Land degradation on officially ‘reclaimed’ opencast coal‐mine sites is a widespread problem in South Wales. This project explores methods suitable for use by community volunteers seeking to effect local environmental improvement by restoring geoecological self‐sustainability on lands that are commonly affected by extreme auto‐compaction and low soil nutrient status. This paper describes a formally established 7‐year experiment designed to assess the effect of three alternative tree planting strategies used in the forestation of such lands. These are notch planting (e.g.

This report is about forests that provide a substantial contribution to mitigation in Romania by sequestering carbon, helping to counter carbon emissions from other sectors in the economy. Sustainable forest management is challenged by fragmented ownership and insufficient financial resources in particular. A summary of key existing analytic studies, and the construction of a marginal abatement cost curve for mitigation actions in the forestry sector, was the basis for identifying key adaptation and mitigation measures for Romania’s forests.

Evaluation of effects of agri-environmental measures on rangeland degradation in two less-favoured areas in Portugal

Nadia Manuela Jones

Solution of ecological problems is an urgent and extremely important task at the present stage of social economic development of Ukraine. Unreasonably high degree of economic (mostly agricultural) reclaiming of area causes spreading and intensification of degradation processes in ecosystems. Conservation of lands, including the one carried out by means of foresting of degraded lands, is the principal way to renature environment. The article concerns an issue of land conservation in the context of ecosystem services of forests.

Land degradation is a topical issue not only in Latvia, but also in Europe. Even the real estate additional tax rate of 1.5% does not prevent agricultural land from overgrowing, and there is no other legal mechanism to control it. One of the mechanisms of prevention of land degradation process is reconstruction of drainage systems, change of worthless agricultural land (less than 25 points) to forest land or improvement and return of agricultural land (more than 25 points) to economic production.

In many regions of the world, soil erosion is one of the main land degradations processes that reduce the soil productivity by removing fertile topsoil layers, thus decreasing levels of organic matter and the nutrients. Therefore erosion researches constitute an important part of the research on the soils. The erosion risk of soils can be evaluated directly carried out in the field, greenhouses or laboratory by means of some experiments or indirectly based on developing and applying models that gives risk expectations for large areas.