The book written by seventeen experts in the field of rangeland management, this compilation of essays brings to light the latent issues concerning this subject to readers all over the globe. Though technical approaches can address some issues, social processes ultimately prevent the balancing of these matters. Socio-economic and political institutions are often a stumbling block for improving ...

The global demand for agricultural products is surging due to population growth, more meat-based diets, and the increasing role of bioenergy. Three strategies can increase agricultural production: (1) expanding agriculture into natural ecosystems; (2) intensifying existing farmland; or (3) recultivating abandoned farmland. Because agricultural expansion entails substantial environmental trade-o...

This paper describes the procedures for a concept-based mapping of two agricultural thesauri, the multilingual AGROVOC, created and maintained by the Food and Agricultural Organization, and the bilingual Chinese Agricultural Thesaurus, created and maintained by the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Science. Conducted under the auspices of FAO’s Agricultural Ontology Service, the mapping project a...

This study was carried out to relate the diversity of one crop in terms of number of landraces and farm area with the diversity of other crop. Information collected during baseline survey of in-situ global project (1999) on three crops namely rice, finger millet and sponge gourd in Jumla, Kaski and Bara of Nepal were used. Farm area of each variety and number of landraces grown by sampled house...

Hydrological and pollutant fate models have long been developed for research purposes. Today, they find an application in integrated watershed management, as decision support systems (DSS). GIBSI is such a DSS designed to assist stakeholders in watershed management. It includes a watershed database coupled to a GIS and accessible through a user-friendly interface, as well as modelling tools tha...

Soil salinity is one of the problems threatening agricultural lands. Parts of this phenomenon are related to geologic formations and saltpans, while some major factors are resulted from irrelevant agricultural activities, issue of irrigation, and improper cultivation systems which lead to increase in soil salinity. To avoid such consequences that would end up with ecosystem degradation, suitabl...

Background: Changes in soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks significantly influence the atmospheric C concentration. Agricultural management practices that increase SOC stocks thus may have profound effects on climate mitigation. Additional benefits include higher soil fertility since increased SOC stocks improve the physical and biological properties of the soil. Intensification of agriculture and...

Agricultural Water Management in the Sevier River Basin, Utah: A Multidisciplinary Approach

Human activities such as research & development, infrastructure or management are of major importance for agricultural productivity. These activities can be summarized as agricultural land-use intensity. We present a measure, called the τ -factor, which is an alternative to current measures for agricultural landuse intensity. The τ -factor is the ratio between actual yield and a reference yield...