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Using 40-year experiment data from a mono-modal rainfall area of northern Togo, we analyzed soil fertility dynamics when 2 and 3-year fallows were alternated with 3-year rotation of groundnut, cotton and sorghum. The control treatment consisted to continuous cultivate the soil in a rotation of groundnut/cotton/sorghum without fallow periods. For each rotation, two fertilisation rates were applied: no fertilisation and mineral fertiliser application during the cropping and/or the fallow periods. Yields of unfertilised crops, which averaged 1 t ha-1 during the first years of cultivation, were often nil in the long-term. In the long-term, yields of fertilised cotton and sorghum decreased by 32 and 50 %, respectively compared to the average of 2.4 and 1.6 t ha-1 obtained during the first decade of cultivation. The long-term decline in crop productivity was mitigated when fallow periods were alternated with cropping periods, and consequently there was partial compensation in terms of production for the unproductive fallowed plots. Long-term yields of fertilised cotton and sorghum in the periodically fallowed plots were 40 and 50 % higher than those in continuously cropped plots, respectively; they were 90 and 60 % higher than those in continuously cropped plots without fertilisation. Like for crop productivity, soil C, N and exchangeable Ca and Mg decreased less in periodically fallowed plots than in continuously cropped plots. The limited soil C decline when fallows were alternated with crops appears to be the consequence of no-tillage period rather than the effect of the highest C inputs to the soil.

In this study, air concentrations of BaP in two different seasons (winter 2015 and summer 2016) and BaP levels in ground vegetation from Tarragona County were used as control simulations performed with the WRF-CHIMERE air quality modelling system, in order to reproduce the incidence of that hazardous chemical in air and soils. The CTM was validated for the present climatology, showing a good ability to represent air and soil concentrations of BaP over the target domain (petrochemical, chemical, urban and background sites), particularly in the winter. Then, the variation of the BaP concentrations in air and soils were simulated for the time series 1996-2015 and for the climate change scenario RCP8.5 (2031-2050). While an increase is projected for the levels in air, particularly in chemical and remote sites where the variation can go up to 10%, in terms of soil deposition the findings are the opposite, with an evident decrease in soil BaP concentrations, particularly for background sites. Finally, a potential health effect of BaP for the local population (lung cancer) was assessed. Although according to the projections the EU threshold for BaP atmospheric incidence (1 ng m-3) will not be reached by 2050, there will be an increase in the life-time risk of lung cancer, particularly in the most populated areas within the simulation domain.

Stories play an exceptionally important role in how people assign value to a place. Taken together, all those stories essentially give a place an identity. The aim of placemaking is to ensure that the people using a place can appreciate that place. Placemaking approaches are focussed on strategic interventions in a place and aimed at changing the meaning and value of that place for local people, thus creating a qualitative place for enhanced storytelling. Using greenery is a common approach in place-making. Urban greenery has gone through a process of emancipation in the past 15 years. This emancipation has led to awareness that urban greenery is about more than just ecology and biodiversity, but also has social and economic consequences for a city’s fortunes. It is clear that green spaces do not stand alone: they are part of a complex urban system, and the use of green spaces in this complex system has immediate repercussions for how the city functions. With the changing role of green spaces within cities, the need to manage these spaces is emphasized. In this sense, the place-making approach, along with the storytelling approach could provide valuable insight on the planning and management of green spaces within the urban environment, with the aim to enhance quality of life by means of the social connection between people, the users of the space, and the qualitative place provided. This research illustrated that green space managers would need more social and organizational skills to manage modern urban green spaces in an attempt to create qualitative, usable spaces for citizens, spaces that are built upon stories and spaces that would further enable future stories of citizen life. The Story Behind the Place: Creating Urban Spaces That Enhance Quality of Life (PDF Download Available). Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/271918395_The_Story_Behind_the_Place_Creating_Urban_Spaces_That_Enhance_Quality_of_Life [accessed Dec 21, 2015].

