6 results
Kudzu (Pueraria montana) community responses to herbicides, burning, and high-density loblolly pine
- Timothy B. Harrington, Laura T. Rader-Dixon, John W. Taylor, Jr.
-
- Journal:
- Weed Science / Volume 51 / Issue 6 / December 2003
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 20 January 2017, pp. 965-974
-
- Article
- Export citation
-
Kudzu is an aggressive, nonnative vine that currently dominates an estimated 810,000 ha of mesic forest communities in the eastern United States. To test an integrated method of weed control, abundances of kudzu and other plant species were compared during 4 yr after six herbicide treatments (clopyralid, triclopyr, metsulfuron, picloram + 2,4-D, tebuthiuron, and a nonsprayed check), in which loblolly pines were planted at three densities (0, 1, and 4 seedlings m−2) to induce competition and potentially delay kudzu recovery. This split-plot design was replicated on each of the four kudzu-dominated sites near Aiken, SC. Relative light intensity (RLI) and soil water content (SWC) were measured periodically to identify mechanisms of interference among plant species. Two years after treatment (1999), crown coverage of kudzu averaged < 2% in herbicide plots compared with 93% in the nonsprayed check, and these differences were maintained through 2001, except in clopyralid plots where kudzu cover increased to 15%. In 2001, pine interference was associated with 33, 56, and 67% reductions in biomass of kudzu, blackberry, and herbaceous vegetation, respectively. RLI in kudzu-dominated plots (4 to 15% of full sun) generally was less than half that of herbicide-treated plots. SWC was greatest in tebuthiuron plots, where total vegetation cover averaged 26% compared with 77 to 111% in other plots. None of the treatments eradicated kudzu, but combinations of herbicides and induced pine competition delayed its recovery.
6 - Comparative assessment of human–environment landscape change
- from Part III
- Edited by Brent Yarnal, Pennsylvania State University, Colin Polsky, Clark University, Massachusetts, James O'Brien, Kingston University, London
-
- Book:
- Sustainable Communities on a Sustainable Planet
- Published online:
- 06 January 2010
- Print publication:
- 24 September 2009, pp 107-136
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
Introduction
Humans acting to change Earth away from hypothetical pristine conditions is one of three key themes on human–environment relationships identified in Clarence Glacken's (1967) classic work, Traces on the Rhodian Shore. A century earlier, George Perkins Marsh (1864) helped create awareness and elucidate concerns regarding the nature and magnitude of human-induced changes to the planet. More recent compilations (e.g., Thomas 1956; Turner et al. 1990a; Foley et al. 2005) have continued to expand our knowledge of the complex and multiple pathways in which human actions alter the Earth system.
A key issue in human dimensions of global change research (NRC 1999) and in sustainability science (Kates et al. 2001) is a need to understand how the specifics of human structure and agency interact (Sorrensen et al. 2005) with the natural environment in disparate places. In theory, local transformations could then be accumulated to produce the cumulative impact on the planet (Turner et al. 1990b; NRC 1992). What similarities and differences exist in the human activities, what are the socioeconomic drivers of those activities, and what are the impacts of those activities in forested, grassland, and desert environments? And, how can scholars compare and contrast these human actions in areas where very different natural resources and settlement histories exist?
The HERO transect of North American research sites, from humid central Massachusetts and central Pennsylvania, to semi-arid southwestern Kansas, to the arid border region between Arizona and Sonora, provides the opportunity for a comparative examination of human–environment interactions over time – especially those forces that have altered land cover and land use.
1 - Infrastructure for observing local human–environment interactions
- from Part I
- Edited by Brent Yarnal, Pennsylvania State University, Colin Polsky, Clark University, Massachusetts, James O'Brien, Kingston University, London
-
- Book:
- Sustainable Communities on a Sustainable Planet
- Published online:
- 06 January 2010
- Print publication:
- 24 September 2009, pp 1-12
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
The vision: sustainable communities on a sustainable planet
Imagine a world where nature and society coexist in a healthy symbiosis, where human impacts on the environment are minimal, and where communities are safe from natural and technological hazards. Imagine a time when scientists can monitor such sustainable human–environment interactions, when they can interactively share and compare data, analyses, and ideas about those interactions from their homes and offices, and when they can collaborate with local, regional, and international colleagues and stakeholders in a global network devoted to the environmental sustainability of their communities and of the planet.
We contend that to build the sustainable world portrayed above, it is necessary to develop an infrastructure that will support such an edifice. Consequently, this chapter introduces our ideas about the infrastructure needed to realize this vision and how the Human–Environment Regional Observatory project (HERO) attempted to take the initial steps to develop that infrastructure. The chapter also demonstrates that HERO addressed several major growth areas of twenty-first-century science – complex systems, interdisciplinary research, usable knowledge/usable science, and transdisciplinarity – as integral parts of its infrastructure development. The chapter ends by laying out the rationale behind and structure of this book.
Achieving the vision: infrastructure development and HERO
Infrastructure for monitoring global change in local places
To paraphrase the American politician Tip O'Neill, “all global change is local.” On the one hand, anthropogenic global environmental change is the accumulated result of billions of individual actions occurring at billions of specific locations.
