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...

The University of Hertfordshire, in collaboration with two UK agricultural establishments are developing a decision support system for environmental management in arable agriculture. The system aims to encourage and promote best practice. Significant environmental effects from arable agriculture arise from the use of fertilisers, pesticides and unsustainable soil management practices. The softw...

In the past the environmental consequences of arable agriculture were often accepted without question. However, there is now increasing debate and public concern regarding the short and long term environmental impacts that might occur as a result of farming practices. Concern, within arable agriculture, is especially focused towards the over-ambitious use of fertilisers and the consequence of n...

China is experiencing a drastic loss of arable land as a result of the continuing process of rapid urbanization. This loss could have an adverse impact not only on China’s sustainable development but also on the world food market. To provide a robust and economical tool for evaluating the impact of this process, we developed an IHS (Intensity, Hue, Saturation)-based approach for detecting the c...

Relevance Concerns about the environmental impact of farming has increasingly been the focus of discussions in the EU. Croplands, a primary land use in Europe, have a significant impact on the environment (soil, water bodies, global climate, local biodiversity and human health). The use of fertilisers and pesticides associated with conventional farming may lead to pollution and/or climate chang...

In order to determine soil inhabitant fungi of Mazandaran and Golestan provinces (N Iran), some soil samples from arable and non-arable areas were collected. After the isolation, purification and identification of fungi, 61 isolates, belonging to Absidia, Actinomucor, Cunninghamella, Lichtheimia, Mucor, Syncephalastrum and Rhizopus were identified. After DNA extraction, all genera were subjecte...