Search Results (2)

The long-standing separation of agro-pastoral relations has adversely affected the agricultural economy and ecology, hindering sustainable agricultural development. The process of reconstructing agro-pastoral relations involves moving from separation to reintegration. To further verify the scientific validity of reconstructing agro-pastoral relations to improve economic and ecological benefits and enhance the capacity for sustainable agricultural development in the major corn-producing areas of Northeast China, this study used survey data from 521 sample farmers in Jilin Province, China, collected during the agricultural production cycle from 2020 to 2022. Using an endogenous switching regression (ESR) model and a counterfactual scenario, the integrated crop–livestock family farm (ICFF) model was shown to have a comparative advantage in improving economic and ecological benefits. The ICFF model can serve as a foundation for reconstructing agro-pastoral relations, thereby enhancing sustainable agricultural development capacity. Heterogeneity analysis indicates that larger-scale cultivated land, intensive cultivated land management, and higher education have a more significant impact on farmers’ choice of the ICFF model. To promote the restructuring of agro-pastoral relations through the ICFF model, farmers should be encouraged and supported to standardize the transfer of farmland, engage in livestock farming according to the principle of land-based livestock management, implement large-scale and intensive management, improve agricultural production technologies and improved varieties, strengthen publicity on the positive role of integrated crop-livestock management, and improve the financial support system. Full article

Currently, indexes from the Fire Weather Index System (FWI) are used to predict the daily fire hazard, but there is no reliable index available in the Mediterranean region to be compared with paleofire records and check for their long-term reliability. In order to assess the past fire hazard and the fire-season length, based on data availability and requirements for fire index computation, we first chose and tested the efficiency of the Drought Code (DC) in Corsica (the main French Mediterranean fire-prone region) over the current period (1979–2016). We then used DC as a benchmark to assess the efficiency of the Monthly Drought Code (MDC) and used it to assess the Fire-Season Length (FSL), which were both used to characterize the fire hazard. Finally, we computed the Holocene MDC and FSL based on the HadCM3B-M1 climate model (three dimensional, fully dynamic, coupled atmosphere-ocean global climate model without flux adjustment) datasets and compared both index trends with those from proxies of paleofire, vegetation, and land use retrieved from sedimentary records in three Corsican lakes (Bastani, Nino, and Creno). Our strategy was to (i) assess fire hazard without the constraint of the daily weather-data requirement, (ii) reconstruct Holocene fire hazard from a climate perspective, and (iii) discuss the role of climate and human fire drivers based on the MDC-Paleofire proxy comparisons. Using both the Prométhée fire database and the ERA-Interim climate database over Corsica for the current period, we showed that DC values higher than 405 units efficiently discriminated fire-days from no-fire-days. The equivalent threshold value from MDC was set at 300 units. MDC and FSL indexes calculated for each of the past 11 millennia Before Present (11 ka BP) showed high values before 7 ka BP (above 300 units for MDC) and then lower values for the mid- to late Holocene (below 300 units for MDC). Climate appeared as a key driver to predict fire occurrences, promoting fires between 11 and 8 ka BP when summers were warmer than the current ones and reducing fire hazard after 7–6 ka BP due to wetter conditions. Since 5 ka BP, humans have taken control of the fire regime through agro-pastoralism, favoring large and/or frequent events despite less fire-prone climate conditions. The current fire hazard and fire-season length computed over the last few decades (1979–2016) both reported values that were respectively higher and longer than those assessed for the previous six millennia at least and comparable for those before 7 ka BP. For the next decades, due to climate warming associated with land abandonment (fuel accumulation) and the increase in human-related sources of ignition, we can expect an increase in fire hazard and larger fire events. Full article