13 - Fossil water and agriculture in southwestern Kansas
- from Part V
- Edited by Brent Yarnal, Pennsylvania State University, Colin Polsky, Clark University, Massachusetts, James O'Brien, Kingston University, London
-
- Book:
- Sustainable Communities on a Sustainable Planet
- Published online:
- 06 January 2010
- Print publication:
- 24 September 2009, pp 269-291
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
Introduction
Among the four areas investigated as part of the HERO project, semi-arid southwestern Kansas is the most reliant on agriculture. This region faces far different issues with respect to land-use/land-cover change, vulnerability to environmental stress (including hydroclimatic variability and change), and sustainability than do densely settled areas and those locales with low economic reliance on agriculture. In both this region and other non-urban parts of the country, populations in many rural counties and small towns are declining, adjustments to economic globalization are taking place, and fluctuations in forcing by coupled human and natural systems are continuing to affect agricultural success. Changes faced by farming regions also vary among those places with generally sufficient rainfall to grow most important crops, those that receive little rain and lack supplemental sources of water, those reliant on renewable surface water sources, and those reliant on declining groundwater sources. Much of southwestern Kansas is reliant on declining groundwater resources, but some areas lack sufficient ground and/or surface water for use in farming.
The name High Plains–Ogallala (HPO-)HERO recognizes this agricultural region's physical identity and its reliance on the Ogallala and other aquifers. Over the last 30 years, the research site has developed a rich literature that connects the people and land of southwestern Kansas (e.g., Worster 1979; Warren et al. 1982; Reisner 1986; Sherow 1990; Kromm and White 1992, 2001; White 1994; White and Kromm 1995; Opie 2000; Bloomquist et al. 2002; Harrington et al. 2003; Broadway and Stull 2006).
15 - Lessons learned from the HERO project
- from Part VI
- Edited by Brent Yarnal, Pennsylvania State University, Colin Polsky, Clark University, Massachusetts, James O'Brien, Kingston University, London
-
- Book:
- Sustainable Communities on a Sustainable Planet
- Published online:
- 06 January 2010
- Print publication:
- 24 September 2009, pp 317-338
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
The HERO vision revisited
This book started with the premise that to develop sustainable communities on a sustainable planet, an infrastructure should exist that enables scientists to monitor local human–environment interactions, to share and compare data, analyses, and ideas with scientists at other locales, and to participate with colleagues and stakeholders in a global network dedicated to community-level sustainability.
The book recounted the Human–Environment Regional Observatory (HERO) project's attempt to take first steps in developing such an infrastructure and the concepts and research behind that infrastructure. As such, the project did not produce – and never intended to produce – definitive research results about, for example, vulnerability or the causes and consequences of land-use and land-cover change. Consequently, this book has concentrated on conceptualizing the elements needed to make human–environment infrastructure work, and on exploring those elements by proof-of-concept testing.
This chapter summarizes HERO's efforts (and therefore the book) by revisiting a set of questions posed in Chapter 1. The most important part of the chapter is the discussion of lessons learned during the HERO team's attempts to answer those questions. The chapter concludes by trying to support the project's (and book's) claim that there is a need for HEROs.
Answers to and lessons learned from HERO's guiding questions
Chapter 1 reported two fundamental questions that were central to the HERO effort. One overarching question guided the research and addressed infrastructure development via three less-encompassing questions (Table 15.1).
7 - Landsat mapping of local landscape change: the satellite-era context
- from Part III
- Edited by Brent Yarnal, Pennsylvania State University, Colin Polsky, Clark University, Massachusetts, James O'Brien, Kingston University, London
-
- Book:
- Sustainable Communities on a Sustainable Planet
- Published online:
- 06 January 2010
- Print publication:
- 24 September 2009, pp 137-154
-
- Chapter
- Export citation
-
Summary
Introduction
To set the stage for a vulnerability analysis, investigators must describe and understand the geographic context, including physical characteristics of the landscape and the political and socioeconomic milieu of the population (Jianchu et al. 2005). Vulnerability studies focus on a particular place, at a specific time through its three dimensions, exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity; therefore, understanding place is essential to analyzing vulnerability.
Land-use studies are essential to understanding place because they generalize human activities on the physical landscape. Essentially, land use indicates past human decisions and actions, environmental constraints, and, in some cases, gives insight into subsequent change. Like vulnerability, land use is particular to a place at a certain time, and the analysis of that land use can be used as a baseline for future change and its implications. Vulnerability and land use are linked by the concept of place and are fundamental to contemporary research on human–environment interactions.
Although the literature on land use, land-use change, and climate change is extensive, the land-use component of vulnerability is usually conceptualized as a feedback mechanism to climate change: forest cutting releases carbon dioxide, which increases atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations, which increases radiative forcing, which changes climate, and which ultimately changes land cover and subsequent land use (e.g. DeFries and Bounoua 2004; Jianchu et al. 2005; Salinger et al. 2005; Watson 2005). Moreover, land use is rarely specifically identified as a component of vulnerability.