Innovations in Agricultural Green Infrastructure
A special issue of Land (ISSN 2073-445X). This special issue belongs to the section "Land, Biodiversity, and Human Wellbeing".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 1 December 2024 | Viewed by 3400
Special Issue Editor
Interests: urban and rural green infrastructure design; planning and management
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Conventionally designed homogenous agricultural systems characterized by a high reliance on agrichemicals and low species richness are often associated with environmental degradation and low resilience to environmental and economic impacts. In response, farmers are internationally shifting to greener production practices in response to growing demands from governments, retailers, and consumers. Much has been written about efficiency/substitution farming strategies to reduce the impact of concern to regulators by increasing input efficiencies and substituting more environmentally benign system components. Much less is known about biodiversity farming strategies, such as the restoration of green infrastructure (GI) on farms and across farming landscapes. These strategies can not only play a significant role in reducing the environmental impacts of farms, but they can also provide other benefits efficiency/substitution strategies cannot provide. GI is defined as the multi-scaled networks of vegetation and waterways on farms, and across their landscapes, that provide key ecosystem services to growers, communities, and markets. It may consist of cover crops, shelterbelts or hedgerows, riparian corridors, vegetation around homes or cellar doors, and remnant natural areas. Benefits can include improved product yields, reduced incidence of pests and weeds, improved microclimates, cleaner water, and improved support for indigenous wildlife and vegetation communities.
This Special Issue brings together leading research that introduces or advances innovative approaches in the use of GI on farms and across agricultural landscapes, on both private and public land.
We invite research, methods, systematic reviews, and critical discussion papers on new ideas that deal with novel design, planning policy, governance, implementation, and management approaches on, but not limited to, the following topics:
- How can green infrastructure on farms be designed and planned to maximize multiple benefits to growers, such as pest and weed regulation, microclimate mitigation, product sales and branding, agri-tourism, and resilience to environmental or economic impacts?
- How can green infrastructure across farming landscapes be designed and planned to maximize support for publicly valued ecosystem services, such as catchment water quality, climate change-related flooding, and landscape scale biodiversity?
- What are the disservices of green infrastructure and how can they be minimized?
- How can the implementation and management of green infrastructure be improved to improve its cost-effectiveness?
We look forward to receiving your contributions.
Dr. Wendy McWilliam
Guest Editor
Manuscript Submission Information
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Keywords
- greening agricultural systems
- environmental impacts
- farm system resilience
- green infrastructure
- agrichemical use
- indigenous biodiversity
- green branding
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