A cutover bog contaminated with seawater in New Brunswick, Canada remained barren 5 years after peat extraction operations ceased despite the proximity of natural seed sources. The aim of the study was to identify abiotic stresses impeding plant establishment and test transplanting of salt-tolerant wetland plants. The site consisted of long cambered rectangular fields that sloped down (2%) to the drainage ditches on both sides. Across this slope, zones were delineated based on moisture gradient as: Up-areas (drier), Mid-areas (moist) and Low-areas (wet).

Degradation of farmland caused by salinisation is a major environmental issue in Australia. To combat salinisation a community-based approach has been adopted. This paper reviews the nature and effectiveness of this approach, describing its rationale, strengths and weaknesses. The community-based approach is shown to have been highly successful in raising awareness and providing education about the problem of dryland salinity in Australia, and has encouraged group participation in managing the problem.

Smallholders in many tropical highlands cause serious environmental damage. The Cameron Highlands of Malaysia offer an excellent opportunity for studying how farmers interact with environment, changing markets, infrastructure development, indigenous peoples, and tourism, and how these shape innovation. Our surveys in 2002-2004, 2006 and 2007 show that farmers have intensified production and in doing so some have adopted less damaging practices. We assess trends and causation of changes; this offers opportunities for more proactive management.

1. The concept of threshold has become important in ecology, but the nature of potential threshold responses of vegetation to grazing in rangeland ecosystems remains poorly understood. We aimed to identify ecological thresholds in vegetation changes along a grazing gradient and to examine whether threshold changes were expressed similarly at a variety of ecological sites. 2. To accomplish this, we surveyed the vegetation along grazing gradients at 10 ecological sites, each located at different landscape positions in Mongolia's central and southern rangelands.

The spatial and temporal dynamics of tropical forest functioning are poorly understood, partly attributed to a weak seasonality and high tree species diversity at the landscape scale. Recent neotropical rainforest studies with local tower flux measurements have revealed strong seasonal carbon fluxes that follow the availability of sunlight in intact forests, while in areas of forest disturbance, carbon fluxes more closely tracked seasonal water availability.

Soils are a vital substrate for agricultural production, play a central role in regulating the global carbon budget, and are a valuable source of biodiversity. Yet estimates of the global area affected by soil and land degradation are continuing to increase. For decades, soil scientists have called for a legally binding, international policy framework to guide the sustainable use of soils, but a piecemeal legislative approach has prevailed instead. With over 200 international environmental agreements currently in force, there is political reluctance for another one.

We focused on land units as landscape characteristics and selected seven typical land units on a land catena comprising two areas of southern Mongolia. Hierarchical analysis was used to test the hypothesis that a land unit's edaphic factors could explain the differences in vegetation responses to grazing.