Indicator 15.1.1: Forest area as a proportion of total land area
 

Indicator 15.2.1: Progress towards sustainable forest management
 

Urgent climate challenges have triggered calls for radical, widespread changes in what we eat, pushing for the drastic reduction if not elimination of animal-source foods from our diets. But high-profile debates, based on patchy evidence, are failing to differentiate between varied landscapes, environments and production methods. Relatively lowimpact, extensive livestock production, such as pastoralism, is being lumped in with industrial systems in the conversation about the future of food.

The authors would like to change the authors’ affiliation in the recent published paper [...]

The conversion of natural forests to different land uses still occurs in various parts of Southeast Asia with poor records of impact on ecosystem services and biodiversity. We quantified such impacts on earthworm diversity in two communes of Quang Nam province, Vietnam. Both communes are situated within buffer zones of a nature reserve where remaining natural forests are under threat of continued conversion.

Within the ecosystem services framework, cultural ecosystem services (CES) have rarely been applied in state-wide surveys of protected area networks. Through a review of available data and online research, we present 22 potential proxy indicators of non-material benefits people may obtain from nature in Natura sites in Greece. Despite the limitations due to data scarcity, this first distance-based study screens a recently expanded protected area system (446 Natura sites) providing steps towards an initial CES capacity review, site prioritization and data gap screening.

Land-use and cover change (LUCC) impacts global environmental changes. Therefore, it is crucial to obtain cross-national level LUCC data that represents past and actual LUCC. As urban areas exhibit the most significant dynamics of the changes, accompanied by such processes as urban sprawl, it seems desirable to take into account LUCC information from such areas to acquire national level information. The paper analyses land-use changes (LUCs) in urban areas in Czechia, Poland, and Slovakia.

Maintaining good soil quality is crucial for the sustainability of agriculture. This study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of the visual soil assessment (VSA) method by testing it on two soil types and two agricultural management practices (AMP) (organic and integrated) that are considered to protect soil quality. We selected two farms with plots on two river terraces with different soil properties.

This study analyzed and evaluated the changes that occurred in two coastal wetlands, characterized by complex and fragmented landscape patterns, in Southern Italy, which were monitored over a period of seven years from 2007 to 2014. Furthermore, the performances of two Land Cover (LC) and habitat taxonomies, compared for their suitability in mapping the identified changes, were assessed. A post-mapping method was adopted to detect the habitat/LC changes that occurred in the study period.

Coal-waste dumps are an integral part of the environment and shape the landscape of coal basins. This study aimed to present an analysis of environmental changes in terms of land use and changes in vegetation on self-heating coal-waste dumps of different ages. Spatial and temporal analyses of land relief and land cover in the area of the investigated coal-waste dumps were performed. The investigated areas differed in size, shape, management, and land cover. Thermally active zones were identified.

The late-season extreme fire activity in Southcentral Alaska during 2019 was highly unusual and consequential. Firefighting operations had to be extended by a month in 2019 due to the extreme conditions of hot summer temperature and prolonged drought. The ongoing fires created poor air quality in the region containing most of Alaska’s population, leading to substantial impacts to public health. Suppression costs totaled over $70 million for Southcentral Alaska.