Measuring the planet to fill terrestrial data gaps
Measuring the planet to fill terrestrial data gaps
复制标题
测量地球以填补陆地数据空白
DOI：
--
复制
发表时间：
2009
影响因子：
11.1
通讯作者：
A. Grainger
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
A. Grainger
不断增长的世界人口如何在地球上维持自己一直是许多研究的焦点。“绿色革命之父”诺曼·博洛格（Norman Borlaug）认为，解决办法之一是加强农业生产，在相同面积的土地上生产更多的粮食。但他作为一项政策策略提出的，其他人称之为“博洛格假设”，旨在将其纳入可持续发展科学理论，并进行实证检验。在这一期的PNAS中，Rudel等人(2)通过在全球范围内检验这一假设，遵循了早期的国家研究(3)。他们通过显示自1970年以来耕地面积的增长慢于人口的增长，证明了“土地节约”这一普遍现象的存在。然而，他们发现相对较少的证据表明集约化已经走得更远，通过减少耕地和产生多余的“闲置土地”，这些证据大多与贸易模式的变化有关。然而，他们的文章对于将闲置土地的概念引入文献，激发更多的研究，以及激发关于土地闲置如何与现有理论相关联的辩论将被证明是重要的。这篇评论着重于他们确定的一个关键挑战（土地节约的衡量）和由此引起的更广泛的监测问题。它主要指发展中国家。
How a growing world population can sustain itself on Planet Earth has been the focus of much research. Norman Borlaug (1), the “father of the Green Revolution,” argued that one answer is to intensify agriculture to produce more food on the same area of land. But what he promoted as a policy strategy, others have called the “Borlaug hypothesis,” aiming to add it to sustainability science theory and test it empirically. In this issue of PNAS Rudel et al. (2) follow earlier national studies (3) by testing the hypothesis at global scale. They demonstrate the existence of the general phenomenon of “land sparing,” by showing that cropland area has increased more slowly than population since 1970. However, they find relatively little evidence that intensification has gone further, by shrinking cropland and generating surplus “spared land,” and much of this evidence is linked to changes in trade patterns. Yet their article will prove important for introducing the concept of spared land into the literature, inspiring more research, and stimulating debate about how land sparing relates to existing theory. This commentary focuses on a key challenge they identify (the measurement of land sparing) and wider monitoring issues raised by it. It refers mainly to developing countries.