Browsing by Subject "sustainability"

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    Evolución de las propiedades físicas y químicas de un suelo de regadío en la conversión de tradicional a ecológico
    (Servicio de Publicaciones. Universidad de Murcia, 2025) Virto-González, D.; Mateos, I.; González-Barragán, María Isabel; Sin departamento asociado
    The present work analyzes the evolution of the physicochemical properties of irrigated soil during the conversion process from traditional to organic agricultural practices. The studied farm is located at the University School of Agricultural Engineering INEA (Valladolid). This irrigated farm was converted to organic agriculture in 2006. The study covers the period from 2004 to 2020. The agricultural practices adopted for the conversion to organic included: elimination of fertilizers (using organic sheep manure when it was the turn for potatoes in the rotation), crop rotation (incorporating legumes in alternate years), elimination of tillage, and incorporation of crop residues from the previous harvest. Three distinct plots within the INEA farm were monitored. Periodic analyses of key parameters such as pH, nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, organic matter, and carbon/nitrogen ratio, among others, were conducted. The results obtained reveal significant changes in the chemical properties of the soil, showing an improvement in its quality, with an increase in organic matter and nutrients and a decrease in salts. This study provides a comprehensive view of soil quality parameters, which have environmental and agronomic benefits for adopting more sustainable approaches in agriculture. The findings contribute to scientific knowledge about the importance of soil management in promoting more environmentally friendly and resilient agricultural systems in the long term.
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    Ponencias Invitadas.-Desertification: the broader context
    Kirkby, M.J.; Universidad de Murcia
    ABSTRACT After over twenty years of research, there is still not complete consensus on even how to define desertification. This is reflected in the changing emphasis of UNCCD and EU programmes. The focus on physical processes in the 1990s has changed, first to an emphasis on the impacts of desertification and global change, and more recently towards sustainability rather than degradation as the core of most research effort, although much is still concerned with scenarios of possible future change. Different research tools are able to survey different windows on changing degradation status. Remote sensing methods, for example, provide an excellent window on the recent past, but little forecasting potential beyond projecting linear trends. Dynamic models add some understanding of the interaction of different components, and are increasingly engaging with socio-economic as well as strictly bio-physical processes, but are still limited by the intervention of the unexpected – the boom in biofuel demand, the credit crunch etc – that severely limit their forecasting horizons. This survey examines some of the over-arching relationships that must always constrain the relationships between population, food, land, water and energy, constraining the overall sustainability of global systems in a way that can only temporarily be ignored through irreversible mining of resources and exploitation of one region at the expense of another. The land sets constraints on food production that can partially be overcome through technological development, linked as both cause and effect to population growth, and may also be reduced by degradation. Less developed countries generally have a larger proportions of rural population and higher rates of rural-urban migration, but higher overall rates of population increase still lead to increasing rural populations (in contrast to more developed economies with falling rural numbers), adding to pressure on land resources and, almost inevitably, to degradation. This example demonstrates how broader social and economic forces lie at the root of much desertification, so that alleviation measures should not be confined to the directly affected area, but linked to national policies and development.