Category: hydroponic agriculture

Some algae have a quite narrow temperature optimum, whereas others can show good growth over a wide temperature range . When choosing a location for algae cultivation, temperature conditions should be taken into account with a location having temperatures as stable as possible not only from day to night but over seasons. Low temperatures exert an obvious dampening effect on metabolic processes although the magnitude of cold inhabitation varies greatly among species . However, it must be recognized that temperature changes not only over the day and from day-to-day, but also with seasons . Stable night temperatures improve microalgae biomass production due to the balance of night respiration. Respiration during the night leads to biomass loss reducing productivity, and the rate of respiration is affected by temperature . Many other factors temperature control of microlgae in cultivation has other significant affects on biomass production. The major physical stimuli are temperature and light intensity;the former, can modify the fatty acid composition by increasing the unsaturation with the decreasing temperature and vice versa 4×8 flood tray. Water is in abundance throughout many parts of the world, but finding locations with plenty of sunlight and ample water with suitable salt levels is not so common.

To provide the algae cultures with enough water for adequate growth,a water source or sources is needed near the designated site that is capable of maintaining a water supply based on the capacity of the algal production system. Microalgae are microscopic photosynthetic organisms that are found in both marine and freshwater environments . Some species of algae have the ability to tolerate a wide range of water salt levels. Some algae exhibit an excellent ability to tolerate high salt concentrations . Cultivating micro algae can often result in the utilization of water that otherwise has poor potential. One of the important factors that set algaebiomass production technology apart from technologies reliant on terrestrial crop production is the ability of algae to utilize water of poor quality, unsuitable for crop production, which usually means brackish and high salinity inland waters and ocean sea waters .Accessing and evaluating these issues is a critical part of an industry such as growing microalgae for biofuel food stock. One of the intentions of this industry is to minimize environmental damage such as reducing carbon emissions which in turn leads to global warming. This is according to recent report that estimates the world pumped 39.8 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the air last year by burning coal, oil and gas See Figure 2 .

This figure is the result of a very fast growing dependence on fossil fuels that started its rapid climb in the 1950’s. See Graph page 23. But care must be taken to ensure that the industry itself does not create its own environmental problems and every attempt must be taken to produce and process microalgae with minimal impact to the local and greater environment. Amongst these cautions the selection of land is vital to ensure land is not used that could be better utilized. To avoid selecting a site with conflicting land use, it was important to identify areas that were not previously developed or used for a more economically viable use . As the world’s population increases there will be a greater demand for biofuels but also an increased demand for land as food production. Food verses fuel is the dilemma regarding the risk of diverting farmland or crops for liquid biofuel production to the detriment of the food supply on a global scale. Many other factors play an important part in the location selection criteria some of which can change frequently such as politics, ebb flow tray local economic conditions,availability of expertise and probable regional environmental issues.Any form of industry or agricultural process has some potential environmental issues. Accessing and evaluating these issues is a critical part of an industry such as growing microalgae for biofuel food stock.

Additional criteria for potential open pond micro algae production systems sites is that the land should benon competitive, non-sensitive, and sparsely populated . One of the intentions of this industry is to minimize environmental damage such as reducing carbon emissions which in turn leads to global warming. Global climate change is also the major environmental issue of our time . But care must be taken to ensure that the industry itself does not create its own environmental problems and every attempt must be taken to produce and process microalgae with minimal impact to the local and greater environment. Microalgae cultivation for biofuel production can potentially be carried out on marginal land and thus wecan reduce the competition for land and may open up new economic opportunities.

MTS can separate normal samples from abnormal samples by using Mahalanobis distance,which can take into account the correlation between features,and select features with larger information gain through signal-to-noise ratio and orthogonal arrays. As a data-driven pattern recognition method,MTS has been widely used in manufacturing cost accounting , automobile motor-head machining process,rolling bearing fault diagnosis and health assessment  and management decision-making.So,this paper will propose a recognition method of multidimensional poverty based on MTS. Good health and education are pivotal aspects of human capability as well,comprehended in Sen’s theory as freedom of guiding a person to have a different type of life. It is noteworthy that improving sanitation facilities has important positive effects on reducing the contagion of various diseases like hepatitis, cholera, and diarrhea. The three education indexes are access to improved educational attainment, vertical grow table reduced expenditure for education, and accessibility of public education. Besides, there are four indexes to measure deprivation of health, such as health conditions, Sanitation facilities, expenditure for health, and accessibility of healthcare.

