Multifunctional Land-Use Systems for Managing the Nexus of Environmental Resources
Description
This book comprehensively describes the major ecosystem services in dryland environments that are provided by typical land use, including forestland, grassland and farmland, using the Loess Plateau, Northwest China as an example. It offers extensive information on land policy, implementation and scientific evidence, and discusses the restoration of the degraded Loess Plateau environment, which that brings new challenges in the sustainable use of natural resources, in particular soil and water. It presents a transdisciplinary and up-to-date understanding of interlinkages and competition between different ecosystem services and illustrates benefit sharing among different users and stakeholders, land- management practitioners and local governments. It is a major contribution to the on-going debate on future land-development strategies and identifies areas where there is a need for more research. This book is a valuable resource for students, scientists and policy makers.
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Persons
Dr. Kai Schwärzel is an Academic Officer at United Nations University Institute for Integrated Management of Material Fluxes and of Resources (UNU-FLORES) where he leads the Soil and Land-use Management unit. The overall goal of his work is to understand, quantify, and predict processes that control water and matter fluxes in variable saturated soils ranging from the plot to catchment scale. He is using lab and field experiments, as well as numerical modelling, to deal with these problems.After completing his PhD in the field of Soil Physics and Soil Hydrology, Dr. Schwärzel worked as a Postdoc at the Chair of Site Ecology and Soil Protection, Technische Universität Berlin (TU Berlin). During his time at TU Berlin, his research focused mainly on the impact of dewatering of wetlands on hydraulic soil properties, water budget, trace gas fluxes, and crop yields.In 2004, Dr. Schwärzel became a Senior Researcher at the Institute of Soil Science and Site Ecology at the Forestry Department of the Technische Universität Dresden (TU Dresden). In 2012, he completed his habilitation at the TU Dresden and received the venia legend for 'soil Science and Ecohydrology'. His research over the last decade has focused on the impact of soils, land use management and climate on water and matter fluxes, green and blue water pools, and related soil physical properties. He has studied the functions of soils under various types of land use and management with respect to flood prevention in mountainous regions, drought mitigation and soil physical health. The work of Dr. Schwärzel combines aspects of soil physics/hydrology and soil-plant-atmosphere interactions.
Content
Chapter 1 The Loess Plateau of China.- Chapter 2 The land-use policy in China.- Chapter 3 Multifunctional agriculture on the Loess Plateau.- Chapter 4 Multifunctional grassland development on the Loess Plateau.- Chapter 5 Multifunctional forestry development on the Loess Plateau.- Chapter 6 Multifunctional forest management in consideration of forest-water relationship.- Chapter 7 Implementation of multifunctional land management: Research needs.