Crop transitions can drive economic and ecological shifts in an established farming landscape: a case study from California
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<p>Meeting growing challenges to maintain food production and rural livelihoods while minimizing land degradation will require significant changes in the way existing farming landscapes are managed. A systemic understanding of the agroecological impacts of land-use change in established farming landscapes, and the identification of significant trade-offs or synergies, are crucial to inform farm management and land-use governance solutions. Here, we focus on land-use change impacts in an already established farming landscape. We investigate spatial and temporal dynamics of agricultural land-use change from 2002 to 2018, in Kern County, California. Our study region is one of the major agricultural production hotspots in the United States, and has undergone a recent agricultural land-use transition from annual to perennial cropping systems. In this study we analyzed parcel-level data documenting changes in the land-use footprint for individual crops, ranging from annual crops like wheat and cotton to perennial tree crops like almonds and pistachios. We assess how land-use change impacted ecosystem pressures and service indicators selected for their relevance in an agricultural context, including water-use, soil erosion, profit and carbon sequestration. Our results indicate no salient trade-offs or synergies among individual crops, and illustrate the possibility of limited economic-ecological trade-offs associated with a shift from annual to perennial crops in a well-established agricultural landscape. We further discuss the relevance of our findings in the context of land-ownership consolidation and changing export dynamics in the study area.</p>Keywords:
Agroecology
Agricultural land
Land consolidation
Consolidation
Environmental degradation
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Sustainable land management
Land Cover
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Abstract For land degradation monitoring and assessment (M&A) to be accurate and for sustainable land management (SLM) to be effective, it is necessary to incorporate multiple knowledges using a variety of methods and scales, and this must include the (potentially conflicting) perspectives of those who use the land. This paper presents a hybrid methodological framework that builds on approaches developed by UN Food & Agriculture Organisation's land degradation Assessment in Drylands (LADA), the World Conservation Approaches and Technologies (WOCAT) programme and the Dryland Development Paradigm (DDP), and is being applied internationally through the EU‐funded DESIRE project. The framework suggests that M&A should determine the progress of SLM towards meeting sustainability goals, with results continually and iteratively enhancing SLM decisions. The framework is divided into four generic themes: (i) establishing land degradation and SLM context and sustainability goals; (ii) identifying, evaluating and selecting SLM strategies; (iii) selecting land degradation and SLM indicators and (iv) applying SLM options and monitoring land degradation and progress towards sustainability goals. This approach incorporates multiple knowledge sources and types (including land manager perspectives) from local to national and international scales. In doing so, it aims to provide outputs for policy‐makers and land managers that have the potential to enhance the sustainability of land management in drylands, from the field scale to the region, and to national and international levels. The paper draws on operational experience from across the DESIRE project to break the four themes into a series of methodological steps, and provides examples of the range of tools and methods that can be used to operationalise each of these steps. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Sustainable land management
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Sustainable land management
Desertification
Environmental degradation
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Sustainable land management
Neutrality
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Discussions of land degradation often display a disconnect between global and local scales. Although global-scale discussions often focus on measuring and reversing land degradation through metrics and policy measures, local-scale discussions can highlight a diversity of viewpoints and the importance of local knowledge and context-specific strategies for sustainable land management. Similarly, although scientific studies clearly link anthropogenic climate change to land degradation as both cause and consequence, the connection may not be so clear for local rangelands communities due to the complex temporal and spatial scales of change and management in such environments. In research conducted in October 2015, we interviewed 18 stakeholders in the far west of New South Wales about their perspectives on sustainable land management. The results revealed highly variable views on what constitutes land degradation, its causes and appropriate responses. For the pastoral land managers, the most important sign of good land management was the maintenance of groundcover, through the management of total grazing pressure. Participants viewed overgrazing as a contributor to land degradation in some cases and they identified episodes of land degradation in the region. However, other more contentious factors were also highlighted, such as wind erosion, grazing by goats and kangaroos and the spread of undesired ‘invasive native scrub’ at the expense of more desirable pasture, and alternative views that these can offer productive benefits. Although few participants were concerned about anthropogenic climate change, many described their rangeland management styles as adaptive to the fluctuations of the climate, regardless of the reasons for these variations. Rather than focusing on whether landholders ‘believe in’ climate change or agree on common definitions or measurement approaches for land degradation, these results suggest that their culture of adaptation may provide a strong basis for coping with an uncertain future. The culture of adaption developed through managing land in a highly variable climate may help even if the specific conditions that landholders need to adapt to are unlike those experienced in living memory. Such an approach requires scientific and expert knowledge to be integrated alongside the context-specific knowledge, values and existing management strategies of local stakeholders.
