The Montado ecosystem is an important agri-forestry system in Portugal, occupying about 8% of the... more The Montado ecosystem is an important agri-forestry system in Portugal, occupying about 8% of the total area of the country. However, this biodiverse ecosystem is threatened due to factors such as shrub encroachment. In this context, the development of tools for characterizing and monitoring Montado areas is crucial for their conservation. In this study, we developed a deep convolutional neural network algorithm based on the U-net architecture to identify regions with trees, shrubs, grass, bare soil, or other areas in Montado areas using high-resolution RGB and near-infrared orthophotos (with a spatial resolution of 25 cm) from seven experimental sites in the Alentejo region of Portugal (six used for training/validation and one for testing). To optimize the model’s performance, we performed hyperparameter tuning, which included adjusting the number of filters, dropout rate, and batch size. The best model achieved an overall classification performance of 0.88 and a mean intersection ...
Agent-based models (ABMs) are particularly suited for simulating the behaviour of agricultural ag... more Agent-based models (ABMs) are particularly suited for simulating the behaviour of agricultural agents in response to land use (LU) policy. However, there is no evidence of their widespread use by policymakers. Here, we carry out a review of LU ABMs to understand how farmers’ decision-making has been modelled. We found that LU ABMs mainly rely on pre-defined behavioural rules at the individual farmers’ level. They prioritise explanatory over predictive purposes, thus limiting the use of ABM for policy assessment. We explore the use of machine learning (ML) as a data-driven alternative for modelling decisions. Integration of ML with ABMs has never been properly applied to LU modelling, despite the increased availability of remote sensing products and agricultural micro-data. Therefore, we also propose a framework to develop data-driven ABMs for agricultural LU. This framework avoids pre-defined theoretical or heuristic rules and instead resorts to ML algorithms to learn agents’ behavi...
Indoor Vertical Farms (IVF) can contribute to urban circular food systems by reducing food waste ... more Indoor Vertical Farms (IVF) can contribute to urban circular food systems by reducing food waste and increasing resource use efficiency. They are also known for high energy consumption but could potentially be improved by integration with buildings. Here, we aim to quantify the environmental performance of a prospective building-integrated urban farm. We performed a Life Cycle Assessment for a unit installed in a university campus in Portugal, producing broccoli microgreens for salads. This technology integrates IVF, product processing and Internet of Things with unused space. Its environmental performance was analyzed using two supply scenarios and a renewable energy variation was applied to each scenario. Results show that the IVF system produces 7.5 kg of microgreens daily with a global warming potential of 18.6 kg CO2e/kg in the case of supply direct on campus, or 22.2 kg CO2e/kg in the case of supply off campus to retailers within a 10-km radius. Consistently in both scenarios,...
Results of useful exergy accounting at the societal (i.e. national or global) level are potential... more Results of useful exergy accounting at the societal (i.e. national or global) level are potentially important for policy purposes, such as the development of energy or GHG emission scenarios, and the determination of the major energy inefficiencies (and thus improvement potentials) within a country. However, useful exergy societal studies commonly differ in their accounting methodology, which affect the results. Such differences include the starting point (primary or final energy), the method used to compute primary exergy, the classes of useful exergy categories considered, the definition of second law efficiencies, the inclusion (or not) of exergy inputs related with non-energy uses, and the inclusion or not of muscle (and human) work. To help bring a more consistent approach to useful exergy accounting at the societal level, we review the methodologies of past studies, highlighting the differences and discussing their advantages and disadvantages in each case. Based on this, we s...
This research explains what happened to agricultural soil fertility during the “Campanha do Trigo... more This research explains what happened to agricultural soil fertility during the “Campanha do Trigo” (Wheat Campaign) in Portugal, which began in 1929. It is commonly understood that the excessive expansion of wheat crops during the fascist “Estado Novo” (New State) regime led to the degradation of soils in the southern half of Portugal. This relationship, however, has never been questioned before. This article extends the narrative back into the last half of the nineteenth century in search of the origin of processes that gradually intensified throughout the country. In short, expansion of the cultivated area in association with the inadequate intensification of crop rotations over about 80 years, from the 1870s onward, including in non-wheat areas, strongly accentuated soil erosion and made organic fertilization progressively less effective. These transformations were only partially offset by chemical fertilization. Nitrogen and phosphorus were the key factors in this historical pro...
