Prior studies exploring the quantitative relationship between landscape structure metrics and the ecological condition of receiving waters have used a variety of sampling units (e.g., a watershed, or a buffer around a sampling station) at a variety of spatial scales to generate landscape metrics resulting in little consensus on which scales best describe land-water relationships. Additionally, the majority of these studies have focused on freshwater systems and it is not clear whether results are transferable to estuarine and marine systems.

Moderate-grained data may not always represent landscape structure in adequate detail which could cause misleading results. Certain metrics have been shown to be predictable with changes in scale; however, no studies have verified such predictions using independent fine-grained data.Our objective was to use independently derived land cover datasets to assess relationships between metrics based on fine- and moderate-grained data for a range of analysis extents.

We show empirically using panel data at the plot and farm level and based on a model incorporating supervision costs, risk, credit-market imperfections and scale-economies associated with mechanization that small-scale farming is inefficient in India. Larger farms are more profitable per acre, more mechanized, less constrained in input use after bad shocks, and employ less per-acre labor than small farms.

Process controls on water, sediment, nutrient, and organic carbon exports from the landscape through runoff are not fully understood. This paper provides analyses from 446 sites worldwide to evaluate the impact of environmental factors (MAP and MAT: mean annual precipitation and temperature; CLAY and BD: soil clay content and bulk density; S: slope gradient; LU: land use) on annual exports (RC: runoff coefficients; SL: sediment loads; TOCL: organic carbon losses; TNL: nitrogen losses; TPL: phosphorus losses) from different spatial scales.

Relating spatial patterns to ecological processes is one of the central goals of landscape ecology. The patch-corridor-matrix
model and landscape metrics have been the predominant approach to describe the spatial arrangement
of discrete elements (“patches”) for the last two decades. However, the widely used approach of using landscape
metrics for characterizing categorical map patterns is connected with a number of problems. We aim at stimulating
further developments in the field of the analysis of spatio-temporal landscape patterns by providing both a critical

Includes ’small-holder’ farmers as potential beneficiaries of agrarian reform in South Africa, a class-analytic approach to small-scale farming, accumulation ’from above’ and ’from below’, policy implications.

A critical assessment of 22 years of land reform policies in South Africa. Concludes that land reform has been captured by elites. The most powerful voices are those of ‘emerging’ black capitalist farmers (often with non-farm incomes), traditional leaders, large-scale white commercial farmers and agribusiness corporates, who are all benefiting more than the poor.

Includes large-scale concessions and oil palm growing in Liberia, international attempts to qualify big land concessions, the FAO’s Voluntary Guidelines, national law and its relevance, the national legal framework concessions in Liberia, Sime Darby and Golden Veroleum in conflict.

Paper reviews the South African experience with land reform, and land redistribution in particular, up to the end of 2005. Looks at various aspects of market-based land reform – landowner veto on participation in land reform; payment of ‘market prices’ for land; self-selection of beneficiaries; focus on ‘commercial’ forms of production; prominent role for the private sector in provision of credit, extension, and other services.

Focuses on tenure reform (as a necessary first step); securing rights for farmworkers and labour tenants; slow progress and key challenges in restitution; redistribution; what is to be done? Offers an overview of the key challenges facing land reform and suggests a number of ways in which the current reform programme can be accelerated to fight poverty and inequality. Argues there is urgent need for a comprehensive, transparent, participatory process and for widespread public debate, especially in the light of events in Zimbabwe.

An analysis of the gendered impacts of commercial pressures on land, based on a review of the literature and ILC’s country case studies, including Ethiopia, Zambia, Rwanda and Benin. In the present global context of increasing pressures, women are both likely to be affected differently to men by large-scale land deals and disproportionately more likely to be negatively affected than men because they are generally vulnerable as a group.

Includes trends prospects and policies, biofuel production and land access in Tanzania – laws, policies and procedures, impacts of biofuel investments on land access. Findings and implications cover production models and their impacts on local land access; risks of land alienation – long term impacts; limitations of compensation; use of third-party mediators?; large-scale transfers of land for biofuels are most problematic; linking policy with practice; shortcomings of biofuel guidelines; alternative land holding structures and production models.