The oleaginous alga Chlorella protothecoides accumulates lipid in its biomass when grown in nitrogen-restricted conditions. To assess the relationship between nitrogen provision and lipid accumulation and to determine the contribution of photosynthesis in mixotrophic growth, C. protothecoides was grown in mixo- and heterotrophic nitrogen-limited continuous flow cultures. Lipid content increased with decreasing C/N, while biomass yield on glucose was not affected. Continuous production of high lipid levels (57% of biomass) was possible at high C/N (87-94). However, the lipid production rate (2.48 g L(-1) d(-1)) was higher at D=0.84 d(-1) with C/N 37 than at D=0.44 d(-1) and C/N 87 even though the lipid content of the biomass was lower (38%). Photosynthesis contributed to biomass and lipid production in mixotrophic conditions, resulting in 13-38% reduction in CO2 production compared with heterotrophic cultures, demonstrating that photo- and heterotrophic growth occurred simultaneously in the same population.

Species distribution models (SDMs) provide realistic scenarios to explain the influence of bioclimatic variables on plant pathogen distribution. Diplodia sapinea is most harmful to plantations of both exotic and native pine species in Italy, causing economic consequences expecially to edible seed production. In this study, we developed maximum entropy models for D. sapinea in Italy to reach the following goals: (i) to carry out the pathogen's first geographical distribution analysis in Italy and determine which ecogeographical variables (EGVs) may influence its outbreaks; (ii) to detect the effect of climate change on the potential occurrence of disease outbreaks by 2050 and 2070. We used Maxent ver. 3.4.0 to develop SDMs. We used six global climate models (BCC-CSM1-1, CCSM4, GISS-E2-R, MIROC5, HadGEM2-ES and MPI-ESM-LR) for two representative concentration pathways (4.5 and 8.5) and two time projections (2050 and 2070) to detect future climate projections of D. sapinea. The most important EGVs influencing outbreaks were land cover, altitude, mean temperature of driest and wettest quarter, precipitation of wettest quarter, precipitation seasonality and minimum temperature of coldest month. The distribution of D. sapinea mostly expanded in central and southern Italy and shifted in altitude upwards on average by ca. 93m a.s.l. Moreover the fungus expanded the range where disease outbreaks may be recorded in response to an increase in the mean temperature of wettest and driest quarter by ca. 1.9 C and 5.8 C, respectively in all climate change scenarios. Precipitation of wettest quarter did not differ between current and any of future models. Under different climate change scenarios D. sapinea's disease outbreaks will be likely to affect larger areas of pine forests in the country, probably causing heavy effects on the dynamics and evolution of these stands or perhaps constraining their survival.

Roundtables for sustainable beef have evolved in national contexts as well as at the global level as a multi-stakeholder process to address sustainability concerns in the cattle sector. However, due to their relatively recent inception, the literature on the beef roundtables is extremely limited and very little scholarly work has traced their process or impact. We used semi-structured interviews with key informants to examine the governance, actions, and potential impacts of the roundtables for sustainable beef, and identified opportunities and challenges for achieving greater sustainability impact. We found that the beef roundtables are in different stages of development and implementation and that they have diverse approaches based on their geographic contexts. However, they have universally adopted a model of sector-wide continuous improvement, in contrast to roundtables for other commodities, which have in many cases adopted formal certification programs. Activities by the roundtables for sustainable beef have variously included working towards definitions of sustainable beef; setting sustainability principles and criteria; and creating working groups to address specific aspects of sustainability (e.g., verification, deforestation). Our interviews identified opportunities to expand the roundtables’ roles, activities, and sustainability impacts. This study provides a benchmark of the roundtables’ efforts to date, and generates hypotheses and ideas for how they could evolve in the future.

SUMMARYWe demonstrated experimentally that coconut husk ash is an excellent mineral fertilizer for immature coconut hybrids on developed peat, providing potassium (K) in particular. Coconut husk ash performed as well as potassium chloride (KCl) in a proportion of 2–2.5 to 1. At four years, 99% of coconut palms fertilized with husk ash, 92% of coconut palms fertilized with KCl and 26% of control palms were sexually differentiated. The cumulative yield in the first two harvesting years more than trebled between control palms (26 nuts per tree) and the palms fertilized with KCl (93 nuts per tree) or husk ash (105 nuts per tree). This is an important result, given the intensity of K deficiency and the increasing cost of imported fertilizers. Although coconut husk ash will never totally replace K fertilizer, it can recycle a substantial proportion of nutrients in a coconut plantation. It now remains to optimize its use on an estate level, by examining the feasibility and cost-effectiveness of its mass production and determining conditions for maximum efficiency.