International Journal of Sustainable Energy Planning and Management, 2014
With the use of electricity being increasingly concentrated in urban areas it becomes important t... more With the use of electricity being increasingly concentrated in urban areas it becomes important to understand the influence of cities, and their size, on patterns of consumption. We tested the application of the scaling law to the Portuguese urban system, across time and municipalities, with special focus on the sectoral consumption of electricity from 1994 until 2009. Results showed that the scaling law is not suitable to describe a city’s electricity consumption throughout the years. In the cross-sectional results, the scaling law proved to be applicable for all cases, although the scaling exponent varies both in time and across sectors. For the residential sector the decrease of the scaling exponent might be related with the electrificationof the energy system and with the increase of average income. For the service sector the scaling exponent was fairly constant, above 1, during the 16 years of the study. The largest variation was found for the industrial sector whose scaling ex...
Abstract Sustainable food systems face trade-offs between demands of low environmental pressures ... more Abstract Sustainable food systems face trade-offs between demands of low environmental pressures per unit area and requirements of increasing production. Organic farming has lower yields than conventional agriculture and requires the introduction of nitrogen (N) fixing legumes in crop rotations. Here we perform an integrated assessment of the feasibility of future food systems in terms of land and N availability and the potential for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Results show that switching to 100% organic farming without additional measures results in N deficiency. Dietary change towards a reduced share of animal products can aggravate N limitations, which can be overcome through the implementation of a combination of agroecological, circular economy and decarbonization strategies. These measures help to recycle and transfer N from grassland. A vegan diet from fully decarbonized conventional production performs similarly as the optimized organic scenario. Sustainable food systems hence require measures beyond the agricultural sector.
Abstract Agroforestry landscapes provide multiple benefits, including the capacity for storing ca... more Abstract Agroforestry landscapes provide multiple benefits, including the capacity for storing carbon, thus contributing to climate change mitigation. In Portugal, the agroforestry system known as Montado (Dehesa in Spain) is heavily dependent on national and European financial incentives. Lack thereof, or insufficient level, often results in abandonment or intensification (increasing grazing pressure) of management practices. Carbon storage is a stock externality of agroforestry systems currently not targeted by CAP agri-environmental mechanisms. Hence, our work is aimed at assessing and valuing net carbon flow in agroforestry systems to guide a Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) scheme targeting Montado landscapes in Portugal. We have assessed and valued net carbon flow for different land-use change scenarios (abandonment, maintenance, or grazing intensification), focusing on cork and holm oak-dominated Montado and using biomass equations. We applied different explicit carbon pricing mechanisms (market value, social cost, and shadow price) to determine a range of values suitable as financial rewards in the proposed PES scheme. For cork-oak Montado, our results suggest both abandonment and grazing intensification are linked to carbon emissions (−1.5 and −1.6tCO2eq.ha-1.year-1, respectively), whereas maintaining Montado results in carbon sequestration (+0.9tCO2eq.ha-1.year-1). Similar results were found for holm oak. Based on this biophysical assessment, we estimate that farmers willing to maintain Montado systems are eligible to be rewarded between 106 and 149€.ha-1.year-1 through a PES scheme for the increase in carbon storage they are providing. Incorporating the value of ecosystem services into direct financial rewards could ensure agroforestry systems are kept under sustainable management and continue to supply multiple benefits to society.
Demonstrating economic benefits generated by protected areas is often pointed out as pivotal for ... more Demonstrating economic benefits generated by protected areas is often pointed out as pivotal for supporting decision-making. We argue in this paper that the concept of ecosystem services (ES), defined as the benefits humans derive from ecosystems, provides a consistent framework to approach this issue as it links ecosystem functioning and benefits, including benefits with economic value. This study aimed at providing evidence on how to bring the economic value of protected areas to the decision-making process and contributing to extend current EU Member States' experience in mapping and assessing the economic value of ES in the context of the EU Biodiversity Strategy to 2020 (Action 5). In doing so, we used the Natural Park of Serra de S. Mamede (PNSSM), located in the Alentejo NUTS II region, as a case study. We followed a three-step approach to pursue our goals, entailing stakeholders' engagement for selecting relevant ES (through a participatory workshop), biophysical map...
A large scale contingent valuation survey is conducted among residents in one of the largest rive... more A large scale contingent valuation survey is conducted among residents in one of the largest river basins in Portugal to estimate the non-market benefits of the ecosystem services associated with implementation of the European Water Framework Directive (WFD). Statistical tests of public willingness to pay's sensitivity to scope and scale are carried out. Decreasing marginal willingness to pay (WTP) is found when asking respondents to value two water quality improvement scenarios (within sample comparison), from current moderate water quality conditions to good and subsequently excellent ecological status. However, insensitivity to scale is found when asking half of the respondents to value water quality improvements in the estuary only and the other half in the whole basin (between sample comparison). Although respondents living outside the river basin value water quality improvements significantly less than respondents inside the basin, no spatial heterogeneity can be detected within the basin between upstream and downstream residents. This finding has important implications for spatial aggregation procedures across the population of beneficiaries living in the river basin to estimate its total economic value based on public WTP for the implementation of the WFD.
