@article{CardenasMolinerHontoriaetal.2018,
  author    = {Cardenas, Aura and Moliner, Ana and Hontoria, Chiquinquira and Schernthanner, Harald},
  title     = {Analysis of land-use/land-cover changes in a livestock landscape dominated by traditional silvopastoral systems},
  series = {International Journal of Remote Sensing},
  volume    = {39},
  journal   = {International Journal of Remote Sensing},
  number    = {14},
  publisher = {Routledge, Taylor \& Francis Group},
  address   = {Abingdon},
  issn      = {0143-1161},
  doi       = {10.1080/01431161.2018.1463116},
  pages     = {4684 -- 4698},
  year      = {2018},
  abstract  = {Remote sensing, which is a common method to examine land-use/land-cover (LULC) changes, could be useful in the analysis of livestock ecosystem transformations. In the last two decades, before Landsat images were free, developing countries could not afford monitoring through remote sensing because of the high cost of acquiring satellite imagery and commercial software. However, Landsat time series nowadays allows the characterization of changes in vegetation across large areas over time. The aim of this study is to analyse the LULC changes affecting forest frontiers and traditional silvopastoral systems (TSPS) in a representative livestock area of Nicaragua. Nearly cloud-free Landsat scenes - a Landsat 5 Thematic Mapper (TM) scene from 1986 and a Landsat 8 Operational Land Imager (OLI) scene from 2015 - have been the data sets used in the study. A process chain following a four-step definition of the remote-sensing process was conceptually developed and implemented based onfree open source software components and by applying the random forest (RF) algorithm. A conceptual LULC classification scheme representing TSPS was developed. Although the imagery shows a heterogeneous surface cover and mixed pixels, it is possible to achieve promising classification results with the RF algorithm with out-of-the-bag (OOB) errors below 13\% for both images along with an overall accuracy level of 85.9\% for the 2015 subset and 85.2\% for the 1986 subset. The classification shows that from 1986 to 2015 (29years) the intervened secondary forest (ISF) increased 2.6 times, whereas the degraded pastures decreased by 34.5\%. The livestock landscape in Matiguas is in a state of constant transformation, but the main changes head towards the positive direction of tree-cover recovery and an increased number of areas of natural regeneration.},
  language  = {en}
}
@incollection{CardenasSchernthanner2022,
  author    = {C{\´a}rdenas, Aura and Schernthanner, Harald},
  title     = {The role of livestock wastes in clean energy},
  series = {Handbook of waste biorefinery},
  booktitle = {Handbook of waste biorefinery},
  editor    = {Jacob-Lopes, Eduardo and Queiroz Zepka, Leila and Costa Depr{\´a}, Mariany},
  publisher = {Springer},
  address   = {Cham},
  isbn      = {978-3-031-06561-3},
  doi       = {10.1007/978-3-031-06562-0_12},
  pages     = {337 -- 343},
  year      = {2022},
  abstract  = {Agricultural production worldwide has been increasing in the last decades at a very fast pace and with it the waste generation. Livestock activities are one of the largest producers of residues in the agricultural sector and contribute greatly to climate change. The present chapter gives an introduction and an in-depth analysis of the waste management of livestock for the conversion in a circular agriculture and economy based on research and experience in the sector conducted in the last decades. The conversion of animal waste into energy generation is an opportunity for farmers to obtain additional economic benefits, while contributing to the environment by preventing the release of GHGs into the atmosphere. The use of animal waste for energy generation through anaerobic digestion is a progressive technique and is being widely accepted in Europe, where Germany is the leading country in the use of biogas plants for energy production among others in the European Union. Economically speaking, the livestock industry faces the challenge of converting its production into a clean and more profitable production. The goal of this chapter is to analyze the economic benefit as well as the environmental contribution and future challenges of the use of livestock waste in the biorefineries sector from different perspectives, based on an intensive literature review. This review is accompanied by a geospatial analysis component, mapping biogas reactor hotspots and clusters in Germany, by means of methods of spatial statistics as analysis methods as kernel density estimations (KDE) and K-means clustering, based on volunteer geographic data. The applied methods easily can be transferred to other regions and allow a quick macroscopic overview over existing biogas reactors; furthermore, an identification of cluster and hotspots with a high biogas potential, that in a subsequent step can be analyzed in depth in larger scales.},
  language  = {en}
}