Nitrate loss from bioenergy crop fields has attracted considerable attention during the last few years because of its potential negative impact on aquatic and human health. Both controllable and uncontrollable factors for nitrate loss have been the subject of several previous studies. Due to differences in climate, biophysical dissimilarities and land management characteristics in different par...

Assessment of canopy nitrogen content (CNC) is an important basis for growth diagnosis, precision management, and yield prediction in rice crop. High-resolution spectral reflectance measurement (Hyperspectra) has been suggested to have significant roles in assessment of crop variables, especially biochemical components (e.g., chlorophyll content) and physiological functioning (e.g., light use e...

Introduction _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 51 Real-Time Wildfire Risk Assessment _____________________________________________________________ 53 Keetch-Byram Drought Index _____________________________________________________________________ 53 Current Practice ______________________________________________...

Soil quality (SQ) assessment is a proactive process for evaluating soil and crop management effects on biological, chemical, and physical indicators of soil health. Our objectives were to evaluate several SQ indicators within five Agricultural Research Service (ARS) experimental watersheds (WS) and determine if those indicators were affected by manure, tillage, or crop rotation histories. Ten s...

Crop residues are potential biofuel feedstocks, but residue removal may reduce soil carbon (C). The inclusion of a cover crop in a corn bioenergy system could provide additional biomass, mitigating the negative effects of residue removal by adding to stable soil C pools. In a no-till continuous corn bioenergy system in the northern US Corn Belt, we used CO2 pulse labeling to trace plant C from ...

Th e response and eff ect trait framework, if supported empirically, would provide for powerful and general predictions about how biodiversity loss leads to loss in ecosystem function. Th is framework proposes that species traits will explain how diff erent species respond to disturbance (i.e. response traits) as well as their contribution to ecosystem function (i.e. eff ect traits). However, p...

Damage manifestations in terms of crop damage and livestock depredation are common in Ethiopia and reporting of such domestic damage in the vicinity of Yegof National Forest Priority Area was achieved by collecting information using the pretested semi-structured questionnaire from November 2013 to May 2014. The anubis baboon (Papio anubis) and grivet monkey (Chlorocebus aethiops) were identifie...

Farmers’ decisions about how much crop insurance to buy are not generally consistent with either expected profit or utility maximization. They do not pick coverage levels that maximize expected subsidy nor do they demand full insurance coverage. In addition, the absolute size ...

Corn growth conditions and yield are closely dependent on climate variability. Leaf growth, measured as the leaf area index, can be used to identify changes in crop growth in response to climate stress. This research was conducted to capture patterns of spatial and temporal corn leaf growth under climate stress for the St. Joseph River watershed, in northeastern Indiana. Leaf growth is represen...