Large areas of land are presently cleared of their natural cover, endangering the worldwide ecosystem. Land clearing, if necessary, should be carried out with great care after very careful consideration. Different land types require different clearing techniques. Often, soil needs to be stabilized after clearing. All clearing processes require training of persons involved.

Environmental policies and regulations have been instrumental in influencing deforestation rates around the world. Understanding how these policies change stakeholder behaviours is critical for determining policy impact. In Queensland, Australia, changes in native vegetation management policy seem to have influenced land clearing behaviour of landholders. Periods of peak clearing rates have been associated with periods preceding the introduction of stricter legislation. However, the characteristics of clearing patterns during the last two decades are poorly understood.

The native forests of Borneo have been impacted by selective logging, fire, and conversion to plantations at unprecedented scales since industrial-scale extractive industries began in the early 1970s. There is no island-wide documentation of forest clearance or logging since the 1970s. This creates an information gap for conservation planning, especially with regard to selectively logged forests that maintain high conservation potential. Analysing LANDSAT images, we estimate that 75.7% (558,060 km2) of Borneo’s area (737,188 km2) was forested around 1973.

Kebakaran hutan adalah terjadinya peristiwa terbakarnya hutan yang diakibatkan oleh aktivitas alam dan juga oleh aktivitas manusia itu sendiri. Kebakaran hutan yang melanda Indonesia yaitu di wilayah Kalimantan dan juga Riau diakibatkan oleh adanya kegiatan land clearing. Selain itu kebakaran hutan dan lahan juga dipicu karena adanya kekeringan panjang yang melanda Indonesia. Land Clearing adalah kegiatan pembersihan lahan yang dimulai dari pemotongan pohon, pembabatan ilalang, dan pembakaran sampai lahan siap untuk digunakan.

The obtaining of quantitative data for economic analysis of changes in the agricultural use of land has been a problem in recent years. Field study is a slow and expensive method of providing information. Usually, it requires several experienced persons to collect the data needed. The airphoto interpretation method described in this article supplies suitable data for economic studies with considerable savings in time and cost. With this method, a minimum of personnel is needed.

Author Posting. © The Author(s), 2005. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of Blackwell Publishing for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Restoration Ecology 14 (2006): 220-232, doi:10.1111/j.1526-100X.2006.00124.x. The decline in grasslands and other species-rich early-successional habitats on the coastal sandplains of the northeastern U.S. has spurred management to increase the area of these declining plant communities.