Although dry farming is important in Azerbaijan, Kurdistan, and Khorasan, as well as some other districts, a large proportion of Iran’s agriculture has always depended upon irrigation. Approximately half the annual grain crop, and an overwhelming proportion of other crops, are irrigated. With the exception of the Caspian littoral almost the whole of Iran is classified as semi-arid or arid. As i...

Quantifying landscape pattern and its change are essential for the monitoring and assessment of environmental consequences of urban area. This paper aims to analyze spatiotemporal patterns of urban landscape changes in Kathmandu Valley, Nepal by combining remote sensing, GIS and landscape metrics. Multi-temporal satellite images from high resolution (CORONA, SPIN and IKONOS) to moderate resolut...

Biodiversity is severely declining in intensively managed agriculture worldwide. In response, land-management strategies for biodiversity conservation on farmland are in debate, namely ecological intensification and land sparing vs. land sharing. In parallel, there is a recent food vs. energy debate stimulated by an increasing competition for land resources. Despite clear overlaps between these...

T Central Coast of California supports unique biodiversity and some of the most productive agricultural lands in the United States. The Salinas Valley in Monterey County, often referred to as the “Salad Bowl of America,” produces the majority of the nation’s lettuce. Since the 1990s, food safety has become increasingly important, especially with respect to outbreaks of E. coli O157:H7 associate...

The problem of environmental degradation is becoming very real in Nigeria. It is also becoming a major source of insecurity locally. In recent times, flooding which affects most parts of the country has resulted in displacement of communities in most states of the federation. While flooding is largely a natural phenomenon, the upgrading of environmental infrastructure should be complemented wit...

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...

Accurate geospatial information on the extent of irrigated land improves our understanding of agricultural water use, local land surface processes, conservation or depletion of water resources, and components of the hydrologic budget. We have developed a method in a geospatial modeling framework that assimilates irrigation statistics with remotely sensed parameters describing vegetation growth ...

Lands can be "less favored" by nature or by man for many reasons. Some areas, often on hillsides, have soils that are at risk for degradation but could produce good crops under certain conditions. Others have soils that are so poor farmers cannot even think about growing crops there. Others have productive soils but are inaccessible and need infrastructure like roads to make it worthwhile for f...

There is a need for expanding agricultural lands due to increased demand for food production and security. Some regions can convert available land to agricultural land use. In order to evaluate available land for future agricultural production, multi-criteria evaluation (MCE) methods can be used to identify the land suitability. This study proposes and implements the soft computing logic and Lo...

The Glaciated Interior Plains historically supported a broad variety of wetland types, but wetland losses, primarily due to agricultural drainage, range from 50% to 90% of presettlement area. Wholesale land use change has created one of the most productive agricultural regions on earth, but wetland conversion has also led to the loss of the ecosystem services they provide, particularly water qu...