Sustainable Agricultural Land Management towards a Net-Zero Pathway

A special issue of Land (ISSN 2073-445X). This special issue belongs to the section "Water, Energy, Land and Food (WELF) Nexus".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 15 February 2025 | Viewed by 2511

Special Issue Editors

School of Public Administration, China University of Geosciences, Wuhan 430074, China
Interests: agricultural land use; natural resource management; climate change
School of Accounting, Finance and Economics, University of Waikato, Private Bag 3105 Hamilton 3240, New Zealand
Interests: agribusiness; agri-food value chain; marketing
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
College of Land Management, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan 430070, China
Interests: agricultural land management; agricultural economics

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

We are pleased to introduce our forthcoming Special Issue of the Land journal, entitled "Sustainable Agricultural Land Management towards a Net-Zero Pathway". Agricultural land use systems play an important role in coping with climate change, ensuring nutrition and food security, providing key ecosystem services, and promoting environmentally sustainable development. Globally, agriculture and related land use change contributed approximately 17% of global anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions in 2010, including carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide. Among the large emerging economies (BRICS: Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa), agriculture alone contributes 18% of net greenhouse gas emissions. The world's major developed countries have realized the pressure and challenges that greenhouse gas emissions from the agricultural sector bring to achieving global temperature control goals and have proposed Net-Zero plans. Rapid urbanization has accelerated the loss of agricultural land. Increasing crop yield is a crucial way to ensure food security when facing shrinking farmland and geopolitical situations. However, the increase in grain production relies heavily on the input of agricultural production materials such as chemical fertilizers and pesticides, which will intensify agricultural greenhouse gas emissions. Therefore, exploring sustainable agricultural land management practices is significant in ensuring regional food security and achieving Net Zero.

This Special Issue aims to explore sustainable agricultural land management to achieve net-zero emissions and ensure food security, including related theories, methods, technologies, policies, and practices. We are also open to diverse methods (quantitative, qualitative, and mixed). The key thematic focus for submissions could include, but is not limited to, the following areas:

  • Sustainable agricultural land use;
  • Greenhouse gas emissions from the agricultural sector;
  • Agricultural land protection and management;
  • Climate-smart agricultural policies;
  • Agricultural land use efficiency;
  • New technologies in agricultural systems for improving food security.

We look forward to receiving your original research articles and reviews.

Dr. Ying Wang
Dr. Ou Wang
Dr. Xin Yang
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Land is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • sustainable agricultural land use management
  • greenhouse gas emissions mitigation
  • food security
  • climate change

Benefits of Publishing in a Special Issue

  • Ease of navigation: Grouping papers by topic helps scholars navigate broad scope journals more efficiently.
  • Greater discoverability: Special Issues support the reach and impact of scientific research. Articles in Special Issues are more discoverable and cited more frequently.
  • Expansion of research network: Special Issues facilitate connections among authors, fostering scientific collaborations.
  • External promotion: Articles in Special Issues are often promoted through the journal's social media, increasing their visibility.
  • e-Book format: Special Issues with more than 10 articles can be published as dedicated e-books, ensuring wide and rapid dissemination.

Further information on MDPI's Special Issue polices can be found here.

Published Papers (2 papers)

Order results
Result details
Select all
Export citation of selected articles as:

Research

19 pages, 4327 KiB  
Article
Exploring Crop Production Strategies to Mitigate Greenhouse Gas Emissions Based on Scenario Analysis
by Zhuoyuan Gu, Jing Xue, Hongfang Han and Chao Wang
Land 2025, 14(2), 256; https://doi.org/10.3390/land14020256 - 26 Jan 2025
Viewed by 482
Abstract
In the context of global climate change and carbon neutrality goals, agriculture has emerged as a major source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and faces the critical challenge of reducing emissions while ensuring food security. However, existing research has rarely focused on dynamic [...] Read more.
In the context of global climate change and carbon neutrality goals, agriculture has emerged as a major source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and faces the critical challenge of reducing emissions while ensuring food security. However, existing research has rarely focused on dynamic simulation and scenario-based analysis of optimised agricultural layouts and their impact on GHG emissions. Taking the three northeastern provinces (Heilongjiang, Jilin, and Liaoning) of China as the study area, this study quantifies GHG emissions from major grain crops and employs time-series analysis and machine learning methods to conduct a scenario analysis, including three scenarios (Business as Usual, Sustainable Optimisation, and Ecological Priority). Specific policy implications are proposed for optimising agricultural layouts and mitigating GHG emissions. The results indicate that GHG emissions in Northeast China primarily stem from methane emissions in rice cultivation and nitrous oxide emissions from fertiliser use. A scenario analysis reveals that the “Sustainable Optimisation” scenario reduces GHG emissions by 22.0% through optimised planting layouts while maintaining stable crop production. The “Ecological Priority” scenario further enhances emission reductions to 25.2% by increasing the share of low-emission crops, such as corn, and reducing high-emission crops, such as rice. The study provides a practical reference for promoting the low carbonisation of agriculture, and demonstrates that optimising planting layouts and production structures can simultaneously achieve food security and climate change mitigation. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Agricultural Land Management towards a Net-Zero Pathway)
Show Figures

Graphical abstract

18 pages, 4648 KiB  
Article
Agricultural Land Suitability Analysis for Land Use Planning: The Case of the Madrid Region
by Nerea Morán-Alonso, Andrés Viedma-Guiard, Marian Simón-Rojo and Rafael Córdoba-Hernández
Land 2025, 14(1), 134; https://doi.org/10.3390/land14010134 - 10 Jan 2025
Viewed by 580
Abstract
Agricultural land is a key resource for territorial resilience. In the European context, fertile soils are under pressure not only from urbanisation processes, abandonment and the establishment of non-agricultural uses but also from agriculture that is not well adapted to territorial resources. In [...] Read more.
Agricultural land is a key resource for territorial resilience. In the European context, fertile soils are under pressure not only from urbanisation processes, abandonment and the establishment of non-agricultural uses but also from agriculture that is not well adapted to territorial resources. In order to inform urban planning, a methodology is proposed and applied to the Madrid region to analyse the suitability of agricultural land uses with respect to agrological quality. The majority of agricultural uses in the region are well adapted to the agroecological quality of the land; larger areas of over-exploited land are located along some of the region’s rivers and in the Campiña, while under-utilised land is mainly found in the south-west and in the metropolitan comarcas. This methodology is based on official and open-access information, so it can be easily replicated and used to inform land planning. We propose three strategies depending on the suitability of land use: the introduction of crops in priority areas for horticulture or arable crops, agricultural protection areas and ecological regeneration areas. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Agricultural Land Management towards a Net-Zero Pathway)
Show Figures

Figure 1

Back to TopTop