Title Shifting ground : the changing agricultural soils of China and Indonesia / Peter H. Lindert

Published Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, ©2000

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Description 1 online resource (xii, 351 pages) : illustrations, maps Contents Machine generated contents note: Preface -- I Judging Soil Trends -- 1. Current Concerns -- Alarm Bells -- What Soil Degradation Means -- The Importance of Soil Chemistry -- The Road Ahead -- 2. Previous Evidence -- Surveys of Degraded Land Areas: The Still-Life as a Documentary Film -- Guesswork on Erosion -- Changes in Cultivated Area -- Lessons from Experiments -- Hints from Good Eclectic Histories -- Summary Diagnosis -- 3. Beginning a New Soil History -- Global Data from the Twenty-First Century -- Mining the Twentieth-Century Record -- A Statistical Strategy for Separating Time from Space -- In Search of Errors -- II China -- 4. Soil Changes in China since the 1930s -- Physical Background -- The Resulting Equations -- Soil Trends in North China -- Soil Trends in South China -- Interpreting the Trends in Soil Nutrients -- Summary -- 5. China's Soil-Agriculture Interactions -- Simultaneous Feedbacks: The Conceptual Task -- Designing a Simultaneous System to Fit China in the 1980s -- The Determinants of Agricultural Yields -- Feedbacks from Agriculture to the Soil -- 6. The Quality and Quantity of China's Cultivated Soils -- Soil Quality since the 1930s: A First Guess -- Cultivated Area -- China's Net Soil Investment since the 1930s -- Three Lingering Concerns -- Summary -- III Indonesia -- 7. A Half Century of Soil Change in Indonesia -- Preparing the Raw Materials -- Revealing the Patterns Statistically -- Soil Trends on Java -- Soil Trends and the Settlement Process on the Outer Islands -- Signs of Erosion? -- The Geography of Indonesia's Soil Chemistry -- Summary -- 8. Consequences for Indonesian Agriculture -- Alternative Approaches -- The Impact of Soils on Agricultural Productivity in 1990 -- Fertilizer as a Substitute for Soil Quality -- Indonesia's Net Investment in Soils, 1940-1990 -- IV Conclusions and Implications -- 9. What Have We Done to the Land? -- On Trends in Soil Characteristics -- On Their Causes -- On Changes in Cultivated Land Area -- Consequences -- Postscript: Trends versus Potential in Soil Management -- Appendix A: Full Soil History Regression Equations for China -- Appendix B: Soil Chemistry Averages by Province, China, -- 1981-1986 -- Appendix C: Fuller Simultaneous-Equation Estimates of China's -- Soil-Agriculture System in the 1980s -- Appendix D: Full Regression Equation Estimates for the -- Determinants of Soil Chemistry in Indonesia, 1923-1990 -- Notes -- References -- Index.n of Stratifica Summary In this book Peter Lindert evaluates environmental concerns about soil degradation in two very large countries--China and Indonesia--where anecdotal evidence has suggested serious problems. Lindert does what no scholar before him has done: using new archival data sets, he measures changes in soil productivity over long enough periods of time to reveal the influence of human activity. China and Indonesia are good test cases because of their geography and history. China has been at the center of global concerns about desertification and water erosion, which it may have accelerated with intense agriculture. Most of Indonesia's lands were created by volcanoes and erosion, and its rapid deforestation and shifting slash-burn agriculture have been singled out for international censure. Lindert's investigation suggests that human mismanagement is not on average worsening the soil quality in China and Indonesia. Human cultivation lowers soil nitrogen and organic matter, but has offsetting positive effects. Economic development and rising incomes may even lead to better soil. Beyond the importance of Lindert's immediate findings, this book opens a new area of study--quantitative soil history--and raises the standard for debating soil trends Analysis PHYSICAL SCIENCES/General ECONOMICS/General Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 333-343) and index Notes English Print version record Subject Soils -- Quality -- China Soil degradation -- China Agriculture -- Environmental aspects -- China Soils -- Quality -- Indonesia Soil degradation -- Indonesia Agriculture -- Environmental aspects -- Indonesia TECHNOLOGY & ENGINEERING -- Agriculture -- Agronomy -- Soil Science. Agriculture -- Environmental aspects Soil degradation Soils -- Quality China Indonesia Genre/Form Electronic books Form Electronic book LC no. 00020373 ISBN 9780262278393 0262278391 0585437254 9780585437255 9780262526975 0262526972

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