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Based on evidence collected in 22 village communities from nine study sites situated in Spain, Italy, Greece, Morocco and China, this study analyses the complex interlinkages between social memory, community resilience and land degradation. Social memory is seen as an important explanation regarding the ability of a local community to manage and cope with land degradation. Emphasis is placed on the importance of three components of social memory—rites, traditions and social learning processes—for shaping community resilience in coping with land degradation processes. The study argues that although there are subtle differences between the 22 village communities, the loss of social memory and learning pathways associated with managing land degradation is emerging as a critical factor constraining stakeholders from effectively responding to land degradation issues. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Mulching management has been used in many places all over the world to improve agricultural sustainability. However, the cycling of carbon in the soil under applications of mulch on sloping arable land is not yet fully understood. A four-year field experiment was carried out in Xiaofuling watershed of Danjiangkou reservoir in China. The object was to evaluate the effects of the application of straw mulch (ST) and grass mulch (GT) on dynamic changes in soil organic carbon and its fractions. Results showed that mulch applied on the soil surface increased the contents of SOC and its active fractions in the soil. Compared to the control without cover (CK), ST and GT treatments increased the contents of SOC, LOC, DOC, POC and EOC by 14.73%, 16.5%, 22.5%, 41.5% and 21%, respectively, in the 0–40 cm soil layer, and by 17%, 14%, 19%, and 30%, respectively, in the 0–100 cm soil layer. The contents of organic carbon and its active fractions decreased with increasing soil depth in all of the treatments. SOC was accumulated in the period of December to the following March. The contents of soil DOC and LOC were high in January to March, while the contents of soil POC and EOC were high in June to September. The relative contents of soil organic carbon fractions were POC > EOC > LOC > DOC over the four years. Straw mulching had no significant effect on the changes in soil organic carbon active fractions during the different periods. Based on this long-term field experiment in Danjiangkou reservoir, we found that straw mulching had a significant effect on soil, increasing SOC content and stock in slopping arable land, and that live grass mulching was more effective than rice straw mulching. We discuss possible optimal periods for the implementation of mulching practices on sloping land.

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Land circulation is an important measure that can be utilized to enable agricultural management at a moderate scale. It is therefore imperative to explore spatiotemporal changes in land circulation and the factors that drive these variations in order to maintain and increase the vitality of the land rental market. An initial analysis of spatiotemporal patterns in land circulation is presented in this study on the basis of data from 169,511 farm households between 2003 and 2013. The rural fixed observation point system advocated by the Chinese Ministry of Agriculture was utilized for this analysis, and Heckman two-stage models were developed and estimated in order to identify the drivers of regional differences in land circulation at the national scale and at the levels of different terrains. The results of this study show that the rate of land circulation in China rose from 15.09% to 25.1% over the course of the study period, an average rate of 0.8%. More specifically, data show that the rate of land circulation in the south of China has been higher than in the north, that the average land rental payment was 4256.13 yuan per ha, and that 55.05% of households did not pay such a fee during the land circulation process. In contrast, the average rent obtained was 3648.45 yuan per ha nationally even though 52.63% of households did not obtain any payments from their tenants. The results show that land quality, geographic location, transaction costs, and household characteristics have significantly affected land circulation in different regions of China. Specifically, the marginal effects of land quality and geographic location were larger in the plain regions, while transaction cost was the key factor influencing land circulation in the hilly and mountainous regions. The signal identified in this study, rent-free land circulation, is indicative of a mismatch that has led to the marginalization of mountainous regions and higher transaction costs that have reduced the potential value of land resources. Thus, as the opportunity cost of farming continues to rise across China, the depreciation of land assets will become irreversible and the phenomenon of land abandonment will become increasingly prevalent in hilly and mountainous regions in the future. The transaction costs associated with the land rental market should be reduced to mitigate these effects by establishing land circulation intermediaries at the township level, and the critical issues of land abandonment and poverty reduction in hilly and mountainous regions should arouse more attention.

Assessing changes in rice cropping systems is essential for ensuring food security, greenhouse gas emissions, and sustainable water management. However, due to the insufficient availability of images with moderate to high spatial resolution, caused by frequent cloud cover and coarse temporal resolution, high-resolution maps of rice cropping systems at a large scale are relatively limited, especially in tropical and subtropical regions. This study combined the difference of Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (dNDVI) method and the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) threshold method to monitor changes in rice cropping systems of Southern China using Landsat images, based on the phenological differences between different rice cropping systems. From 1990–2015, the sown area of double cropping rice (DCR) in Southern China decreased by 61054.5 km2, the sown area of single cropping rice (SCR) increased by 20,110.7 km2, the index of multiple cropping decreased from 148.3% to 129.3%, and the proportion of DCR decreased by 20%. The rice cropping systems in Southern China showed a “double rice shrinking and single rice expanding” change pattern from north to south, and the most dramatic changes occurred in the Middle-Lower Yangtze Plain. This study provided an efficient strategy that can be applied to moderate to high resolution images with deficient data availability, and the resulting maps can be used as data support to adjust agricultural structures, formulate food security strategies, and compile a greenhouse gas emission inventory.

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