In Latvia the construction of new transport infrastructure objects or reconstruction of existing ones increasingly generates necessity to expand an area of land under auto roads (right of way), as well as activates necessity of efficiency of real property expropriation process. In frame of research the correlation between expropriated land and total area of affected land parcels have been analyzed in two different projects of road development – project of new road and project of road reconstruction.

Old World climbing fern is one of the most invasive plants in natural areas of central and southern Florida. The fern spreads across the landscape by wind-blown spores and invades isolated and undisturbed habitats such as interior portions of the Florida Everglades. Land managers in Florida have reported that multiple herbicide treatments are required to control the fern, which could indicate that herbicides do not translocate throughout the plant in long-established populations.

Understanding historical and present gully development is essential when addressing the causes and consequences of land degradation, especially in vulnerable dryland environments. For Northern Ethiopia, several studies exist on the severity of gully erosion, yet few have quantified gully development. In this study, gully network and volume development were quantified over the period 1963–2010 for an area of 123km², representing the regional variability in environmental characteristics. Gully networks were mapped from small-scale aerial photographs and high-resolution satellite images.

One of the highest priority invasive species at both Yosemite and Sequoia and Kings Canyon national parks is Holcus lanatus L. (common velvetgrass), a perennial bunchgrass that invades mid-elevation montane meadows. Despite velvetgrass being a high priority species, there is little information available on control techniques. The goal of this project was to evaluate the short-term response of a single application of common chemical and manual velvetgrass control techniques. The study was conducted at three montane sites in Yosemite National Park.

It is now widely accepted that agricultural intensification drives the decline of biodiversity and related ecosystem services like pollination. Conservation management, such as agri-environment schemes (AES), has been introduced to counteract these declines, but in Western European countries these tend to produce mixed biodiversity benefits. Not much is known about the effects of AES in Central and Eastern European countries. We evaluated the effect of reduced stocking rates (0.5cow/ha vs. >1cow/ha) on bees and insect-pollinated plants in semi-natural pastures in Hungary.

Seeding rangeland following wildfire is a central tool managers use to stabilize soils and inhibit the spread of invasive plants. Rates of successful seeding on arid rangeland, however, are low. The objective of this study was to determine the degree to which water availability, invasive plant abundance, and seeding technology influence postfire seedling establishment. Across four fire complexes, whole plots were either seeded using a rangeland drill, seeded by hand where seeds could be placed at an exact depth, or left as unseeded controls.

Private landowners are often de facto stewards of biodiversity and ecosystem services. In California's Sierra Nevada foothills, ranchers frequently present the only defense against biological invasions in private rangelands. Although ranchers' land management goals (e.g., the desire to control invasive species) can be consistent with ecosystem protection, practical constraints often limit their success. Considerable research on the invasive weed, yellow starthistle (Centaurea solstitialis L.), has produced numerous control strategies.

The Mississippi Delta Management Systems Evaluation Area (MSEA) project was designed to assess the effects of land management practices on water quality in three small oxbow lake watersheds; Thighman (1338ha, 16ha lake); Beasley (915ha, 25ha lake); and Deep Hollow (132ha, 8ha lake).

While conflict-related dynamics are recognized as causes of land grabbing in Colombia, violent processes of exclusion and expropriation behind ‘greener’ projects are often seen as disconnected from them. The case of ecotourism in Tayrona National Natural Park makes it possible to explore the geographies of violence that sustain tourism in the area and their role in shaping everyday resource politics. This paper shows how green pretexts of paradisiacal spots in need of protection have contributed to privatization and dispossession.

CONTEXT: Increasing demands on land for agriculture have resulted in large-scale clearance and fragmentation of forests globally. In fragmented landscapes, species that tolerate or exploit the matrix will persist, while those that do not, frequently decline. Knowledge of matrix use is therefore critical to predicting extinction proneness of species in modified landscapes and defining the value of land for conservation management.