The reason for including these dimensions is that with rural,income does not assure to get education and health services. Living dimension is acknowledged as a standard to measure access to basic services, which is included four indexes, such as clean water, improved cooking fuel, electricity, and Engel’s coefficient. Among them, unsafe water can cause many diseases in rural,and the availability of safe water is to a fundamental human right. Good electricity can help people improve accessibility to information by using a wide range offacilities like television, refrigerators, telephones, and computers. In China, using solid fuel caused by indoor air pollution is the primary reason for more than40,000 premature deaths annually. Finally, we consider that asset and housing dimensions are also essential to enhance the quality of life. These reflect the rate of accumulation assets of rural families and provide a buffer territory for people to relieve the negative effects of social and economic risks. There are four assets indexes to evaluate household capital accumulation, such as means of production,assisted living assets, cultivated land quantity, types of current housing. In addition, we use seven indexes to reflect housing conditions, such as Per capita housing, congestion, healthy conditions, lighting conditions, ventilate conditions,air condition, and noisy conditions.

The dataset used in this paper is from the China Labor-force Dynamic survey in 2014, which surveyed the working population aged 15 – 64. It is an interdisciplinary large-scale survey, including issues of labor education, employment,household property and income, household consumption, production and land of the rural household.CLDS2014uses multi-stage and multi-level probability sampling method, which can better reflect the real situation of Chinese society. This paper selected rural household data from central provinces of China in CLDS2014 for analysis,mobile vertical grow tables including Anhui, Henan, Hunan, Hubei, and Jiangxi. The central provinces have the characteristics of large agricultural population,wide distribution of poor people, and complex and diverse causes of poverty. Therefore, this sample data is selected for recognition in the hope of providing a reference for poverty alleviation.

The households were taken as the basic unit to analyze. Besides, we selected family-level data as the primary data source of this study. Nevertheless, we turned to the individual-level data for more detailed information when the description about the conditions of members was ambiguous in the family-level data. Firstly, we segregated rural households from urban households in term of where they lived in, village committees or neighborhood committees. Secondly, if families rejected answering significant problems corresponding to the study, we would deleteit. Thirdly, we preserved families with total income/expenditure are equal to the sum of income/expenditure from sub-component sources. Finally, we got 425 households. In this paper, 425 families are recognized as two classes, that is, poor and non-poor by using the MTS. The MTS can recognize poor and non-poor households and select the main indexes to measure multidimensional poverty, which mainly focuses on income, health, and housing conditions. For rural families, it was of significance to raise their income or enhance sustainable livelihood capacity. Improving farming efficiency was the most remunerative strategy which required relatively high technical support and financial input.

The case study of a RCB was screened initially through eight face-to-face interviews conducted in August 2010, and then subsequent e-mail and telephone conversations. The case is a local RCB located in Jiangsu province, in the eastern part of China where SMEs were well developed. This case bank is one of the early developed RCBs in China and has developed a relatively comprehensive CRM system. Information-gathering techniques implemented during execution of the case study included obtaining historical data and documentation, as well as conducting semi-structured interviews with CRM personnel and bank managers in the case bank. Each interview has duration of approximately one hour and conducted in Chinese in the bank offices. The semi-structured interviews ensured that the researchers maintained control over each interview, without discouraging the discussion of any valuable, additional information. The information from the case and transcripts of interviews were analysed to identify risk factors facing SMEs and farming households. It is extremely important to distinguish between failures and closures. Watson and Everett  note that closing firms could have been financially successful but closed for other reasons.

To define failures they create five categories: ceasing to exist ; closing,or a change in ownership; filing for bankruptcy; closing to limit losses; and failing to reach financial goals. Headd finds that only one-third of new businesses closed under circumstances that owners considered unsuccessful.In the proposed framework, stacking pots it is essential for RCBs to carry out this kind of analysis before starting to develop a default prediction model concerning their SME and farming household clients. Separating the cases of closures from the ones of failures improves the quality of the available information and of the prediction power of a model. In the credit analysis, RCBs should take into account only clients that entered into liquidation, administration or receivership.The construction of CRM framework for RCBs should be based on the analysis of various risk factors affecting failures of the major customers of RCBs. In this study these risk factors are categorised into four clusters: environmental, financial,operational, and guanxi risks. These factors reflect the perceptions of various stakeholders involved in RCBs’ CRM obtained through the case study. Different from the previous literature, this study considers both financial data and non-financial data in analysing credit risk. The value of non-financial information in SMEs’ CRM has been recognised in the literature.

