By Gloria I. Guzman Casado, Manuel Gonzalez de Molina

Energy in Agroecosystems: a device for Assessing Sustainability is the 1st publication on power research that's up to date and in particular devoted to agriculture. it truly is written from an agroecological standpoint and is going past the normal research of the effective use of strength. The publication supply a methodological consultant to evaluate power potency and sustainability from an eco-energetic perspective.

Case stories from either Europe and the United States, that are consultant of today’s so much used scales of study (crop, farm, neighborhood or nationwide) and the several farm administration practices (traditional, industrialized, and modern organic), observe this technique This publication may be of fundamental curiosity to researchers, practitioners, and scholars operating within the components of agroecology, sustainable agriculture, environmental technology, power research, ordinary assets administration, rural improvement and foreign development.

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184). , 2012, p. 185). Restating the above in biological terms, these elements are analogous to the anatomy and the physiology of society in relation with nature. Later, we shall see how this distinction is applied specifically to agriculture. In short, the application of the term flow to exchanges of energy, materials, and information makes explicit the dynamic, unidirectional, and irreversible nature of transferences of energy, materials, and information from one point to another within the system, or between the system and its environment (Adams, 1975).

Complex adaptive systems have resolved this dilemma by capturing from their surroundings the flows of energy, materials, and information required to maintain and increase their level of negentropy, transferring the entropy generated to their surroundings. In other words, the total entropy of the system tends to increase, reducing at the same time the internal entropy, if external entropy increases. To put it another way ÑSin = ∆Sout Accordingly, we could say that the level of negentropy maintained by a society— in other words, the distance it remains from thermodynamic equilibrium—is the product of the sum of levels of internal and external entropy.

29). Input flows involve the energy and materials consumed or dissipated by the metabolic process—for example, raw materials or fossil fuel. Their purpose is to configure and supply the “funds” constructed by societies to generate goods and services (the output flows), and to compensate for the law of entropy by generating order. Two types of factors control the rhythm of flows: external factors related to the accessibility of resources available in the environment in which metabolism takes place, and internal factors pertaining to the capacity for processing energy and materials during the process of conversion, which itself depends on the technology used and the knowledge for its management.

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Energy in agroecosystems: a tool for assessing by Gloria I. Guzman Casado, Manuel Gonzalez de Molina
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