Despite decades of attention by conservationists, deforestation remains a critical problem in Latin America, particularly in agricultural frontiers like the Amazon and the lowlands of Central America. The limited impact of conservation initiatives in such regions stems partly from a poor understanding of the socioeconomic and land use dynamics that typify frontiers. Moreover, conservation organizations tend to disregard the economic and policy factors at various scales that contribute to deforestation pressures in developing countries.

Effective management of small expanding populations is aided by the availability of reliable estimates of distribution, as well as by demographic characteristics such as population density, genetic diversity and sex ratio. The range of the black bear Ursus americanus in the southeastern United States is expanding to include areas from which it has been extirpated for more than a century. Lack of baseline demographic data in recently reoccupied areas leaves little information on which to base emerging management needs.

About 95% of the rice grown in Sri Lanka is direct-seeded (wet- and dry-seeding). The average rough rice yield in irrigated predominantly direct-seeded dry zone (DZ) is about 5.0tha⁻¹and in the wet zone (WZ) it is about 3.3tha⁻¹. However the average realizable yield in DZ and WZ are 8tha⁻¹ and 5tha⁻¹ respectively. A survey was conducted to understand the cultural practices, farmers' perceptions and the reasons for the yield gap in direct-seeded rice culture in Sri Lanka.

Since the year 2000 with the help of the specialists from the Land Consolidation Division of the Danish Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Fisheries, pilot land consolidation projects have been started. Besides the simple territorial readjustment of land parcels, these projects aimed to encourage local initiatives as well as to develop the land consolidation mechanism as an essential tool for the development of the integrated rural development including environment protection, development of infrastructure together with the creation of competitive farms.

Rural landscape of the southern part of Lithuania as well as its use is analysed in the article. The defects of land reclamation system cause the rise of deserted lands. Dampness and bagged up soils are a large obstacle for the proper use of deserted lands. One more reason is lands of low productivity. The third reason of the rise of deserted lands is the shortage and default of perspective farmers and agricultural companies who are able to lease and cultivate land.

Although the transmission line network is relatively comprehensive in many countries, there are new needs to develop the networks due to the increased consumption of energy and new decentralized energy sources. However, compared with other large-scale infrastructure in the landscape, there has been relatively little research on the perceptions of transmission lines. Consequently, the aim of this study was to analyse how transmission lines are perceived in comparison with other landscape elements and how the perceptions of existing transmission lines differ from those concerning new lines.

The concept of land consolidation is new in Latvia. Its main tasks are to eliminate land fragmentation and to facilitate farms of optimal size. One of the most important preconditions of land consolidation is forming of optimal size farmland plots in property and use, and land fragmentation, which has a major impact on both the operating conditions and other rural development processes. Land fragmentation affects not only land management, but it also increases transport costs.

Vegetable farming systems (VFSs) in Indonesia have a long tradition in the upland areas and were characterised by high productivity and competitiveness. However, in the last decade, the profitability of VFSs has been challenged by several issues including lower productivity, higher domestic prices, various export barriers, an increase in the volume of imported vegetables and environmental deterioration.

Land ownership in Alaska includes a mosaic of federally managed units. Within its agency’s context, each unit has its own management strategy, authority, and resources of conservation concern, many of which are migratory animals. Though some units are geographically isolated, many are nevertheless linked by paths of abiotic and biotic flows, such as rivers, air masses, flyways, and terrestrial and aquatic migration routes.

Monitoring natural resources in Alaskan national parks is challenging because of their remoteness, limited accessibility, and high sampling costs. We describe an iterative, three-phased process for developing sampling designs based on our efforts to establish a vegetation monitoring program in southwest Alaska. In the first phase, we defined a sampling frame based on land ownership and specific vegetated habitats within the park boundaries and used Path Distance analysis tools to create a GIS layer that delineated portions of each park that could be feasibly accessed for ground sampling.

This paper examines the implications of adopting catchment scale approaches for the sustainable management of land and water systems. Drawing on the findings of an interdisciplinary study examining how farm management practices impact on the loss of faecal indicator organisms (FIOs) and potential pathogens from land to water, the paper argues that the overwhelming focus on integration at the catchment level may risk ignoring the sub-catchment as an equally appropriate unit of hydrological analysis.

This research is an empirical examination of institutional developments in Afro-Colombian communities that have occurred since the change in the property rights regime in 1991. I surveyed 82 local leaders of 42 communities to understand whether these communities have succeeded in designing and implementing rules to manage their collective land and its resources. I found that the new property regime has not replaced individuals' informal land holdings, which are still managed as de facto individual private property and are traded in the informal land market.