Pasture yield and soil physical property responses to soil compaction from treading and grazing - a review

This paper reviews animal treading and the associated effects on soil physical properties and pasture productivity from treading-induced soil compaction and pugging. Response curve relationships between soil physical properties (e.g. macroporosity, air-filled porosity, bulk density) and pasture and crop yield are reviewed. Optimum soil macroporosity for maximum pasture and crop yield ranges from 6 to 17% v/v, but there is a paucity of yield response curves for pastoral systems, particularly critical or optimum values of soil physical properties. There is little information available on the effects of cattle treading on soil physical properties and consequently pasture yield in seasons when soil pugging and poaching is minimised. Such information is needed to provide practical and rigorously tested decision support tools for land managers during grazing seasons. Knowledge of yield response curves, and critical or optimum values of soil physical properties for field pasture-based grazing systems, is required for improved farm-system production and economic decision support

Ideas, power and change : explaining EU–Russia energy relations

This article explores the European Union's (EU) energy relations with Russia through new institutionalist concepts that understand ideas to be powerful within policymaking processes, in conferring credibility on certain governance norms as well as in contesting existing institutions. Explanations of the deterioration in EU–Russia energy relations have emphasized divergence in perspectives on energy, and how it should be governed, between these actors. Here it is argued that the proliferation of different ideas about energy within EU institutions has significant implications for this relationship. The paper analyses EU energy policy as a whole, including climate policy, and outlines what ideas have been influential over policymaking processes and with what consequences. Internal ideological differences challenge the dominance and credibility of market liberal ideas and policies, the EU's ability to speak with one voice in energy and attest to an increasingly complex and contradictory EU energy policy