Growing processing tomatoes represents one of the most intensive forms of land use in terms of water consumption and nutrient inputs. During the last decade in many European countries and in the United States, Integrated Crop Management guidelines have also been applied for fertilisation and reducing nitrogen inputs to crops has become compulsory. A large number of Best Management Practices, rules and tools have been developed to steer farmers toward sustainable farming practices.

Land use and land cover change (LUCC) models frequently employ different accessibility measures as a proxy for human influence on land change processes. Here, we simulate deforestation in Peruvian Amazonia and evaluate different accessibility measures as LUCC model inputs. We demonstrate how the selection, and different combinations, of accessibility measures impact simulation results. Out of the individual measures, time distance to market center catches the essential aspects of accessibility in our study area.

Peri-urban areas are often characterized by valuable natural environments that provide essential life-support functions and ecosystem services for urban residents. Global environmental change has raised concerns over how urbanization and land use and land cover change affect ecosystem services. This study applied systems ecology theory and ecological energetic analysis to value the worth of natural environment and ecosystem services to a socioeconomic system. We begin with a general discussion of peri-urban areas and their ecosystem services.

Rapid land ownership changes in the Northern Forest of the eastern United States have spurred development as well as conservation. Local people have experienced differing degrees of participation in land use decisions. We examine two conservation projects from the Northern Forest state of Maine. This paper presents the policy processes from these projects and an assessment of their impact on conflict and support for the project. One project was a top-down approach, and the second was a grassroots, private effort by local citizens to conserve forestland.

Endocrine-disrupting contaminant (EDC) loads in rivers, and the associated risk to wildlife, may be linked to different anthropogenic stressors occupying river catchments. The aims of this study were to evaluate seasonal and spatial variation in steroid estrogen loads, and (anti)estrogenic and (anti)androgenic activity in a river catchment (upper Olifants River, South Africa), subject to a diversity of anthropogenic impacts. In addition, Mozambique tilapia, Oreochromis mossambicus, was applied as African-endemic sentinel and source of in vivo biomarkers.

The shortage of forest products and unsustainability of current land use practices experienced by many hillside farmers in the Caribbean is associated with increasing rates of conversion and degradation of remaining natural forests. This pressure could be alleviated by the establishment of trees in community/farm forests or more integrated agroforestry systems.

We measured bidirectional arthropod fluxes at 12 river reaches distributed across an urban‐rural gradient of riparian land use and land cover in the Scioto River system of Ohio (U.S.A.). For the terrestrial‐to‐aquatic arthropod flux (i.e. inputs of terrestrial arthropods to the river from the land), urban development was positively related to density of inputs but negatively related to biomass, partially explained by shifts in community composition and body size. Riparian grassland, typical of rural (i.e.

In order to investigate spatial and temporal characteristics of the purely grazing-based livestock husbandry system in southwestern Madagascar, individual animals from 12 cattle and 12 goat herds that were equally distributed across four villages were fitted with GPS tracking collars and their behaviour during pasturing was directly observed to identify seasonal variations in land use and movement patterns along the regional altitude and vegetation gradient.

Remote sensing is a useful technology for monitoring the spatial distribution and expansion of built-up and bare land areas. One effective approach, known as the normalized difference built-up index (NDBI), has been promoted for identifying built-up areas based on Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM)/Enhanced Thematic Mapper (ETM+) data.

Bashagard district is one of the important malaria endemic areas in southern Iran. From this region a total of 16,199 indigenous cases have been reported in recent years. The aim of this study was to determine the situation of the disease and provide the risk map for the area. ArcGIS9.2 was used for mapping spatial distribution of malaria incidence. Hot spots were obtained using evidence-based weighting method for transmission risk.