After the outbreak of classical swine fever (CSF) in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa, policy makers are expected to make decisions on the restocking of pigs. The objective of this study was to investigate farmers’ perceptions of CSF outbreak in coastal and inland communal production systems because of their differences in harbouring pathogens. Data were collected from 288 farmers in t...

Understanding the molecular mechanism of adaptive evolution in plants provides insights into the selective forces driving adaptation and the genetic basis of adaptive traits with agricultural value. The genomic resources available for Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) make it well suited to the rapid molecular dissection of adaptive processes. Although numerous potentially adaptive loci have b...

Distributed irrigation systems are those in which the water access (via pump or human power), distribution (via furrow, watering can, sprinkler, drip lines, etc.), and use all occur at or near the same location. Distributed systems are typically privately owned and managed by individuals or groups, in contrast to centralized irrigation systems, which tend to be publicly operated and involve lar...

In recent decades, problems with the provision of drinking water and sanitation services around the world have increasingly been addressed by attempts at privatisation, recasting clean water as an essentially economic, rather than public, good. This approach gained particular acceptance in Latin America, but with limited success. In order to address the full range of social, economic and enviro...

[1] The oxygen isotope content of nocturnal ecosystem respiration (dOR) was examined in forests along a precipitation gradient in Oregon, USA, to determine whether site-to-site variation in dOR was more strongly related to variation in d O of precipitation or to evaporative processes that isotopically modify water pools within ecosystems. Measurements were made over 4 years at sites ranging in ...

Compared with nutrient levels and habitat degradation, the importance of agricultural pesticides in surface water may have been underestimated due to a lack of comprehensive quantitative analysis. Increasing pesticide contamination results in decreasing regional aquatic biodiversity, i.e., macroinvertebrate family richness is reduced by ∼30% at pesticide concentrations equaling the legally acce...

Lessening the leakage of surface water can reduce the waste of water resources and ground water pollution. To solve the problem that Mengxi River could not store water enduringly, geology investigation, theoretical analysis, experiment research, and numerical simulation analysis were carried out. Firstly, the seepage mathematical model was established based on unsaturated seepage theory; second...

Nutrient enrichment of water resources has degraded coastal waters throughout the world, including in the United States (e.g., Chesapeake Bay, Gulf of Mexico, and Neuse Estuary). Agricultural nonpoint sources have significant impacts on water resources. As a result, nutrient management planning is the primary tool recommended to reduce nutrient losses from agricultural fields. Its effectiveness...