Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by Fnord666 on Sunday March 11 2018, @06:12PM   Printer-friendly
from the planning-for-the-future dept.

Smart land-use planning could ease the conflict between agricultural production and nature conservation. A team of researchers from the University of Göttingen, the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv), the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) and the University of Münster integrated global datasets on the geographical distributions and ecological requirements of thousands of animal species with detailed information on the production of the world’s major agricultural crops. The results were published in Global Change Biology.

Increasing agricultural production usually leads to various negative side effects in agricultural landscapes, such as local decline in wildlife and loss of ecosystem functions. But what would happen if agricultural growth would be focused on areas of the world where only a few animal species would be affected?

The researchers evaluated how far global biodiversity loss could be minimized by such planning. They found that 88 percent of the biodiversity that is expected to be lost under future agricultural intensification could be avoided if global land use was spatially optimized.

“However, global optimization implies that species-rich countries, mainly in the tropics, would be more responsible for safeguarding the world’s natural resources – at the expense of their own production opportunities and economic development,” says lead author Lukas Egli of Göttingen University and UFZ.

This applies mainly to countries that are highly dependent on agriculture. “Unless such conflicting national interests can be somehow accommodated in international sustainability policies, global cooperation seems unlikely and might generate new socioeconomic dependencies.”

Lukas Egli et al. Winners and losers of national and global efforts to reconcile agricultural intensification and biodiversity conservation. Global Change Biology 2018. Doi: 10.1111/gcb.14076.


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday March 11 2018, @08:17PM

    by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Sunday March 11 2018, @08:17PM (#651042) Homepage

    Potatoes and other tubers are easy to grow, and chicken populations are very easily regenerated and kept in confined spaces. As for apples, I've seen firsthand what the orchards look like in Washington state, and there's more than enough nature up there to sustain them without abominations like canals. Wait, maybe not, because the thing about orchards is the bees. To run an orchard you need bees, and cubic wooden-crate industrial beehives have to be bussed-in even in Washington state.

    " What besides Nutella is made from hazel nuts? "

    What besides cashew butter is made from cashews? Maybe the raw nuts, by themselves, serve as very tasty morsels in their own right. I love nuts, they're the meatiest things short of actual meat that nature produces. They're not only packed with fiber, but power. Get those flavored salts the fuck off my raw nuts.

    One of the most fond memories I have of nuts was a result of growing up in a traditional family, when around Christmastime a large bowl of a variety of shelled nuts was always on the table, and a Tchaikovsky-style Russian nutcracker was always on hand to crack them. But the point of that story is that granny loved explaining Brazil nuts -- with a quick "tee-hee," she was very fast to explain that they were also called "nigger-toes." She was not racist or anything, although she did love to say the word "nigger" when the opportunity arose.