The literature recognises that quantitative variables are not sufficient to predict SME default and qualitative variables  should be considered along with quantitative variables in predicting the failures of SMEs.The framework is divided into five steps. The first step is to distinguish business failure and closure. In credit risk analysis, the focus should be on the failure.Business closure does not mean the failure. The second step is to identify factors contributing to the failure, which should be considered from environmental,operational, financial, and guanxi dimensions. Some factors may appear in one case, but not in other cases. The third step is to identify the principal factors by using specific techniques. Based on the key factors, RCBs design credit risk analysis models with a focus on the analysis of these key/principal factors. The final step is to use the credit risk analysis model to manage credit risks of their portfolios and individual loans. SMEs and farming firms are facing the challenges raised from globalisation, grow lights increased customer expectations, technological advances, and increased competition.The main external environmental triggers include among others government laws and regulations, globalisation of markets and the internationalization of business, major economic, political and social events, technological advancements,customer expectations, supplier requirements, increasing competition,organisational growth, and fluctuations in business cycles.

The changing demographics and the challenges to SMEs in attracting and retaining skilled workers were also identified as major factors influencing business failures. The recruitment and retention challenge is complex for SMEs and it is expected to continue over the long term. Demographic changes , specifically the aging workforce and the declining entrant pool, are occurring in China and SMEs are currently countering some of the impacts.A lack of effective risk management programme in SMEs is also a major factor contributing to the failure of many SMEs. One overriding factor that contributes to ineffective risk management in SMEs is a lack of infrastructure, risk management skills, human capital and adequate management knowledge and training. Gao et al.  acknowledge the limited risk management capability building in Chinese SMEs largely due to lack of adequate education and qualification, higher staff turnover and negative attitudes of both owner-managers and employees towards the use of technology, learning and training.

The thematic maps of land use and cover, over a 30-year period , were developed in MapInfo Professional 8.5 software. The landscape spatial pattern of the Northern Region of Rio Grande do Sul was configured by four  land use classes: Natural, Aquatic, Agricultural Anthropic,and Non-Agricultural Anthropic, and their respective areas, over a30-year period. These classes were later categorized into nine types of land cover: native vegetation, wetlands, water bodies, agriculture, pasture, forestry,bare soil, urbanized area, and road net.The landscape composition was described based on land use and cover changes, expressing the performance of anthropic activities in determining the predominant type of land use, over a 30-year period. The agricultural anthropic land use  showed the highest area values, occupying between 85% and 70% of the total study area, over the last 30years . Through time, a sequence of land use dynamics was observed setting an anthropic matrix, nft system predominantly occupied by farming,with agriculture and soil exposed as the most representative land cover types.

The agricultural anthropic land use has been initially substituted by a natura lone; non-agricultural anthropic land use makes up anthropic matrix as a consequence of ongoing urbanization. The Northern Region of Rio Grandedo Sul evidenced an increase of 81,332.85 ha  in the native vegetation area, over a 30-year period . This increase became particularly marked in 1990, mainly, in greater slope area to the North and East of the Northern Region of Rio Grande do Sul. The total increase in the native vegetation area resulted in a quantitative remnant, occupying around 25%, of the Northern Region of Rio Grande do Sul total area. This value can be considered below the natural area critical threshold of 30% to ensure the balance between biodiversity conservation and economic development in a biocultural landscape.The intensification of the farming mechanization in the South of Brazil, since1980, with an increase in agricultural productivity per unit area, has been identified as one of the driver of the agricultural reduction area, and the consequent reduction of deforestation and natural vegetation recovery.

The replacement of agricultural anthropic areas with subsequent natural vegetation recovery has been described like a feature of regions where socio-economic factors strongly influence land use changes.The increase of forest areas was also previously reported for regions with lower agricultural potential and marked slope gradient. Similar results and reports for the Northern Region of Rio Grande do Sul were previously related by.The increase in pasture areas of 44,534.71 ha , between 1986 and 2016, may be related to the reduction of agricultural areas, mainly in sloping areas, particularly in municipalities with agricultural technology associated with monoculture .The total area of non-agricultural anthropogenic use  for the North Region of Rio Grande do Sul increased by 4039.88 ha, over a30-year period , particularly, as a result of the urbanization expansion,as well as, the exodus of rural population to urban centers. These results are supported by the increase and the reduction of urban and rural populations, hydroponic gutter respectively,of the Northern Region of Rio Grande do Sul municipalities.There was no change in road net value area  in the Northern Region of Rio Grande do Sul between 1986 and 2016.

