Household Yard Research Articles

Perceptions, Knowledge, and Invasion Extent of Lantana camara on Household Yards in Rural Communities in Limpopo Province, South Africa

Studies on human perceptions of Lantana camara invasion are needed to inform management. This study used a two-pronged approach to assess perceptions, knowledge, and uses of L. camara in rural communities as well as evaluate its invasion extent in household yards of the Vhembe Biosphere Reserve, Limpopo province of South Africa. Results from 300 face-to-face household interviews and household ecological surveys showed that most villagers know of L. camara but are not aware that it is an invasive alien plant. Both people’s responses and ecological household yard surveys show that the plant is on properties and is expanding. Few benefits compared to negative impacts were mentioned. Local communities are implementing control measures; however, they need assistance from the government. The results highlight the need to incorporate local and individual clearing initiatives into the current broader national control programmes, such as the Working for Water clearing programme.

Revisit the Development of Native Indonesian Chickens from Red Jungle Fowls (Gallus gallus bankiva) to Commercial Chickens

Kampung chicken which is one of native Indonesian chickens has been domesticated from the ancestor of Red Fowl Jungle, and developed by the village community from generation to generation through an extensive rearing method. Before the intensive management of kampung chicken was introduced, the chickens were allowed to scavange around the household yard during the day, they slept in the trees, on the roofs or underneath of the household at night. It has been for many years that kampung chickens were crossed with imported exotic breeds, and unplanned selection. As a result, kampung chickens have developed to a considerable high phenotype and genetic varieties with several different names and purposes. There have been selection programs, which have resulted a considerable strain of improved egg type of Kampung chicken (KUB-1 chicken), and a strain of broiler type of local chicken (Sensi-1 Agrinak chicken and Gaoksi chicken). KUB-1 chickens can be used as female lines, and Sensi-Agrinak and Gaoksi chickens can be used as male lines to produce local commercial broilers. The article is to provide information on the domestication process of Red Jungle Fowl chickens into Kampung chickens and their development to become layer and broiler line chickens.

Use of yard land as a source of nutrition and family economy during covid-19 pandemic

The period of the Covid-19 pandemic in Indonesia has not yet fully passed, so various strategies are needed that can minimize fluctuations in household food needs. Continuous optimization of yard land can provide nutritional fulfillment solutions for people both plant and animal and an increase in the PPH score by 11.90-20.46 percent. The description of the government’s strategy in agriculture through the Ministry of Agriculture of the Republic of Indonesia, that the system of cultivation of verticulture crops, hydroganic, aquaponics, hydroponics, tabulapot, and shelter houses is very easy for every household in Indonesia to do. People can use empty or derelict yard land integrated by suitable or cultivating livestock/fish to obtain family nutrition and economic resources. This review raises several models of household yard management that have been studied by previous researchers so that the community can imitate or apply directly in the yard.

Carriage of antimicrobial-resistant bacteria in a high-density informal settlement in Kenya is associated with environmental risk-factors

BackgroundThe relationship between antibiotic use and antimicrobial resistance varies with cultural, socio-economic, and environmental factors. We examined these relationships in Kibera, an informal settlement in Nairobi—Kenya, characterized by high population density, high burden of respiratory disease and diarrhea.MethodsTwo-hundred households were enrolled in a 5-month longitudinal study. One adult (≥ 18 years) and one child (≤ 5 years) participated per household. Biweekly interviews (n = 1516) that included questions on water, sanitation, hygiene, and antibiotic use in the previous two weeks were conducted, and 2341 stool, 2843 hand swabs and 1490 drinking water samples collected. Presumptive E. coli (n = 34,042) were isolated and tested for susceptibility to nine antibiotics.ResultsEighty percent of presumptive E. coli were resistant to ≥ 3 antibiotic classes. Stool isolates were resistant to trimethoprim (mean: 81%), sulfamethoxazole (80%), ampicillin (68%), streptomycin (60%) and tetracycline (55%). Ninety-seven households reported using an antibiotic in at least one visit over the study period for a total of 144 episodes and 190 antibiotic doses. Enrolled children had five times the number of episodes reported by enrolled adults (96 vs. 19). Multivariable linear mixed-effects models indicated that children eating soil from the household yard and the presence of informal hand-washing stations were associated with increased numbers of antimicrobial-resistant bacteria (counts increasing by 0·27–0·80 log10 and 0·22–0·51 log10 respectively, depending on the antibiotic tested). Rainy conditions were associated with reduced carriage of antimicrobial-resistant bacteria (1·19 to 3·26 log10 depending on the antibiotic tested).ConclusionsAntibiotic use provided little explanatory power for the prevalence of antimicrobial resistance. Transmission of resistant bacteria in this setting through unsanitary living conditions likely overwhelms incremental changes in antibiotic use. Under such circumstances, sanitation, hygiene, and disease transmission are the limiting factors for reducing the prevalence of resistant bacteria.

