Land use response to agricultural policy and market movements on Finnish dairy-farms

Selostus: Tuki- ja hintamuutosten vaikutus maitotilojen pellon käyttöön

Recycled Asphalt Pavements - Kossuth County Iowa, HR-176, 1975

Kossuth County is located in North Central Iowa bordering on the State of Minnesota. It is the largest county in Iowa consisting of 28 congressional townships. The population of the county is 23,000 of which 11,000 people live in the rural area. There are 13 towns located in the county with the county seat, Algona, being the largest with a population of 6,100. Major industry of the area is grain farming with some beef and hog production. Naturally, where there is good grain farm land it follows that there is poor soil available for road construction and pavements. However, below the 3 to 4 feet of good farm land of Kossuth there is present a good grade of clay soil which does make an adequate base for surfacing when placed and compacted on top of the roadbed. As early as 1950, the then Kossuth County Engineer, H.M. Smith, embarked on a program of stage construction in building new grades and pavements. The goal of his program was primarily to conserve the county's rapidly dwindling supply of surfacing materials, and also, to realize the side effects of providing smooth and dustless roads for the public. Engineer Smith was fully aware of the poor soils that existed for road construction, but he also knew about the good clay that lay below the farm soil. Consequently, in his grading program he insisted that road ditches be dug deep enough to allow the good clay soil to be compacted on top of the roadbed. The presence of the compacted clay on top of the road resulted in a briding affect over the farm soil. The stage construction program satisfied the objectives of aggregate construction and dust control but did generate other problems which we are now trying to solve as economically as possible.

Climate Change or Land Use Dynamics: Do We Know What Climate Change Indicators Indicate?

Different components of global change can have interacting effects on biodiversity and this may influence our ability to detect the specific consequences of climate change through biodiversity indicators. Here, we analyze whether climate change indicators can be affected by land use dynamics that are not directly determined by climate change. To this aim, we analyzed three community-level indicators of climate change impacts that are based on the optimal thermal environment and averagelatitude of the distribution of bird species present at local communities. We used multiple regression models to relate the variation in climate change indicators to: i) environmental temperature; and ii) three landscape gradients reflecting important current land use change processes (land abandonment, fire impacts and urbanization), all of them having forest areas at their positive extremes. We found that, with few exceptions, landscape gradients determined the figures of climate change indicators as strongly as temperature. Bird communities in forest habitats had colder-dwelling bird species with more northerndistributions than farmland, burnt or urban areas. Our results show that land use changes can reverse, hide or exacerbate our perception of climate change impacts when measured through community-level climate change indicators. We stress the need of an explicit incorporation of the interactions between climate change and land use dynamics to understand what are current climate change indicators indicating and be able to isolate real climate change impacts

Report on the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship for the year ended June 30, 2013

Report on the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship for the year ended June 30, 2013

How the West "invented" fertility restriction

We analyze the rise of the first socio-economic institution in history that limited fertility ? long before theDemographic Transition. The "European Marriage Pattern" (EMP) raised the marriage age of women andensured that many remained celibate, thereby reducing childbirths by up to one third between the 14thand 18th century. To explain the rise of EMP we build a two-sector model of agricultural production ?grain and livestock. Women have a comparative advantage in the latter because plow agriculture requiresphysical strength. After the Black Death in 1348-50, land abundance triggered a shift towards the landintensivepastoral sector, improving female employment prospects. Because women working in animalhusbandry had to remain unmarried, more farm service spelled later marriages. The resulting reductionin fertility led to a new Malthusian steady state with lower population pressure and higher wages. Themodel can thus help to explain the divergence in income per capita between Europe and Asia long beforethe Industrial Revolution. Using detailed data from England after 1290, we provide strong evidence forour mechanism. Where pastoral agriculture dominated, more women worked as servants, and marriageoccurred markedly later. Overall, we estimate that pastoral farming raised female ages at first marriage bymore than 4 years.

El Land-Art a l'educació 0-3: l'expressió lliure i la comprensió del medi a través de l'art i la natura

Actualment el Land – Art és un moviment poc conegut i difós en la vessant educativa. Aquest treball pretén treure a la llum i transmetre l’essència d’aquest moviment enriquidor cap als infants. Tant és així, que el Land – Art esdevé una eina d’aprenentatge innovadora en el primer cicle d’Educació Infantil a través d’una metodologia constructivista que involucra a tota la comunitat educativa: professionals, família i alumnes. L’objectiu del present projecte és l’ús d’aquest moviment com instrument d’aprenentatge per tal d’observar i analitzar uns resultats que s’han anat construint a partir d’una hipòtesi: “El Land – Art a l’Educació 0-3 fomenta l’expressió lliure i la comprensió del medi”. En aquest treball trobarem, en primer lloc, el marc teòric del projecte; en segon lloc, el seu mètode d’investigació; en tercer lloc, la vessant pràctica del projecte; i, en quart i darrer lloc, les conclusions que reflecteixen la part comparativa entre el marc teòric i la part pràctica, on es finalitzarà amb les reflexions finals.

