Current Insights in Drylands

Current Insights in Drylands
Author: Niall Patrick Hanan
Publisher: Frontiers Media SA
Total Pages: 174
Release: 2024-04-05
Genre: Science
ISBN: 283254696X

We are now entering the third decade of the 21st century, and recent drylands-focused research has led to major advances in our understanding of the coupled roles of climatic, edaphic, biotic, and anthropogenic processes in dryland ecosystem function, degradation, and sustainable management. Frontiers has organized a series of Research Topics to highlight the latest advancements in science in order to be at the forefront of science in different fields of research. This editorial initiative, led by Professor Niall Hanan, Specialty Chief Editor of the Drylands section, together with Dr. Lindsay Hutley, is focused on new insights, novel developments, current challenges, latest discoveries, recent advances, and future perspectives in the drylands field.

Phytobiomes: Current Insights and Future Vistas

Phytobiomes: Current Insights and Future Vistas
Author: Manoj Kumar Solanki
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 410
Release: 2020-07-10
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 981153151X

To satisfy the food demands of the global population, advanced technology based research is needed, that can extract the information from the plant metabolism and microbial gene pool and use it for improving plant health and productivity. Modern biotechnological tools have the ability to unlock the limitations of agricultural practices. However, the application of these tools is not well equipped. Moreover, eco-friendly agriculture by microbial inoculants is known to have positive influences on soil/plant health. Therefore it is relevant to explore the plant associated microbial niches, especially endophytes, epiphytes, and soil microbes and understand how they are benefitting each other. It can open new insights to develop sustainable agriculture practices by using consortia of microbes as plant helpers that recover the imbalanced agriculture systems and manage pathogenic diseases. This book presents the updates about the plant associated microbiomes and their contemporary uses. It covers the knowledge gap between soil and plant helper microbiomes and their application in the agriculture and allied sectors. Modern insights of phytobiomes are explored in various chapters on a variety of interrelated aspects of the fascinating areas like plant microbial interaction, integrated pest management, soil fertility intensification, sustainable crop production, and disease management. Sections in the book describe how to plant beneficial microbiomes have been utilized for sustainable green farming, with the aim to resolve the global food problem without harming the soil and environment health. This book is intended for everyone who is involved in agriculture, microbial biotechnology, bioinformatics, and all disciplines related to microbial biotechnology. These include academic students, scientists, and researchers at universities, institutes, industries, and government organizations who want to understand microbial linkages in a shorter time. It contains basic information that will be help to the non-specialist readers to understand progressive research.

Dryland Opportunities

Dryland Opportunities
Author: Michael Mortimore
Publisher: World Conservation Union
Total Pages: 100
Release: 2009
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN:

Drylands cover 41 percent of the earth' s terrestrial surface. The urgency of and international response to climate change have given a new place to drylands in terms both of their vulnerability to predicted climate change impacts and their potential contribution to climate change mitigation. This book aims to apply the new scientific insights on complex dryland systems to practical options for development. A new dryland paradigm is built on the resources and capacities of dryland peoples, on new and emergent economic opportunities, on inward investment, and on the best support that dryland science can offer.

Ecosystems and Human Well-being

Ecosystems and Human Well-being
Author: Joseph Alcamo
Publisher:
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2003
Genre: Biodiversity
ISBN:

Ecosystems and Human Well-Being is the first product of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, a four-year international work program designed to meet the needs of decisionmakers for scientific information on the links between ecosystem change and human well-being. The book offers an overview of the project, describing the conceptual framework that is being used, defining its scope, and providing a baseline of understanding that all participants need to move forward. The Millennium Assessment focuses on how humans have altered ecosystems, and how changes in ecosystem services have affected human well-being, how ecosystem changes may affect people in future decades, and what types of responses can be adopted at local, national, or global scales to improve ecosystem management and thereby contribute to human well-being and poverty alleviation. The program was launched by United National Secretary-General Kofi Annan in June 2001, and the primary assessment reports will be released by Island Press in 2005. Leading scientists from more than 100 nations are conducting the assessment, which can aid countries, regions, or companies by: providing a clear, scientific picture of the current sta

Building climate-resilient dryland forests and agrosilvopastoral production systems

