In most developing countries, there has been a long-standing conflict between nature conservation and local demands for natural resources. This paper reports a study on the preference of local people for different incentives that could help increase local support for nature conservation. It also explores the possibilities for designing a sustainable incentive strategy. Data were obtained from personal interviews conducted with community members around the Okwangwo Division of the Cross River National Park in south-east Nigeria, and were analysed using a multinomial logit model.

This paper explores the concept of homegardens and their potential functions as strategic elements in land-use planning, and adaptation and mitigation to climate change in Sri Lanka.

This paper highlights results of a multidisciplinary and multi-analytical study of Holocene archaeological soils around Cecita Lake (Sila massif, Calabria, southern Italy), which represents a typical upland Mediterranean environment. It is focused on assessment of climatic and environmental changes that took place since late Neolithic to Roman times, trying to discriminate natural from anthropogenic signals.

During the 1990's community-based forest management gained momentum in Nepal. This study systematically evaluates the impacts that this had on land cover change and other associated aspects during the period 1990–2010 using repeat photography and satellite imagery in combination with interviews with community members.

This study examines forest change processes, within the framework of forest transition theory (FTT), using Mississippi (USA) as a case study. The aim is to evaluate the assumption and theoretical basis of FTT with quantitative data, and to propose changes in forest management policy as a potential driver for reforestation. We compiled a number of historical records, geospatial data, and time series forest mapping products to reconstruct the last 100 years of forest trajectory. Forest changes are studied in relation to changes in society, over a range of temporal and spatial scales.

Shifting cultivation systems have been blamed as the primary cause of tropical deforestation and are being transformed through various forms of conservation and development policies and through the emergence of new markets for cash crops. Here, we analyze the outcomes of different policies on land use/land cover change (LUCC) in a traditional, shifting cultivation landscape in the Atlantic Forest (Brazil), one of the world’s top biodiversity hotspots.

Background: It is essential that systems for measuring changes in carbon stocks for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) projects are accurate, reliable and low cost.

Substitution of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) default methodology by country-specific activity data is recommended for improved estimation of baseline soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks and their changes. In the Republic of Ireland (ROI), previous studies focused either predominantly on grassland or on all land cover types but were depth-limited. To improve the accuracy, Tier 2 approaches are proposed by the IPCC.

Mexico’s 1992 agrarian counter-reforms opened up the country’s vast network of common property regimes, known as ejidos, to the possibility of privatization. This study investigates the relationship between dynamic common property regimes and deforestation in the wake of policy reform among eight ejidos in southeastern Mexico. Using institutional analyses, land use/land cover change (LULCC) analyses and a Forest Dependency Index, we examine how land tenure arrangements relate to land use and forest cover change patterns.

In the Andean region of South America, understanding communities’ water perceptions is particularly important for water management as many rural communities must decide by themselves if and how they will protect their micro-watersheds and distribute their water. In this study we examine how Water User Associations in the Eastern Andes of Colombia perceive water scarcity and the relationship between this perception and observed climate, land use, and demographic changes. Results demonstrate a complex relationship between perceptions and observed changes.

Multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA), also termed as multi-criteria assessment (MCA), is a powerful policy appraisal tool but as Stirling (2006) has suggested, it can be used both for opening up and closing down policy discourses. Our analysis of MCA in addressing a conflict between state forestry and indigenous Sámi reindeer herding in Upper Lapland, Finland, illustrates MCA's potential in promoting open discussion about policy alternatives and their consequences, and also its limitations in highly controversial policy processes.

Carbon-based forest conservation requires the establishment of ‘reference emission levels’ against which to measure a country or region's progress in reducing their carbon emissions. In East Africa, landscape-scale estimates of carbon fluxes are uncertain and factors such as deforestation poorly resolved due to a lack of data. In this study, trends in vegetation cover and carbon for East Africa were quantified using moderate-resolution imaging spectroradiometer (MODIS) land cover grids from 2002 to 2008 (500-m spatial resolution), in combination with a regional carbon look-up table.