CONTEXT: Understanding the causes and consequences of land use and land cover change in drylands is crucial for global sustainability. Inner Mongolia consists of arid and semiarid ecosystems of global importance. OBJECTIVES: Our main goal was twofold: to review the patterns and drivers of land use and land cover change in Inner Mongolia, and to discuss ecological impacts and strategies for promoting landscape and regional sustainability. METHODS: We took an interdisciplinary and retrospective approach, based on historical records and remote sensing data.

Land use change can alter the ecological mechanisms that influence infectious disease exposure in animal populations. However, few studies have empirically integrated the environmental, spatial, and dietary patterns of wildlife epidemiology. We investigate how urbanization, habitat type, and dietary behavior are associated with coyote (Canis latrans) parasitism structure along a gradient of rural to urban land cover using multivariate redundancy analyses. Coyote fecal samples were collected in eight urban and six rural sites in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

Conflicts over land-grabs for industry, infrastructure and urbanization are on the rise in emerging economies. A slew of policy measures undergird such land deals in India but have encountered successful resistance from peasants and citizens groups. In Goa, resistance led to the revocation of the state's special economic zone (SEZ) policy and cancellation of all approved SEZs, many developed by prominent realty firms. As battle over three SEZs continues in the Supreme Court of India, there is hope that commons will be returned to local communities.

Meat production in South Africa is on an increasing trend. In South Africa rising wealth, urbanisation and a growing middle class means South Africans are eating more processed and high-protein foods, especially meat and dairy products. These foods are more land- and water-intensive than fruit, vegetable and grain crops, and further stress existing resources. Traditional agricultural farms cannot keep up with the increasing demand for animal products and these farms are being replaced with concentrated animal feeding operations.

The rapid urbanization of the world has significant ecological consequences that shape global biodiversity patterns. The plant communities now common in urban centers may represent new habitats with unique dynamics and the potential for highly modified ecological services. This study, joining extensive spatial and floristic data sets, examined current distribution patterns of non-native and native woody plant species in the New York metropolitan region, USA.

The effects of urban sprawl, at the expense of green natural areas, and the increasing anthropogenic pressure on these areas, lead to significant changes in land cover composition and structure. One of the threats and hazardous aspects of the urban sprawl is the disposal of construction site waste (CW) at the cities’ fringes and by the roadsides. The analysis of vegetation community structure over space and time in such areas may contribute to the understanding of community dynamics at the urban fringe following modern human intervention.

This study combines statistical methods and a Markov model to analyze interregional differences in land use in Beijing since 2003 and to predict land use changes for 2015 and 2019. First, the paper proposes a new concept, land use flow, which counts the change in area from the beginning to the end of the period of interest, to analyze changing land use patterns using statistical records from 2003 to 2011. Second, based on land use data between 2003, 2007 and 2011, this paper applied a Markov model to the prediction of Beijing land use in 2015 and 2019.

This paper assessed water management by households from three ethnic groups in two contrasting ecological settings (upland and lowland) in the Upper Ping River Basin in Northern Thailand. Important gender differences in the use and management of water were identified. Women are major users of water for agriculture in the uplands, but less so in the lowlands. In the lowlands irrigation is viewed as a masculine activity. In the uplands the role of women is more widely accepted, with women frequently being members of water user groups.

In recent years, the dependency of local public finance from various forms of taxation related to urban development and real estate has become increasingly evident in Italy. Nevertheless, to date no organic relationship seems to have been established between fiscal policies, on the one hand, and urban planning, on the other.

Changes in the usage of a particular urban or regional area have immediate effects on transportation, such as the development of a new multimodal terminal within a city, or the creation of a business park in its outskirts. Thus far, this correlation has been under-researched at a national level in Greece. As a result, its effects on trip generation and passenger flows has been underestimated at the planning level, leading to the implementation of projects that are neither viable nor sustainable.

The set of models available to predict land use change in urban regions has become increasingly complex in recent years. Despite their complexity, the predictive power of these models remains relatively weak. This paper presents an example of an alternative modeling framework based on the concept of a Markov chain. The model assumes that land use at any given time, which is viewed as a discrete state, can be considered a function of only its previous state.