Summary

Environmental science emerged from the fields of natural history and medicine during the Enlightenment. Today, it provides an integrated, quantitative, and interdisciplinary approach to the study of environmental systems. Environmental studies are incorporating more of the social sciences in order to understand human relationships, perceptions and policies towards the environment. This entry collection features information about design and technology for improving environmental quality in every aspect.

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Entries
Topic Review
Sunflower Crop Rotation's Biophysical Impact on Agricultural Fields
Crop rotation is an important determining factor of crop productivity. Sustainable agriculture requires correct rules of crop rotation. Failure to comply with these rules can lead to deterioration of soil biochemical characteristics and land degradation.
  • 534
  • 02 Jun 2022
Topic Review
Development of a Real-World Driving Cycle
Global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reached a new high in 2019. Although 2020 GHG emissions were lower than those in 2019 due to the COVID-19 crisis and associated actions, GHG concentrations in the atmosphere are continuing to rise. An improvement in on-road driving behavior that would reduce fuel consumption would benefit a huge number of motorcycle riders, resulting in significant reductions in fuel consumption and CO2 emissions. Therefore, it is essential to aggregate sufficient realistic data to generate representative real-world driving cycles that can be employed reliably for fuel consumption and exhaust emission assessment in the future. 
  • 395
  • 01 Jun 2022
Topic Review
Green Innovation and Corporate Social Responsibility
Indonesia’s government policy recommends that medium and large companies carry out corporate social responsibility programs. These programs provide sustainability for the company because they can involve community social relations, economic growth, and increasing environmental awareness. Corporate social responsibility can increase green innovation in companies with the stability of environmentally friendly materials, emission reductions for the surrounding community, and saving energy use. Corporate social responsibility has a positive effect on firm performance because the company has maintained the continuity of the process. After all, it has a harmonious relationship with the community. Furthermore, green innovation positively affects firm performance because the company can reduce energy use and utilize environmentally friendly resources. Therefore, green innovation can mediate the influence of corporate social responsibility and firm performance. 
  • 1.2K
  • 31 May 2022
Topic Review
Remediation of Toxic Metals from Paddy Fields
Toxic metals (TMs)  may affect human growth and development, physiological metabolism, etc., and may cause diseases and even death. TMs enter the food chain via organisms located at the bottom of the food chain, and their concentration and toxicity are subsequently amplified as they move further up the food chain. Consuming a certain amount of food contaminated by TMs can threaten an individual’s health. Thus, humans (who are at the top of the food chain) face great health risks, as they risk TM exposure principally through food intake. Rice is more important than fish in terms of the risk of metal exposure in the human diet, and arsenic requires particular attention. Grain crops (e.g., rice) that grow on soil/water polluted by TMs not only experience a reduction in yield and quality but also enrich a large amount of TMs. To reduce the threat of TMs to human health, measures must be taken from the source. In particular, uncontaminated soil and water bodies can guarantee the production of healthy food, which is key to human health. Therefore, the research and exploration of the technical methods of heavy metal removal or remediation in rice fields is of great significance to human food safety and health.
  • 499
  • 31 May 2022
Topic Review
The Factors That Influence Food Waste
Food conservation is an issue of global importance. In unstable conditions such as pandemics and wars, clean plate campaigns have been developed to limit food waste around the world. The COVID-19 pandemic threatens global food security and has created an urgent need for food conservation
  • 3.5K
  • 31 May 2022
Topic Review
Lighting Strategy in Plant Factory with Artificial Light
A plant factory with artificial light (PFAL) is defined as an advanced agricultural production system with a precisely controlled environment, playing an important role in vertical farming and urban food supply. Artificial light is one of the core technologies in PFALs and accounts for a large part of energy consumption; elevating the light utilization efficiency of plants is vital for the sustainable development of PFALs. Meanwhile, the enclosed structure of the plant factory resulted in the independence of its light environment, indicating that the light environment in PFALs can be custom-made. Lighting strategy is an attempt to reprogram the light environmental parameters in unconventional ways, resulting in innovative lighting modes for energy-saving, high-yield, and high-quality production in PFALs. 
  • 1.6K
  • 30 May 2022
Topic Review
Genetic Improvement of Wheat for Drought Tolerance
Wheat production and productivity are challenged by recurrent droughts associated with climate change globally. Drought and heat stress resilient cultivars can alleviate yield loss in marginal production agro-ecologies. The ability of some crop genotypes to thrive and yield in drought conditions is attributable to the inherent genetic variation and environmental adaptation, presenting opportunities to develop drought-tolerant varieties. Understanding the underlying genetic, physiological, biochemical, and environmental mechanisms and their interactions is key critical opportunity for drought tolerance improvement.
  • 1.1K
  • 30 May 2022
Topic Review
Clustering Sustainable Destinations
Within the globalized tourism market, tourism destinations have the option to turn to sustainability as a conceptual and management framework for their unique branding and identity proposition. It is well-known that tourism contributes to sustainable development, but in order to render tourism’s contribution clearly, the assessment should be fed with conceptually clear and measurable indicators that effectuate the continuous monitoring of a destination’s sustainability performance.
  • 603
  • 30 May 2022
Topic Review
The Role of Flavonoids in Plant Terrestrialization
Plants evolved an impressive arsenal of specialized metabolites to cope with the novel environmental pressures imposed by the terrestrial habitat when moving from water. Flavonoids are maybe the most important specilized metabolites that show multifarious roles in the sucess of plant terrestrialization. These compounds modulated auxin transport and signaling and promoted the symbiosis between plants and fungi (e.g., arbuscular mycorrhizal, AM), a central event for the conquest of land by plants. AM improved the ability of early plants to take up nutrients and water from highly impoverished soils. Therefore, flavonoids were essential to plant development in the “new world” scarce of water and nutrients.
  • 722
  • 30 May 2022
Topic Review
World-Wide Data of Organochlorine Pesticide in Agricultural Soils
Soil constitutes the central environmental compartment that, primarily due to anthropogenic activities, is the recipient of several contaminants. Among these are organochlorine pesticides (OCPs), which are of major concern, even though they were banned decades ago due to their persistence and the health effects they can elicit. Soil pollution by OCPs should be an essential aspect of the characterization of whole soil quality, considering that a significant percent of soils on a global scale are in the borderline of suitability for cultivation and pertinent activities. The latter, to an extent, is attributed to the presence of organic contaminants, especially those of persistent chemical natures.
  • 599
  • 30 May 2022
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