The link between land-use management and fluvial flood risk : a chaotic conception?

There is much policy interest in the possible linkages that might exist between land use and downstream fluvial flood risk. On the one hand, this position is sustained by observations from plot- and field-scale studies that suggest land management does affect runoff. On the other, upscaling these effects to show that land-management activities impact upon flood risk at larger catchment scales has proved to be elusive. This review considers the reasons for why this upscaling is problematic. We argue that, rather than it reflecting methodological challenges associated with the difficulties of modelling hydrological processes over very large areas and during extreme runoff events, it reflects the fact that any linkage between land management and flood risk cannot be generalized and taken out of its specific spatial (catchment) and temporal (flood event) context. We use Sayer's (1992) notion of a `chaotic conception' to describe the belief that there is a simple and general association between land management and downstream flood risk rather than the impacts of land management being spatially and temporally contingent in relation to the particular geographical location, time period and scale being considered. Our argument has important practical consequences because it implies that land-management activities to reduce downstream flood risk will be different to traditional flood-reduction interventions such as levees. The purpose of demonstration projects then needs careful consideration such that conclusions made for one project are not transferred uncritically to other scales of analysis or geographical locations.

Iowa Drainage Law Manual, TR-497, 2005

The relationship between Iowa’s roads and drainage developed when rural roads were originally constructed. The land parallel to roadways was excavated to create road embankments. The resulting ditches provided an outlet for shallow tiles to drain nearby fields for farming. Iowa’s climate and terrain are nearly ideal for farming, and more than 90 percent of the land suits the purpose. Much of the land, however, needs to be artificially drained to achieve maximum productivity. Most of this drainage has been accomplished with an extensive network of levees, open ditches, and underground tiles. The U.S. Census Bureau estimated that as early as 1920 approximately nine million acres of Iowa farm land had been artificially drained or needed to be. Couple this drainage system with Iowa’s extensive surface transportation system—approximately 100,000 miles of roads and streets, 90,000 on local systems— and potential for conflicts will naturally arise. This is particularly true with urban expansion resulting in residential and commercial development of rural land. This manual contains summaries of and references to the laws most relevant to drainage in Iowa. It also includes frequently asked questions about transportation agencies’ responsibilities related to drainage. Typical policies and agreement forms used by agencies to address drainage issues are illustrated and a glossary of common terms is included.

Effects of competing vegetation and post-planting weed control on the mortality, growth and vole damages to Betula pendula planted on former agricultural land

Abstract

Report on the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship for the year ended June 30, 2014

Report on the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship for the year ended June 30, 2014

1102-001 Twelve Mile Lake Final Report

Twelve-Mile Lake is an 800-acre man-made lake in central Union County. The watershed has 13,964 land acres that are used by farmers for row crops and pasture. This lake is used as a water supply source for the City of Creston and the Southern Iowa Rural Water Association. In total approximately 40,000 people are affected by this project. Developed over 20 years ago, the lake and fishery was renovated and restocked and much of the shoreline was riprapped about six years ago. During its history, extensive watershed efforts have been ongoing. However, as farmland for cropland has become more valuable and demand has increased, hilly land once used for dairy farming, grazing, and CRP has been put into row crop production. Consequently, sediment loss has become an increasing issue for farmers, conservation professionals, and the Creston Waterworks Department, which owns the water treatment facility at the lake. In 2011, the Creston Water Board received a WIRB grant to implement a sedimentation structure at the north end of the main channel flowing into the lake. The WIRB funds were used for land acquisition, with the IDNR actually constructing the facility. This report depicts work performed as part of the WIRB project.

State of the science and the way forward for the ecotoxicological assessment of contaminated land

Over the past two decades, soil ecotoxicologists have made strides in utilizing the basic concepts and advancements in soil zoology and ecology. They have applied the existing tools, and developed new ones to investigate how chemical contamination can affect soil ecosystems, including the degradation or destruction of soil quality and habitats or the diminishment of belowground biodiversity. Soil ecotoxicologists are applying a suite of standard protocols, originally developed as laboratory tests with single chemicals (e.g., pesticides), and further enhancing both the approaches and protocols for the assessment of contaminated lands. However, ecological relevance of some approaches remains unresolved. The authors discuss the main challenges for a coherent ecotoxicological assessment of soil ecosystems amid contaminated lands, and provide recommendations on how to integrate the effects of physical and chemical soil properties, the variations in the diversity of soil invertebrates, and the interactions among organisms of various trophic levels. The review examines new international approaches and test methods using examples from three continents (in particular research conducted in Brazil), and provides recommendations for improving ecological relevance of ecotoxicological investigations of contaminated lands.