In recent years, the term biocultural diversity has been promoted to raise awareness for the interrelationship between culture and biodiversity. This term is on one hand compelling, as it is obvious that culture has been shaped by the natural context, and in turn has left traces in this natural context. However, it is hard to conceptualize and to envision how much this approach may contribute to a deeper understanding of and for the diversity of life on earth.
Read more »Food production has increased many folds since the advent of sophisticated farm inputs, better farm management practices, and technologies delivering greater food security around the world - saving over a billion people from starvation. Agriculture has involved developing high-yielding crop varieties, expanding irrigation infrastructure, modernizing management techniques, distributing hybridized seeds, synthetic fertilizers, and crop protection to farmers. Since then, agriculture has seen big changes in production methods, including increased mechanization and farm consolidation. These developments have been accompanied by reductions or even the removal of margins, hedges, ponds, and other uncultivated areas rich in biodiversity.
Read more »Biodiversity protection needs space, and this resource is sparse in most agricultural landscapes. The Eh da-initiative which started in Germany raises the question if more space than generally considered for bees (wild bees as well as honeybees) in agricultural landscapes is available, how this space - if it should be available - can be used, and how an initiative in order to promote bees can be implemented.
Read more »The Permanent Conference for the Study of the Rural landscape (PECSRL, http://www.pecsrl.org/) is according to its statement “an international network of landscape researchers whose interest focus on the past, present and future of European landscapes, and its members (and many others) meet every two years in a different European country for a Conference that is alive and vibrant for 26 meetings (from 1957!). The people that attend these Conferences reflect the wide diversity of the landscape concept itself, from historical geography to landscape ecology and beyond. Its most recent meeting was this September in Gothenburg and Mariestad (http://www.pecsrl2014.com/).
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