Urban, Rural, and Agricultural Infrastructures for Resource Recovery: Fostering Environmental Sustainability, Ecological Balance, and a Resilient Circular Bioeconomy

Dear Colleagues,

Currently, human, industrial, civil, and agro-industrial activities consume a large part of the natural resources available on the planet (e.g., water, land, and fossil resources) and have various impacts, including a large production of waste. For this purpose, it is essential to know the value of urban, industrial, and agricultural residues, such as food waste and wastewater, in order to operate a correct transition towards urban sustainability and a Circular Economy (Brown et al., 2023). To this end, for the sustainable management of natural resources, it is essential to provide infrastructures and models that can be adopted at urban, local, and rural levels and, in particular, in the agro-industrial sector. In particular, we should consider the vital role of water and land resources, as improving their management and utilization is essential to contributing toward sustainable agricultural and food production systems while mitigating the risk of water and land utilization stress and pollution (OECD, 2023).

Within this framework, the objective of this Special Issue is to encourage researchers to develop models and infrastructures that promote Circular Bioeconomy pathways through resource recovery at urban, rural, and agricultural levels. Particularly, the Guest Editors aim to collect contributions in several forms (original research articles or review papers); more methodological approaches from an interdisciplinary perspective are particularly welcome, but contributions that focus on the infrastructures already present in territories for the reuse of resources such as water and sustainable practices for land utilization are also very welcome. Furthermore, we also desire diversity in the scales of observation used, from the regional, scalar, Mediterranean, and community levels to the global level.

This Special Issue welcomes manuscripts (reviews or original research articles) that link the following themes:

• Infrastructure for wastewater recovery in agriculture;
• Resources recovery in urban and civil activities;
• End of waste management and valorization;
• Sustainable land use in conventional and organic farming;
• Environmental indicators and ecological footprint of natural resources;
• Applications of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) in agriculture;
• Indicators for land cover and land use;
• Environmental and ecological balance;
• Circular Economy and Bioeconomy.

Proposed titles and abstracts (250 words) can be submitted by 30 July 2025 to the guest editors, at tiziana.crovella@uniba,it, for possible feedback, if prospective authors want some feedback before preparing their manuscripts.

We look forward to receiving your original research articles and reviews.

References:

• Brown, S., Butman, D., Kurtz, K. (2023). Steps to circularity: Impact of resource recovery and urban agriculture in Seattle and Tacoma, Washington, Journal of Environmental Management, 345, 118648, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2023.118648.
• OECD (2023). Managing water sustainably is key to the future of food and agriculture, Available at https://www.oecd.org/agriculture/topics/water-and-agriculture/.

Dr. Tiziana Crovella
Dr. Teodoro Gallucci
Prof. Dr. Annarita Paiano
Guest Editors

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. Land 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.