Perennial cellulosic feedstocks may have potential to reduce life-cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by offsetting fossil fuels. However, this potential depends on meeting a number of important criteria involving land cover change, including avoiding displacement of agricultural production, not reducing uncultivated natural lands that provide biodiversity habitat and other valued ecosystem se...

INTRODUCTION In many countries around the world “developers” take the best agricultural lands for housing, and urbanization spreads rapidly. As a result, the agricultural industries are pushed into less productive lands in which the climate is not the most suitable for crops. A very good example is found in Israel. The best agricultural area is along the Mediterranean coast where the citrus ind...

Afforestation of agricultural lands has been one of the major land use changes in China in recent decades. To better understand the effect of such land use change on soil quality, we investigated selected soil physical, chemical and microbial properties (0-15 cm depth) in marginal agricultural land and a chronosequence of poplar (Populus euramericana cv. 'N3016') plantations (5-, 10-, 15- and 2...

Canada’s agriculturally important lands include lands that are currently used for agricultural purposes (e.g. croplands, rangeland, pastures) as well as those that show potential for future agricultural development (e.g. natural grasslands). However, because these lands generally cover large geographical extents, their assessment by conventional ground survey techniques are often time-consuming...

Cultivated land in China has faced severe challenges in recent years due to rapid urbanization. In 1997, the “cultivated land requisition-compensation balance” policy was implemented by the government to maintain the quantity and quality of cultivated land. Previous studies mainly focused on the quantity changes of cultivated land. In this study, from a quality perspective, we characterized the...

Conservation decisions should be evaluated for how they meet conservation goals at multiple spatial extents. Conservation easements are land use decisions resulting from a combination of social and environmental conditions. An emerging area of research is the evaluation of spatial distribution of easements and their spatial correlates. We tested the relative influence of interacting social and ...

Groundwater is connected to the landscape above and is thus affected by the overlaying land uses. This study evaluated the impacts of land uses upon groundwater quality using trilinear analysis. Trilinear analysis is a display of experimental data in a triangular graph. Groundwater quality data collected from agricultural, septic tank, forest, and wastewater land uses for a 6-year period were u...

The problem of evaluation of agricultural land suitability is consid­ ered as a fuzzy modeling task. For assessment of land suitability, it is proposed to use fuzzy indicators. Application of individual fuzzy indicators gives oppor­ tunity for assessment of suitability of lands as degree or grade of performance when the lands are used for agricultural purposes. Using composite fuzzy indi­ cator...

A survey of all county planning departments in Washington State indicated that protecting agricultural land is a major concern at the county level. Maintenance of the agribusiness sector is the main reason for protecting agricultural land, while the preservation of open space and rural lifestyles was of secondary importance. As a result, most Washington counties have implemented a broad range o...