PRESUMABLE VARIANTS OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF FORTIFIED SETTLEMENTS OF THE DNIEPER-DON FOREST-STEPPE IN THE SCYTHIAN AGE

The intensive constructing of fortified settlements has turned the Dnieper-Don forest-steppe into a huge building site since the second half of the 6th century BCE. Mass development of fortifications has begun. Despite the local features related with topography and the availability of building materials, it is possible to distinguish some common vectors.
 The hillforts are traditionally perceived by researchers as static structures that have «frozen» in their original forms. Recent archaeological researches on the Tsyrkuny, Bilsk and Mokhnach hillforts in the Forest-Steppe, confirmed by the series of planographic observations on the other sites, allow us to classify some features of the development of fortified settlements.
 On the one hand, hillforts are formed on the basis of the unfortified settlements. Another part was initially built as fortification. Simple forms of defensive structures and poorly saturated cultural layer are the characteristic features of the fortifications of so-called «shelter-fortresses». The review of the sources allowed us to say that these sites are hillforts which, for some unknown reasons, were not settled down, capturing the first stage of the existence of fortifications, and their specific cultural layer cannot be the evidence of their belonging to certain cultural and economic type.
 The series of cross-sections of fortifications indicated the traces of restructuring and repairing of individual defensive lines throughout the entire period of their use. There are examples of expanding the area of the hillfort due to constructing of the new defensive structure as an extension of the main line or the creation of the fortification on the next cape that could be united by the common rampart. Also are known the examples of the special reduction of the area of hillfort. Similar situation is observed at the last stage of the Bilsk archaeological complex.
 In the Late Scythian period, a new type of monuments appeared on the territory of the Dnieper-Don Forest-Steppe, fortifications consisting of the acropolis (central fortified part) and large household yard.
 The current research allows to critically evaluate the popular models of classifications and the validity of their application for historical reconstructions.

Existing dairy buffalo production system under intensive condition in drought prone Dinajpur district of Bangladesh

An attempt was made to study the existing production and management system under intensive buffalo farming at Dinajpur district, a drought area of Bangladesh. Thirty two farmers were selected for this study. Direct interview with farmers, farm observation, community discussions and key informant interview (KII) were carried out to achieve the study. Two types of intensive system were found, namely – household yard (HYI) and completely intensive (CI). It was observed that in HYI system during the day time the animals were kept in yard and in confinement at night. On the contrary, animals were always remained in the shed under CI system. Feeding practice and utilization of feed resources were found different in HYI and CI farming. Showering of dairy buffaloes was observed as common practices in both production systems. All productive e.g. milk yield, lactation yield, lactation length and dry period and reproductive traits e.g. service per conception, age at first pregnancy, age at first calving and post/partum heat period under CI production system were found significantly (p≤0.05) better than that of the HYI systems. Significantly (p≤0.05) higher total solids and fat were found in milk from CI system compared to the HYI system, but in case of protein it was opposite. Natural breeding showed as more prominent practice than that of the artificial insemination in both farming systems. All the farmers practiced colostrum feeding and the calf mortality ranges from 7-8%. Regarding the primary health care, CI farmers were found to be more attentive than the HYI farmers. Most of the buffaloes showed heat from early night to early morning (78.7%). Problem matrix revealed that the top ranked order of problems were “inadequate knowledge”, “high price of feed” and “low milk price”. However, both systems were found as a profitable venture (benefit cost ratio1.33 in HYI and 1.25 in CI).
 Bangladesh J. of Livestock Res. 21-25: 103-117, 2018

Residential household yard care practices along urban-exurban gradients in six climatically-diverse U.S. metropolitan areas.

Residential land is expanding in the United States, and lawn now covers more area than the country’s leading irrigated crop by area. Given that lawns are widespread across diverse climatic regions and there is rising concern about the environmental impacts associated with their management, there is a clear need to understand the geographic variation, drivers, and outcomes of common yard care practices. We hypothesized that 1) income, age, and the number of neighbors known by name will be positively associated with the odds of having irrigated, fertilized, or applied pesticides in the last year, 2) irrigation, fertilization, and pesticide application will vary quadratically with population density, with the highest odds in suburban areas, and 3) the odds of irrigating will vary by climate, but fertilization and pesticide application will not. We used multi-level models to systematically address nested spatial scales within and across six U.S. metropolitan areas—Boston, Baltimore, Miami, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Phoenix, and Los Angeles. We found significant variation in yard care practices at the household (the relationship with income was positive), urban-exurban gradient (the relationship with population density was an inverted U), and regional scales (city-to-city variation). A multi-level modeling framework was useful for discerning these scale-dependent outcomes because this approach controls for autocorrelation at multiple spatial scales. Our findings may guide policies or programs seeking to mitigate the potentially deleterious outcomes associated with water use and chemical application, by identifying the subpopulations most likely to irrigate, fertilize, and/or apply pesticides.

