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Full-Text Articles in Life Sciences
Agricultural Intensification Can Preserve The Brazilian Cerrado: Applying Lessons From Mato Grosso And Goia's To Brazil’S Last Agricultural Frontier, Stephanie A. Spera
Agricultural Intensification Can Preserve The Brazilian Cerrado: Applying Lessons From Mato Grosso And Goia's To Brazil’S Last Agricultural Frontier, Stephanie A. Spera
Geography and the Environment Faculty Publications
Food security and climate change are two pressing issues shaping the future of tropical land use. Brazil, home to abundant land that is rich in carbon, water, and biodiversity and often cleared for agropastoral and renewable energy purposes, is the ideal location for studying socioeconomic and environmental trade-offs of land use dynamics. Here, I use recent (2000–2016) land-use land-cover change dynamics in the established agricultural states of Mato Grosso and Goia's to demonstrate how incentivizing intensive agricultural practices and improving degraded pastures may be a means by which Brazil can increase agricultural production while conserving the remainder of the Cerrado. …
Precipitation Drivers Of Cropping Frequency In The Brazilian Cerrado: Evidence And Implications For Decision-Making, Keith R. Spangler, Amanda H. Lynch, Stephanie A. Spera
Precipitation Drivers Of Cropping Frequency In The Brazilian Cerrado: Evidence And Implications For Decision-Making, Keith R. Spangler, Amanda H. Lynch, Stephanie A. Spera
Geography and the Environment Faculty Publications
The Amazon basin has been subjected to unprecedented rates of land-use change over the past several decades, primarily as a result of the expansion of agriculture. Enhanced rain forest conservation efforts toward the end of the twentieth century slowed deforestation of the Amazon but, in turn, increased demand for land repurposing in the adjacent Cerrado (savanna) region, where conservation regulations are less strict. To maintain or increase yields while minimizing the need for additional land, agricultural producers adopted a form of intensification in which two rain-fed crops are planted within a single growing season (double cropping). Using 10 years (August …
Livestock-Livelihood Linkages In Uganda: The Benefits For Women And Rural Households?, Elizabeth Ransom, Carmen Bain, Iim Halimatusa'diyah
Livestock-Livelihood Linkages In Uganda: The Benefits For Women And Rural Households?, Elizabeth Ransom, Carmen Bain, Iim Halimatusa'diyah
Sociology and Anthropology Faculty Publications
Livestock are an important component of rural households and gendered livelihood practices throughout sub-Saharan Africa. Widespread within the development literature is the belief in the livestock ladder, with poorer households often owning small stock and wealthier households owning large stock, with the assumption that poor households can utilize livestock to build their asset base and overtime this would allow poorer households to expand from small stock to large stock, in so doing climb the livestock ladder. There is also an assumption in the literature that women are more likely to oversee small stock. In addition, some well-known agricultural development programs …
Branching Out: How Virginia Can Strategically Use Trees To Combat Biodiversity Loss, Taylor Pfeiffer
Branching Out: How Virginia Can Strategically Use Trees To Combat Biodiversity Loss, Taylor Pfeiffer
Environmental Studies Senior Seminar Projects
Biodiversity loss is a particularly concerning effect of climate change because as greenhouse gas emissions increase global temperatures, decreases in the abundance and diversity of species has reduced ecosystem resiliency to these changes (Verchot et al. 2007). Weakened ecosystems and threatened species decrease the environment’s capacity to provide humans with services like safe drinking water, fuel, and protection from natural disasters, just to name a few (US EPA 2013). The agricultural industry plays a unique role in this environmental conversation, as farmland both contributes to climate change and is jeopardized by the negative effects created by the issue in a …
The Southern Family Farm As Endangered Species: Possibilities For Survival In Barbara Kingsolver's Prodigal Summer, Suzanne W. Jones
The Southern Family Farm As Endangered Species: Possibilities For Survival In Barbara Kingsolver's Prodigal Summer, Suzanne W. Jones
English Faculty Publications
At the same time some southern studies scholars are positioning the U.S. South in a larger cultural, historic, and economic region that encompasses the Caribbean and Latin America, some southern environmentalist writers, such as long-time essayist and novelist Wendell Berry and activist-turned-memoirist Janisse Ray, are finding a pressing need to focus on smaller bioregions and the locatedness of the human subject. These writers believe that agribusiness and consumer ignorance are driving small farmers out of business and that clear-cutting timber and farming practices dependent on chemicals are threatening local ecosystems. Best-selling novelist Barbara Kingsolver has joined their ranks. With her …