Agricultural Advisory Diagnostics Using a Data-Based Approach: Test Case in an Intensively Managed Rural Landscape in the Ganga River Basin, India

technology adoption through agricultural extension may be a consequence of providing generic information without sufficient adaptation to local conditions. Data-rich paradigms may be disruptive to extension services and can potentially change farmer-advisor interactions. This study fills a gap in pre-existing, generic advisory programs by suggesting an approach to “diagnose” farm-specific agricultural issues quantitatively first in order to facilitate advisors in developing farm-centric advisories. A user-friendly Farm Agricultural Diagnostics (FAD) tool is developed in Microsoft Excel VBA that uses farmer surveys and soil testing to quantify current agricultural performance, classify farms into different performance categories relative to a localized performance target, and visualize farm performance within a user-friendly interface. The advisory diagnostics approach is tested in Kanpur, representative of an intensively managed rural landscape in the Ganga river basin in India. The developed open-source tool is made available online to generate data-based agricultural advisories. During the field testing in Kanpur, the tool identifies 24% farms as nutrient-limited, 34% farms as water-limited, 27% farms with nutrient and water co-limitations, and the remaining farms as satisfactory compared to the localized performance target. It is recommended to design advisories in terms of water and nutrient recommendations which can fulfill the farm needs identified by the tool. The tool will add data-based value to pre-existing demand based advisory services in agricultural extension programs. The primary users of the tools are academic, governmental and non-governmental agencies working in the agricultural sector, whose rigorous scientific research, soil testing capacity, and direct stakeholder engagement, respectively, can be harnessed to generate more data-based and customized advisories, potentially improving farmer uptake of agricultural advisories.

Connect the Dots

This chapter presents a case study of the Connect the Dots Project, which encompasses a coordinated and connected set of actions aimed at sustainable territorial development, under the prism of the knowledge economy. The project, held in São Paulo City, Brazil, was awarded with the first place at the contest Mayors Challenge 2016, organized by the North American institution Bloomberg Philanthropies. Connect the Dots is a project aimed at strengthening producers and support their transition to an agroecological production system, as a way of protecting the rural landscape, conceived within the scope of the 2014 São Paulo Strategic Master Plan. The name of the project, an allusion to a puzzle game, has its inspiration in the fundamental connections between public and private actors. Its foundation is in the development of technological innovations, education collective actions, and decisions based on data and evidence typical of the knowledge economy.

Evaluation of Rural Landscape Resources Based on Cloud Model and Probabilistic Linguistic Term Set

Rural landscape resources are important ingredients of rural revitalization and modernization in developing countries and regions. Evaluation methods play a crucial role in the development planning, design, transformation, and protection of these resources. However, there has been a lack of research on the evaluation of rural landscape resources, especially from the perspective of rural revitalization. Based on previous evaluation methods and expert consultations on landscape planning and design, we proposed a new approach for evaluating rural landscape resources by establishing a new index system and using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and probabilistic linguistic Cloud Model. To demonstrate its applicability and effectiveness, we applied our model to the case of a village (Xiapu) in Guangdong, China, determined the parameter set of its rural landscape resources, and obtained related results showing that the method is practical and can reflect the value of resources objectively and efficiently. Based on this model, further suggestions are provided to improve the design and other utilizations of rural landscape resources.

A National Survey of Hand Surgeons: Understanding the Rural Landscape

Background: Twenty percent of the US population is described as being rural and may have limited access to hand surgeons, especially on an emergency basis. Little is known about case type, call hours, employment status, and other relevant details of rural hand surgery. Methods: We surveyed members of the American Society of Surgery for the Hand to begin to describe the problem. Results: There were 471 responses from 2256 members surveyed with 387 completing 100% of questions asked. Ninety (19%) identified themselves as primarily located in a rural population and 381 (81%) in a metropolitan region. In our study, rural hand surgeons were more likely to be employed by a community hospital, followed by independent private practice, multispecialty group, academics, and then locum tenens. Rural surgeons’ practices were 80% solely hand surgery, while metropolitan surgeons’ practices were 89% ( P < .01). Metropolitan surgeons felt that of the transfers from rural facilities, 46% did not need emergency hand care and that 60% of the time, there was not actually a need for specialty hand surgery care. Conclusions: Our survey begins to shed light on the details of rural hand surgery practice. We found that rural surgeons are more likely to be employed in community hospitals and take more call. When available, hand surgery specialists could prevent unnecessary transfer of patients to metropolitan areas. More work needs to be done to describe the differences between rural and metropolitan hand surgery practices as well as create rural hand surgeons.

