We assessed the extension of natural habitat conversion into croplands and grazing lands in subtropical NW Argentina and its impact on two key ecosystem functional attributes. We quantified changes in remotely sensed surrogates of aboveground net primary production (ANPP) and seasonality of carbon gains. Both functional attributes are associated with intermediate ecosystem services sensuFisher et al. (2009). Deforestation was estimated based on photointerpretation of Landsat imagery.

A recent policy response to halting global forest deforestation and degradation, and any resulting greenhouse gas emissions is REDD+, which also includes the role of conservation, sustainable management of forests and enhancement of forest carbon stocks. Although still in its infancy, the success of REDD+ will depend significantly on whether it can be economically viable and if any resulting payments are sufficient to cover the opportunity cost plus any transaction cost.

Since the 1950s, with national policy changes and socio-economic development, the habitat of the giant pandas has altered accordingly. This can also be inferred from the population changes of the giant pandas as reported in three national surveys. Thus, monitoring the changes in giant panda habitat and then taking appropriate action would be a valuable contribution to giant panda protection. In this paper, using existing habitats and potential habitats of the giant pandas as the study area, multitemporal remotely sensed data from the three national surveys are used as the data source.

The distributed hydrology soil vegetation model (DHSVM) is applied in the 107 km² Nam Mae Rim watershed (NMRW) in northern Thailand. Simulations using land cover scenarios for 1989 and 2002, extreme deforestation, and forest, each run with and without roads, show that roads have very small effects on the mean water fluxes, but significantly increase peak flows for all land cover scenarios. The magnitude of the road effect on peak flow depends on the land cover context in which the roads are placed.

Industrial agricultural plantations are a rapidly increasing yet largely unmeasured source of tropical land cover change. Here, we evaluate impacts of oil palm plantation development on land cover, carbon flux, and agrarian community lands in West Kalimantan, Indonesian Borneo. With a spatially explicit land change/carbon bookkeeping model, parameterized using high-resolution satellite time series and informed by socioeconomic surveys, we assess previous and project future plantation expansion under five scenarios.

Urban land-cover change threatens biodiversity and affects ecosystem productivity through loss of habitat, biomass, and carbon storage. However, despite projections that world urban populations will increase to nearly 5 billion by 2030, little is known about future locations, magnitudes, and rates of urban expansion. Here we develop spatially explicit probabilistic forecasts of global urban land-cover change and explore the direct impacts on biodiversity hotspots and tropical carbon biomass.

After long periods of deforestation, forest transition has occurred globally, but the causes of forest transition in different countries are highly variable. Conservation policies may play important roles in facilitating forest transition around the world, including China. To restore forests and protect the remaining natural forests, the Chinese government initiated two nationwide conservation policies in the late 1990s – the Natural Forest Conservation Program (NFCP) and the Grain-To-Green Program (GTGP).

Peru contains the fourth largest area of tropical forest in the world, yet faces a worsening net deforestation rate. In 2008, to address this threat, the national government announced its ambition to reduce deforestation to zero by 2021. Via literature review and key informant interviews, this study assess two years of REDD+ readiness preparations according to six readiness functions. A mixed pattern of outcomes emerge. Although significant advances were made by various local-level initiatives, national-level efforts continue to struggle.

The productivity of semi-arid rangelands on the Arabian Peninsula is spatially and temporally highly variable, and increasing grazing pressure as well as the likely effects of climatic change further threatens vegetation resources. Using the Al Jabal al Akhdar mountains in northern Oman as an example, our objectives were to analyse the availability and spatial distribution of aboveground net primary production (ANPP) and the extent and causes of vegetation changes during the last decades with a remote sensing approach.

The transition of land between forest and grassland has important implications for greenhouse gas emissions and removals. In this paper, we use New Zealand as a case study to comprehensively assess, compare and quantify the net climate change impact of shifting land use between temperate forest and grassland. Forests store large amounts of carbon in their biomass, whereas grasslands contain relatively little biomass carbon. These biomass changes tend to dominate the carbon balance under land-use change.

Land cover changes affect local surface energy balances by changing the amount of solar energy reflected, the magnitude and duration over which absorbed energy is released as heat, and the amount of energy that is diverted to non-heating fluxes through evaporation. However, such local influences often are only crudely included in climate modeling exercises, if at all. A better understanding of local land conversion dynamics can serve to inform inputs for climate models and increase the role for land use planning in climate management policy.