Effects of Changes in Land Use and Land Management on Soil Fertility in the Tropics
A special issue of Agronomy (ISSN 2073-4395). This special issue belongs to the section "Farming Sustainability".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 December 2019)
Special Issue Editor
Interests: carbon and nutrient dynamics in tropical agro-ecosystems; effects of land use changes on carbon storage in soil and vegetation; climate change mitigation in the land use sector; adaptation to climate change in the land use sector; agro-Ecological intensification of small-scale tropical farming systems; shifting cultivation; soil quality indicators
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Land use changes have shaped the face of the Earth for thousands of years, but in recent decades they have been particularly rapid and extensive in the tropics. Some of the most widespread changes are transitions from traditional extensively managed land use systems to intensified systems focusing on production of cash crops. These intensified land uses put pressure on the soil system and impact soil fertility, but the extent, severity and consequences of these impacts remain poorly documented and understood.
This Special Issue seeks to assemble papers that advance our knowledge about effects of land use changes on soil fertility in the tropics and address the local or regional implications of these effects. We welcome papers that provide new field based empirical evidence from local case studies or experiments as well as review papers and meta-analyses. We are particularly interested in research that (i) sheds light on the interactions between land use and soil heterogeneity at various scales (ii) reports results at aggregated scales and in a spatially explicit way (iii) includes local perspectives on changes in soil fertility (iv) introduces novel methods of ascribing changes in soil fertility to land use changes (v) introduces new integrative methods of assessing changes in soil fertility. We strongly encourage submission of manuscripts based on interdisciplinary studies and manuscripts with a solution oriented approach.
Dr. Thilde Bech Bruun
Guest Editor
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. Agronomy 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
- Tropical farming systems
- Agricultural Intensification
- Assessment of Soil Fertility
- Local knowledge
- Interdisciplinary
