This paper explores how environmental policy is implemented and enacted through the management of technical and institutional knowledge at the local level. We use the conservation of the freshwater pearl mussel in the River Esk, North Yorkshire, UK, as an empirical case study to examine the interaction that takes place between professionals from different institutional and disciplinary backgrounds as they come together to work on a common problem. We focus on two aspects: the way in which an institutional context was created; and the interaction between the professionals involved.

The spatio-temporal variation underlies and complicates studies related to earth surface processes. Subsequent to our previous studies reporting the temporal invariability of sediment concentration, this study further reports the spatial invariability of sediment concentration or the flow–sediment relationship in the hilly part of the Chinese Loess Plateau. The dense channel network dissects this area into numerous sub-watersheds, which are composed of entire slopes (a combination of the hill slope and the valley side slope).

Segmentation of landholders has rarely been undertaken in the natural resource management literature, yet it provides a rich set of information for planners to improve targeting of public investment and resources. Segmentation allows the identification of segments of landholders that are ‘investment ready’, their location and characteristics, and the land conservation incentive programmes that they would be most willing to participate in. Segments that are not investment ready are also identified, and the instances where they reside in critical ecological habitats.

High biodiversity of Estonian semi-natural grasslands can only be maintained through continuous management. One option for the usage of biomass from these areas is bioenergy production, if both the herbaceous biomass yield and the chemical characteristics of the cut meet the needs. In 2007 the largest average annual biomass yield per area was achieved in floodplain meadows (5.7tdrymass/ha), which also have the highest potential for biomass production among Estonian semi-natural grasslands (more than 113,000tdrymass).

The art and science of developing effective policies and practices to enhance sustainability and adapt to new climate conditions on rangelands and savannas are typically founded on addressing the “average” or “typical” resource user. However, this assumption is flawed since it does not appreciate the extent of diversity among resource users; it risks that strategies will be irrelevant for many people and ignored, and that the grazing resource itself will remain unprotected. Understanding social heterogeneity is vital for effective natural resource management.

Livestock often concentrate grazing in particular regions of landscapes while partly or wholly avoiding other regions. Dispersing livestock from the heavily grazed regions is a central challenge in grazing land management. Position data gathered from GPS-collared livestock hold potential for increasing knowledge of factors driving livestock aggregation patterns, but advances in gathering the data have outpaced advancements in analyzing and learning from it.

This article investigates how cultural landscapes (especially the potentially limiting organically evolved landscape) can be used as a research framework to evaluate historical mining heritage sites in Australia and New Zealand. We argue that when mining heritage sites are read as evolved organic landscapes and linked to the surrounding forested and hedged farmland, the disruptive aspects of mining are masked. Cultural landscape is now a separate listing for World Heritage sites and includes associative and designed landscape as well as those that have evolved organically.

Lactation can have significant costs to individual and population-level productivity because of the high energetic demands it places on dams. Because the difference in condition between lactating and dry Rocky Mountain elk (Cervus elaphus nelsoni) cows tends to disappear as nutritional quality rises, the magnitude of that difference could be used to relate condition to habitat quality or the capability of habitats to support elk.

The effects of land management and disturbance on ecosystem performance (i.e. biomass production) are often confounded by those of weather and site potential. The current study overcomes this issue by calculating the difference between actual and expected ecosystem performance (EEP) to generate ecosystem performance anomalies (EPA). This study aims to delineate and quantify average EPA from 2000–2009 within the Greater Platte and Upper Colorado River Basins, USA.

In the conditions of the Republic of Belarus there was shown the necessity of detection and recording of socially-significant sights and brand objects in the process of managing land resources. There was examined the classification of land plots and objects of real estate, which appear to be territory brands. There were determined the main approaches to the formation of the system of such objects on the basic level of state management.