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Land degradation has been a subject of academic research all across the world and still an important global issue in the twenty-first century. Land is an essential resource that is degraded day by day through some major factors like natural, anthropogenic and climatic factors. It is the principal basis for human well-being and livelihood as it provides us food, shelter, and multiple other ecosystem services. Land degradation has become a severe environmental problem. It is observed that a complex interplay between a variety of interrelated processes leads to what we defined as land degradation. It occurs in the form of deforestation, desertification, rapid changes in climatic conditions, waterlogging, salinization, erosion, and loss of organic matter components, etc. But we can save our land or manage our land from degradation by identifying sustainable land management practices and by adopting a precise methodology for assessing land degradation. The major objectives of this study are to address the problems of land degradation and to explore sustainable land management practices through different researches. This paper surveys the research works done on this theme and points out the key drivers of land degradation across the world, the social, economic and environmental costs of land degradation, the extent and severity of global land degradation and the appropriate methods for assessment of land degradation at global level and opportunities for improvement.
Desertification
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Abstract Land degradation is a global environmental problem that has received a great deal of attention. Moreover, the current methods used to evaluate land degradation concentrate mostly on point and management levels, while information at the regional scale is lacking. This study aimed to assess potential land degradation at a regional scale by adapting the Mediterranean desertification and land use approach for a subtropical region with a geographic information system (GIS), developing a degradation assessment model that recognizes environmentally sensitive areas and analyzing potential land degradation for natural and anthropogenic factors. The selected indicators included vegetation, soil, climate, and human pressure, and these four indicators contained 15 indices that were input by layers from GIS data. The results showed that 89.32% of the study area was affected by land degradation, with more than half of this region in the moderate risk class for land degradation. At the city scale, Nanning had the largest percentage of land in the critical class, followed by the cities of Chongzuo and Qinzhou. Climate and human pressure were the predominant indicators, with the highest mean scores of 1.46 and 1.45, respectively. This study offers significant information for decision makers evaluating potential land degradation. The goal of land management is to solve conflicts between humans and land, and management measures consider local conditions. The assessment model provides a basis for effective management measures and decision making for land degradation prevention. Developing this approach is significant in terms of extending degradation assessment to a larger scale.
Desertification
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Sustainable land management
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Land degradation is considered to be a major environmental problem by scientific and political institutions in Iceland. In past years, land degradation problems related to sheep and horse grazing have gradually come to the fore in public discussion of environmental questions. However, land degradation is often evaluated in different ways by different groups of people. This has led to a lack of consensus regarding rates and severity of land degradation. Therefore, it is important to study differences in environmental perception, and how these differences can be dealt with in the context of sustainable management. This paper aims to highlight farmers' perception of land degradation in Iceland, as perceptions of the environment determine the basis for human activities related to the land. A total of 100 farmers in NE Iceland were questioned and interviewed for their opinions on land degradation, its history, causes and severity. The results indicate that farmers consider land degradation to be a slow process, and not a catastrophic phenomenon. The understanding of the general ecological processes by the users affects their practices and concern for their environment. This feeds back on the land-use system and ultimately causes changes in land-cover. Therefore, if we are to increase our understanding of the processes that lead to land-cover changes we have to integrate the perceptions of land users and technical experts. In this way we may improve conservation practices and land-resource management policies. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Land Cover
Environmental degradation
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Land degradation refers to a range of processes that contribute to a reduction in the quality and economic productivity of the land. It describes the deterioration of the biological, physical, or chemical properties of land and its constituent parts. Land degradation is often viewed in relation to certain ecosystem services that land is expected or desired to provide within particular socioeconomic and land‐use systems. This contextual nature of land degradation makes its management highly challenging. Land degradation creates challenges across a range of sectors and scales. This means that policies and actions to address land degradation span multiple governance levels. It is increasingly recognized that those who manage the land need to be directly involved in actions to reduce, prevent, and reverse its degradation.
Degradation
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