Land use and management practices may influence plant C inputs and soil CO2 emission. We evaluated the effect of a combination of irrigation, tillage, cropping system, and N fertilization on plant biomass C, soil temperature and water content at the 0- to 15-cm depth, and CO2 emission in a sandy loam soil from April to October, 2006 to 2008, in western North Dakota.

The Ethiopian Rift Valley is a dry land zone where for a long time pastoral communities have made their living from acacia-based woodlands. But many pastoralists have changed from a pastoral way of life to mixed farming over time. The aim of this study was to evaluate land-use and land cover (LULC) changes in the Central Rift Valley dry lands of Ethiopia, and determine the role of drought vulnerability as a driver. A combination of GIS/remote sensing techniques, drought vulnerability analyses, field observation and surveying were employed.

Supporters of the effort to link cleanups at hazardous waste sites to the sites' expected land uses claim that amending language in the federal Superfund statute to allow this may yield a number of benefits. These include rationalizing the cleanup process and decreasing cleanup costs, promoting economic development in the local communities that host Superfund sites, and helping such communities exercise more control over the cleanups. However, interviews with Superfund stakeholders and a detailed case study call into question these arguments.

This study determined the effects of land-use practice had on the rate and extent of bush encroachment in a mesic savanna in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Changes in woody cover were measured for 1 km² sites in areas under communal, commercial and conservation land-use systems for the period between 1937 and 2000. Land users from each area were interviewed to gain the histories of each area and to determine how the changes in woody cover had impacted them and whether anything was being done to counteract the spread of trees and shrubs on their land.

Texture in high resolution satellite images requires substantial improvement in the conventional segmentation algorithms. The use of wavelet packet transforms for texture analysis and image classification of high spatial resolution LISS IV imagery provide more details about the urban areas. This paper analyses the performance of a combination of Wavelet Packet Statistical Features (WPSFs) and Wavelet Packet Co-occurrence Features (WPCFs) for the classification of LISS IV images. The classification accuracy per pixel is improved in this paper by varying the window size.

In several tropical regions of the world, formerly widespread forests have been reduced to scattered remnants, and many tree species are becoming increasingly endangered. Knowledge on the population status of rare species is essential to inform conservation efforts and, in particular, the use of native species for reforestation projects stemming from emerging land-use strategies. We studied 20 mostly red-listed native species in remnant forests on five limestone-, four volcanic- and one ultramafic site(s) across the Visayas in the Philippines, with 40 plots being assessed at each site.

The promise of the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) to deliver its dual objectives is currently under public scrutiny. In land-use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF) activities through afforestation and reforestation projects, known as A/R CDM, the deliverables that demonstrate sustainable development remain unclear. While the methods to convincingly demonstrate carbon benefits are fine-tuned, there is growing concern on a lack of socio-economic benefits of the projects.

Agricultural crops and pasturelands cover 24–38% of the global land area, and thus the ecological services that agricultural systems provide are of utmost societal importance. An important determinant of ecosystem services provision from European farmland is the amount and spatial arrangement of trees, shrubs and woodlands that are integrated into the respective land-use systems.

The unequal distribution of agricultural land is often cited as a source of inefficiency in agriculture. Previous cross-country studies of agricultural productivity differences, though, have not considered land inequality. This article addresses this issue by using cross-country data on inequality in operational holdings of agricultural land from Deininger and Squire (1998) . In an estimation of an agricultural production function, the Gini coefficient for land holdings is found to have a significant negative relationship with productivity.

Urbanization effects on ecosystem functions are both important and complex, characterized by scale multiplicity, spatial heterogeneity, and intensive human disturbances. Integrating the hierarchical structure of urban landscape pattern with ecosystem processes through simulation modeling can facilitate our understanding of human–environment interactions in urban environment.

KEY MESSAGE : We compiled 2,458 biomass equations from 168 destructive sampling studies in Indonesia. Unpublished academic theses contributed the largest share of the biomass equations. The availability of the biomass equations was skewed to certain regions, forest types, and species. Further research is necessary to fill the data gaps in emission factors and to enhance the implementation of climate change mitigation projects and programs.