Agriculture is multi-functional, producing economic goods including food, feed, fibre, and fuel, as well as providing several intangible or non-tradable services to society free of cost. Non-tradable services, unlike economic goods, remain unpriced; as a result, farmers are not compensated monetarily for the benefits of the several non-tradable services they …
Management of temperate forests has the potential to increase carbon sinks and mitigate climate change. However, those opportunities may be confounded by negative climate change impacts. We therefore need a better understanding of climate change alterations to temperate forest carbon dynamics before developing mitigation strategies. The purpose of this project …
Palustrine wetlands(PWs) include all bogs, fens, swamps and marshes that are non-saline and which are not lakes or rivers. They therefore form a highly important group of wetlands which hold large carbon stocks. If these wetlands are not protected properly they could become a net carbon source in the future. …
Biochar, a carbon-rich, porous pyrolysis product of organic residues may positively affect plant yield and can, owing to its inherent stability, promote soil carbon sequestration when amended to agricultural soils. Another possible effect of biochar is the reduction in emissions of nitrous oxide (N2O). A number of laboratory incubations have …
Question raised in Lok Sabha on Forest Areas, 08/12/2015. The Forest Survey of India (FSI), Dehradun assesses the forest cover of the country at the interval of two years. As per India State of Forest Report (ISFR) 2013, there is a net increase of 5871 sq km. in the forest …
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO) has issued a publication containing key messages from the February 2015 International Online Conference on the 'Economics of Climate Change Mitigation Options in the Forest Sector.' The report addresses afforestation and reforestation, reduced deforestation and degradation, changing forest management practices, wood …
This report gives a Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA) and carbon footprint analysis on a selection of industrial bamboo products. The LCA is made for cradle-to-gate, plus the end-of-life stages of the bamboo products. For end-of-life it is assumed that 90% of the bamboo products are incinerated in an electrical power plant, …
Exports of pellets from the United States(US) are growing significantly to meet the demand for renewable energy in the European Union. This transatlantic trade in pellets has raised questions about the greenhouse gas(GHG)intensity of these pellets and their effects on conventional forest product markets in the US. This paper examines …
Over two centuries of economic growth have put undeniable pressure on the ecological systems that underpin human well-being. While it is agreed that these pressures are increasing, views divide on how they may be alleviated. Some suggest technological advances will automatically keep us from transgressing key environmental thresholds; others that …
Air pollution today is the most important aspect of environmental study as every progress by mankind has deteriorated the air quality. Artificial technologies have proved insufficient to address this problem. So a better and a natural way to combat the air pollution is plantation. However, all plants do not show …
North East India (NEI) has 17.2 M ha under forest cover, which is ~25% of India’s total forest area. Of the total forest cover, 1.5 M ha is currently managed by shifting cultivation in NEI. Shifting cultivation, an integral part of culture and tradition of tribes of NEI, is presently …
Carbon farming describes a collection of eco-friendly techniques that have the ability to increase carbon sink into soil, i.e. carbon sequestration. Increasing C sink in the soil will help reduce the amount of CO2, CH4 and N2O emissions in the environment. Carbon farming that leads to reduction in greenhouse gas …
Stoichiometric approaches have been applied to understand the relationship between soil organic matter dynamics and biological nutrient transformations. However, very few studies explicitly considered the effects of agricultural management practices on soil C : N : P ratio. The aim of this study was to assess how different input types …
Low nitrogen availability in the high Arctic represents a major constraint for plant growth, which limits the tundra capacity for carbon retention and determines tundra vegetation types. The limited terrestrial nitrogen (N) pool in the tundra is augmented significantly by nesting seabirds, such as the planktivorous Little Auk (Alle alle). …
Ghana’s Cocoa Eco-Project has a major outcome of increasing carbon sequestration by minimizing the emission of harmful gases on cocoa farms into the atmosphere. Carbon sequestration involves the long-term storage of carbon dioxide to mitigate climate change – it has been proposed as a way to slow the atmospheric accumulation …
Across the tropics, there is a growing financial investment in activities that aim to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, such as REDD+. However, most tropical countries lack on-the-ground capacity to conduct reliable and replicable assessments of forest carbon stocks, undermining their ability to secure long-term carbon finance for …
Physico-chemical properties of soil of two dominant forest types in Western Himalaya, viz. oak (Quercus leucotrichophora) and pine (Pinus roxburghii) across three soil depths, and winter and rainy seasons were analysed. In general, all the soil parameters, viz. soil moisture, water-holding capacity, organic carbon and total nitrogen decreased significantly with …
Tropical agroforestry has an enormous potential to sequester carbon while simultaneously producing agricultural yields and tree products. The amount of soil organic carbon (SOC) sequestered is however influenced by the type of the agroforestry system established, the soil and climatic conditions and management. In this regional scale study, we utilized …
This paper provides field experiment–based evidence on the potential additional forest carbon sequestration that cleaner and more fuel-efficient cookstoves might generate. The paper focuses on the Mirt (meaning “best”) cookstove, which is used to bake injera, the staple food in Ethiopia. The analysis finds that the technology generates per-meal fuel …
Forty years after the ocean floor was first mapped by hand, a team of Australian researchers has created the first digital map of the entire sea floor. Made by the University of Sydney's School of Geosciences and National ICT Australia (NICTA), the map can be used to plot the planet's …
The researchers combined Landsat and MODIS data in a land model to assess the impact of urbanization on US surface climate. For cities built within forests, daytime urban land surface temperature (LST) is much higher than that of vegetated lands. For example, in Washington DC and Atlanta, daytime mean temperature …
