Large-scale land conversion for agriculture in Brazilian Amazonia is occurring at persistently high rates. Basin-wide net land use and land cover changes imply substantially different situations between distinct regions and states due to different agricultural policies. This research used eight landscape metrics to quantify and investigate the spatial patterns of cattle pasture and cropland throughout the states of Pará, Mato Grosso, Rondônia, and Amazonas.

Geospatial information of small mangrove islands in the Philippines is usually lacking. Such information is vital to monitor mangrove cover change and craft plans for their sustainable management. This study was conducted to provide some land use information about Banacon Island in Bohol province. The island is renowned for its vast mangrove plantations, community-initiated reforestation, and double reef system. To determine the different forest land uses therein, the study employed a maximum likelihood classification method using two Landsat images of different periods.

Accurately quantifying changes in soil carbon (C) stocks with land-use change is important for estimating the anthropogenic fluxes of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere and for implementing policies such as REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation) that provide financial incentives to reduce carbon dioxide fluxes from deforestation and land degradation. Despite hundreds of field studies and at least a dozen literature reviews, there is still considerable disagreement on the direction and magnitude of changes in soil C stocks with land-use change.

Geographic information systems and remote sensing technologies have become an important tool for visualizing conservation management and developing solutions to problems associated with conservation. When multiple organizations separately develop spatial data representations of protected areas, implicit error arises due to variation between data sets.

This paper analyses some key findings emerged in the study of the Mayan community of S. Jos Sinach, located in the Guatemalan Highlands. The research highlights how colonial and post-colonial legislation influences the actual land tenure and hampers the development of the community. Little land ownership together with high demographic growth lead to insufficient crop production. As a consequence, human pressure on S. Jos forest and seasonal migration to sugar cane plantations of the Pacific Coast is carried out by householders in order to ensure subsistence to their families.

It is urgent in science and society to address climate change and other sustainability challenges such as biodiversity loss, deforestation, depletion of marine fish stocks, global ill-health, land degradation, land use change and water scarcity. Sustainability science (SS) is an attempt to bridge the natural and social sciences for seeking creative solutions to these complex challenges. In this article, we propose a research agenda that advances the methodological and theoretical understanding of what SS can be, how it can be pursued and what it can contribute.

Land use and land cover change (LUCC) models frequently employ different accessibility measures as a proxy for human influence on land change processes. Here, we simulate deforestation in Peruvian Amazonia and evaluate different accessibility measures as LUCC model inputs. We demonstrate how the selection, and different combinations, of accessibility measures impact simulation results. Out of the individual measures, time distance to market center catches the essential aspects of accessibility in our study area.

We used land‐cover maps and active fire detection based on satellite imagery to evaluate the rates and spatial distribution of peatland deforestation in Southeast Asia from 1990 to 2010. Over this time period, the proportion of forest cover in the peatlands of Peninsular Malaysia, Sumatra, and Borneo fell from 77% to 36%. After two decades of extensive deforestation (31 000 km²; 4.9% yr⁻¹) strongly associated with fire activity, Sumatra has been left with just 28% of its historical forested peatlands.

Community assembly rules have been extensively studied, but its association with regional environmental variation and land use history remains largely unexplored. Land use history might be especially important in Mediterranean forests, considering their historical deforestation and recent afforestation.

The Belgian climate policy is formulated at the federal level, requiring cooperation between regional and federal administrations. Around a fifth of the total area of Belgium is covered by forests. Around 80/ of the productive forests are in the Walloon region. Reported values for land use change and forestry categories give a potential of 2,057 kt eq. CO2 per year. Given the existing regional forest inventories (RFI): RFI1 for 1984 and RFI2 for 1999, an estimate has been made to consolidate reported data.

SUMMARYIn this article we discuss the two largest reforestation and forest conservation programmes in China, the Natural Forest Protection Programme (NFPP), and the Slope Land Conversion Programme (SLCP, also called Grain for Green), introduced in 1998. The NFPP reformed the state forest enterprises to reduce deforestation, increase the amount of forestland to be protected, and increase the sustainability of logging, while improving their financial viability. The SLCP reformed collective (i.e.