Pollinators provide an essential ecosystem service that contributes to the maintenance of biodiversity and ensures the survival of pt species including crop pts. Furthermore, the reproductive success in pts is often pollinator limited. Most of the vegetable crops are cross-pollinated i.e. the flowers of these crops need conspecific foreign pollen for pollination and seed set. Insect pollinators...

This paper discusses site selection process for biological soil conservation planning. It was supported by a valuefocused approach and spatial multi-criteria evaluation techniques. A first set of spatial criteria was used to design a number of potential sites. Next, a new set of spatial and non-spatial criteria was employed, including the natural factors and the financial costs, together with t...

Conservation tillage has been promoted as a solution to counteract constraints caused by intensive agriculture. In this work the effects of two conservation tillage systems, reduced tillage (RT) and no-tillage (NT) were compared to the traditional tillage (TT) in a long(15 years, RT) and short-term experiment (3 years, NT). Both experiments were carried out under semi-arid, rainfed agriculture ...

Introduction Conservation tillage has been one of the most rapidly adopted agricultural practices of the past 15 years (CTIC, 1983). The primary impetus for conservation tillage has been decreased soil erosion; fuel, labor, and machinery costs; and increased soil water storage and yields (USDA, 1975). Conservation tillage may be broad­ ly defined as tillage practices that reduce soil and water ...

Runoff assessment and estimation is crucial for watershed management as it provides information that is needed to expedite the course of watershed planning and development. The most commonly used model due to its simplicity and versatility in runoff estimation is the soil conservation service curve number developed by the United States Department of Agriculture. The study estimates the surface ...

We illustrate a strategy for valuation of forest ecosystem services by studying the demand for its weak complement, agricultural labor –a commodity that has market prices. In our case study forest protection in Ruteng Park of Flores, Indonesia, provides soil conservation benefits to farmers living near the protected area. Econometric analyses of forest hydrology and household data shows that so...

The Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) defines conservation tillage as a tillage system that leaves enough crop residue to adequately protect the soil from erosion throughout the year. The percent of cover required varies by field according to soil type, slope, crop rotation, winter cover crops used and other factors (NRCS website). Conservation tillage in general and notill practice...