Two geographers specializing in Russian agriculture and rural development present an exploratory essay on the phenomenon of agricultural land abandonment in the countryside of European Russia. A particular focus is on investigating the relative importance of physical conditions (fertility) and proximity to regional population centers in explaining the prevalence of land abandonment. A map depic...

Human use of land has transformed ecosystem pattern and process across most of the terrestrial biosphere, a global change often described as historically recent and potentially catastrophic for both humanity and the biosphere. Interdisciplinary paleoecological, archaeological, and historical studies challenge this view, indicating that land use has been extensive and sustained for millennia in ...

Background and purpose: Invasion by alien plant species is considered as one of major threats to biodiversity. Actual invasion of different habitats in particular country is important for understanding processes that are important in invasion ecology as well as for the nature conservation. Materials and methods: Vegetation relevés stored in a database Vegetation of Slovenia were translated into...

Global food demand is increasing rapidly, as are the environmental impacts of agricultural expansion. Here, we project global demand for crop production in 2050 and evaluate the environmental impacts of alternative ways that this demand might be met. We find that per capita demand for crops, when measured as caloric or protein content of all crops combined, has been a similarly increasing funct...

This paper introduces the concepts and aims of sustainable agriculture in China. Sustainable agricultural development comprises sustainability of agricultural production, sustainability of the rural economy, ecological and environmental sustainability within agricultural systems and sustainability of rural society. China's prime aim is to ensure current and future food security. Based on projec...

We organized a crowdsourcing experiment in the form of a snapshot sampling campaign to assess the spatial distribution of nitrogen solutes, namely, nitrate, ammonium and dissolved organic nitrogen (DON), in German surface waters. In particular, we investigated (i) whether crowdsourcing is a reasonable sampling method in hydrology and (ii) what the effects of population density, soil humus conte...

Conversion of arable land into semi-natural grassland or heath land is a common practice for restoring and conserving plant diversity. However, little is known about the effectiveness of land conversion for restoring and conserving taxonomic and functional diversity in the soil. We studied soil nematode community development in a chronosequence of abandoned fields and related this to plant comm...

As the main food source for humans, global movement of three major grains significantly impacts human survival and development. To investigate evolution world cereal trade network its development trend, a weighted directed dynamic multiplexed was established using historical data on trade, import dependency ratio, arable land per capita. Inspired by MLP framework, we redefined weight determinat...

There is a need to examine long-term changes in nitrogen leaching from arable soils. The purpose of this study was to analyse variations in specific leaching rates (kg ha−1 per year) and gross load (Mg per year) of N from arable land to watercourses in Sweden from a historical perspective. The start of the study was set to 1865 because information on crop distribution, yield and livestock has b...