A Community-Designed Play-Yard Intervention to Prevent Microbial Ingestion: A Baby Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene Pilot Study in Rural Zambia.

Malnourished children in low-income contexts usually suffer from environmental enteric dysfunction, which is damage to the intestines caused by chronic exposure to bacterial pathogens from feces hypothesized to contribute to stunting. Many intervention studies are piloting "Baby water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH)" to help rural farming families reduce infant and young children's (IYC's) exposure to human and free-range livestock feces. One proposed Baby WASH intervention is a play-yard, which consists of a baby-proofed structure (i.e., playpen) that caregivers can place IYC into while doing chores around the household yard. This article describes the pilot development and assessment of a community-built Baby WASH play-yard and a plastic play-yard intervention with 21 caregivers of 6- to 24-month-old IYC in rural Zambia. A modified Trials of Improved Practices approach was used to conduct three visits in each household: an introductory visit during which play-yard use was explained, a second visit consisting of a semi-structured interview and a session of behavioral counseling, and a final visit which included a 2-hour observation of play-yard use. The second and final visits also included 24-hour recalls, and all three visits included spot observations of play-yard use. Reports from caregivers suggest that the community-built play-yard protected IYC from ingesting soil and livestock feces. Barriers to intervention use included caregivers' WASH beliefs and practices, community reactions, and play-yard maintenance. More work is needed to examine the role of women's time use in their home environment, community reactions to the intervention, and the biological efficacy to reduce microbial ingestion.

Linking climate change to water provision: greywater treatment by constructed wetlands

Climate change has been felt to take place in Indonesia, causing the temperature to increase, additional drought with more moisture evaporates from rivers, lakes, and other bodies of water, and intense rainfall in a shorter rainy season. One of the major concerns is the risk of severe drought leading to water shortages. It will affect water supply and agriculture yields. As a country extremely vulnerable to the climate change, Indonesia must adapt to the serious environmental issues. This paper aims to offer an effort of water provision by recycling and reusing of greywater applying constructed wetland systems. The treated greywater is useful as water provision for non-consumptive uses. A recent experiment was conducted on a household yard using a single horizontal subsurface flow type of constructed wetland. The experiments demonstrated that the constructed wetland systems reduced effectively the pollutants of TSS, BOD, COD, and detergent to the level that are compliant with regulatory standards. The constructed wetland has been established for almost two years however the system still works properly.

Soils of the Summer Garden (Saint Petersburg)

Soils of the Summer Garden—the first regular (French-style) garden in Russia—are characterized on the basis of the materials of field study performed during reconstruction of the garden in 2005–2011. Most of these soils are filled soils—urbostratozems—underlain by the loamy sands deposited in the Littorina Sea or by the buried gray-humus gleyic and gleyed soils. Urbostratozems are characterized by the slightly acid reaction in the topsoil horizons and slightly alkaline reaction in the middle-profile and lower horizons. The humus content in them varies from 0.2 to 6.8%; in the buried gray-humus soils, it is within 1.3–2.6%. The soils of the garden are characterized by the high and extremely high content of available phosphorus and the predominantly low content of available potassium as determined by Machigin’s method. The bulk content of Pb in the surface soil horizons during the period of our study exceeded the maximum permissible concentration by 3–20 times; the bulk contents of Cu and Zn exceeded the tentative permissible concentrations for coarse-textured soils by 2–6 and 4–20 times, respectively. The main sources of the soil contamination by the heavy metals are the nearby highways. Local contaminated area was also found near the household yard.

Synthesis of Household Yard Area Dynamics in the City of San Juan Using Multi-Scalar Social-Ecological Perspectives

Urban sustainability discourse promotes the increased use of green infrastructure (GI) because of its contribution of important ecosystem services to city dwellers. Under this vision, all urban green spaces, including those at the household scale, are valued for their potential contributions to a city’s social-ecological functioning and associated benefits for human well-being. Understanding how urban residential green spaces have evolved can help improve sustainable urban planning and design, but it requires examining urban processes occurring at multiple scales. The interaction between social structures and ecological structures within the subtropical city of San Juan, the capital and the largest city of Puerto Rico, has been an important focus of study of the San Juan ULTRA (Urban Long-Term Research Area) network, advancing understanding of the city’s vulnerabilities and potential adaptive capacity. Here we provide a synthesis of several social-ecological processes driving residential yard dynamics in the city of San Juan, Puerto Rico, through the evaluation of empirical findings related to yard management decisions, yard area, and yard services. We emphasize the role of factors occurring at the household scale. Results are discussed within the context of shrinking cities using an integrated, multi-scalar, social-ecological systems framework, and consider the implications of household green infrastructure for advancing urban sustainability theory.

