Search

Massive investments in climate change mitigation and adaptation are projected during coming decades. Many of these investments will seek to modify how land is managed. The return on both types of investments can be increased through an understanding of land potential: the potential of the land to support primary production and ecosystem services, and its resilience. A Land‐Potential Knowledge System (LandPKS) is being developed and implemented to provide individual users with point‐based estimates of land potential based on the integration of simple, geo‐tagged user inputs with cloud‐based information and knowledge. This system will rely on mobile phones for knowledge and information exchange, and use cloud computing to integrate, interpret, and access relevant knowledge and information, including local knowledge about land with similar potential. The system will initially provide management options based on long‐term land potential, which depends on climate, topography, and relatively static soil properties, such as soil texture, depth, and mineralogy. Future modules will provide more specific management information based on the status of relatively dynamic soil properties such as organic matter and nutrient content, and of weather. The paper includes a discussion of how this system can be used to help distinguish between meteorological and edaphic drought.

Destructive land use is driving long-term losses of ecosystem function and productivity. Satellite measurements of Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) since 1981 provide a global yardstick, revealing that a quarter of the land surface has been degrading over the last quarter of a century; every continent and biome is affected with Africa south of the equator, southeast (SE) Asia and south (S) China hardest hit. The loss of primary productivity is equivalent to more than a billion Mg C but the associated emissions from loss of biomass and soil organic carbon are much greater. Degradation is not confined to farmland (18 % of the degrading area is cropland; 47 % is classed as forest); neither is it strongly associated with drylands, population pressure or poverty. A case study using more detailed data for China explores the effects of soil resilience and the association between land degradation and land use. NDVI can only be a proxy measure of land degradation; assessment of ecosystem services is a further step removed. Remotely-­sensed data can be used along with climatic and topographic data as an input to models that predict the provision of these services but the processes, drivers and effects beyond NPP are unseen and more importantly, unmeasured. This is an issue for emerging markets in environmental services.

Metopolophium festucae s.str. is restricted to grasses whilst the subspecies M. festucae cerealium has extended its host range to include cereals. This study considers only M. festucae cerealium. The performance of this aphid on a range of host plants has been considered in terms of antibiotic and antixenotic resistance. Particular emphasis was placed on the comparative resistance of wheat and L. perenne. M. festucae cerealium was more fecund on wheat, produced more alatae and showed more restlessness than on L. perenne. The difference in response on the two host plants implicated the influence of secondary plant substances in wheat. The role of the grassland habitat was considered in relation to density independent induction of alatae and the general life history strategy of this aphid. The influence of temperature on M. festucae cerealium was investigated, and was found to influence reproductive performance, the induction of alate virginoparae and the morphology of virginoparae. Temperature did not influence the aphid's ovariole number and did not induce the development of any sexual morphs. M. festucae cerealium was considered to be anholocyclic on Gramineae. The control of M. festucae cerealium in grassland and the implications of its life history strategy for integrated control are discussed.