This result is due to the only main roads mapping and rasterization of the study area, due to there solution of the Landsat images  be incompatible with the average width of most of the region’s roads. Three naturalness performances of the Northern Region of Rio Grande do Sul,over a 30-year period, were identified: 1) increased naturalness  resulting, respectively, from the increase of natural areas with or without minimal anthropic influence, and of natural areas with anthropic influence, equivalent to changes from 0.94% to 2.63%, and from13.33% to 26.29%, of the total study area. Areas of high naturalness are associated with patches of natural vegetation, in the North and East of the Northern Region of Rio Grande do Sul, particularly, through two remnants of natural vegetation, with areas greater than 1000 ha, located in Indigenous Land,respectively, to the northwest and southeast of the Northern Region of Rio Grande do Sul ; 2) reduction of naturalness ,specifically, related to the ongoing urbanization process, equivalent to a change from 0.38% to 0.57% of the total study area; Reduction of the farming matrix, from 85.35% to 70.51% of the total study area, mainly due to the replacement of agricultural with natural vegetation areas.

Traditional villages have their regional value according to their different geographical environment, natural resources and cultural heritage of different genealogy families, and with the increasing lying Qof villages with the outside world,the problem of hollowing out villages is becoming more and more serious, and the cultural heritage of traditional villages is under threat. Religious belief takes space as the carrier, is a special ideological and cultural phenomenon,the development of traditional villages by the influence and restriction of religious belief culture.Through the investigation and analysis of Datun Village, this study tries to explore the influence of religious belief on the spatial characteristics of traditional villages from the perspective of religious belief, and provides a theoretical basis for the protection and utilization, construction and innovation of the spatial characteristics of traditional religious villages in the new period, so that the traditional villages can not only meet the material needs, but also be able to build under the guidance of cultural characteristics. Domestic research on traditional villages is the earliest from the traditional architecture research, with the development of urbanization, the more popular local culture is people, the study of traditional villages is not limited to this.

At present, the research on religious villages is reflected in the cultural tradition of national religion, rolling benches as well as the influence of religion on the production and living space pattern and social relations of the surrounding villages, many scholars have made great exploration and research on the relationship between religion and village, and inferred from their spatial form and evolutionary mechanism.Through combing, it is found that the research content of the protection of historical and cultural towns and villages in foreign countries mainly focuses on the protection and restoration of local buildings, the idea of protection of traditional villages, the tourism development of traditional villages and so on. Research centers in various countries tend to favour urban development, and the study of villages is also neglected, with relatively few research results.At present, the vast majority of scholars in the past from the perspective of ethnology, religion and political science, less from the perspective of planning.This paper takes this as a starting point to explore the influence of religious belief on the spatial characteristics of traditional villages and provide a theoretical basis for the protection and development of traditional villages.

Taking Datun village as the research object, through the method of literature review and field visit research, this paper studies the spatial characteristics of religion and belief from the three aspects of the village’s spatial structure, street structure and public space structure, and analyzes and organizes the information ,which provides the foundation for the renewal, transformation and development of the traditional village research. In Datun village, the most important resident villagers are Hui and Han, the religion of the Hui faith is Islam, the Han people believe in Buddhism, and there are mosques and Buddhist monasteries in the village. Datun village by the influence of religious belief, built a different size of temples, there are mosques, five fairy temples, Guany in temple, quartet temple, etc., the space layout around the temple,ebb and flow bench and finally in the space to form a temple-centered grid-shaped irregular village. The distribution of temples has an important influence on the overall form of the village, Datun village belongs to the “one village number of temples” form,from the overall spatial layout of Datun village, Buddhist temples are located in the village, along with the axis distribution, forming a clear religious axis. The terrain is low to high, with different Buddhist temples, namely the Quartet Temple, the Five Fairy Temple, the Guanyin Temple and the Mamma Temple.

