Understanding how natural resources co-evolve with management practices is fundamental to all questions concerning their sustainable management. In the search for new pathways of sustainable development we seek to understand how comparable initial conditions in agro-ecosystems lead to fundamentally different resource conditions. Agro-ecosystems are characterized by a high diversity, path depend...

Environmental risks resulting from increasing application of herbicides have raised many concerns about human health and safety of agro ecosystems and environment. Hence, it is very important to find practical and effective methods for reducing the use of pesticides in environment as well as the increasing the efficiency of these compounds. Addition of adjuvants to spray solutions could be cons...

Two different patterns in input–output relations can be distinguished in agricultural production. For the first, yields are obtained at zero rates of certain external inputs, such as in wheat growing, or dairying based on grazing. For a second type of input–output relation, inputs are required before any yield can be obtained, such as in irrigation schemes in desert areas, or industrial product...

Free-air CO2 enrichment (FACE) studies are the ultimate test bed for hypotheses that seek to explain how plants respond to rising [CO2]; and they provide the most realistic conditions for simulating the impact of future elevated (e)[CO2] levels (see Chapter 2). FACE studies have many benefits over controlled environment and open-top chamber (OTC) experiments. FACE allows the investigation of an...

The conversion of tropical forest ecosystems to agro-pastoral ecosystems and other land uses continues unabated in Latin America. The present document constitutes a comparative study in which the degree of forest fragmentation through a 23-year period (between 1973 and 1996) was evaluated in two areas located within the same ecological region, but in two different countries (Colombia and Ecuado...

DNDC is a computer simulation model of carbon and nitrogen biogeochemistry in agro-ecosystems. It is used in agricultural tri-dimensional pollution control widely. Learning from abroad advanced technologies and research methods, we have developed an agricultural tri-dimensional pollution data submission and management platform based on DNDC model. The platform is very important for sharing and ...