Tropical countries face special specific problems in implementing sustainable forest management (SFM). In many countries, questions are raised on whether tropical forests should be publicly, commonly or privately owned and managed in order to enhance sustainability. Other debates also focus on whether small-scale enterprises are better positioned than large-scale industrial concessions to reduce poverty and attain sustainable management.

In this study, classical, geostatistical methods and a geographical information system have been used to identify soil properties including soil organic carbon (SOC), total nitrogen (total N), salt content (SC) and soil moisture (SM), and their spatial variation as well as their relationships with groundwater, land use, and soil texture. The data came from 36 soil samples from 0 to 20cm depth, and 36 groundwater samples in the Tikanlik Oasis on the lower reaches of the Tarim River, northwest China.

Nature conservation is a very important issue in the sustainability assessments and spatial planning context. Knowledge of the suitability of the land to behave as an ecological corridor thus provides very significant input to land-use planning. Nature conservation and land-use planning are by their nature spatial problems.

Understanding factors that drive the choice of breeding habitats for birds is important for species management and conservation. We addressed this question in the case of the European Roller Coracias garrulus, an endangered species listed in Annex I of the European Union directive for bird conservation. For secondary hole-nesting birds, such as rollers, the breeding micro- and macrohabitat selection may rely on the location of the nest hole in a tree and its immediate surrounding environment as well as the larger scale foraging habitat.

The distribution of invasive plants across a landscape is largely governed by disturbance invoking anthropogenic land-use practices and propagule pressure. However, spatial variability associated with anthropogenic disturbances and propagule pressure is seldom used to develop distribution models of invasive plants. This study makes use of large-scale survey data to develop a spatially explicit predictive model for the invasive wetland plant—purple loosestrife.

Environmental land degradation is a major impediment to the utilization of land in many arid and semi-arid regions of the World and is a major issue in the East Nile Delta (END), Egypt. Waterlogging and salt-affected soil problems have serious implications for irrigated areas leading to socio-economic and agricultural development problems.

Soil erosion is one of the major threats to the conservation of soil and water resources in the Danjiangkou Reservoir region (DRR), China. In order to describe the areas with high soil erosion risk (SER) and to develop adequate erosion prevention measures, SER in the DRR was assessed by integrating the CORINE model with GIS and RS.

Increasing numbers of horses are being kept for sports and leisure purposes in peri-urban areas throughout the Western world. This expansion of the equestrian sector represents a multifunctional transition, with new production of rural goods and services and increasing influence on land use. In Sweden, the number of horses has increased from 70,000 to approximately 300,000 over the last 30 years. This increase is putting pressure on the traditional Right of Public Access, an old custom allowing the public to walk, cycle or ride on private or state-owned property.

In a river, the flow directly affects the physical and chemical properties of its water, with further consequences for aquatic biota. Land use practices and vegetation cover play a significant role in the water cycle. The wide-spread perception of forest cover, in terms of hydrology is that forests may reduce water runoff: although in rare instances the contrary has been reported. Water runoff varies seasonally and depends on the forest tree species. By no means can it be considered constant over large expanses of area or for various rainfall patterns.

Ecosystem services (ESs) are gaining ground in urban policy as a key to attaining sustainable cities. However, strategic and land-use planners need operational and accessible tools to better understand the consequences of policy and planning measures. Based on a study of the City of Stockholm and its surrounding region, we argue that spatially explicit land-use mapping is a good base for modeling and visualizing the supply of urban ESs provided by different patterns of Service Providing Units.

Land degradation is a process negatively affecting environmental sustainability and requires permanent monitoring for understanding its nonlinear trajectories of change over time and space. Environmental sustainability is linked to a theoretical definition of dynamic balance among various components contributing to the ecosystem quality and functioning.

Research was conducted in northern Namibia to document and investigate the value of local knowledge connected with soil and land management, in particular with respect to the cultivation of grain legumes. Participatory approaches were used to describe and map the indigenous land unit (ILU) classification system in four villages. Soil and crop analyses indicated good correspondence between conventional productivity assessments and farmers' more qualitative descriptions of the ILUs.