Among them, the Four Temples and The Wuxian Temple sit in the center of the village, the old age, the Guanyin Temple is located on the hillside behind the village, is the villagers to protect the forest on the old mountain and built later,the terrain is higher, the mother temple is located on the top of the mountain,play an iconic role.The temple pattern in Datun village is not big, in the spatial layout will not be graded, more into the life of the villagers, residents more “around the temple and live”, in the village to form a gathering point, but the various temples in the layout of the formation of axis, become the center of the village, the whole village closely linked, the village is actually a potential belief culture.The mosque is located on the outskirts of the village, distributed in the south,in a relatively independent location for individual construction, so that the temple in front of a more open space, can obtain a wider public space, Hui residents live around the temple, belong to the spontaneous residence of the mosque as the center of the circle around a circle of circular space scattered in a mesh structure. In the initial stage of the village’s beginning to form, the overall spatial layout of the village takes on the characteristics of heart orientation.

It’s generally agreed that control of tick-borne diseases in Sub-Saharan Africa has failed because of lack of epizootiological information and control strategies. These would probably be due to the various social farming challenges at the community interface, controlled by a variety of factors ranging from Government policies,farming technologies, climate change, soil and vegetation to human activities including livestock production systems as well as measures taken to control ticks and treatment interventions done by the farmers. There is still a great lack of knowledge regarding the epidemiology of the increasing HP burden in the region despite the efforts from the regional Governments in the livestock sector to promote the MDGs.In this study we carried out a survey to identify and determine the prevalence of the major HP in Central and Western Uganda. A questionnaire was administered and an on farm drug survey was conducted to determine any relationship between HP distribution and the seasons, farming practices in order to form a baseline for institution of relevant corrective measures within the study areas. In this study, more samples were collected from the Central region probably due to convenience, and demand for laboratory veterinary diagnostic services within these communities.

Prevalence of Theileria and Anaplasma infection was highest in Western region from this study, grow bucket which showed a 50% increment from previous studies in both Northern and Eastern regions of Uganda  . It was also shown that infection with hemo-parasites was highest  among Bos indicus while in the Bos taurus it was established at 57.9%, which is contrary to recent findings   that indicated stability in Bos indicus. This would probably due to the farmer management practices in the rural communities which have led to the endemic instability of the parasites in the livestock populations. Generally, in both regions, farmers did offer medications without consultations from veterinarians due to the liberalization of the livestock industry , and they often wait until the condition has deteriorated thus accounting for the increased animal loses due to HP and the steady increase of the their prevalence within Uganda. Amongst farmers that attempted treatment, majority of them used antibiotics and anti-protozoa agents, while the rest offered no treatment intervention. HP were detected in cattle samples from farmers that had attempted treatment with anti-protozoan agents , which was higher than in those that that claimed to have used antibiotics as shown in Table 3.

The farm surveys also showed that the control of HP and vectors basically relied on the use of anti-protozoan agents as well as  antibiotics which concurs with previous findings   while some farmers offered no chemotherapeutical treatment. It was also observed that the limited human resource at the regional local Governments was not being fully utilized, thus making disease diagnosis and control further more complicated under the prevailing Government policies,dutch bucket for tomatoes thus contributing to the slow development of the livestock industry through increased animal mortalities and poor farming practices that have culminated into the severe climatic changes in these farming communities as shown in Table 10. The Government’s policy on liberalization , of the drug industry has been a great failure, because, the end point of the policy, was not to improve accessibility, but improve animal health and productivity and from our observations this is still elusive.The findings Table 2 and Table 3 showed that generally, cattle in the Western region are more severely affected by HP than those from the Central region, and PCV alone wouldn’t be used as measure of HP presence.Central region had a higher burden of HP than those from the Western .

This would probably be because the Central region lies more within the mixed rain-fed crop-livestock category in Uganda, which has a better climate favorable for farming  which would further indicate that the burden of HP. The absence of screening centers for inter-district animal movements against animal diseases in the regions has further escalated the situation . Generally the occurrence and importance of HP is a reflection of complex interactions involving the causative organisms, tick vectors, the vertebrate hosts and the environment . These interactions are driven and modified by a wide variety of factors ranging from the environment, host, and the vectors as well as community farming activities. Trypanosome prevalence infection was four times greater in Western region than in the Central region , which concurs with the findings of Rubaire  in Eastern Uganda which showed that prevalence of HP in cattle vary with agro-ecological zones and management   in the Kenyan highlands. The Western region is also bordered  by a couple of National Game Parks which continue to act as reservoirs for maintenance  and carrier hosts   in the regional farms as wildlife and cattle often intermingle during grazing.

