Livestock intensification and use of natural resources in smallholder mixed farming systems

Bhutan aims to intensify livestock production not only to improve livelihoods of farming households and to meet the increasing demands of livestock products, but also to sustainably use natural resources. This paper assesses the impact and trends of livestock intensification on the use of Common Property Resources (CPR), and how this affects the cattle numbers that can be maintained and the nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) flows at the farm. Data on household, cropping and livestock activities were collected through interviewing 183 households in extensive, semi-intensive, intensive, and intensive peri-urban areas in the years 2000 and 2004. In the extensive and semi-intensive areas, CPR was the most important source of Total Digestible Nutrients (TDN) for cattle. In the intensive areas with a majority of crossbred cattle, the farmers relied less on CPR than in the other two areas, but still about one quarter of the TDN requirements were met by grazing CPR. Grazing in the CPR provided the highest proportion of NP inputs at farm level; without grazing on CPR all four areas would have had highly negative soil nutrient balances. Intensification of livestock production through crossbreeding has not resulted in major reductions in cattle numbers per farm, but it is contributing to reduced use of CPR by farmers. Intensification partly replaces farm nutrient flows from CPR with nutrient inputs through increased use of concentrates, conserved fodder, and fertilizers. More awareness of nutrient management is required among farmers coupled with more research on nutrient assessments

Environmental performance of wild-caught North Sea whitefish. A comparison with aquaculture and animal husbandry using LCA

Dit onderzoek heeft tot doel om de kwaliteiten van wild gevangen witvis uit de Noordzee in kaart te brengen en te vergelijken met de kwaliteiten van geïmporteerde, gekweekte vis en van vlees. We richten ons daarbij in het bijzonder op de milieuprestaties. In dit onderzoek doorlopen we de volgende stappen: 1. We voeren een levenscyclusanalyse (LCA) uit om de milieuprestaties van schol en kabeljauw in kaart te brengen en te vergelijken met die van zalm, tilapia en pangasius. Deze analyse is te beschouwen als de kern van het onderzoek; 2. We vergelijken de resultaten van de LCA met de resultaten van LCA-onderzoek naar rundvlees, varkensvlees en kip; 3. We beschrijven welke impact verwachte verbeteringen in de visserij en aquacultuur zullen hebben op de LCA. Omdat er geen data voor tong beschikbaar waren, hebben we ons voor Noordzeevis gericht op schol en kabeljauw

Life cycle assessment of local and crossbred cattle production systems in Central Java, Indonesia

Indonesia is a prominent example where crossbreeding with European breeds has been promoted to intensify beef production. It is implemented throughout the country regardless of the different agro-ecological conditions, of which the available feed resources are the main element. Crossbreeding at farm level in Central Java showed that crossbreeding has not changed the farming systems or motivations for keeping cattle. These results lead to our hypothesis that we expect no differences in global warming potential (GWP) of local and crossbred cattle production systems in Central Java. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is acknowledged method to assess the contribution of livestock production to GWP. Expressed per kg live weight, GWP of local and crossbred cattle was 29.1 kg CO2 and 32.1 kg CO2. These results were higher compared to the GWP of beef cattle production systems in European countries. Future LCA’s of smallholder systems should pay more attention to the multi-functional aspects of a production system, because the GWP’s mitigation depending on the multi-functions included

Erratum: "A Gravitational-wave Measurement of the Hubble Constant Following the Second Observing Run of Advanced LIGO and Virgo" (2021, ApJ, 909, 218)

[no abstract available

Open data from the third observing run of LIGO, Virgo, KAGRA, and GEO

The global network of gravitational-wave observatories now includes five detectors, namely LIGO Hanford, LIGO Livingston, Virgo, KAGRA, and GEO 600. These detectors collected data during their third observing run, O3, composed of three phases: O3a starting in 2019 April and lasting six months, O3b starting in 2019 November and lasting five months, and O3GK starting in 2020 April and lasting two weeks. In this paper we describe these data and various other science products that can be freely accessed through the Gravitational Wave Open Science Center at https://gwosc.org. The main data set, consisting of the gravitational-wave strain time series that contains the astrophysical signals, is released together with supporting data useful for their analysis and documentation, tutorials, as well as analysis software packages