In order for carbon credits awarded for reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation of forests (REDD) to be effective, they need to be competitive with alternative land uses. In the case of Southeast Asia, oil palm cultivation is one of the most lucrative possible land uses. Existing mechanisms for awarding certified emission reductions (CERs) might not be adequately flexible to changing commodity prices or to meet the needs of landowners who heavily discount future returns from their land.

As forest areas have become increasingly relevant to the public as recreational landscapes, and outdoor recreation is increasingly diverse and specialized, we explore how notions of property and issues of public access are made relevant in controversies over hunting rights in Norway. Focusing on responses of local hunters to landowners’ recent promotion of hunting tourism, one central finding is that the hunters tend to engage with the hunting grounds as part of landscapes they identify strongly with.

CONTEXT: Landscape heterogeneity (the composition and configuration of matrix habitats) plays a major role in shaping species communities in wooded-agricultural landscapes. However, few studies consider the influence of different types of semi-natural and linear habitats in the matrix, despite their known ecological value for biodiversity.

The major purpose of this paper is to explore the potential value of benefit–cost evaluation for stormwater quality management decisions at a local level. A preliminary benefit–cost analysis (BCA) screening method is used for maximum extent practicable (MEP) analysis, identifying promising management practices, and identifying societal and economic tradeoffs for local stormwater problems. Ballona Creek, a major urban storm drain in Los Angeles, California, USA, is used to illustrate the practicality of the benefit–cost evaluation.

Conservation auctions are used by public agencies to procure environmental friendly land uses from private landowners. We present the structure of an iterative conservation auction that ranks bids according to a scoring rule intended to procure spatially adjacent conservation land use projects. Laboratory experiments are conducted to compare the performance of this auction under two information conditions. Under one condition subjects have knowledge about the spatial goal implemented by the scoring rule and in the other case they don’t.

The US has undergone a recent boom in the development of onshore wind farm and natural gas energy projects and contentious debates over the construction of these projects are common in communities across the US.

In this work we show the feasibility of empirical testing of socio-environmental models with a relatively simple model of a traditional agro-ecosystem: the Huerta Murcia (Spain). This Mediterranean traditional irrigated land is based on adaptive strategies of irrigation and crop management and has important functions for the conservation of natural and cultural resources.

There is increasing interest in plantations with the objective of producing biomass for energy and fuel. These types of plantations are called Short Rotation Woody Crops (SRWC). Popular SRWC species are Eucalypt (Eucalyptus spp.), Cottonwood (Populus deltoides) and Willow (Salix spp.). These species have in common strong growth rates, the ability to coppice, and rotations of 2–10 years.

Black cohosh (Actaea racemosa L.) rhizomes are harvested extensively from eastern North American forests and sold worldwide for treatment of menopausal symptoms. While forest farming is encouraged to reduce wild-harvest impacts, little information is available to aid landowners in successfully cultivating black cohosh. This study examined survival and multi-year growth of 200 black cohosh rhizomes collected from an Appalachian deciduous forest and transplanted to a similar forest type.

In the Brazilian Amazon, private land accounts for the majority of remaining native vegetation. Understanding how land‐use change affects the composition and distribution of biodiversity in farmlands is critical for improving conservation strategies in the face of rapid agricultural expansion. Working across an area exceeding 3 million ha in the southwestern state of Rondônia, we assessed how the extent and configuration of remnant forest in replicate 10,000‐ha landscapes has affected the occurrence of a suite of Amazonian mammals and birds.