Crop production versus surface-water regulation: assessing tradeoffs for land-use scenarios in the Tat Hamlet Watershed, Vietnam

Abstract

Local land uses play a critically important role in regulating hydrological services like surface-water runoff. This runoff influences the supply of water to streams and lowland agriculture. Land-use management decisions, in turn, are influenced by economic return. This article examines the tradeoffs between surface-water runoff regulation and income from crop production by using the land-use change impact assessment model and an economic analysis for a case study in Tat Hamlet Watershed, north Vietnam. The traditional composite swidden agriculture was used as baseline scenario, since it has been practised by farmers in the study area for decades. Two alternative scenarios were tested and compared with the composite swidden agriculture: expansion of maize monoculture and introduction of rubber plantations in the uplands. Among the land-use scenarios tested, rubber plantations appear to be better alternatives than maize monocropping in terms of surface-water regulation and improving economic return. However, implementation should consider the interests of local stakeholders as well as an analysis of possible risks and uncertainties involved.

Weakening the Brazilian legislation for forest conservation has severe impacts for ecosystem services in the Atlantic Southern Forest

“…The same pattern was observed in different case studies around the world (Nelson et al, 2009;Raudsepp-Hearne et al, 2010;Ayanu et al, 2011;Goldstein et al, 2012;Jopke et al, 2014), as well as in global projections (Foley et al, 2005;Nelson et al, 2010). In this study soya was negatively correlated with carbon and habitat quality.…”

Does Land Tenure Security Promote Manure Use by Farm Households in Vietnam?

“…Manure use has not been the custom of minority ethnic groups in the past even though this has been slowly changing. In the past, ethnic minorities mainly practiced slash and burn agriculture [82]. In general, Kinh farmers apply about 29% more manure per ha than minority ethnic farmers.…”

“…It borders with China to the North, Laos to the West and South, and is bisected diagonally by the Red River. Much of the region consists of hills and mountains with elevations between 500 m and 1000 m above sea level [82]. Within the whole region, the mountains alone comprise 89,000 square kilometers (82% of the area).…”

Editorial

“…This is a new topic for our Journal; the management and production of rice fields have, for example, been described in Ayanu et al (2011) and Spangenberg et al (2014), but the extent of pesticides and the effects thereof have not been published before. The researchers studied 40 conventionally (mostly synthetic pesticides) and 31 organically managed farms (mostly natural pesticides).…”