Pantanal is one of the largest wetlands in the world. In its southern portion, it hosts significant beef cattle ranching, having a herd of 4,832,200 head of cattle in 2016 (IBGE, 2018). Yet it presents intra-regional differences and complementarities. This article discusses such current territory definition, focusing on cattle ranching in Pantanal, considering its forms of occupation, agents, and its intra-regional flow of cattle.

Texas savanna experienced substantial woody plant encroachment during the past several decades, resulting in habitat fragmentation and species loss. A detailed map of woody plant abundance and distribution in this area is critically needed for management purpose. This study endeavors to map the fractional woody cover of Texas savanna at Landsat scale (30 m) in an affordable way. The top of atmosphere reflectance, thermal bands, and NDVI layer of Web-Enabled Landsat Data (WELD) of 2012 were used as predictors, together with mean annual precipitation.

In economics, land has been traditionally assumed to be a fixed production factor, both in terms of quantity supplied and mobility, as opposed to capital and labor, which are usually considered to be mobile factors, at least to some extent. Yet, in the last decade, international investors have expressed an unexpected interest in farmland and in land-related investments, with the demand for land brusquely rising at an unprecedented pace.

This paper uses the tripartite place attachment framework to examine six rural parishes across Estonia and Latvia. Existing analyses/frameworks on participatory processes often neglect the complexity of relationships that rural residents have to their local environments.

The article takes hydro-development schemes in the Upper Blue Nile Basin of Ethiopia as an example to discuss the suitability and shortcomings of nexus approaches for the analysis of complex socio-ecological transformations. Based on critical theoretical debates and extensive field research in Ethiopia, the paper broadens the nexus perspective by integrating the three analytical dimensions of time, space, and power.

The value of Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) for informing resource management has long been recognized; however, its incorporation into ecosystem services (ES) assessments remains uncommon. Often “top-down” approaches are utilized, depending on “expert knowledge”, that are not relevant to local resource users. Here we propose an approach for combining participatory methods with remote sensing to provide a more holistic understanding of ES change. Participatory mapping in focus group discussions identified TEK regarding what ES were present, where, and their value to communities.

Increasing population and rural to urban migration are accelerating urbanization globally, permanently transforming natural systems over large extents. Modelling landscape change over large regions, however, presents particular challenges due to local-scale variations in social and environmental factors that drive land change.

Spatially explicit assessments of ecosystem services (ES) potentials are a key component in supporting a sustainable land use management. The ES matrix method is a commonly used approach as it allows for a comparably fast, comprehensible and accessible ES assessment. As it is often based on land use/land cover data (LULC) with no spatial variability, a main critique is that the results fail to assess spatial variability at landscape levels, which limits the reliability of the outputs for spatial planning applications.

Although the way in which vegetation phenology mediates the feedback of vegetation to climate systems is now well understood, the magnitude of these changes is still unknown. A thorough understanding of how the recent shift in phenology may impact on, for example, land surface temperature (LST) is important. To address this knowledge gap, it is important to quantify these impacts and identify patterns from the global to the regional scale.

The understanding of relationships between ecosystem services and the appropriate spatial scales for their analysis and characterization represent opportunities for sustainable land management. Bundles have appeared as an integrated method to assess and visualize consistent associations among multiple ecosystem services. Most of the bundle assessments focused on a static framework at a specific spatial scale.

This paper explores the impact of large-scale agricultural investment on household livelihood outcomes among smallholder farmers in Kilombero Valley, Tanzania. The study used qualitative and quantitative data from a sample of 376 households. Quantitative data analysis employed independent samples t-test and multiple linear regressions. There were associations in livelihood outcomes and household headship (p < 0.05).

Artisanal and small-scale mining affects the quality and components of the environment in the Batouri area in different ways. Activities interfere with air, soil, water, fauna and forest resources. This study seeks to assess the impacts of mining on the environment using a combination of spatial analysis, questionnaires administration and Leopold’s grid of impact assessment. The impacts of mining on physical environment include air pollution by emission of dusts and fumes from engines, soil and subsoil degradation by earthworks and release of wastewater containing chemicals from companies.