Zoekresultaten

Productivity and topsoil quality of young and old permanent grassland

Renewing agricultural grasslands for improved yields and forage quality generally involves eliminating standing vegetation with herbicides, ploughing and reseeding. However, grassland renewal may negatively affect soil quality and related ecosystem services. On clay soil in the north of the Netherlands, we measured grass productivity and soil chemical parameters of ‘young’ (5–15 years since last grassland renewal) and ‘old’ (>20 years since last grassland renewal) permanent grasslands, located as pairs at 10 different dairy farms. We found no significant difference with old permanent grassland in herbage dry matter yield and fertilizer nitrogen (N) response, whereas herbage N yield was lower in young permanent grassland. Moreover, the young grassland soil contained less soil organic matter (SOM), soil organic carbon (C) and soil organic N compared to the old grassland soil. Grass productivity was positively correlated with SOM and related parameters such as soil organic C, soil organic N and potentially mineralizable N. We conclude that on clay soils with 70% desirable grasses (i.e., Lolium perenne and Phleum pratense) or more, the presumed yield benefit of grassland renewal is offset by a loss of soil quality (SOM and N-total). The current practice of renewing grassland after 10 years without considering the botanical composition, is counter-productive and not sustainable.

Nature, natural resources and valuation in the Anthropocene

Biodiversity, including entire habitats and ecosystems, is recognized to be of great social and economic value. Conserving biodiversity has therefore become a task of international NGO’s as well as grass-roots organisations. The ‘classical’ model of conservation has been characterised by creation of designated nature areas to allow biodiversity to recover from the effects of human activities. Typically, such areas prohibit entry other than through commercial ecotourism or necessary monitoring activities, but also often involve commodification nature. This classical conservation model has been criticized for limiting valuation of nature to its commercial worth and for being insensitive to local communities. Simultaneously, ‘new conservation’ approaches have emerged. Propagating openness of conservation approaches, ‘new conservation’ has counteracted the calls for strict measures of biodiversity protection as the only means of protecting biodiversity. In turn, the ’new conservation’ was criticised for being inadequate in protecting those species that are not instrumental for human welfare. The aim of this article is to inquire whether sustainable future for non-humans can be achieved based on commodification of nature and/or upon open approaches to conservation. It is argued that while economic development does not necessarily lead to greater environmental protection, strict regulation combined with economic interests can be effective. Thus, economic approaches by mainstream conservation institutions cannot be easily dismissed. However, ‘new conservation’ can also be useful in opening up alternatives, such as care-based and spiritual approaches to valuation of nature. Complementary to market-based approaches to conservation, alternative ontologies of the human development as empathic beings embedded in intimate ethical relations with non-humans are proposed. https://www.linkedin.com/in/helenkopnina/

Preference for different urban greenscape designs: A choice experiment using virtual environments.

Nature in cities serves a multitude of purposes, one of which is that it provides citizens opportunities to recover from stressful daily urban life. Such stress recovering effects of nature can be experienced through urban green, which in urban planning and design contexts can be divided into large natural areas - urban green space - and small scale elements in urban streets: the urban greenscape. The current study aims at finding the extent to which various small scale natural elements in residential streets and their possible configurations influence citizens' preferences for those streets. The research was conducted through an online survey in four cities in the Netherlands (n = 4,956). It used stated choice methods in a virtual environment street design. The method yielded high quality data, indicating that the use of virtual environments and imagery is suitable for stated choice research in the built environment. The results show that especially trees very strongly influence preference, indicating they deserve more attention and space in cities. Grass, which is typically favored by local governments, and vertical green have the smallest effects in residential streets. Furthermore, the concept of greenscape intensity is introduced as the intensities of both the element and the configuration were found to be highly relevant. The results clearly show that the higher either of these intensities, the more likely a respondent will prefer the greenscape design. Furthermore, low intensity on the one can be compensated by high intensity on the other. With these results, urban design professionals and local governments can better trade-off the different aspects of costs versus positive effects of urban greenscape designs.

Counter-mapping for critical emancipatory awareness and affective engagement with urban semi-periphery

Short abstract:With our case study ‘Researching the City: Mapping Imaginaries’ of Amsterdam Zuidoost, we explore grass-root, collaborative knowledge practices through mixed methods of counter-mapping that fosters critical emancipatory awareness and affective engagement with areas in the urban semi-periphery.Long abstract:Urban transformations often result in ‘affective displacement’ and have consequences for the health and well-being of residents (Butcher & Dickens, 2016; Brummet and Reed, 2019). Displacement is a form of violence, that includes processes of ‘cultural appropriation’ (Elliott-Cooper et al., 2020) and its impacts need to be better ‘documented and resisted’ (ibid). Responding to this call, with our case study of ‘Researching the City: Mapping Imaginaries’ of Amsterdam Southeast (Zuidoost), we turned to medium specific, embodied, non-representational (Thrift, 2008) counter-mapping to better engage (in terms of cultural sensitivity and inclusivity) with the urban ‘semi-periphery’ (Blagojevic, 2009).We used digital methods (Rogers, 2013) to explore how Amsterdam Southeast is ‘seen’ through search engine results (stakeholders networks). We intervened in the mapping with local expert knowledge of activists, artists, and researchers. We also used affect as an intervention and collaboratively collected sensory data (recording with images, sounds, videos) with students and local communities. In this process we created a counter-archive, bringing to the forefront imaginaries, senses, emotions, and memories -- a repository of local affective knowledge.Our case study shows that "counter-mapping" can be a meditative and reflective practice that fosters critical and emancipatory awareness in students, partners, and local communities. It opens space for reimagining and productive affective engagement with areas in the urban periphery. It also enables various themes of consideration: ‘body as an archive’, and archiving 'imaginaries' practices such as performance, memory, and digital objects.

Bridging the gap between technology and progressive politics in Europe

Re-Organise - The Game - English- V2.0

New version of Re-Organise - The Game. Incl. translation to English.