To analyze the changes in the Upper Danube Floodplain, we used aerial photos to quantify the change of landscape pattern from 1963 to 2010. We focused on typical floodplain habitats, i.e., riparian forest and floodplain grassland. We used landscape metrics and transformation matrix to explore changes in land cover structure and composition. The active floodplain experienced increasing fragmenta...

Phosphorus losses from arable land need to be reduced to prevent eutrophication of surrounding waters. Owing to the high spatial variability of P losses, cost-effective countermeasures need to target parts of the catchment that are most susceptible to P losses. Field surveys identified critical source areas for overland flow and erosion amounting to only 0.4-2.6 % of total arable land in four d...

China has recently undertaken a very ambitious biofuel production program. However due to a lack of arable land domestically, this program has necessitated the leasing of arable land elsewhere (e.g., in Africa). This thesis first conducts a policy analysis of China’s biofuel policy using a historical institutionalism ends-and-means framework. The analysis reveals the ways in which China achieve...

Although assistance to farming remains the dominant method for supporting the rural sector in the UK, there has been a shift in policy towards agri-environmental schemes which attempt to reconcile competing demands on the countryside as a simultaneous provider of food, rural livelihoods and environmental goods and services. Many of these issues and challenges facing UK and European agriculture ...

This study sets out to verify the key predictors of the dynamics of the arable production per capita index, the arable production and permanent crop land and forest area at a national scale in Cameroon. To achieve this objective, data for twelve time series data variables spanning the period 1961-2000 were collected from Oxford University, the United Nations Development program, the World Bank,...

land use change may influence many natural phenomena and ecological processes, including runoff, soil erosion, sedimentation and soil conditions. decreasing of forest area in the north of iran is one of the critical problems in recent years. the aims of this study are to detect land use changes between 1967 to 2002 using satellite images of land sat 7 etm+ (2002), aerial photos and digital topo...

Arable land use is generally assumed to be the largest contributor to agricultural diffuse pollution. This study adds to the growing evidence that conventional temperate intensively managed lowland grasslands contribute significantly to soil erosion and diffuse pollution rates. This is the first grassland study to monitor hydrological characteristics and multiple pollutant fluxes (suspended sed...

Over the past two decades, the Leizhou Peninsula has suffered from many geological hazards and great property losses caused by land subsidence. However, the absence of a deformation map of the whole peninsula has impeded the government in making the necessary decisions concerning hazard prevention and mitigation. This study aims to provide the evolution of land deformation (subsidence and uplif...