1,720,963 research outputs found
Carbon Farming: How to Support Farmers in Choosing the Best Management Strategies for Low-Impact Food Production
Get PDFThe European Commission is directing efforts into triggering the storage of carbon in agricultural soils by encouraging the adoption of carbon farming practices under the European Green Deal and in other key EU policies. However, farmers that want to enter this production model urgently need to define the sustainable practices required for increasing soil organic carbon without overturning production systems and also need to adapt it for optimizing yields and improving carbon stocks. However, there is still a lack of tools that are easy to use and interpret for guiding farmers and stakeholders to find ways in which to increase soil organic carbon content. Therefore, this research aims to set up a novel bottom-up approach, in terms of the methodology and analysis process, for identifying tailored sustainable farming management strategies for the purpose of increasing soil carbon. We investigated 115 real food production cases that were carried out under homogeneous pedo-climatic conditions over a period of 20 years in the Apulia region (Southern Italy), which made it possible to create a dataset of 12 variables that were analyzed through a decision tree (created with the C4.5 algorithm). The overall results highlight that the treatment duration was the most crucial factor and affected the carbon stock both positively and negatively. This was followed by the use of cover crops alone and then those in combination with a type of irrigation system; hence, specific agricultural management strategies were successfully identified for obtaining effective carbon storage in the considered real food production cases. From a wider perspective, this research can serve as guidance to help EU private actors and public authorities to start carbon farming initiatives, pilot projects, or certification schemes at the local and/or regional levels
Evaluating the Progress of the EU Countries Towards Implementation of the European Green Deal: A Multiple Criteria Approach
Get PDFThe European Green Deal (EGD) is a package of policy initiatives launched by the European Commission in December 2019, which aims to set the European Union (EU) on the path to a green transition with the final goal of achieving climate neutrality by 2050. The package includes interlinked initiatives covering the climate, the environment, energy, transport, industry, agriculture, and sustainable finance. It is thus evident that holistic and scientifically sound decision support systems are crucial to help EU policymakers and stakeholders in monitoring the progress of countries towards the implementation of the EGD. Indeed, the multidimensionality of this policy initiative lends itself well to its integration into a Multiple Criteria Decision Aiding (MCDA) approach to the identification of priorities for action. Therefore, this research aims to evaluate the progress of the EU countries towards the implementation of the European Green Deal, using MCDA. The PROMETHEE II method was applied to the data for EU countries, using 26 key indicators collected from the Eurostat database and organized into three thematic clusters. The results enabled us to calculate overall scores measuring the degree of implementation of the EGD by the EU countries, and their profiles with respect to the key indicators and thematic clusters. By analyzing these profiles, strengths and weaknesses were identified. Thus, the fundamental novelty of this research consists of the first concrete application of a holistic and ‘ready-to-use’ decision-making tool that can be adopted by EU policymakers and stakeholders to draw up a roadmap towards climate neutrality
Slow pyrolysis of olive mill solid residues as a sustainable valorization strategy for waste biomass
No full textPyrolysis is a valid thermos-chemical process of energy production that produces biochar from potentially harmful biomasses. This study aims to investigate the pyrolytic conversion of olive mill solid residues (OMSR) into biochar, with the aim of characterizing this product towards applications for soil improvement and soil C sequestration. Production parameters of OMSR-biochar (OB) and physico-chemical characteristics were analyzed and compared with published data to assess the potential of OB to serve as a soil amendment and soil C sequestration method. The slow pyrolysis of OMSR at 450° leads to a good proportion between produced products (fuels liquid and gas, and solid), and generates about the 35% of OB. In turn, this product reveals the absence of phytotoxicity, the presence of exchangeable surface cations, structure, particle size distribution and external surface groups suitable for agricultural uses, and high C content with a potential long lasting in soil. The physico-chemical characteristics of OB reported here suggest that OB could be used for improving soils and increasing C sequestration in a sustainable way
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
Assessment of addition of biochar to filtering mixtures for potential water pollutant removal
Get PDFGreen roofs are used increasingly to alleviate peaks of water discharge into the sewage systems in urban areas. Surface runoff from roofs contain pollutants from dry and wet deposition, and green roofs offer a possibility to reduce the amounts of pollutants in the water discharged from roofs by degradation and filtering. These pollutants would otherwise enter wastewater treatments plants and ultimately end up in sewage sludge that is spread on agricultural soils. The most common substrates used in green roofs have limited capacity for filtration and sorption. Also, more sustainable alternatives are sought, due to the high carbon footprint of these materials. Biochar is a carbon-rich material produced by pyrolysis of biomass, and several types of biochar have been described as good sorbents and filter materials. Biochar is also a light and carbon negative material, which may fulfill other desired criteria for new green roof substrates. We here report on an experiment where two types of biochar, produced from olive husks at 450 °C or from forest waste at 850 ° C were mixed with volcanic rock or peat, and tested for retention capacity of phenanthrene and six heavy metals in a column experiment with unsaturated gravimetric water flow lasting for 3 weeks. The results suggest that biochar as a component in green roof substrates perform better than traditional materials, concerning retention of the tested pollutants, and that different types of biochar have different properties in this respect
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