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The Atlas of rural protocols in the American Midwest and the Argentine Pampas is structured along eight systems of organization: transport and infrastructure, land subdivision, agricultural production, water management, storage and maintenance, human habitation, animal management, land management. Each of these systems possesses a number of organizational types, material components, normative relationships, and spectra of performance, which become available through a manual of instructions for a Suprarural architectural environment. The research is based on a realistic-overriding ethics towards design that operates by abstracting and intensifying unexplored territorial phenomena.

China continuously maintains the first place of global wind energy with the national installed capacity of 188GW at the end of 2017, accounting for over 34.8% of the total world capacity. With the continuous increase both in number and height of wind turbines, the spatial planning has the task to provide suitable places for wind farms. Thus the rising demand for good locations is increasingly causing conflicts. The \"13th Five-Year-Plan\" of China aims to optimize the spatial layout of wind energy, resolving wind curtailment problems in North China and encouraging the construction of distributed, low-speed wind farms in South China for consumer near energy production. The ecological and social impacts caused by wind farms become more prominent in the densely populated areas of South China, which brings challenges to spatial planning and land use coordination. As a pioneer of wind industry, Germany is faced with similar problems and very early paid attention on spatial planning issues like wind farm site selection, environmental protection and land use planning. This paper compares the spatial planning systems of two countries and draws experiences from Germany to optimize the Chinese wind farm planning procedures. Planning principles and specific planning procedures for the integration of wind farm and spatial planning both in regional and local levels will be proposed according to the developing status of China. An on-shore wind farm planning framework will be set up implemented at each planning level, and coordinated with other land use and space functions to ensure the synchronous development of renewable energy and surrounding ecological and human environment.

Integrated soil fertility management (ISFM) is generally accepted as the most relevant paradigm for soil fertility improvement in the tropics. Successes however are mainly reported at plot level, while real impact at farm level and beyond remains scattered. As a consequence, many Sub-Saharan African countries continue experiencing soil nutrient mining and insecure and insufficient agricultural production. Since technology-driven projects at the plot level failed to bring ISFM to scale, a different approach is needed. This paper describes a bottom-up approach developed in Burundi, the “PIP approach”. It starts at farmer family level with the creation of an integrated farm plan (Plan Intégré de Paysan in French—PIP) and aims at wide-scale spreading of farmers’ intrinsic motivation to invest in activities that make the household more resilient and profitable, while moving towards sustainable agricultural intensification based on concepts of ISFM. As such, and once firmly embedded in and supported by village or district plans, agriculture becomes a business rather than a default activity inherited by parents, and ISFM an intrinsic aspect of farm management. In this paper the PIP approach as currently being implemented in Burundi is explained and discussed, with special reference to soil fertility management and some preliminary promising results.

This paper examines crop planning decisions in sustainable agriculture—that is, how to allocate farmland among multiple crops in each growing season when the crops have rotation benefits across growing seasons. We consider a farmer who periodically allocates the farmland between two crops in the presence of revenue uncertainty where revenue is stochastically larger and farming cost is lower when a crop is grown on rotated farmland (where the other crop was grown in the previous season). We characterize the optimal dynamic farmland allocation policy and perform sensitivity analysis to investigate how revenue uncertainty of each crop affects the farmer’s optimal allocation decision and profitability. Using a calibration based on a farmer growing corn and soybeans in Iowa, we show that growing only one crop over the entire planning horizon, as employed in industrial agriculture, leads to a considerable profit loss—that is, crop planning based on principles of sustainable agriculture has substantial value. We propose a simple heuristic allocation policy, which we characterize in closed form. Using our model calibration, we show that (i) the proposed policy not only outperforms the commonly suggested heuristic policies in the literature, but also provides a near-optimal performance and (ii) compared with the optimal policy, the proposed policy has a higher allocation of crops to rotated farmland, and thus, it is potentially more environmentally friendly. The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2018.3044 . This paper was accepted by Serguei Netessine, operations management.

This research aimed to assess carbon (C) stocks (living biomass, soil and detritus) in silvopastoral systems (SPS), the C density in living biomass (CLB) at the farm level, technological adoption and milk yields in an integrated fashion in small dairy farms in the Andean-Amazon region of Colombia. Technological adoption was assessed on a scale of 0 to 100% across 26 points. Milk yields from the top 10% highest-yielding farms were used for gap analysis. The lactation period and weaning age were considered as herd management variables. The study included 30 farms classified as high, medium or low SPS coverage. The average farm size was 9.1 ± 0.8 ha −1 where live fences (LF) and woodlots (WL) were the main SPS. The total C were 152.0 ± 13.8 Mg·ha- 1 , 152.2 ± 10.3 Mg·ha- 1 , and 73.2 ± 4.4 Mg·ha- 1 in WL, LF and pastures. Farms with high SPS coverage (10.8 ± 1.1%) presented a CLB density of 8.6 ± 2.0 Mg·ha −1 , 3.4 and 43 times higher than those with medium and low coverage, respectively. Average milk yield was 3190.1 ± 237.5 kg fat and protein-corrected milk (FPCM) cow −1  yr⁻ 1 , with the top 10% of farms having 6056.7 kg·FPCM·cow −1  yr⁻ 1 . Farms with low SPS coverage had the smallest yield gap (1221.4 ± 290 kg·FPCM·cow −1  yr⁻ 1 ) but also a lower average yield (2883.0 ± 290 kg·FPCM·cow⁻ 1 ·yr⁻ 1 ). The farms averaged 48.9 ± 2.1% in the technological adoption level, 271.5 ± 8.4 days of lactation period, and 129.3 ± 17.8 days of weaning age, with no significant differences across SPS levels. An integrated approach to jointly increase technology adoption, herd management, and the enhancement of SPS coverage at the farm level can reduce the yield gap while enhancing C stocks.

