1. Economic forces are recognized as an important driving factor behind current biodiversity losses. This study investigates whether such factors have been important in determining one measure of biodiversity change over the 'long run'- in our case, 400 years - for upland sites in Scotland. 2. A combination of palaeoecological, historical and economic methods is used to construct and then analyse a database of factors contributing to changes in plant diversity over time for 11 upland sites. 3.

Growing recognition that periodic fire is critical for maintaining the health of many rangeland ecosystems and concerns over more frequent catastrophic wildfires have focused attention on prescribed fire as an ecosystem restoration and fuel management tool. In states such as Texas, where most land is privately owned, the level of success of outreach activities aimed at expanding the adoption of specific management practices is influenced by the extent to which landowners' perceptions, interests, and concerns regarding such practices are addressed.

The land-cover/use change dynamics in Manica Province in Mozambique are analysed, based upon interpretation of LANDSAT images, to assess trends and highlight management suggestions considering current policies in place that include the ownership and participation of local communities in natural resources management and the recognition of traditional ownership systems. Applying an object-oriented approach to compare the year 2004 with 1990, one observes that land-cover/use changes are not distributed evenly in the province.

The need of Fulanis for secured access to land is a long time policy challenge in Nigeria but progress in achieving this is far from being made. Meanwhile, access to land, of Fulanis that are settled among the Yorubas in southwest Nigeria, is dependent on land rights regimes operating in Yoruba communities. The study examines the nature of land rights in southwest Nigeria and how these provide access to Fulanis for their livelihoods activities. The study hypothesised that land access and land rights relate significantly to livelihood security of the Fulanis.

Over the last 130 years, patterns of land use in central Australia have altered dramatically, and so too have fire regimes and fire management objectives. Although Aboriginal people still have tenure over large parts of the landscape, their lifestyles have changed. Most Aboriginal people now live in towns and settlements and, although fire management is still culturally important, the opportunities for getting out on country to burn are constrained. Large parts of the landscape are now used for pastoral production.

Worldwide, fruit-tree-based agroforestry systems have been only modestly studied, although they are common on smallholder farms. Such systems based on apple (Malus spp.), peach (Prunus spp.), and pear (Pyrus spp.) are common in northwest Guatemala as low intensity homegardens and are known to increase total farm productivity in communities where farm size is a limiting factor.

Agistment is the practice of temporarily moving stock between properties, and is used by pastoralists both to strategically develop their enterprises and as a response to environmental heterogeneities such as variation in rainfall. This paper considers the agistment market in the northern Australian rangelands using the 'market failure framework'. This form of economic analysis identifies failings in a market, thus, provides a rigorous basis for designing interventions intended to improve market performance.