The Montado ecosystem is an important agri-forestry system in Portugal, occupying about 8% of the... more The Montado ecosystem is an important agri-forestry system in Portugal, occupying about 8% of the total area of the country. However, this biodiverse ecosystem is threatened due to factors such as shrub encroachment. In this context, the development of tools for characterizing and monitoring Montado areas is crucial for their conservation. In this study, we developed a deep convolutional neural network algorithm based on the U-net architecture to identify regions with trees, shrubs, grass, bare soil, or other areas in Montado areas using high-resolution RGB and near-infrared orthophotos (with a spatial resolution of 25 cm) from seven experimental sites in the Alentejo region of Portugal (six used for training/validation and one for testing). To optimize the model’s performance, we performed hyperparameter tuning, which included adjusting the number of filters, dropout rate, and batch size. The best model achieved an overall classification performance of 0.88 and a mean intersection ...
Agent-based models (ABMs) are particularly suited for simulating the behaviour of agricultural ag... more Agent-based models (ABMs) are particularly suited for simulating the behaviour of agricultural agents in response to land use (LU) policy. However, there is no evidence of their widespread use by policymakers. Here, we carry out a review of LU ABMs to understand how farmers’ decision-making has been modelled. We found that LU ABMs mainly rely on pre-defined behavioural rules at the individual farmers’ level. They prioritise explanatory over predictive purposes, thus limiting the use of ABM for policy assessment. We explore the use of machine learning (ML) as a data-driven alternative for modelling decisions. Integration of ML with ABMs has never been properly applied to LU modelling, despite the increased availability of remote sensing products and agricultural micro-data. Therefore, we also propose a framework to develop data-driven ABMs for agricultural LU. This framework avoids pre-defined theoretical or heuristic rules and instead resorts to ML algorithms to learn agents’ behavi...
Indoor Vertical Farms (IVF) can contribute to urban circular food systems by reducing food waste ... more Indoor Vertical Farms (IVF) can contribute to urban circular food systems by reducing food waste and increasing resource use efficiency. They are also known for high energy consumption but could potentially be improved by integration with buildings. Here, we aim to quantify the environmental performance of a prospective building-integrated urban farm. We performed a Life Cycle Assessment for a unit installed in a university campus in Portugal, producing broccoli microgreens for salads. This technology integrates IVF, product processing and Internet of Things with unused space. Its environmental performance was analyzed using two supply scenarios and a renewable energy variation was applied to each scenario. Results show that the IVF system produces 7.5 kg of microgreens daily with a global warming potential of 18.6 kg CO2e/kg in the case of supply direct on campus, or 22.2 kg CO2e/kg in the case of supply off campus to retailers within a 10-km radius. Consistently in both scenarios,...
Results of useful exergy accounting at the societal (i.e. national or global) level are potential... more Results of useful exergy accounting at the societal (i.e. national or global) level are potentially important for policy purposes, such as the development of energy or GHG emission scenarios, and the determination of the major energy inefficiencies (and thus improvement potentials) within a country. However, useful exergy societal studies commonly differ in their accounting methodology, which affect the results. Such differences include the starting point (primary or final energy), the method used to compute primary exergy, the classes of useful exergy categories considered, the definition of second law efficiencies, the inclusion (or not) of exergy inputs related with non-energy uses, and the inclusion or not of muscle (and human) work. To help bring a more consistent approach to useful exergy accounting at the societal level, we review the methodologies of past studies, highlighting the differences and discussing their advantages and disadvantages in each case. Based on this, we s...
This research explains what happened to agricultural soil fertility during the “Campanha do Trigo... more This research explains what happened to agricultural soil fertility during the “Campanha do Trigo” (Wheat Campaign) in Portugal, which began in 1929. It is commonly understood that the excessive expansion of wheat crops during the fascist “Estado Novo” (New State) regime led to the degradation of soils in the southern half of Portugal. This relationship, however, has never been questioned before. This article extends the narrative back into the last half of the nineteenth century in search of the origin of processes that gradually intensified throughout the country. In short, expansion of the cultivated area in association with the inadequate intensification of crop rotations over about 80 years, from the 1870s onward, including in non-wheat areas, strongly accentuated soil erosion and made organic fertilization progressively less effective. These transformations were only partially offset by chemical fertilization. Nitrogen and phosphorus were the key factors in this historical pro...
International Journal of Sustainable Energy Planning and Management, 2014
With the use of electricity being increasingly concentrated in urban areas it becomes important t... more With the use of electricity being increasingly concentrated in urban areas it becomes important to understand the influence of cities, and their size, on patterns of consumption. We tested the application of the scaling law to the Portuguese urban system, across time and municipalities, with special focus on the sectoral consumption of electricity from 1994 until 2009. Results showed that the scaling law is not suitable to describe a city’s electricity consumption throughout the years. In the cross-sectional results, the scaling law proved to be applicable for all cases, although the scaling exponent varies both in time and across sectors. For the residential sector the decrease of the scaling exponent might be related with the electrificationof the energy system and with the increase of average income. For the service sector the scaling exponent was fairly constant, above 1, during the 16 years of the study. The largest variation was found for the industrial sector whose scaling ex...