The approach provides more details about the processes that cause the various distribution changes which may either increase or decrease the Ginico efficient . The percentile shares approach is more useful incases where time series data is used but it also compliments the analysis of income in equality using cross-sectional data. As mentioned earlier, the Gini index is a widely used and favoured measure of income inequality over other alternatives because this index can be applied to both time series and cross-sectional data simultaneously . The value of the Gini Index ranges from 0 to 1. With the value 1, the Gini coefficient represents perfect unequal distribution of income, while with the value 0, it represents perfect equality of income . Links with the Lorenz curve make the Gini coefficient an attractive statistic for the decomposition by income components, as the Lorenz curve graphically represents the Gini coefficient. The concentration coefficient of each income component with respect to total income is obtained from a concentration curve .

However, it should be noted here that, ebb and flow tray the Gini coefficient cannot be used to rank distributions if the Lorenz curves intersect. According to Litchfield , there are alternative ways to decompose the Gini, however the component terms of total inequality are not always intuitively or mathematically appealing. Notwithstanding this concern the Gini coefficient still remains a popular inequality measure of total inequality and as a decomposable measure.Using the CV approach, we decomposed the total household incomes into three major categories of income namely; income from crops, income from timber products , and income from off-farm activities . This is useful because conventionally, most studies have often attempted to evaluate the distributional impact of certain types of income by merely comparing the size of distribution of that particular income with that of the total rural income as a whole. Because it neglects the twin issues of income weights and covariance between income sources, any approach, which solely compares the size distribution of one particular income with that of total income, is likely to arrive at erroneous conclusions regarding the distributional impact of that particular income .

Corresponding to the CV, we applied the decomposition formula presented in Equation . 90% of the households had incomes of less than TZS 3,342,022 and only 10% had income higher than this. These results suggest existence of income inequality in the study area. At the 50 percentile, the mean incomes for disaggregated analysis were the highest for farmers with farmland located far from homestead , followed by those of farmers who accessed extension services during the past two years  and farmers who were members of community-based financial institutions . The mean incomes were the lowest for female-headed households , ebb and flow trays followed by farmers who did not access extension services , and farmers with farmland located close to homestead .Farmlands located far from homestead were mostly found along the footsteps of the mountains or lowland areas where landholdings were relatively larger allowing for more intensification and crop revenues than the farmlands located in the upper gradients. This relationship is common in mountain areas.

Mountain areas are considered as less favoured due to difficulties caused by short growing seasons, steep slopes at lower altitudes, or by a combination of the two . Land holdings in high altitudes of mountain areas are limiting the scale of economic activities performed by farmers to increase farm income. Doucha et al. , for example showed that, farmers in in Czech less favoured areas could rarely grow permanent pasture along with extensive cattle breeding or undertake any additional non-agricultural activities on farm . In fact, Kata  confirmed decreasing value of income from operational farm activity toward higher altitude. In this circumstance, farm incomes may remain insufficient for smallholder farmers to undertake a profitable agricultural production. The influence of altitudinal variation on crop production and animal husbandry is also reported by Zhang etal. who investigated the response of altitudinal vegetation belts of the Tianshan Mountains of north-western China.

They expressed the meaning that spatial heterogeneity of agricultural productivity was predominantly controlled by the topographic conditions at a decadal scale. At the same time it also confirms the fact that karst ecosystems have low biological productivity. That means for producing the same quality and quantity of agricultural products farmers in the karst region have to pay more both in terms of labour and time. The extremely fragile karst ecosystem is damaged by this in appropriate land use and the result is serious soil erosion on the sloping fields, water pollution in groundwater and down stream,and finally, irreversible ecological degradation. Therefore, could we say that the karst mountain regions are not a place to provide food for people? In fact we know that karst mountain regions are not grain-producing areas in China, stackable planter but the Chinese people traditionally want to grow their own crop and rarely consider any other trade, thus they become farmers also in less suitable areas.

Therefore we need to find another way to make sustainable development for both nature and society in the karst region. This means that the alternatives to the present land-use must be attractive to the farmers, not least in terms of money. We believe our EC model fulfil that requirement.According to our study, if all sloping land is changed to forest, the economic value of the ecosystem services would increase 2.57 times. These ecosystem services would not only benefit the local people but also those living downstream along the Pearl and Yangtze rivers. The services of ecological systems and the natural capital stocks that produce them are critical to the functioning of the earth’s life support system .Costanza et al. also stressed that it is not particularly meaningful to ask how large the total value of the natural capital is to human welfare. The question is instead how changes in the quantity or quality of various types of natural capital and ecosystem services may impact human welfare.

