land use
AGROVOC URI: http://aims.fao.org/aos/agrovoc/c_4182
Expansion to abandoned agricultural land forms an integral part of silver fir dynamics
Silver fir (Abies alba Mill.) is a tree species distributed mainly in central Europe. It once was a dominant tree species within some forests of this region. The causes for its rapid decline in the past two centuries have not yet been sufficiently explained. It is argued that human activities have been largely responsible for expansions and contractions of silver fir populations. On the basis of the current distribution of silver fir, historical maps and palaeoecological data, we describe the expansion of silver fir forests.
Indigenous claims and conflicts in managing the Abijata-Shalla Lakes National Park, Ethiopia
This paper examines claims and conflicts in the management of the Abijata-Shalla Lakes National Park in the Central Rift Valley of Ethiopia. We used data from households, key informants (elders, park managers), and focus group discussions. Poor wildlife policy resulting in space competition between wildlife and humans (other forms of land use), limited means of revenue generation for insiders and centralized benefits from tourism have accumulated grievance and then conflict between national park authority and local communities.
Development of local municipality territory use in land management
Human attitude to the land is the base for existence of humanity. It widely affects everybody– environment and landscape is changed, new buildings are constructed, new villages are developed in countryside. If such recensions aren’t planned it can cause serious problems in nearest future, considering limitedness and great significance of the land as unique resource. For correction of errors in land use immeasurable resources and decennaries are necessary. Tendencies in land use development and related problems concern to all people of Latvia, especially landowners.
relative importance of landscape properties for woodland birds in agricultural environments
1. Studies of landscape change are seldom conducted at scales commensurate with the processes they purport to investigate. Landscape change is a landscape-level process, yet most studies focus on patches. Even when landscape context is considered, inference remains at the patch-level. The unit of investigation must be extended beyond individual patches to whole mosaics in order to advance understanding of faunal responses to landscape change. 2.
Impacts of land use and plant characteristics on dried soil layers in different climatic regions on the Loess Plateau of China
A dried soil layer (DSL) formed in the soil profile is a typical indication of soil drought caused by climate change and/or poor land management. The responses of a soil to drought conditions in water-limited systems and the impacts of plant characteristics on these processes are seldom known due to the lack of comparative data on soil water content (SWC) in the soil profile. The occurrence of DSLs can interfere in the water cycle in soil–plant–atmosphere systems by preventing water interchanges between upper soil layers and groundwater.
Mapping urban sprawl and impervious surfaces in the northeast United States for the past four decades
Mapping urban expansion and impervious surfaces (IS) has become a useful tool for supporting watershed assessments. The lack of large-area time-series maps created the need to develop an approach and products that can easily be scaled. In this research application, 81 Landsat 1, 2, and 5 scenes for the epochs of 1975, 1985, and 1996 were used to map urban land use/land cover across New England, USA.
Spatially explicit historical land use land cover and soil organic carbon transformations in Southern Illinois
Soil organic carbon (SOC) is a biophysical parameter, which is also directly linked to above ground land use and land cover (LULC). Currently changes in LULC and variations in SOC often are studied and modeled separately. However, both are conjoined and should be seen as part of a cascading ecosystem framework. This is not only true for SOC but also for other biophysical parameters which are governed by human activities.
[The territory occupation: a reflection of development model]
Mapping Ecological Processes and Ecosystem Services for Prioritizing Restoration Efforts in a Semi-arid Mediterranean River Basin
Semi-arid Mediterranean regions are highly susceptible to desertification processes which can reduce the benefits that people obtain from healthy ecosystems and thus threaten human wellbeing. The European Union Biodiversity Strategy to 2020 recognizes the need to incorporate ecosystem services into land-use management, conservation, and restoration actions. The inclusion of ecosystem services into restoration actions and plans is an emerging area of research, and there are few documented approaches and guidelines on how to undertake such an exercise.
Modeling the Landscape Drivers of Fire Recurrence in Sardinia (Italy)
Although recurrent fire events with very short return periods have the most dangerous effects on landscape degradation, only a few papers have explored the landscape ecological factors that drive the probability of fire recurrence. In this paper we apply a habitat suitability model for analyzing the spatial relationship between a selected set of landscape factors (mainly land use types) and fire recurrence in Sardinia (Italy) in the years 2005–2010.
Vietnam’s Forest Transition in Retrospect: Demonstrating Weaknesses in Business-as-Usual Scenarios for REDD+
One of the prerequisites of the REDD+ mechanism is to effectively predict business-as-usual (BAU) scenarios for change in forest cover. This would enable estimation of how much carbon emission a project could potentially prevent and thus how much carbon credit should be rewarded. However, different factors like forest degradation and the lack of linearity in forest cover transitions challenge the accuracy of such scenarios. Here we predict and validate such BAU scenarios retrospectively based on forest cover changes at village and district level in North Central Vietnam.