Payments for ecosystem services (PES) have recently attracted attention as a means for aligning the interests of landowners and society by remunerating forest owners for the goods and services their forests produce. As PES schemes are being extensively adopted around the world, questions related to their institutional dimensions, as well as the role of different actors and contextual factors in PES initiation, design and implementation, arise.

In the Brazilian Amazon, insecure property rights are among the main causes of land conflicts and deforestation. Through an in-depth empirical case study in Maranhao in the Eastern Amazon, this research analyzes how distorted agrarian, forest and environmental policies, laws and regulations originated insecure property rights not only over land, but also over timber, which allied to social and political factors, such as uneven distribution of land and strong organization of landless peasants, led to land conflicts and deforestation.

The maximum clearcut size and green-up period is important for land managers adhering to voluntary and regulatory guidelines. Therefore the impact of actual and hypothetical clearcut size restrictions is a concern for forest landowners who manage land and intend to practice forestry for profit. In this research, the effect of a 97.1 ha (240 ac) clearcut size constraint with a green-up period of 2-yrs is assessed for forest landowners with different forest land sizes, ownership patterns, and age class distributions.

The recent appreciation in agricultural land values across the United States has raised a number of important questions for farmers, farmland owners, lenders, and policy makers. While traditional economic theory suggests that farmland values are determined by the discounted stream of expected returns, previous research has shown that agricultural land values are actually driven by a complex set of factors.

Recent increases in farm real estate values in the United States have increased farm equity. By exploiting periods of high and low appreciation that caused various increases in wealth for farmers owning various shares of their farmland, we examine whether U.S. grain farmers expanded their acres harvested or acres owned in response to an increase in their land wealth. We find that land wealth had little effect on farm size. However, for similarly-sized farms, a larger ownership share (10 percentage points) led to an increase in the growth of land owned (2 percentage points).

Increasing numbers of horses are being kept for sports and leisure purposes in peri-urban areas throughout the Western world. This expansion of the equestrian sector represents a multifunctional transition, with new production of rural goods and services and increasing influence on land use. In Sweden, the number of horses has increased from 70,000 to approximately 300,000 over the last 30 years. This increase is putting pressure on the traditional Right of Public Access, an old custom allowing the public to walk, cycle or ride on private or state-owned property.

Agricultural landscapes provide the essential ecosystem service of food to growing human populations; at the same time, agricultural expansion to increase crop production results in forest fragmentation, degrading many other forest‐dependent ecosystem services. However, surprisingly little is known about the role that forest fragments play in the provision of ecosystem services and how fragmentation affects landscape multifunctionality at scales relevant to land management decisions.

Farmer-to-farmer outreach was used within a targeted watershed to promote the installation of conservation buffers. In this program called “FarmLink”, four farmers/landowners were employed part-time as “advisors” and trained by University of Nebraska-Lincoln Extension, Natural Resources Conservation Service, and Natural Resources District personnel. Topics included basic buffer design and benefits, availability of incentive programs, and sales techniques. These individuals then contacted their neighbors to explain the need for and benefits of buffers and other conservation practices.

Land tenure has long been considered a critical factor in determining the adoption and long-term maintenance of agroforestry practices. Empirical evidence from non-US settings has consistently shown that secure land tenure is positively associated with agroforestry adoption. In the US, over 40% of private agricultural land is farmed by someone other than the owner.

Increased urbanization in many societies is having a negative impact on vitality of rural areas. To maintain the vitality of these areas governments have employed a variety of policies, some of which are designed to facilitate innovation and enhance landowner innovativeness. However, little research has investigated the antecedents to landowner innovativeness and whether innovativeness positively impacts economic performance in this setting.

The effectiveness of stormwater management strategies is a key issue affecting decision making on urban water resources management, and so proper monitoring and analysis of pilot studies must be addressed before drawing conclusions. We performed a pilot study in the suburban Shepherd Creek watershed located in Cincinnati, Ohio to evaluate the practicality of voluntary incentives for stormwater quantity reduction on privately owned suburban properties. Stream discharge and precipitation were monitored 3years before and after implementation of the stormwater management treatments.