Agri-cultural Heritage:An Interdisciplinary Field with Development Prospects

Traditional agricultural heritage research has a very long history.Programme on"The conservation and adaptive management of Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems(GIAHS)"initiative launched by FAO in 2002,aimed at not only preserving agricultural heritage system,but also applying the principle of dynamic conservation to promote rural development to benefit local community,to assure food security and maintaining the ecosystem.Since then,many more scientists have been enrolled in the new field focusing on the function and value,application and management,conservation and development and other aspects of these traditional agricultural systems which facilitate an emerging cross-discipline.In this paper,based on the concepts and characteristics of GIAHS and China Nationally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems(China-NIAHS),the author specifies that Agri-cultural Heritage is a compound heritage that integrates the characteristics of natural,cultural and intangible cultural heritage,and a typical social-economic-natural complex ecosystem composed of economic,biological,technological,cultural and landscape components.For their conservation and development,the joint efforts of scientists from economics,ecology,geography,history,management sciences,culturology,ethnology,sociology and other subjects are needed.Based on progresses studies and perspectives of the field,the author felt that although a good start of the research on Agri-cultural Heritage has been made,there is still much room for development which show a steady growth trend and suggested 32 priority areas in research;a new subject of Agroheritology could emerge in the near future.

Progresses and Perspectives of the Resource Evaluation Related to Agri-cultural Heritage Tourism

The scientific evaluation of tourism resources is not only an important prerequisite for the development of agri-cultural heritage tourism(AHT),but it can also promote the conservation and management of Important Agricultural Heritage Systems(IAHS).With the goal of providing scientific support for the sustainable management of tourism resources,this review systematically analyzes the overall situation,research regions,developmental timeline trends,key fields and hot topics of resource evaluation research related to AHT over 2005–2020.With a comprehensive perspective that incorporates both traditional literature review and quantitative literature review,the study revealed four important aspects of AHT research.(1)Relevant articles could be divided into two phases,a development-oriented period(2005–2012)and a conservation-oriented period(2013–2020).(2)GIAHS accounts for the absolute majority(about 66.7%)of relevant studies.In particular,Longji Terraces System,Hani terraces system and Dong’s Rice-Fish-Duck System were the research hotspots IAHS,and Yunnan,Zhejiang and Guangxi were the research hotspot provinces.(3)Terraced landscapes and tea culture were the most popular themes in tourism resource evaluation,while sports tourism,tea culture tourism and study tours are becoming the new trends in IAHS sites.(4)Research methods have undergone a shift from qualitative to quantitative approaches,and a combination of these two in an interdisciplinary manner is becoming a new research trend.By reviewing and prospecting the relevant literature,this study not only makes a unique contribution to the tourism resource evaluation of IAHS,but also helps to enrich the relevant evaluation theories and further promote the sustainable development of heritage tourism from theoretical and methodological perspectives.

A tree counting algorithm for precision agriculture tasks

This study proposes an automatic procedure for individual fruit tree identification using GeoEye-1 sensor data.Depending on site-specific pruning practices,the morphologic characteristics of tree crowns may generate one or more brightness peaks(tree top)on the imagery.To optimize tree counting and to minimize typical background noises from orchards(i.e.bare soil,weeds,and man-made objects),a four-step algorithm was implemented with spatial transforms and functions suitable for spaced stands(asymmetrical smoothing filter,local minimum filter,mask layer,and spatial aggregation operator).System perfor-mance was evaluated through objective criteria,showing consistent results in fast capturing tree position for precision agriculture tasks.