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Agriculture And The Environment
The environmental impact of agriculture is the effect that different farming practices have on the ecosystems around them, and how those effects can be traced back to those practices. The environmental impact of agriculture varies widely based on practices employed by farmers and by the scale of practice. Farming communities that try to reduce environmental impacts through modifying their practices will adopt sustainable agriculture practices. The negative impact of agriculture is an old issue that remains a concern even as experts design innovative means to reduce destruction and enhance eco-efficiency. Animal agriculture practices Environmental impact of meat production, tend to be more environmentally destructive than agricultural practices focused on fruits, vegetables and other biomass. The emissions of ammonia from cattle waste continue to raise concerns over environmental pollution. When evaluating environmental impact, experts use two types of indicators: "means-based", whic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Agriculture
Agriculture encompasses crop and livestock production, aquaculture, and forestry for food and non-food products. Agriculture was a key factor in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that enabled people to live in the cities. While humans started gathering grains at least 105,000 years ago, nascent farmers only began planting them around 11,500 years ago. Sheep, goats, pigs, and cattle were domesticated around 10,000 years ago. Plants were independently cultivated in at least 11 regions of the world. In the 20th century, industrial agriculture based on large-scale monocultures came to dominate agricultural output. , small farms produce about one-third of the world's food, but large farms are prevalent. The largest 1% of farms in the world are greater than and operate more than 70% of the world's farmland. Nearly 40% of agricultural land is found on farms larger than . However, five of every six farm ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Food Security
Food security is the state of having reliable access to a sufficient quantity of affordable, healthy Human food, food. The availability of food for people of any class, gender, ethnicity, or religion is another element of food protection. Similarly, household food security is considered to exist when all the members of a family have consistent access to enough food for an active, healthy life. Food-secure individuals do not live in hunger or fear of starvation. Food security includes resilience to future disruptions of food supply. Such a disruption could occur due to various risk factors such as droughts and floods, shipping disruptions, fuel shortages, economic instability, and wars. Food insecurity is the opposite of food security: a state where there is only limited or uncertain availability of suitable food. The concept of food security has evolved over time. The four pillars of food security include availability, access, utilization, and stability. In addition, there are tw ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mudslides
A mudflow, also known as mudslide or mud flow, is a form of mass wasting involving fast-moving flow of debris and dirt that has become liquified by the addition of water. Such flows can move at speeds ranging from 3 meters/minute to 5 meters/second. Mudflows contain a significant proportion of clay, which makes them more fluid than debris flows, allowing them to travel farther and across lower slope angles. Both types of flow are generally mixtures of particles with a wide range of sizes, which typically become sorted by size upon deposition. Mudflows are often called mudslips, a term applied indiscriminately by the mass media to a variety of mass wasting events. Mudflows often start as slides, becoming flows as water is entrained along the flow path; such events are often called mud failures. Other types of mudflows include lahars (involving fine-grained pyroclastic deposits on the flanks of volcanoes) and jökulhlaups (outbursts from under glaciers or icecaps). A statutory ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Water Cycle
The water cycle (or hydrologic cycle or hydrological cycle) is a biogeochemical cycle that involves the continuous movement of water on, above and below the surface of the Earth across different reservoirs. The mass of water on Earth remains fairly constant over time. However, the partitioning of the water into the major reservoirs of ice, fresh water, Saline water, salt water and Atmosphere, atmospheric water is variable and depends on Climate, climatic variables. The water moves from one reservoir to another, such as from river to ocean, or from the ocean to the atmosphere due to a variety of physical and chemical processes. The processes that drive these movements, or Flux (biology), fluxes, are evaporation, transpiration, condensation, Precipitation (meteorology), precipitation, Sublimation (phase transition), sublimation, Infiltration (hydrology), infiltration, surface runoff, and subsurface flow. In doing so, the water goes through different phases: liquid, solid (ice) and W ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Carbon Sink
A carbon sink is a natural or artificial carbon sequestration process that "removes a greenhouse gas, an aerosol or a precursor of a greenhouse gas from the atmosphere". These sinks form an important part of the natural carbon cycle. An overarching term is carbon pool, which is all the places where carbon on Earth can be, i.e. the atmosphere, oceans, soil, florae, fossil fuel reservoirs and so forth. A carbon sink is a type of carbon pool that has the capability to take up more carbon from the atmosphere than it releases. Globally, the two most important carbon sinks are vegetation and the ocean. Soil is an important carbon storage medium. Much of the organic carbon retained in the soil of agricultural areas has been depleted due to intensive farming. '' Blue carbon'' designates carbon that is fixed via certain marine ecosystems. ''Coastal blue carbon'' includes mangroves, salt marshes and seagrasses. These make up a majority of ocean plant life and store large quantities of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Deforestation And Climate Change
