agricultural sustainability (as) in farming systems has turned into an extremely sensitive issue, which has attracted the attention of most researchers in recent years. the main objective of this survey research was to assess the situation with regard to different levels of farming system sustainability among wheat growing farmers in agricultural production cooperatives in fars province of iran...

Surveillance measures for human cases of Lyme disease in Wisconsin were compared and associated with tick distribution and vegetation coverage. During 1991-1994, 1,759 confirmed human cases of Lyme disease reported to the Wisconsin Division of Health were assigned a county of residence, but only 329 (19%) could be assigned with certainty a county of exposure. Distributions of cases by county of...

It is almost certainly the case that many populations have always existed as metapopulations, leading to the conclusion that local extinctions are common and normally balanced by migrations. This conclusion has major consequences for biodiversity conservation in fragmented tropical forests and the agricultural matrices in which they are embedded. Here we make the argument that the conservation ...

By the turn of the century, American farmers and ranchers will be producing food and fiber through the application of highly sophisticated systems that involve a broad spectrum of relevant factors--from soil type, to options for fertilizer and pesticide use, to markets and other economic information. These systems will help farmers and ranchers better match land use to land capability, apply ne...

1. General Background for Agro-Ecology 1.1. The Field of Ecology 1.2. Specifics of Agro-Ecology 2. Environmental Resources of Food Supply 3. Environmental Constrains on Food Production 4. Loss of Biological Diversity and its Potential Impact on Food Production 4.1. General causes of Biodiversity losses 4.2 Impact on Food Production 5. Water for Agriculture and Food Production 6. Energy use in F...

0308-521X/$ see front matter Published by Elsevier doi:10.1016/j.agsy.2010.04.004 * Corresponding author. Address: Building 162, PO 32611-0495, United States. Tel.: +1 352 392 3797; fa E-mail address: [email protected] (H. Beck). A methodology and applications of ontology-based simulation are presented. An environment for building simulations based on the Lyra ontology management system is described ...

Organic matter, compost, humus, humates, humic acid, and fulvic acid are all related to, and parts of, decaying plant materials. It’s food for soil life and a storehouse for minerals, energy and water. These organic materials are mediums for certain organisms to grow on. The biological/organic farming system is based on balanced minerals and lots of soil life in terms of diversity and volume. S...

Topic Note 6.1: ICT in the Agricultural Research Process. This section spans the entire agricultural research process from engaging partners and stakeholders, through data collection and analysis, collaboration and knowledge access, publishing and dissemination, to feedback and interactions with rural and other end-user communities. In each of these areas, ICTs are making agricultural research ...

An architecture is presented that utilizes both knowledge-based systems technology and Intelligent Agents technology to design and implement computerized systems for agricultural management that are flexible, extendible, and reusable. While stand-alone knowledge based systems provide valuable agricultural management information, collaboration among several knowledge-based systems with related f...

Soil solarization is a natural, hydrothermal process of disinfesting soil of plant pests that is accomplished through passive solar heating. Solarization occurs through a combination of physical, chemical, and biological mechanisms, and is compatible with many other disinfestation methods to provide integrated pest management. Commercially, it is used on a relatively small scale worldwide as a ...