A modelling experiment is used to examine different land-use scenarios ranging from extreme deforestation (31% forest cover) to pristine (95% forest cover) conditions and related Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) schemes to assess whether a change in streamflow dynamics, discharge extremes and mean annual water balance of a 73.4-km² tropical headwater catchment in Costa Rica could be detected.

Policy initiatives in India, such as the Social Forestry Program and later the Joint Forest Management, were introduced for their co-benefits, including forest protection, employment opportunities, and added income for communities living in and around the forests. The evolution of these forest policies is critically reviewed. It is argued that India is perfectly positioned to benefit from climate change mitigation efforts, due to a rich, albeit chequered, history in forest management.

Phytodiversity is affected both by natural and anthropogenic factors and in Island ecosystems these impacts can devastate or reduce diversity, if the native vegetation is lost. In addition to rich species richness and diversity, Island systems are the sites of high endemism and any threat to these ecosystems will consequently lead to loss and extinction of species.

Previous studies have shown that collective property rights offer higher flexibility than individual property and improve sustainable community-based forest management. Our case study, carried out in the Beni department of Bolivia, does not contradict this assertion, but shows that collective rights have been granted in areas where ecological contexts and market facilities were less favourable to intensive land use. Previous experiences suggest investigating political processes in order to understand the criteria according to which access rights were distributed.

The rapid environmental changes occurring in the Brazilian Amazon due to widespread deforestation have attracted the attention of the scientific community for several decades. A topic of particular interest involves the assessment of the combined impacts of selective logging and forest fires. Forest disturbances by selective logging and forest fires may vary in scale, from local to global changes, mostly related to the increase of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere.

In order for carbon credits awarded for reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation of forests (REDD) to be effective, they need to be competitive with alternative land uses. In the case of Southeast Asia, oil palm cultivation is one of the most lucrative possible land uses. Existing mechanisms for awarding certified emission reductions (CERs) might not be adequately flexible to changing commodity prices or to meet the needs of landowners who heavily discount future returns from their land.

We present quantitative reconstructions of regional vegetation cover in north‐western Europe, western Europe north of the Alps, and eastern Europe for five time windows in the Holocene [around 6k, 3k, 0.5k, 0.2k, and 0.05k calendar years before present (bp)] at a 1° × 1° spatial scale with the objective of producing vegetation descriptions suitable for climate modelling.

Borneo has experienced heavy deforestation and forest degradation during the past two decades. In this study the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer was used to monitor land cover change in Borneo between 2002 and 2005 in order to assess the current extent of the forest cover, the deforestation rate and the role of fire. Using Landsat and ground observation for validation it was possible to discriminate 11 land cover classes. In 2002 57% of the land surface of Borneo was covered with forest of which 74% was dipterocarp and more than 23% peat swamp forest.

Frequent human activities and climate change in the karst region of southwest China since the 1950s have led to the investigation of response of runoff to climate and catchment properties. Runoff coefficient (Rc) as an expression variable of the catchment response to rainfall is important to describe runoff dynamics and to estimate available streamflow for utilization. In this study, the equations of Rc associated with its attributors of climate condition and catchment property were derived using the Budyko framework.

In the Brazilian Amazon, private land accounts for the majority of remaining native vegetation. Understanding how land‐use change affects the composition and distribution of biodiversity in farmlands is critical for improving conservation strategies in the face of rapid agricultural expansion. Working across an area exceeding 3 million ha in the southwestern state of Rondônia, we assessed how the extent and configuration of remnant forest in replicate 10,000‐ha landscapes has affected the occurrence of a suite of Amazonian mammals and birds.

This paper assesses strategic water availability and use under different development pathways on a basin scale using remote sensing (RS), geographical information systems (GIS) and a spatial water budget model (SWBM). The SWBM was applied to the Upper Ing Basin in northern Thailand to investigate the spatial and temporal variations in the location of streams and water yields from different parts of the basin. The base simulation was carried out for the years 1998–2007 using a DEM and actual land-use data at 100-m resolution.

Cloud forest in the Central Highlands of Guatemala provides important ecosystem services for the Q’eqchi’ Maya but has been disappearing at an increasing rate in recent decades. This research documents changes in cloud forest cover, explores some contributing factors to deforestation, and considers forest preservation and food security implications for Q’eqchi’ communities. We used a transdisciplinary framework that synthesized remote sensing/GIS analysis of land cover change, focus group dialogs, and surveys.