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This book provides a quantitative analysis of the role of woody plants in semi-arid regions, for the aSSessment of their benefits in agrosylvopastoralland-use systems with productive and sus tainability objectives. The insights presented and conclusions drawn allow the additional benefits of woody plants for specific climatic and physical site conditions and land-use systems to be estimated. The Sahel and Sudan zones in West Africa, on which the book focusses, represent resource-poor conditions, whose ecological dynamics have been relatively well studied. The role of woody plants in this region, as assessed in this book, is extrapolated to other semi-arid regions, leading to general conclusions on agroforestry's potential as an option for sustainable land use in semi-arid regions. The origins of this book go back to 1982, when the Club du Sahel requested that available data on woody plants in the Sahel region be synthesised, to provide basic information to enable better attention to be given to woody plants in rural development programmes. We are grateful to the Club du Sahel for this challenge. Various people contributed to studies used in this book. The preliminary inventory of the data available was made by Frits Ohler; later his work was continued by Franciska Dekker.
This book is open access under a CC BY-NC 2.5 license. This book provides an unprecedented synthesis of the current status of scientific and management knowledge regarding global rangelands and the major challenges that confront them. It has been organized around three major themes. The first summarizes the conceptual advances that have occurred in the rangeland profession. The second addresses the implications of these conceptual advances to management and policy. The third assesses several major challenges confronting global rangelands in the 21st century. This book will compliment applied range management textbooks by describing the conceptual foundation on which the rangeland profession is based. It has been written to be accessible to a broad audience, including ecosystem managers, educators, students and policy makers. The content is founded on the collective experience, knowledge and commitment of 80 authors who have worked in rangelands throughout the world. Their collective contributions indicate that a more comprehensive framework is necessary to address the complex challenges confronting global rangelands. Rangelands represent adaptive social-ecological systems, in which societal values, organizations and capacities are of equal importance to, and interact with, those of ecological processes. A more comprehensive framework for rangeland systems may enable management agencies, and educational, research and policy making organizations to more effectively assess complex problems and develop appropriate solutions.
On the eve of the World Summit for Sustainable Development (WSSD), held in autumn 2002 in Johannesburg, South Africa, United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan recommended five specific areas as focal points of discussion for the global forum: Water, energy, health, agriculture and biodiversity. In his address, "Towards a Sustainable Future," delivered just four months before the WSSD, Secretary General Annan contended that concrete progress in each of these areas, often referred to by their acronym WEHAB, would be key to improving the quality of life not only in the developing world but across the globe. For most people, I think it is fair to say that the inclusion of biodiversity in a list that focuses on basic human needs may not be self-evident. Water, energy, health and agriculture, yes. But why biodiversity? The truth is that biodiversity is just as critical to global well-being as water, energy, agriculture and health. This is because biodiversity both drives and shapes nature's intricate and dynamic structure in an enduring form and force that enables both current and future generations to enjoy its bounty.
This book describes the potential contributions of emerging technologies in different fields as well as the opportunities and challenges related to the integration of these technologies in the socio-economic sector. In this book, many latest technologies are addressed, particularly in the fields of computer science and engineering. The expected scientific papers covered state-of-the-art technologies, theoretical concepts, standards, product implementation, ongoing research projects, and innovative applications of Sustainable Development. This new technology highlights, the guiding principle of innovation for harnessing frontier technologies and taking full profit from the current technological revolution to reduce gaps that hold back truly inclusive and sustainable development. The fundamental and specific topics are Big Data Analytics, Wireless sensors, IoT, Geospatial technology, Engineering and Mechanization, Modeling Tools, Risk analytics, and preventive systems.
Below-grownd interactions are often seen as the 'dark side' of agroecosystems, especially when more than one crop is grown on the same piece of land at he same time. this book aims to review the amount of light he past decade of research has shed on this topic. It also aims to review ohw far we have come in unravelling the positive and negative aspects of these interactions and how, in dialogue with farmers, we can use the generic principles that are now emerging to look for sita-specifics solutions.
