Animal products are at the heart of environmental issues of agriculture. Their global impacts on land use, biodiversity, water use and greenhouse gas emissions are singled out. The application of Life Cycle Assessment for the environmental assessment of agricultural products and especially meat products has changed the perception of their environmental impacts, providing a broader view of the production system and a multi-criteria evaluation. While the impacts of livestock are better known, the assessment methods remain to be stabilized.

The global carbon cycle has feedbacks on the global climate, and climate-carbon cycle interactions are explicitly represented in earth system models (ESMs). In ESMs, leaf area index (LAI) is a key variable for projecting future environmental changes, but it might be one of the most difficult to precisely predict. In this research, historical LAI changes reproduced in the ESM named 'Model for Interdisciplinary Research on Climate ESM (MIROC-ESM)' are analyzed, focusing on impacts of CO2 fertilization effects, climate change, and land-use change.

Climate change, deforestation and the fate of Amazon. Understanding and mitigation the impact of the increasing population and global economic activities on tropical forests is one of the greatest challenges for scientists and policy makers. A summary of some of the latest findings and thinking on this topic has been reported by Malhi and colleagues in a recent paper published on Science. An overview and comments on this paper is herein proposed.

Water has been identified as a key resource for Nepal's economic growth. Although the country has 225 billion cubic meters of water available annually, less than 7% has been utilized. Climate change is a frequent topic in national development discussions in part because of its possible impact on future water availability. This study assessed the likely impact of climate change on water resources development in the Koshi River basin, Nepal, using the Soil and Water Assessment Tool to generate projections for the 2030s and 2050s.

Biofuels are fuels produced from biomass, mostly in liquid form, within a time frame sufficiently short to consider that their feedstock (biomass) can be renewed, contrarily to fossil fuels. This paper reviews the current and future biofuel technologies, and their development impacts (including on the climate) within given policy and economic frameworks. Current technologies make it possible to provide first generation biodiesel, ethanol or biogas to the transport sector to be blended with fossil fuels.

Farmers are in a continuous process of, individually and as community groups, adjusting to the observed variability in climate parameters. Climate shocks are considered by farmers in their decision-making as factors affecting risk and uncertainty, and farmers make their choices so as to minimize such risks. The overall outcome of these individual and community efforts is known as climate adaptation, which itself is a continuous process. Farmers are traditionally supported by local institutions in this process, which are also currently in a state of transformation.

A Nemzeti Vidékstratégiai Koncepció(Vidékfejlesztési Minisztérium, 2011) vitaanyagánakelőszava a természeti erőforrásokfelértékelődésére, a természeti környezetvédelmére, valamint a mezőgazdaságés a vidék szoros kapcsolatára hívja fela figyelmet. Ennek tükrében élelmiszerelőállításcsak a talajok, az ivóvízbázisokés a táj fenntartását eredményező, a jó környezetiállapotot és az élővilág sokszínűségétmegőrző, valamint a vidéki életformát,a helyi közösségeket és kultúrát megóvó jóminőségű és biztonságos alapanyagokraépülő termelés mellett értelmezhető.

North China is the most important food basket of China, where the majority of wheat and corn are produced. Most crops grown in North China are irrigated, thus water security is food security. Since the 1980s, drying has been frequently observed, as shown by a reduction in precipitation, cutoff in riverflow, and shrinkage of lakes. This increase in drying cannot be explained by climate change alone. We propose that intensive land-use in this area in recent decades has had a significant impact.

The Kalu Ganga Basin in Sri Lanka is generally flooded once a year. A network of low-lying lands acts as natural retention and storage that captures floodwater, minimizing damage. An increase in the flood frequency has been observed in recent years. It is commonly perceived that this increase is caused by a rise in the frequency and severity of ‘very wet’ precipitation events. We conclude that land-use changes may have played a larger role in generating floods.