Most desertification research focuses on degradation assessments without putting sufficient emphasis on prevention and mitigation strategies, although the concept of sustainable land management (SLM) is increasingly being acknowledged. A variety of already applied conservation measures exist at the local level, but they are not adequately recognised, evaluated and shared, either by land users, technicians, researchers, or policy makers. Likewise, collaboration between research and implementation is often insufficient.

The environment and the natural resource base have been severely degraded in Alxa League, western Inner Mongolia, China, over the past half-century. This study reports surveys that reveal farmers' perceptions of environmental degradation and their adoption of improved management practices in this poor and remote desert region. Surveys were made in villages that had been engaged in a large environmental rehabilitation and management project [Alxa League environmental rehabilitation and management project (ALERMP)] and those that had not.

In article is devoted to problems of land relations in agriculture, which provides an analysis of the nature this dynamics in recent decades, assess the rationality of land use in the context of globalization and offers an innovative solution for forming a model of land relations in agriculture. The authors is a traced the cyclic processes in the history of the development of land and property relations, assesses the present stage of the next cycle and are historical parallels in socio-economic development.

Soil microbes play major agricultural functions such as the transformation of soil organic matter into plant fertilizers. The effects of agricultural practices on soil microbes at the scale of plots, from meters to hectare, are well documented. However, the impact at soil microscale, from micrometers to millimeters, is much less known. Therefore, we studied bacterial community density and diversity at microscale in crop soil under grassland, tillage, and no tillage.

Dominant plant species are often used as indicators of site potential in forest and rangelands. However, subspecies of dominant vegetation often indicate different site characteristics and, therefore, may be more useful indicators of plant community potential and provide more precise information for management. Big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata Nutt.) occurs across large expanses of the western United States.

In Latvia the construction of new transport infrastructure objects or reconstruction of existing ones increasingly generates necessity to expand an area of land under auto roads (right of way), as well as activates necessity of efficiency of real property expropriation process. In frame of research the correlation between expropriated land and total area of affected land parcels have been analyzed in two different projects of road development – project of new road and project of road reconstruction.

Old World climbing fern is one of the most invasive plants in natural areas of central and southern Florida. The fern spreads across the landscape by wind-blown spores and invades isolated and undisturbed habitats such as interior portions of the Florida Everglades. Land managers in Florida have reported that multiple herbicide treatments are required to control the fern, which could indicate that herbicides do not translocate throughout the plant in long-established populations.

Understanding historical and present gully development is essential when addressing the causes and consequences of land degradation, especially in vulnerable dryland environments. For Northern Ethiopia, several studies exist on the severity of gully erosion, yet few have quantified gully development. In this study, gully network and volume development were quantified over the period 1963–2010 for an area of 123km², representing the regional variability in environmental characteristics. Gully networks were mapped from small-scale aerial photographs and high-resolution satellite images.

One of the highest priority invasive species at both Yosemite and Sequoia and Kings Canyon national parks is Holcus lanatus L. (common velvetgrass), a perennial bunchgrass that invades mid-elevation montane meadows. Despite velvetgrass being a high priority species, there is little information available on control techniques. The goal of this project was to evaluate the short-term response of a single application of common chemical and manual velvetgrass control techniques. The study was conducted at three montane sites in Yosemite National Park.

It is now widely accepted that agricultural intensification drives the decline of biodiversity and related ecosystem services like pollination. Conservation management, such as agri-environment schemes (AES), has been introduced to counteract these declines, but in Western European countries these tend to produce mixed biodiversity benefits. Not much is known about the effects of AES in Central and Eastern European countries. We evaluated the effect of reduced stocking rates (0.5cow/ha vs. >1cow/ha) on bees and insect-pollinated plants in semi-natural pastures in Hungary.