To address land degradation and rural poverty the Chinese government has put in place a series of land conversion programmes in the Loess Plateau area in northern China. In addition to problems arising from unsustainable land use, water resource availability driven in part by climatic forcing is also a threat to livelihoods in this region. To understand climate impacts on farming practice in poor areas of China, field observation and village reconnaissance took place in the summer of 2009 in three selected counties of Shaanxi and Ningxia Province, northern China.

Historical tensions between Nigeria's pastoralist Fulani and settled indigenous farmers have intensified in recent years, with dwindling natural resources and land availability greatly contributing to the ongoing, escalating conflict in the north of the country. The urgent requirement to engage with, rather than isolate, Nigeria's Fulani from various socioeconomic and environmental management strategies is fundamental to peace and agricultural productivity in the region.

Small burnet is a hardy, relatively long-lived evergreen forb with the potential to improve grazing lands, particularly to extend grazing into late fall and winter. Small burnet was evaluated for tolerance to spring and fall POST applications of aminopyralid, bromoxynil, clethodim, clopyralid, dicamba, dimethenamid-P, imazamox, metribuzin, pendimethalin, quinclorac, and 2,4-DB. Injury, seed yield, seed viability, and dry matter yield (DMY) were measured in the spring following application. Injury was observed in response to all spring and fall herbicide applications.

PURPOSE: Concern about the environmental impact of agriculture caused by intensification is growing as large amounts of nutrients and contaminants are introduced into the environment. The aim of this paper is to identify the geogenic and agricultural controls on the elemental composition of European, grazing and agricultural soils. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Robust factor analysis was applied to data series for Al, B, Ca, Cd, Co, Cu, Fe, K, Mg, Mn, Na, Ni, P, S, Se, Sr, U, Zn (ICP-MS) and SiO2, K2O, Na2O, Fe2O3, Al2O3 (XRF) based on the European GEMAS dataset.

Herbivores are a significant source of nitrous oxide (N₂O) emissions. They account for a large share of manure-related N₂O emissions, as well as soil-related N₂O emissions through the use of grazing land, and land for feed and forage production. It is widely acknowledged that mitigation measures are necessary to avoid an increase in N₂O emissions while meeting the growing global food demand. The production and emissions of N₂O are closely linked to the efficiency of nitrogen (N) transfer between the major components of a livestock system, that is, animal, manure, soil and crop.

China launched the “Returning Grazing Lands to Grasslands” project about a decade ago to restore severely degraded grasslands. Grassland grazing exclusion was one of the experimental approaches for achieving the grand goal. Here, we evaluate the long-term regional ecological effects of grassland grazing exclusion in the Xilingol region of Inner Mongolia, China. The dynamics of grassland communities over 8 years (2004–2011) were continuously monitored at 11 research sites dominated by temperate steppe ecosystems.

Chemical and sediment losses from agricultural lands are threatening coastal marine and aquatic ecosystems in many parts of the world. This is an acute problem in Australia, where the condition of Great Barrier Reef (GBR) ecosystems is threatened by increased pollutant loads from agricultural lands, and Governments have enacted policies to reduce pollutant exports. These policies raise the question of how to identify changes in land management that will effectively reduce exports.

In the last 100 years or so, desertification, degradation, and woody plant encroachment have altered huge tracts of semiarid rangelands. It is expected that the changes thus brought about significantly affect water balance in these regions; and in fact, at the headwater-catchment and smaller scales, such effects are reasonably well documented. For larger scales, however, there is surprisingly little documentation of hydrological change.