Fifth-century landscapes

The desertion of Roman London around the end of the fourth century is contrasted with settlement continuity within its rural hinterland. The failure of the Roman administration resulted in the abandonment of most urban properties. Although some suburban villas may have suffered a similar fate, others saw continued occupation into the fifth century. The most compelling evidence for such continuity comes from the site of the likely villa at St Martin-in-the-Fields by Trafalgar Square. Other rural sites, some first occupied in the Iron Age, remained as focal points for later activities represented by sporadic finds of early Saxon material in Southwark and at sites along the Fleet valley. The contrast that these sites present with the evidence from the City suggests that the evacuation of the city had little immediate impact on the management of the surrounding rural landscape. Saxon settlement occurred at some remove from Roman retreat. Other suburban villas may have been abandoned, only to attract later church foundations because of their identity as late antique sites with potential Christian associations. London’s late Saxon revival was the consequence of later political choices.

Countryside Borderscapes in Finland

This article focuses on a particular kind of fence (riukuaita) that visually fragmented the nineteenth-century rural landscape in Finland and deeply affected everyday mobility in the countryside. Expanding on observations made in a previous article, the first section situates earlier depictions of the Finnish countryside within the broader confrontation between classic and romantic landscape painting and presents the idea of a countryside transformed into a borderscape of sorts. The second section examines the cultural practices within the Alderman institution that sustained and administrated these borders and divisions. The third and final section explores how artists of the so-called Golden Age of Finnish Art depicted these bordescapes, and how it might affect the way we read and experience landscape paintings, especially when considered from the phenomenological perspective of actual and imaginary walking into the depicted scene.

A Diachronic Analysis of a Changing Landscape on the Duero River Borderlands of Spain and Portugal Combining Remote Sensing and Ethnographic Approaches

The Arribes del Duero region spans the border of both Spain and Portugal along the Duero River. On both sides of the border, the region boasts unique human-influenced ecosystems. The borderland landscape is dotted with numerous villages that have a history of maintaining and managing an agrosilvopastoral use of the land. Unfortunately, the region in recent decades has suffered from massive outmigration, resulting in significant rural abandonment. Consequently, the once-maintained landscape is evolving into a more homogenous vegetative one, resulting in a greater propensity for wildfires. This study utilizes an interdisciplinary, integrated approach of “bottom up” ethnography and “top down” remote sensing data from Landsat imagery, to characterize and document the diachronic vegetative changes on the landscape, as they are perceived by stakeholders and satellite spectral analysis. In both countries, stakeholders perceived the current changes and threats facing the landscape. Remote sensing analysis revealed an increase in forest cover throughout the region, and more advanced, drastic change on the Spanish side of the study area marked by wildfire and a rapidly declining population. Understanding the evolution and history of this rural landscape can provide more effective management and its sustainability.

Differences in Visual Preference in Rural Landscapes on the Plain of La Mancha in Spain

For centuries, agricultural activities have marked and defined the landscape with its own distinctive features. The consideration of the rural landscape as a resource has gained traction in recent years. In Europe, the European Landscape Convention offers a solid framework that places landscape at the forefront of European policies on cultural heritage, environment, and territorial ordination. The most important new development is the integrated vision of the landscape in its cultural and natural aspects, and the introduction of its social dimension. This work analyses the influence of different factors on preferences for rural landscapes in the locality of Campo de Criptana (Ciudad Real), representative of the singular rural landscape of the La Mancha plain. The method for assessing landscape is the people’s aesthetic response to it. Specifically, an analysis has been made of the observers’ preferences in relation to their educational level (university educated or not), gender, age, and place of origin (whether they come from the locality itself or from outside). This is one of the few works that analyse the place of origin of the observer. In view of these results, it can be concluded that all the demographic factors analysed have an influence on preferences in rural landscapes.

Georeferenced Cartography and Landscape: the Protection of the Monumental Olive Heritage

This research studies the protection of the rural landscape and agri-food heritage, offering a perspective on the role and contribution of research to support land management processes and the development of local resources.This opportunity for reflection was created by a project developed at the request of Regione Campania, in Southern Italy, aimed at preserving the inestimable source of biodiversity represented by olive varieties from the risk of genetic erosion, and at guaranteeing the production of oils with typical and diversified organoleptic qualities and properties.Within the scope of the project, the geo-cartographic section has analyzed, surveyed, georeferenced and represented, for a selected territory, the presence of centuries-old olive trees and allowed the creation of other research sections, more specifically agronomic and legal.The georeferencing map of the millenary olive trees typical of the territory, together with the genetic identity card of each plant, have been inserted in a publicly accessible database, through which it is possible to trace the origins and, consequently, the quality of the oil produced.