Agricultural Energy Crops and the Search for Alternative Energy: Analysis of the Current Research and Core Journal Literature on Biofuels and Bioenergy

ABSTRACT

This paper analyzes the agricultural research output on energy crops and bioenergy for the period 2000–2005. Seven hundred eighty-three (783) articles gathered from CAB Abstracts from this period were analyzed to determine which disciplines have been publishing the most on this subject. The findings show that engineering-related research is most prevalent but that twelve distinct agricultural disciplines produced research on the subject during the study period, with varying degrees of productivity for each discipline. The actual agricultural energy resources being researched were determined by examining the 783 articles. The resources were divided into woody crops, non-woody crops, and animal-based resources, and the number of articles for each was tabulated. The three resource types were further examined to create a list of the individual crops or animal-based resources under investigation, along with the number of articles for each individual crop or resource. The core journal literature dealing with energy crops and bioenergy was determined by doing searches in both CAB Abstracts and Web of Science and tabulating the number of articles appearing in each journal. This allowed for the creation of a core journal list, ranked by the number of appropriate articles appearing in each journal.     

Freshwater crabs and the biodiversity crisis: Importance, threats, status, and conservation challenges

Freshwater ecosystems in the tropics host a diverse endemic fauna including freshwater crabs, but the rapid loss and deterioration of habitat means that many species are now under imminent threat. Studies on freshwater fish and amphibians suggest a third to half of the species in some tropical freshwaters is either extinct or endangered, but the status of the freshwater crabs is not known. Freshwater crabs, with 1280 species, represent one-fifth of all the World’s brachyurans. We therefore undertook a comprehensive IUCN Red List assessment of the freshwater crabs, which was the first time that such a study had been attempted on a global scale for any group of freshwater invertebrates. The conservation status of all known species from the Americas, Africa, Europe, Asia, and Australasia revealed unexpectedly high threat levels. Here we show that about one-sixth of all freshwater crab species have an elevated risk of extinction, only one-third are not at-risk, and although none are actually extinct, almost half are too poorly known to assess. Out of 122 countries that have populations of freshwater crabs, 43 have species in need of protection. The majority of threatened species are restricted-range semi-terrestrial endemics living in habitats subjected to deforestation, alteration of drainage patterns, and pollution. This is illustrated with a case study of one such species found in Singapore. This underlines the need to prioritize and develop conservation measures before species decline to levels from which they cannot recover. The proportion of freshwater crabs threatened with extinction is equal to that of reef-building corals, and exceeds that of all other groups that have been assessed except for amphibians. These results represent a baseline that can be used to design strategies to save the World’s threatened freshwater crab species.     

Urban domestic gardens (IX): Composition and richness of the vascular plant flora, and implications for native biodiversity

Garden floras interact with native biodiversity by providing resources for wildlife and by acting as a source of non-native species. Understanding the composition and richness of garden floras will help evaluate the relationships between these floras and the wider environment. The composition and richness of vascular plant floras were measured in a stratified sample of 61 urban, domestic gardens in Sheffield, UK, based on complete garden inventories. The entire garden flora contained 1166 species, of which 30% were native and 70% alien. Across gardens, aliens showed lower occupancy than natives, comprising 79% of the species recorded only once. The garden flora contained 146 plant families, which included 72% of the native, naturalised or recurrent casual families recorded in the wild in Britain and Ireland. Gardens contained on average 45% natives, irrespective of garden size. Garden area explained 30% of the variation in species richness within individual gardens. Doubling garden size led to an increase in species richness of 25%. The garden flora comprised 10% annuals, 63% biennial/perennials, 18% shrubs and 8% trees; shrubs were disproportionately composed of alien species. The floras of urban domestic gardens probably form the greatest source of potentially invasive alien plants. However, the plants found in domestic gardens have closer affinities with the uncultivated flora than is often perceived, and their role for wildlife in gardens deserves reassessment. Declines in garden size that result from recommendations on the density of new housing are unlikely to have major consequences for plant richness in gardens.     