This book publishes the best papers accepted and presented at the 3rd edition of the International Conference on Advanced Intelligent Systems for Sustainable Development Applied to Agriculture, Energy, Health, Environment, Industry, Education, Economy, and Security (AI2SD’2020). This conference is one of the biggest amalgamations of eminent researchers, students, and delegates from both academia and industry where the collaborators have an interactive access to emerging technology and approaches globally. In this book, readers find the latest ideas addressing technological issues relevant to all areas of the social and human sciences for sustainable development. Due to the nature of the conference with its focus on innovative ideas and developments, the book provides the ideal scientific and brings together very high-quality chapters written by eminent researchers from different disciplines, to discover the most recent developments in scientific research.
There is an urgent need to increase agricultural productivity in sub-Saharan Africa in a sustainable and economically-viable manner. Transforming risk-averse smallholders into business-oriented producers that invest in producing surplus food for sale provides a formidable challenge, both from a technological and socio-political perspective. This book addresses the issue of agricultural intensification in the humid highland areas of Africa – regions with relatively good agricultural potential, but where the scarce land resources are increasingly under pressure from the growing population and from climate change. In addition to introductory and synthesis chapters, the book focuses on four themes: system components required for agricultural intensification; the integration of components at the system level; drivers for adoption of technologies towards intensification; and the dissemination of complex knowledge. It provides case studies of improved crop and soil management for staple crops such as cassava and bananas, as well as examples of how the livelihoods of rural people can be improved. The book provides a valuable resource for researchers, development actors, students and policy makers in agricultural systems and economics and in international development. It highlights and addresses key challenges and opportunities that exist for sustainable agricultural intensification in the humid highlands of sub-Saharan Africa.
Soil Management and Climate Change: Effects on Organic Carbon, Nitrogen Dynamics, and Greenhouse Gas Emissions provides a state of the art overview of recent findings and future research challenges regarding physical, chemical and biological processes controlling soil carbon, nitrogen dynamic and greenhouse gas emissions from soils. This book is for students and academics in soil science and environmental science, land managers, public administrators and legislators, and will increase understanding of organic matter preservation in soil and mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions. Given the central role soil plays on the global carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) cycles and its impact on greenhouse gas emissions, there is an urgent need to increase our common understanding about sources, mechanisms and processes that regulate organic matter mineralization and stabilization, and to identify those management practices and processes which mitigate greenhouse gas emissions, helping increase organic matter stabilization with suitable supplies of available N. - Provides the latest findings about soil organic matter stabilization and greenhouse gas emissions - Covers the effect of practices and management on soil organic matter stabilization - Includes information for readers to select the most suitable management practices to increase soil organic matter stabilization
Large areas of the warm, humid tropics in Southeast Asia, the Pacific, Latin America, the Caribbean, and Africa are hilly or mountainous. Jackson and Scherr (1995) estimate that these tropical hillside areas are inhabited by 500 million people, or one-tenth of the current world population, many of whom practice subsistence agriculture. The region most affected is Asia which has the lowest area of arable land per capita. Aside from limited areas of irrigated terraces, most of the sloping land, which constitutes 60% to 90% of the land resources in many Southeast Asian countries, has been by-passed in the economic development of the region (Maglinao and Hashim, 1993). Poverty in these areas is often high, in contrast to the relative wealth of irri gated rice farms in lowland areas that benefited from the green revolution. Rapid population growth in some countries is also exacerbating the problems of hillside areas. Increasingly, people are migrating from high-potential lowland areas where land is scarce to more remote hillside areas. Such migra tion, together with inherent high population growth, is forcing a transforma tion in land use from subsistence to permanent agriculture on fragile slopes, and is creating a new suite of social, economic, and environmental problems (Garrity, 1993; Maglinao and Hashim, 1993).
Agroforestry in Sustainable Agricultural Systems examines the environmental and social conditions that affect the roles and performance of trees in field- and forest-based agricultural production systems. Various types of ecological settings for agroforestry are analyzed within temperate and tropical regions. The roles of soil, water, light, nutrient and pest management in mixed, annual, woody perennial and livestock systems are discussed. Important new case studies from around the world offer innovative strategies that have been used successfully in raising forests and tree products on a sustainable basis for commercial harvesting and for providing other environmental services in land conservation and watershed management.