Recently, land use and land cover change have received increased attention, and an approach is required that can assess agricultural land use intensity on a general basis. This study demonstrated the usefulness of a tool for characterizing and assessing agricultural land use intensity in Beijing mountainous region. An emergy analysis and principal component analysis (PCA) were adopted to obtain...

Background and Context Maize, the main staple crop remains the dominant crop among smallholder farmers in Malawi. Smallholder farmers devote almost 70 percent of their land to maize cultivation, and maize availability in the country de nes the food security situation of the country. Smallholder agriculture in Malawi has been characterized by low productivity, low technology and labour intensive...

Global agricultural feeds over 7 billion people, but is also a leading cause of environmental degradation. Understanding how alternative agricultural production systems, agricultural input efficiency, and food choice drive environmental degradation is necessary for reducing agriculture’s environmental impacts. A meta-analysis of life cycle assessments that includes 742 agricultural systems and ...

With the increases of cropland area and fertilizer nitrogen (N) application rate, general N balance characteristics in regional agroecosystems have been widely documented. However, few studies have quantitatively analyzed the drivers of spatial changes in the N budget. We constructed a mass balance model of the N budget at the soil surface using a database of county-level agricultural statistic...