Farmers' practices, metapopulation dynamics, and conservation of agricultural biodiversity on-farm: a case study of sorghum among the Duupa in sub-sahelian Cameroon

In many traditionally managed agroecosystems, populations of domesticated plants maintain high levels of genetic diversity. The threat of erosion of this diversity is a current conservation concern, motivating studies of how diversity can be maintained by in situ conservation measures. Precisely how the biological traits of plants and the cultural practices of farmers act on fundamental evolutionary forces - drift, migration, selection, and mutation - to create and maintain crop plant diversity has been little investigated in detail. We develop some elements of the framework required for studying such biocultural interactions, focusing on one component of management: farmers' decisions on what to plant, and the structure of germplasm exchange among farmers. We illustrate the approach with a study of Duupa farmers in northern Cameroon. Our results suggest that sorghum populations managed by the Duupa function like source-sink metapopulations. Fields of older farmers, larger and containing a greater number of varieties, act as sources, whereas fields of younger farmers act as sinks, becoming sources as their owners mature. In each field, seeds for sowing are selected from a small number of plants. The frequent exchange of germplasm among fields may counteract the genetic bottlenecks associated with the small number of genitors within each field. Identifying key processes and key individuals should facilitate the design of in situ conservation measures to maintain crop plant diversity against the threat of genetic erosion.     

Interaction matters: Synergy between vermicompost and PGPR agents improves soil quality,crop quality and crop yield in the field

Organic amendments not only promote soil quality and plant performance directly but also facilitate the establishment of introduced microbial agents. A field experiment with a fully factorial design was conducted using three levels of vermicompost (without vermicompost, low dose of 15 Mg ha⁻¹ and high dose of 30 Mg ha⁻¹), with and without plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR) to investigate their effects in a tomato – by spinach rotation system. Our results demonstrated that applying PGPR alone had no effect on soil properties and crop performance. Vermicompost enhanced the beneficial effects of PGPR on both soil and crop, with the extent of promotion depending on the dose of vermicompost and crop types. In the presence of vermicompost, PGPR significantly (P < 0.05) reduced soil carbon and nitrogen but increased soil microbial biomass carbon and nitrogen. PGPR also significantly increased the yield of tomato and spinach under the low dose of vermicompost, but only significantly increased tomato yield under the high dose of vermicompost. There were strongly synergistic effects between vermicompost and PGPR on crop quality, with crop nitrate concentration being significantly decreased, while the vitamin C in tomato and soluble protein in spinach was significantly increased. Our results revealed the high potential of integrating vermicompost and microbial agents to substitute for regular chemical fertilization practices.     

外来调水对华北低平原区地表水和地下水 水化学特征的影响* ——以河北省南皮县为例

华北低平原区有着巨大的粮食增产潜力,同时也是粮食生产和农业水资源矛盾突出的地区。外来调水与浅层微咸水的联合利用是解决区域水资源问题的有效途径之一,同时也将引起区域水循环和水环境的改变。为明确外来调水对华北低平原区地表水和地下水水化学特征的影响,本研究在华北低平原区河北省南皮县域内对调水后不同季节地表水和地下水进行调查和采样,利用水文地球化学和氢氧(d~2H、d~(18)O)稳定同位素相结合的方法,研究外来调水对地表水和地下水转化及其水化学特征的影响。研究结果表明,11月至翌年7月,受蒸发作用的影响,地表水电导率(EC)和钠吸附比(SAR)增加,d2H、d18O同位素不断富集;由于地表水和周围土壤的交换吸附作用使其水化学类型向Na~+、Cl~-和SO_4~(2-)增加、HCO_3~-减少的咸水转变。调水改变了地表水和浅层地下水之间的补给关系,11月至翌年3月,沟渠附近浅层地下水受外来调水直接或者灌溉补给,使得3月浅层地下水EC降低,埋深变浅,部分采样点分布在外来调水的SAR-EC区域。受调水影响,3月沟渠附近浅层地下水水化学类型为Na·Mg·Ca-Cl·SO_4、Na·Mg-Cl·SO_4·HCO_3、Na·Mg-SO_4·Cl·HCO_3等,是11月调水(Na·Mg·CaSO_4·HCO_3·Cl)和浅层地下水(Na·Mg-Cl·SO_4)的过渡类型。3月至7月浅层地下水补给沟渠水,地下水埋深变深,7月浅层地下水水化学类型与3月相似。调水可以季节性地改善区域内沟渠水及其附近的浅层地下水水质,而对深层地下水和坑塘水的水质无改善作用。调水对沟渠水水质的改善体现在调水季节,对浅层地下水水质的改善存在滞后性,2014年11月调水之后,2015年3月浅层地下水的水质得到改善。因此,采用调水和浅层地下水、坑塘水混合灌溉,对合理开发利用区域咸淡水资源以及深层地下水压采,恢复地下水位意义重大。     