Research addressing non-food biomass production from the perspective of land-use change and environmental impacts has expanded considerably since 2008. An exhaustive literature review followed by the identification within the resulting corpus of all references seelcing to quantify the consumption of nonrenewable resources yielded 29 articles, which were then examined in detail. Our goal was to describe, as precisely as possible, the methods and results of published research addressing land use change as it relates to the consumption of nonrenewable resources. We found that these articles were in fact more focused on the assessment of other environmental impacts, primarily greenhouse gas impacts, with fossil-fuel use appearing as a collateral result. All the articles employed a life cycle analysis approach; all considered the question of fossil-fuel consumption; and all concluded that a reduction in fossil fuel use was achieved through the substitution of biomass energy. According to the findings of this sub-corpus, biofuels produced from lignocellulosic biomass appear to be most effective in terms of reducing environmental impacts, but few direct comparisons with first-generation biofuels have been made. In general, differences in methodologies and in the assumptions adopted for different studies, particularly with respect to land-use change parameters, make comparisons among the selected studies difficult.

Bioenergy crops are well known for their ability to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and increase the soil carbon stock. Although such crops are often held to be in competition with food crops and thus raise the question of current and future food security, at the same time mitigation measures are required to tackle climate change and sustain local farming communities and crop production. However, in some cases the actions envisaged for specific pedo-climatic conditions are not always economically sustainable by farmers. In this frame, energy crops with high environmental adaptability and yields, such as giant reed (Arundo donax L.), may represent an opportunity to improve farm incomes, making marginal areas not suitable for food production once again productive. In so doing, three of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations would be met, namely SDG 2 on food security and sustainable agriculture, SDG 7 on reliable, sustainable and modern energy, and SDG 13 on action to combat climate change and its impacts. In this work, the response of giant reed in the marginal areas of an agricultural district of southern Italy (Destra Sele) and expected farm incomes under climate change (2021-2050) are evaluated. The normalized water productivity index of giant reed was determined (WP; 30.1gm-2) by means of a SWAP agro-hydrological model, calibrated and validated on two years of a long-term field experiment. The model was used to estimate giant reed response (biomass yield) in marginal areas under climate change, and economic evaluation was performed to determine expected farm incomes (woodchips and chopped forage). The results show that woodchip production represents the most profitable option for farmers, yielding a gross margin 50% lower than ordinary high-input maize cultivation across the study area.

The energy crop sweet sorghum (Sorghum bicolor L. Moench) is raising considerable interest as a source of either fermentable free sugars or lignocellulosic feedstock with the potential to produce fuel, food, feed and a variety of other products. Sweet sorghum is a C4 plant with many potential advantages, including high water, nitrogen and radiation use efficiency, broad agro-ecological adaptation as well as a rich genetic diversity for useful traits. For developing countries sweet sorghum provides opportunities for the simultaneous production of food and bioenergy (e.g. bio-ethanol), thereby contributing to improved food security as well as increased access to affordable and renewable energy sources. In temperate regions (e.g. in Europe) sweet sorghum is seen as promising crop for the production of raw material for 2nd generation bio-ethanol. The project SWEETFUEL (Sweet Sorghum: An alternative energy crop) is supported by the European Commission in the 7th Framework Programme to exploit the advantages of sweet sorghum as potential energy crop for bio-ethanol production. Thereby, the main objective of SWEETFUEL is to optimize yields in temperate and semi-arid regions by genetic enhancement and the improvement of cultural and harvest practices. Proceedings of the 18th European Biomass Conference and Exhibition, 3-7 May 2010, Lyon, France, pp. 200-206