Building climate-resilient dryland forests and agrosilvopastoral production systems
Author: Haddad, F.F., Ariza, C., Malmer, A.
Publisher: Food & Agriculture Org.
Total Pages: 88
Release: 2021-03-19
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 9251341192

With climate change impacts already felt in the world’s drylands, there is an urgent need for action, at various scales and initiated by different stakeholders, to ensure the sustainability of food production and livelihoods in these regions in the coming decades. There is also the need to rapidly establish baselines, assess and start monitoring progress on sustainability, emerging as result of the action taken. To aid in this effort, this paper provides a short list of expected transformations (under each of the three sustainability pillars) for guiding the planning and implementation of policy, governance and practice-level actions. Gender and indigenous people’s rights and knowledge will be considered cross-cutting issues. The expected transformations will be shared with and agreed by dryland experts and practitioners and will be complemented with additional relevant information sources and indicators. However, it is recommended that national and subnational governments, programmes, projects and individual practitioners and experts define the indicators they will use for measuring their own progress towards the expected transformations, based on the availability of data and specific national and local conditions.The paper will also present case studies portraying actions that have led to progress in sustainability and are directly related to the expected transformations. A related policy brief Blooming Drylands will complement the paper and offer practical recommendations on how policymakers can reach the expected transformations.

The Arid Lands

The Arid Lands
Author: Diana K. Davis
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 302
Release: 2016-03-25
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 0262034522

An argument that the perception of arid lands as wastelands is politically motivated and that these landscapes are variable, biodiverse ecosystems, whose inhabitants must be empowered. Deserts are commonly imagined as barren, defiled, worthless places, wastelands in need of development. This understanding has fueled extensive anti-desertification efforts—a multimillion-dollar global campaign driven by perceptions of a looming crisis. In this book, Diana Davis argues that estimates of desertification have been significantly exaggerated and that deserts and drylands—which constitute about 41% of the earth's landmass—are actually resilient and biodiverse environments in which a great many indigenous people have long lived sustainably. Meanwhile, contemporary arid lands development programs and anti-desertification efforts have met with little success. As Davis explains, these environments are not governed by the equilibrium ecological dynamics that apply in most other regions. Davis shows that our notion of the arid lands as wastelands derives largely from politically motivated Anglo-European colonial assumptions that these regions had been laid waste by “traditional” uses of the land. Unfortunately, such assumptions still frequently inform policy. Drawing on political ecology and environmental history, Davis traces changes in our understanding of deserts, from the benign views of the classical era to Christian associations of the desert with sinful activities to later (neo)colonial assumptions of destruction. She further explains how our thinking about deserts is problematically related to our conceptions of forests and desiccation. Davis concludes that a new understanding of the arid lands as healthy, natural, but variable ecosystems that do not necessarily need improvement or development will facilitate a more sustainable future for the world's magnificent drylands.

The Political Ecology of Drylands

The Political Ecology of Drylands
Author: Sören Köpke
Publisher: LIT Verlag Münster
Total Pages: 434
Release: 2018
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 3643910894

As climate change is becoming more severe, drought is threatening to disrupt agrarian societies. This book investigates the connections between drought and social conflict over land and water. It is a comparative study of eight dryland regions in Sub-saharan Africa, South and East Asia and South America. Sören Köpke looks at different agricultural production systems and analyses environmental conflicts linked to drought. Through the political ecology approach, the author highlights the power imbalances underpinning these conflicts. A central finding: Development strategies decide if a conflict escalates or not. The book contributes to the on-going debate on the link between climate change and conflict.

Dry Times

Dry Times
Author: Mark Stafford Smith
Publisher: CSIRO PUBLISHING
Total Pages: 186
Release: 2009-12-03
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 0643101810

With knowledge from our deserts, Australians can reshape the human story. Dry Times: Blueprint for a Red Land provides new insights into how our desert environments and institutions work – and how this affects the people living in them, Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal alike. It shows that the desert offers solutions to the challenges of living in an uncertain and threatening age, teaching us new ways to live, manage scarce resources, and cope with climatic extremes, isolation and lack of water and energy. These lessons apply not only to remote regions, but also to cities and entire nations as humanity faces growing scarcity of vital resources. With vivid examples drawn from Australia's desert life, outback people, animals and plants, Dry Times holds many positive lessons for our nation and humanity in a changing and resource-depleted world.