Evaluation of precision land leveling and double zero-till systems in the rice–wheat rotation: Water use, productivity, profitability and soil physical properties

In recent years conventional production technologies in the rice–wheat (RW) system have been leading to deterioration of soil health and declining farm profitability due to high inputs of water and labour. Conservation agriculture (CA)-based resource-conserving technologies (RCTs) vis-à-vis zero-till (ZT), raised-bed planting and direct-seeded rice (DSR) have shown promise as alternatives to conventional production technologies to overcome these problems. The integration of CA-based RCTs with precision agriculture (PA)-based technologies in a systems perspective could provide a better option for sustainable RW production systems. In this study we attempted to evaluate conservation and precision agriculture (CPA)-based RCTs as a double-ZT system integrated with laser-assisted precision land leveling (PLL) in the RW system. A field experiment was conducted in the western IGP for 2 years to evaluate various tillage and crop establishment methods under PLL and traditional land leveling (TLL) practices to improve water productivity, economic profitability and soil physical quality. Irrespective of tillage and crop establishment methods (TCE), PLL improved RW system productivity by 7.4% in year 2 as compared to traditional land leveling. Total irrigation water savings under PLL versus TLL were 12–14% in rice and 10–13% in wheat. PLL improved RW system profitability by US$113 ha⁻¹ (year 1) to $175 ha⁻¹ (year 2). Yields were higher in conventionally transplanted rice followed by direct-drill-seeded rice after ZT. In wheat, yields were higher in ZT when followed by DSR than in the conventional-till (CT) system. RW system productivity under double ZT was equivalent to that of the conventional method. Among different TCE, conventional puddled-transplanted rice-CT wheat required 12–33% more water than other TCE techniques. Compared with CT systems, double ZT consumed 12–20% less water with almost equal system productivity and demonstrated higher water productivity. The CT system had higher bulk density and penetration resistance in 10–15 and 15–20 cm soil layers due to compaction caused by the repeated wet tillage in rice. The steady-state infiltration rate and soil aggregation (>0.25 mm) were higher under permanent beds and double ZT and lower in the CT system. Under CT, soil aggregation was static across seasons, whereas it improved under double no-till and permanent beds. Similarly, mean weight diameter of aggregates was higher under double ZT and permanent beds and increased over time. The study reveals that to sustain the RW system, CPA-based RCTs could be more viable options: however, the long-term effects of these alternative technologies need to be studied under varying agro-ecologies.     

A Bayesian framework for model calibration, comparison and analysis: Application to four models for the biogeochemistry of a Norway spruce forest

Four different parameter-rich process-based models of forest biogeochemistry were analysed in a Bayesian framework consisting of three operations: (1) Model calibration, (2) Model comparison, (3) Analysis of model-data mismatch.Data were available for four output variables common to the models: soil water content and emissions of N₂O, NO and CO₂. All datasets consisted of time series of daily measurements. Monthly averages and quantiles of the annual frequency distributions of daily emission rates were calculated for comparison with equivalent model outputs. This use of the data at model-appropriate temporal scale, together with the choice of heavy-tailed likelihood functions that accounted for data uncertainty through random and systematic errors, helped prevent asymptotic collapse of the parameter distributions in the calibration.Model behaviour and how it was affected by calibration was analysed by quantifying the normalised RMSE and r² for the different output variables, and by decomposition of the MSE into contributions from bias, phase shift and variance error. The simplest model, BASFOR, seemed to underestimate the temporal variance of nitrogenous emissions even after calibration. The model of intermediate complexity, DAYCENT, simulated the time series well but with large phase shift. COUP and MoBiLE-DNDC were able to remove most bias through calibration.The Bayesian framework was shown to be effective in improving the parameterisation of the models, quantifying the uncertainties in parameters and outputs, and evaluating the different models. The analysis showed that there remain patterns in the data - in particular infrequent events of very high nitrogenous emission rate - that are unexplained by any of the selected forest models and that this is unlikely to be due to incorrect model parameterisation.