Explaining agricultural intensity at the European and global scale
Agricultural land management and land use intensity differ across the globe but their constraints and drivers are limitedly understood at the continental and global scale. The main objective of this thesis is therefore to characterize and explain spatial diversity in agricultural land management and land use intensity and to explain their variability across the globe.
The thesis targets three important aspects of agricultural land management and land use intensity: livestock farming, efficiency of grain production, and irrigation. To meet the objective a variety of quantitative methods were applied at different spatial scales. Results show that land use intensity and agricultural land management 1) depend only to a certain degree on characteristics of the land itself, 2) often have a strong path dependency, and 3) may be explained by scale depended factors. The thesis finalizes with some suggestions for modeling agricultural land management and land use intensity at the continental and global scale.
This concluded Kathleen Neumann, employee of PBL, in her thesis which she defended on October 4 2010 at the Wageningen University.
This publication is only digital available at the Wageningen University
Authors
Specifications
- Publication title
- Explaining agricultural intensity at the European and global scale
- Publication date
- 4 October 2010
- Publication type
- Publication
- Publication language
- English
- Product number
- 92536
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