Abstract Sustainable food systems face trade-offs between demands of low environmental pressures ... more Abstract Sustainable food systems face trade-offs between demands of low environmental pressures per unit area and requirements of increasing production. Organic farming has lower yields than conventional agriculture and requires the introduction of nitrogen (N) fixing legumes in crop rotations. Here we perform an integrated assessment of the feasibility of future food systems in terms of land and N availability and the potential for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Results show that switching to 100% organic farming without additional measures results in N deficiency. Dietary change towards a reduced share of animal products can aggravate N limitations, which can be overcome through the implementation of a combination of agroecological, circular economy and decarbonization strategies. These measures help to recycle and transfer N from grassland. A vegan diet from fully decarbonized conventional production performs similarly as the optimized organic scenario. Sustainable food systems hence require measures beyond the agricultural sector.
Abstract Agroforestry landscapes provide multiple benefits, including the capacity for storing ca... more Abstract Agroforestry landscapes provide multiple benefits, including the capacity for storing carbon, thus contributing to climate change mitigation. In Portugal, the agroforestry system known as Montado (Dehesa in Spain) is heavily dependent on national and European financial incentives. Lack thereof, or insufficient level, often results in abandonment or intensification (increasing grazing pressure) of management practices. Carbon storage is a stock externality of agroforestry systems currently not targeted by CAP agri-environmental mechanisms. Hence, our work is aimed at assessing and valuing net carbon flow in agroforestry systems to guide a Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) scheme targeting Montado landscapes in Portugal. We have assessed and valued net carbon flow for different land-use change scenarios (abandonment, maintenance, or grazing intensification), focusing on cork and holm oak-dominated Montado and using biomass equations. We applied different explicit carbon pricing mechanisms (market value, social cost, and shadow price) to determine a range of values suitable as financial rewards in the proposed PES scheme. For cork-oak Montado, our results suggest both abandonment and grazing intensification are linked to carbon emissions (−1.5 and −1.6tCO2eq.ha-1.year-1, respectively), whereas maintaining Montado results in carbon sequestration (+0.9tCO2eq.ha-1.year-1). Similar results were found for holm oak. Based on this biophysical assessment, we estimate that farmers willing to maintain Montado systems are eligible to be rewarded between 106 and 149€.ha-1.year-1 through a PES scheme for the increase in carbon storage they are providing. Incorporating the value of ecosystem services into direct financial rewards could ensure agroforestry systems are kept under sustainable management and continue to supply multiple benefits to society.
Demonstrating economic benefits generated by protected areas is often pointed out as pivotal for ... more Demonstrating economic benefits generated by protected areas is often pointed out as pivotal for supporting decision-making. We argue in this paper that the concept of ecosystem services (ES), defined as the benefits humans derive from ecosystems, provides a consistent framework to approach this issue as it links ecosystem functioning and benefits, including benefits with economic value. This study aimed at providing evidence on how to bring the economic value of protected areas to the decision-making process and contributing to extend current EU Member States' experience in mapping and assessing the economic value of ES in the context of the EU Biodiversity Strategy to 2020 (Action 5). In doing so, we used the Natural Park of Serra de S. Mamede (PNSSM), located in the Alentejo NUTS II region, as a case study. We followed a three-step approach to pursue our goals, entailing stakeholders' engagement for selecting relevant ES (through a participatory workshop), biophysical map...
A large scale contingent valuation survey is conducted among residents in one of the largest rive... more A large scale contingent valuation survey is conducted among residents in one of the largest river basins in Portugal to estimate the non-market benefits of the ecosystem services associated with implementation of the European Water Framework Directive (WFD). Statistical tests of public willingness to pay's sensitivity to scope and scale are carried out. Decreasing marginal willingness to pay (WTP) is found when asking respondents to value two water quality improvement scenarios (within sample comparison), from current moderate water quality conditions to good and subsequently excellent ecological status. However, insensitivity to scale is found when asking half of the respondents to value water quality improvements in the estuary only and the other half in the whole basin (between sample comparison). Although respondents living outside the river basin value water quality improvements significantly less than respondents inside the basin, no spatial heterogeneity can be detected within the basin between upstream and downstream residents. This finding has important implications for spatial aggregation procedures across the population of beneficiaries living in the river basin to estimate its total economic value based on public WTP for the implementation of the WFD.
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Papers by Tiago Domingos