Deforestation is a primary Causes of global warming, contributor to climate change, and climate change affects the health of forests. Land use change, especially in the form of deforestation, is the second largest source of carbon dioxide emissions from human activities, after the burning of fossil fuels. Greenhouse gases are emitted from deforestation during the burning of forest Biomass (ecology), biomass and decomposition of remaining plant material and soil carbon. Global models and national greenhouse gas inventories give similar results for deforestation emissions. , deforestation is responsible for about 11% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Carbon emissions from tropical deforestation are accelerating. When forests grow they are a carbon sink and therefore have potential to Climate change mitigation, mitigate the effects of climate change. Some of the effects of climate change, such as more wildfires, invasive species, and more extreme weather events can lead to more fore ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Slash-and-burn
Slash-and-burn agriculture is a form of shifting cultivation that involves the cutting and burning of plants in a forest or woodland to create a Field (agriculture), field called a swidden. The method begins by cutting down the trees and woody plants in an area. The downed vegetation, or "slash", is then left to dry, usually right before the rainiest part of the year. Then, the Biomass (ecology), biomass is burned, resulting in a nutrient-rich layer of ash which makes the Soil fertility, soil fertile, as well as temporarily eliminating weed and pest species. After about three to five years, the plot's productivity decreases due to depletion of nutrients along with weed and pest invasion, causing the farmers to abandon the field and move to a new area. The time it takes for a swidden to recover depends on the location and can be as little as five years to more than twenty years, after which the plot can be slashed and burned again, repeating the cycle. In Bangladesh and India, the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Palm Oil
Palm oil is an edible vegetable oil derived from the mesocarp (reddish pulp) of the fruit of oil palms. The oil is used in food manufacturing, in beauty products, and as biofuel. Palm oil accounted for about 36% of global oils produced from oil crops in 2014. Palm oils are easier to stabilize and maintain quality of flavor and consistency in ultra-processed foods, so they are frequently favored by food manufacturers. Globally, humans consumed an average of of palm oil per person in 2015. Demand has also increased for other uses, such as cosmetics and biofuels, encouraging the growth of palm oil plantations in tropical countries. The mass production of palm oil in the tropics has attracted the concern of environmental and human rights groups. The palm oil industry is a significant contributor to deforestation in the tropics where palms are grown and has been cited as a factor in social problems due to allegations of human rights violations among growers. In 2018, a repor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Logging
Logging is the process of cutting, processing, and moving trees to a location for transport. It may include skidder, skidding, on-site processing, and loading of trees or trunk (botany), logs onto logging truck, trucksSociety of American Foresters, 1998. Dictionary of Forestry. or flatcar#Skeleton car, skeleton cars. In forestry, the term logging is sometimes used narrowly to describe the logistics of moving wood from the stump to somewhere outside the forest, usually a sawmill or a lumber yard. In common usage, however, the term may cover a range of forestry or silviculture activities. Logging is the beginning of a supply chain that provides raw material for many products societies worldwide use for housing, construction, energy, and consumer paper products. Logging systems are a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cattle Ranching
A ranch (from /Mexican Spanish) is an area of land, including various structures, given primarily to ranching, the practice of raising grazing livestock such as cattle and sheep. It is a subtype of farm. These terms are most often applied to livestock-raising operations in Mexico, the Western United States and Western Canada, though there are ranches in other areas.For terminologies in Australia and New Zealand, see Station (Australian agriculture) and Station (New Zealand agriculture). People who own or operate a ranch are called ranchers, cattlemen, or stockgrowers. Ranching is also a method used to raise less common livestock such as horses, elk, American bison, ostrich, emu, and alpaca.Holechek, J.L., Geli, H.M., Cibils, A.F. and Sawalhah, M.N., 2020. Climate Change, Rangelands, and Sustainability of Ranching in the Western United States. ''Sustainability'', ''12''(12), p.4942. Ranches generally consist of large areas, but may be of nearly any size. In the western United S ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Norman Myers
Norman Myers (24 August 1934 – 20 October 2019) was a British environmentalist specialising in biodiversity and also noted for his work on environmental refugees. Biography Myers was born in Whitewell (Lancashire, then Yorkshire) and was raised until the age of 11 on the family farm, without electricity, gas or an internal toilet. He lived in Kenya for over 30 years and later settled in Headington, Oxford, England. He attended grammar school and then the University of Oxford (BA French and German, Keble College 1958, MA 1963) and became a District Officer in the last few years of the Kenya Administration from 1958 to 1961. He then worked as a high school teacher in Nairobi from 1961 to 1966 and a freelance writer and broadcaster until 1969. He spoke Swahili, Masai, French and German. In 1972, after PhD studies at the University of California, Berkeley (graduated 1973) he became a consultant for the UN, the World Bank and other organisations, remaining in Kenya until the ear ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Share Of Water Withdrawal By Agriculture In Total Withdrawal, Top Countries (2020)
Share may refer to: * Share, to make joint use of a resource (such as food, money, or space); see Sharing * Share (finance), a stock or other financial security (such as a mutual fund) * Share, Kwara, a town and LGA in Kwara State, Nigeria Share may also refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media * ''Share'' (2015 film), a short drama film * ''Share'' (2019 film), a feature drama film * ''Share'' (newspaper), a newspaper in Toronto, Canada * Ratings share, percentage of television sets in use tuned to a program, according to the Nielsen Ratings Computing * share (command), a shell command * SHARE (computing), a user group for IBM mainframe computers * Share (P2P), a Japanese P2P computer program, the successor to Winny * Share, a software service of Acrobat.com used for sending files * File sharing * Network share, a file storage area that is available over a computer network * Share icon, a user interface icon intended to convey performing a share action * SHARE Operating ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
