Understanding the impacts of land-use change on landscape-hydrological dynamics is one of the main challenges in the Northern Brazilian Cerrado biome, where the Amazon agricultural frontier is located. Motivated by the gap in literature assessing these impacts, we characterized the soil hydro-physical properties and quantified surface water fluxes from catchments under contrasting land-use in t...

One of the main resonator factors in watershed soil erosion is inappropriateland management including conversion of pasture land to dry-land farming.Unfortunately, the changes of Gara Su watershed usages have been very common.Thus, in order to understand the influence of land use on runoff rate and soil loss, soillosses were investigated and determined under both pasture and dry-land agricultur...

This paper presents a dynamic systems model that shows how different land use patterns degrade the value of ecosystem services provided by the Brazilian Amazonia. The model consists of four sectors: (1) deforestation drivers; (2) land use/cover; (3) ecosystem services; and (4) ecosystem valuation. The deforestation drivers sector models the economic and social incentives that small farmers and ...

To maintain a predominantly pasture-based system, the large herd milked by automatic milking rotary would be required to walk significant distances. Walking distances of greater than 1-km are associated with an increased incidence of undesirably long milking intervals and reduced milk yield. Complementary forages can be incorporated into pasture-based systems to lift total home grown feed in a ...

The main objective of this study was to investigate the effect of forest road construction on the Soil Organic Carbon Stock (SOCS) in Ziarat Catchment. Therefore, soil samples were collected from five land use types including road construction, cultivated area, channel bank, pasture and forest land and soil organic carbon concentration and bulk density were measured in the samples and SOCS were...

1 2 A soil transfer field experiment has been designed in order to study (i) whether and how 3 Collembolan communities are affected by a sudden perturbation (a shift from agricultural land 4 to heathland, and the reverse), and (ii) whether species do respond in the same direction and 5 to the same extent according to their habitat preference (ascertained by controls). The study 6 was conducted ...

Biofuels impact on global land use has been a controversial yet important topic. Up until recently, there has not been enough biofuels to have caused major land use change, so the evidence from actual global land use data has been scant. However, in the past decade, there have been 72 million hectares added to global crop cover. In this research we take advantage of this new data to calibrate t...

Bioenergy related land use change would likely alter biogeochemical cycles and global greenhouse gas budgets. Energy cane (Saccharum officinarum L.) is a sugarcane variety and an emerging biofuel feedstock for cellulosic bio-ethanol production. It has potential for high yields and can be grown on marginal land, which minimizes competition with grain and vegetable production. The DayCent biogeoc...