The Chinese Central Government has been trying to compensate the loss of income to farmers for conservation of the environment through the implementation of projects such as NFPP and SLCP . According to SLCP’s compensation standard, if one farmer gives up all his fields  then he would get 189 yuan∙a−1. At the same time there are some local government’s grants for them. Everyone in the karst mountain regions of Guizhou would get1000 yuan∙a−1 for developing planting or breeding from 2014 to 2016. And at the end of 2016, 6 million of the poorest people in Guizhou will each get the compensation of 1000 yuan from the local government. Nevertheless,vertical grow rack it is difficult for them to get enough food and clothing. Obviously farmers need additional compensation to escape poverty, and only then could they gain the possibility to achieve sustainable development. In fact some countries have been focusing on ecological compensation as a method to solve the environmental problem or to preserve the ecosystems that provide the services .Zheng and Kou  stressed that EC in River Basin is one of the important means to settle water resource conflicts between upstream and downstream villages, and they established an EC mode scheme in the Beijing water source areas.

Li and Sun  put forward that EC has an important function in coordinating trans-regional resources and reallocating benefits. We believe that EC in the karst region could also achieve this function.That means EC not only provides money for improving the present living standard, but also a changed lifestyle and a build-up of sustainable industries, so we build a EC mechanism for 20 years to achieve sustainable development during which the proportion of EC will change . During these 20 years we assume that the new industry will have developed. Thus, after20 years the villagers will no longer be dependent on EC.During the 20 years, funding of EC would come from financial institutions at all levels of government, downstream enterprises of Pearl River, and eco-tax . However, all the funding should be collected by the government and supervised by the third part. The main obligations of the third part are to monitor the changes of environment, economy and society, track the process of the EC program, evaluate the execution of the contract between part A and part B  and to provide suggestions at any time.

Community-based, low-tech coral aquaculture approaches used in this study proved to be successful, reliable and highly cost-effective tools to conserve and restore threatened Staghorn coral populations with minimum intervention and maintenance, and generated multiple management-oriented lessons learned. The Community-Based Coral Aquaculture and Reef Rehabilitation Program has continued to be a successful model to empower wider Caribbean community stakeholders to implement basic coral reef conservation and coral transplanting methods. This could have major implications in helping base communities engage into conservation-oriented coral reef management activities, and to help communities adapt and manage climate change impacts on their “backyard” coral reef ecosystems. Hands-on, behavior-modifying, transformative education continued to be a crucial product of community integration and active participation, improving local stewardship, and fostering their successful integration into planning, decision-making processes, and in the implementation of local-based coral reef and fisheries conservation-oriented and restoration-oriented management. However,hydroponic dutch buckets rapid adaptive responses in low-tech coral farming and reef rehabilitation will become critical to keep up with climate change impacts in the near future.

Community-based efforts will continue to be fundamental to successfully foster there habilitation of reef ecosystem’s resilience, biodiversity, ecological functions, and its socio-economic,ecological and environmental benefits and services. Further, the integration of the academia, NGOs, fisher communities, base communities, private stakeholders and government institutions has become a successful collaborative model that can be applied through the wider Caribbean Region and will be important in a time of economic constraints across developing island nations.Nonetheless, there is a particular concern with the still prevailing lack of adaptation capacity of multiple coastal base communities to climate change impacts, including sea level rise and loss of coral reefs, across many small island nations through the wider Caribbean, which could affect the sustainability of coastal community livelihoods . Further, weak governance and lack of political will to enforce existing regulations can be a major deter rant of community compliance and a roadblock to project success. This points out at the importance of coral reef rehabilitation to foster increased coral reef ecosystem resilience, bato buckets functions, and services, further improving the adaptability of coastal communities and coral reef ecosystems to climate change.

