Soil salinity is one of the problems threatening agricultural lands. Parts of this phenomenon are related to geologic formations and saltpans, while some major factors are resulted from irrelevant agricultural activities, issue of irrigation, and improper cultivation systems which lead to increase in soil salinity. To avoid such consequences that would end up with ecosystem degradation, suitabl...

Arid and semi-arid lands constitute a large proportion of available agricultural and rangeland in the world. These lands are characterised by low and unreliable rainfall, low land productivity, and low socioeconomic status of the inhabitants. Livestock plays a very significant role in their economies. Leguminous trees and shrubs, which dominate the natural rangelands, are often higher in crude ...

The main purpose of the present study was to assess the ecological capability of agricultural soils using geographic information system (GIS). This research was conducted during 2014 in Hamedan Province, Iran. A cross-sectional study was conducted mapping the 10 factors of soil characteristics (texture, depth, erosion, and aggregation, percentage of slope, direction of slope, height, soil salin...

Amazonia holds the largest continuous area of tropical forests with intense land use change dynamics inducing water, carbon, and energy feedbacks with regional and global impacts. Much of our knowledge of land use change in Amazonia comes from studies of the Brazilian Amazon, which accounts for two thirds of the region. Amazonia outside of Brazil has received less attention because of the diffi...

EDITORIAL article Front. Earth Sci., 17 January 2023Sec. Hydrosphere Volume 11 - 2023 | https://doi.org/10.3389/feart.2023.1113184

We use data from two satellites and a terrestrial carbon model to quantify the impact of urbanization on the carbon cycle and food production in the US as a result of reduced net primary productivity (NPP). Our results show that urbanization is taking place on the most fertile lands and hence has a disproportionately large overall negative impact on NPP. Urban land transformation in the US has ...

Land degradation is a global concern. In tropical areas it primarily concerns the conversion of forest into non-forest lands and the associated losses of environmental services. Defining such degradation is not straightforward hampering effective reduction in degradation and use of already degraded lands for more productive purposes. To facilitate the processes of avoided degradation and land r...

Does the intensification of agriculture reduce cultivated areas and, in so doing, spare some lands by concentrating production on other lands? Such sparing is important for many reasons, among them the enhanced abilities of released lands to sequester carbon and provide other environmental services. Difficulties measuring the extent of spared land make it impossible to investigate fully the hyp...

Degraded lands have often been suggested as a solution to issues of land scarcity and as an ideal way to meet mounting global demands for agricultural goods, but their locations and conditions are not well known. Four approaches have been used to assess degraded lands at the global scale: expert opinion, satellite observation, biophysical models, and taking inventory of abandoned agricultural l...

Using marginal agricultural lands to grow energy crops for biofuel feedstocks is a promising option to meet the biofuel needs in populous China without causing further food shortages or environmental problems. Here we quantify the effects of growing switchgrass and Miscanthus on Chinese marginal agricultural lands on biomass production and carbon emissions with a global-scale biogeochemical mod...