Much information on restoration and management exists for wet tropical forests of Central America but comparatively little work has been done in the dry forests of this region. Such information is critical for reforestation efforts that are now occurring throughout Central America. This paper describes processes of degradation due to land use and provides a conceptual framework for the restoration of dry tropical forest. Most of this forest type was initially harvested for timber and then cleared for cattle in the last century (1930–1970).

Objective scientific characteristics of present reclamation systems of Belarus have been done. Structure of reclamation lands has been analyzed. Distribution of reclaimed lands according to the types of irrigation and drainage systems has been presented. Reasons of insufficient usage of reclamation systems have been discovered. Mistakes that had been made on large-scale reclamation building have been estimated. Review of realization of the Republican programme “Preservation and usage of reclaimed lands” for 2001-2005 has been made.

The most important land and water issues facing North America and the world – including land‐use patterns, water management, biodiversity protection, and climate adaptation – require innovative governance arrangements. Most of these issues need to be addressed at several scales simultaneously, ranging from local to global. They require action at the scale of large landscapes given that the geographic scope of the issues often transcends the legal and geographic reach of existing jurisdictions and institutions.

Recently, the science and policy agenda on biodiversity moved to include ecosystem services assessments and it is recognised that for determining the effectiveness and progress of policy frameworks monitoring is crucial. Within European monitoring schemes, data is collected following different sampling protocols for a range of biodiversity or context related aspects; from EU-wide general land cover mapping to red list species within Annex I habitats.

This study investigates four decades of socio-economic and environmental change in a shifting cultivation landscape in the northern uplands of Laos. Historical changes in land cover and land use were analyzed using a chronological series of remote sensing data. Impacts of landscape change on local livelihoods were investigated in seven villages through interviews with various stakeholders.

Achievement of environmental management goals and objectives in coastal areas, including how to measure success, remains a significant subject for discussion among scholars and practitioners, meanwhile four distinct management efforts potentially converge within the coastal zone: land-use planning (LUP), river basin management (RBM), marine spatial planning (MSP) and integrated coastal management (ICM).

AIM: To disentangle whether long‐range periphery‐to‐core gradient of forest understorey plants could be attributed to past forest landscape and/or to current environmental filtering processes.

Population pressures and the need to optimize the use of limited available land has led to increasing cropping affluence levels within the maize agro-ecologies in Kenya, and a shift from large to smallholder intensification and multiple cropping patterns. Using a geographic information system, this study relates cropping patterns, by area share, maize productivity and household incomes across maize agro-ecologies, with the purpose to establish a decision support system for optimizing land allocation and in priority setting for introduction of new technologies such as Bt maize varieties.

Severe soil erosion and food security problems are the most important issues in the Loess Plateau of northern China, which are closely related to the over-cultivation and poor management of marginal land resources. Alleviation of these unsustainability problems requires, among many other things, alternative and innovative cropping systems. This paper describes the identification of such cropping systems and their quantitative evaluation.

The province of New Brunswick (NB), Canada and the state of Maine (ME), USA are heavily forested jurisdictions whose forests provide many social, ecological, and economic functions. Roughly a third of NB and ME’s forested land is owned by private, non-industrial owners [sometimes called family forests or woodlot owners]. The choices of thousands of individual parcel owners of forest land determine the fate of these ecosystems. Ownership of forest land implies a social contract between the landowners and the rest of society.

Human activities in many parts of the world have greatly changed the natural land cover. This study has been conducted on Pichavaram forest, south east coast of India, famous for its unique mangrove bio-diversity. The main objectives of this study were focused on monitoring land cover changes particularly for the mangrove forest in the Pichavaram area using multi-temporal Landsat images captured in the 1991, 2000, and 2009.

Due to the progressive forest expansion in European mountain areas triggered by agricultural abandonment, semi-natural meadows and pastures of great ecological and aesthetic value are disappearing. The aim of this study is to predict and analyse the future evolution of land use and land cover (LULC) in the Stubai Valley, Central Alps. We propose a computational Population Dynamics P system (PDP) model that incorporates the main LULC change processes like plant production, grazing, abandonment and reforestation.