Wind energy generation has become an important means to reduce reliance on fossil fuels and mitigate against human‐induced climate change, but could also represent a significant human–wildlife conflict. Airborne taxa such as birds may be particularly sensitive to collision mortality with wind turbines, yet the relative vulnerability of species’ populations across their annual life cycles has not been evaluated. Using GPS telemetry, we studied the movements of lesser black‐backed gulls Larus fuscus from three UK breeding colonies through their annual cycle. We modelled the distance travelled by birds at altitudes between the minimum and maximum rotor sweep zone of turbines, combined with the probability of collision, to estimate sensitivity to collision. Sensitivity was then combined with turbine density (exposure) to evaluate spatio‐temporal vulnerability. Sensitivity was highest near to colonies during the breeding season, where a greater distance travelled by birds was in concentrated areas where they were exposed to turbines. Consequently, vulnerability was high near to colonies but was also high at some migration bottlenecks and wintering sites where, despite a reduced sensitivity, exposure to turbines was greatest. Synthesis and applications. Our framework combines bird‐borne telemetry and spatial data on the location of wind turbines to identify potential areas of conflict for migratory populations throughout their annual cycle. This approach can aid the wind farm planning process by: (a) providing sensitivity maps to inform wind farm placement, helping minimize impacts; (b) identifying areas of high vulnerability where mitigation warrants exploration; (c) highlighting potential cumulative impacts of developments over international boundaries and (d) informing the conservation status of species at protected sites. Our methods can identify pressures and linkages for populations using effect‐specific metrics that are transferable and could help resolve other human–wildlife conflicts. This study uses GPS‐telemetry to assess sensitivity and vulnerability of a gull species to collision with wind turbines through its annual life‐cycle. With the proliferation of renewable energy to mitigate against climate change, these results can aid the planning process and minimise potential impacts on protected site populations.

Shadow flicker caused by wind turbine blades passing through sunlight can significantly affect nearby residential buildings, raising environmental and regulatory concerns in wind farm development. The accurate assessment of shadow flicker exposure is critical for compliance and minimizing community impacts. We present a novel method for accurately determining the exposure of shadow flicker from wind turbines on residential buildings, addressing a key regulatory concern in wind farm planning. Current simulation techniques rely on discrete sampling of solar positions, resulting in potential inaccuracies tied to sampling resolution. Our proposed approach models shadow flicker as a continuous function and applies numerical minimization and numerical root finding to compute the duration of exposure. Our evaluation proves that this method achieves a superior balance between precision and computational efficiency, significantly improving existing techniques.

Federal conservation programs included in various farm bills with regard to controlled drainage establish the context for further actions to reduce nutrient pollution in the Gulf of Mexico. This study calibrates the financial incentives presented to farmers regarding the adoption of controlled drainage technology that improves downstream drainage water quality by using a representative farm-planning model. The results show that controlled drainage can be more profitable than free-flowing whole-farm field drainage as long as the minimum yield advantage with controlled drainage is 2% with subsidy and 4% without subsidy respectively. However, even with a 10% yield advantage due to controlled drainage, the lack of labor during key periods may limit adoption of controlled drainage technology. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]

A multi-faceted whole farm planning model is developed to compare conventional and autonomous machinery for grain crop production under various benefit, farm size, suitable field day risk aversion, and grain price scenarios. Results suggest that autonomous machinery can be an economically viable alternative to conventional manned machinery if the establishment of intelligent controls is cost effective. An increase in net returns of 24% over operating with conventional machinery is found when including both input savings and a yield increase due to reduced compaction. This study also identifies the break-even investment price for intelligent controls for the safe and reliable commercialization of autonomous machinery. Results indicate that the break-even investment price is highly variable depending on the financial benefits resulting from the deployment of autonomous machinery, farm size, suitable field day risk aversion, and grain prices. The maximum break-even investment price for intelligent, autonomous controls is nearly US$500 000 for the median days suitable for fieldwork when including both input savings and a yield increase due to reduced compaction.