Phylogenetic and functional characteristics of household yard floras and their changes along an urbanization gradient

Urban areas are among the most heavily managed landscapes in the world, yet they harbor a remarkable richness of species. Private yards are common habitats in urban areas and are places where cultivated species manage to escape cultivation and become part of the spontaneous species pool. Yards are novel ecosystems where community assembly is driven by both natural and anthropogenic processes. Phylogenetic diversity and functional traits are increasingly recognized as critical to understanding processes of community assembly. Recent evidence indicates that urban areas may select more closely related plant species from the pool of regionally occurring species than do nonurban areas, and that exotic species are phylogenetically clustered within communities. We tested whether phylogenetic diversity and functional trait composition in privately managed yards change along a gradient of housing density in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul metropolis, Minnesota, USA, in accordance with these predictions. We also identified characteristics of the spontaneous yard flora by comparing its phylogenetic diversity and functional composition with the “natural‐areas” species pool represented by the flora of nearby Cedar Creek Ecosystem Science Reserve. Along the urbanization gradient, yards had more species per hectare in densely built regions than in lower‐density regions, but phylogenetic diversity and functional composition did not change with housing density. In contrast, in comparison to species in natural areas, yard species were more closely related to each other and functionally distinct: They were more often short‐lived, self‐compatible, and had higher specific leaf area than species of Cedar Creek. The high number of exotic yard species increased the yard flora's phylogenetic relatedness in comparison to species of Cedar Creek, causing a degree of phylogenetic homogenization within yards. The urban environment and homeowners' preferences select for trait attributes and phylogenetic lineages that can colonize and persist in yards. As yard species disperse beyond household boundaries, their functional attributes will affect ecosystem processes in urban environments and beyond, such as accelerating decomposition rates. Limited phylogenetic diversity may reduce the potential of ecosystems to respond to environmental changes. As cities continue to expand globally, understanding the impacts of yard management for biodiversity and ecosystem services becomes increasingly important.

Radvilų rūmai Dubingiuose

Dubingių piliavietė yra Molėtų rajone, Asvejos ežero pusiasalyje (anksčiau buvusioje saloje) greta Dubingių miestelio. 2003 m. buvo pradėti sistemingi Dubingių piliavietės archeologiniai tyrimai. 2004 m. ten buvusios bažnyčios vietoje buvo atrasti ir bendromis archeologų, antropologų, istorikų ir menotyrininkų pastangomis identifikuoti Radvilų palaikai. 2006–2008 m. visa buvusių bažnyčių vieta išsamiai ištirta, restauruoti, užkonservuoti ir pritaikyti turistams lankyti ištirtos evangelikų reformatų bažnyčios pamatai, įrengta nauja Radvilų palaidojimo kripta, jų palaikams pagamintas naujas, puošnus sarkofagas, taip pat granito antkapis su epitafiniu tekstu. 2009 m., po iškilmingo atsisveikinimo su surastais ir atpažintais Radvilų giminės atstovų palaikais Vilniuje, buv. Radvilų rūmuose, dabartiniame Lietuvos nacionaliniame dailės muziejuje, 2009 m. rugsėjo 5 d. jie buvo iškilmingai perlaidoti Dubingiuose. Perlaidojimo iškilmėse dalyvavo Lietuvos Respublikos vadovai, politikai, evangelikų reformatų bažnyčios atstovai, iš Lenkijos atvykę Radvilų giminės palikuonys – Mikalojus (Mikolaj) ir Motiejus (Maciej) Radvilos (Radziwill) ir gausiai susirinkusi Lietuvos visuomenė. Visi šie įvykiai buvo plačiai pristatyti visuomenei. Už Dubingių piliavietės ir Radvilų kapavietės mokslinius kompleksinius tyrimus (2003–2009 m.), jų sklaidą ir kolektyvinę monografiją „Radvilų tėvonija Dubingiuose“ prof. dr. A. Kuncevičiui, prof. dr. R. Jankauskui ir doc. dr. R. Laužikui 2009 m. paskirta Nacionalinė mokslo pažangos premija.