A concerning call for precaution is also brought up by documented coral skeletal extension rates in this study, as well as in some recent studies of A. cervicornis farming , as it could be the result of successful methodologies being used, but may also imply significant combined impacts from increased LBSP and climate change which may significantly compromise coral colonies ability to withstand disturbance and may explain significant recurrent mortality episodes from multiple disturbance events.It is not clear whether we can foster acclimatization responses in coral reefs to futures characterized by recurrent ecological surprises, non-linear change and unexpected long-term consequences of climate change and ocean acidification. The speed at which climate change is impacting reef ecosystems leaves little opportunity for evolutionary processes to come to the aid of corals and other reef inhabitants, thus survival will be highly dependent upon any natural resistance already existing in the gene pools today . It will also rely upon successful governance, management of reef resources and land use patterns, and upon consistent enforcement of existing environmental regulations. Therefore, the identification of high-temperature resistant genetic clones has become a critical tool for successful coral propagation and reef restoration . On that line, we were successfully able to identify, propagate and restock local depleted populations using six different shallow-water genetic clones of A. cervicornis highly resistant to existing warm surface water conditions. But efforts should also be implemented to propagate deep water genetic clones across deep water habitats to improve ecological scales of connectivity across multiple spatial scales.

This effort has resulted in the successful implementation since 2003 of the Community-Based Coral Aquaculture and Reef Rehabilitation Program led by Sociedad Ambiente Marino  and the Coral Reef Research Group of the University of Puerto Rico’s Center for Applied Tropical Ecology and Conservation ,with the direct collaboration of NGO Coralations and the Culebra Island Fishers Association. The program has successfully propagated and reintroduced over 15,000 A. cervicornis colonies around Culebra since 2003. The general goals of the program include the aim to restore A. cervicornis depleted populations and to rehabilitate coral reef ecosystem functions by fostering increased fish and coral recruitment, and increased herb ivory levels.These processes are critical for the sustainability of coral reef ecosystem functions and resilience under forecasted climate change scenarios . Forecasted trends of change based on climate modeling suggest major threats due to increasing SST and increased risk of massive coral bleaching events . These could have potentially devastating consequences for selected reef-building species   and for marine ecosystems.

Global-scale climate change impacts may also threaten the success of coral aquaculture and coral reef rehabilitation activities due to extreme weather events leaving base-communities nearly defenseless against factors such as declining reef accretion in face of increasing sea level rise , ocean acidification, grow table net loss of ecosystem resilience and productivity, and declining socioeconomic value, services and benefits . Such impacts can be more critical for small island-nations with limited geographic, socio-economic, and human resources,particularly under non-sustainable economic models . Nonetheless, studies addressing the impacts of climate-related factors such as increasing SST, increased tropical storm or hurricane frequency, or extreme rainfall events are missing. We postulate that a chronic increase in SST may increase the frequency and/or severity of extreme rainfall events and hurricanes. In turn, this should result in an increased frequency and/or severity of impacts from sediment-laden runoff pulses and LBSP to coral reefs and to community-based coral farming efforts. This suggests the need to test low-tech adaptive strategies to minimize such impacts and maximize coral growth and survival. Further, the role of no-take marine protected areas  as potential buffers of multiple anthropogenic disturbance impacts to coral reefs, including climate change, still remains controversial  .We suggest that even a no-take MPA designation is not enough to ameliorate impacts from climate change and extreme weather events.

Their potential benefit could be further diminished by LBSP. There are still no published accounts comparing outputs of coral farming within and outside no-take MPAs.This study was aimed at addressing the impacts of high SST, hurricanes, and extreme rainfall events on community-based low-tech A. cervicornis farming in Culebra Island, Puerto Rico. We tested two different methods to propagate corals as an adaptive strategy to mitigate impacts by hurricanes, extreme rainfall and sediment-laden runoff pulses . Finally, results were compared between coral farming sites located within a notake MPA and control sites outside open to fishing. For our purpose, ebb flow table extreme rainfall was defined as heavy rainfall in a short period of time . There were six events recorded in a local rain gauge during May 2011 , five during June ,four during July , and two during August  associated to tropical storm Emily and Hurricane Irene . These also produced 2 m, and 4 – 5 m swells, respectively.Based on rain gauge data, summer extreme events in 2011 represented rainfall anomalies of 127%, 140%, and 152% in relation to mean monthly values in May, June, and August, respectively . However, Doppler data suggested extreme rainfall events that resulted in rainfall records 319% above mean May value, 521% in June, 246% in July, 168% in August, and 165% in September. All of these events resulted in coral mortality episode sin both wild and cultured A. cervicornis populations as a result of rapid shut-down reaction  and tissue loss following heavy rainfall and sediment-laden run off.The northeastern Caribbean Region was also impacted during 2012 and 2013 by several significant rainfall events, as well as by recurrent long-period bottom swells.