BACKGROUND Global annual losses in agricultural production from salt-affected land are in excess of US$12 billion and rising. At the same time, a significant amount of arable land is becoming lost to urban sprawl, forcing agricultural production into marginal areas. Consequently, there is a need for a major breakthrough in crop breeding for salinity tolerance. Given the limited range of genetic...

Andisols are characterized by a high phosphorus (P) fixation capacity, which is a limiting factor for plant production. Continuous application of P fertilizer may result in an accumulation of P associated with soil organic matter (SOM), which further acts to reduce the availability of the added P. The objectives of this study were (1) to evaluate the impact of P fertilizer inputs on the quantit...

The sub-Saharan Africa region recorded the fastest conversion of forest land to agriculture in the past 20 years. The region also has the widest yield gap and together with Latin America and Caribbean has the largest unused arable land. However, there are wide variations across countries and this offers valuable lessons on the drivers of agricultural intensification and land use dynamics. This ...

China has recorded positive growth rates of grain production for the past eleven consecutive years. This is a remarkable accomplishment given that China's rapid industrialization and urbanization has led to a vast reduction of arable land and agricultural labor to non-agricultural sectors. While there are many factors contributing to this happy outcome, one potential contributing factor that ha...

Land consolidation is a tool for increasing the area of the arable land and improving the effectiveness of land cultivation. With the development of high resolution image, the progress of land consolidation project can be monitored by acquiring information from the image objectively. This paper presents a method to extract the wells and roads in land consolidation project from high resolution i...

According to the CORINE programme, Spain and Portugal are the Mediterranean countries in the European Union facing the greatest risk of erosion (Desir & Marín, 2007). In Portugal, areas at high risk of erosion cover almost one third of the country (Grimm et al., 2002). The main causes of soil erosion are inappropriate agricultural practices, land abandonment, deforestation, overgrazing, forest ...

The objective of the presented work was to conduct an ex-post analysis of land use change in Wroclaw city, Poland, as a response to the soil protection regulations. The assessment that was a part of Urban Soil Management Strategy (URBAN-SMS) project involved development of land use change maps based on the satellite image data, analysis of land use change trends within 15 years period and subse...

Converting rangelands to arable land such as dry farming is widely practiced in many places in Iran. This activity could possibly contribute to the increase in downstream sedimentation. The effects of this activity on downstream watersheds are not well documented for many strategic areas in the country. One such area which is proposed for this study is the Kardeh drainage basin, located in the ...