Qingdao is one of the essential growth poles in the process of new-type urbanization in Shandong Province. The study on the relationship between urban expansion and driving factors in this area is representative. This paper examined urban expansion from the perspective of non-urban to urban conversion, detailing an empirical investigation into the spatiotemporal variations and impact factors of urban expansion in Qingdao.

The Abbotsford‐Sumas Aquifer is arguably the most studied case in Canada of groundwater nitrate contamination associated with agricultural production. Underlying some of the most productive agricultural land in Canada, this highly vulnerable trans‐boundary aquifer provides a unique case study on the opportunities and challenges of addressing water quality issues. A groundwater monitoring program initiated in the early 1990s has been important in tracking spatial and temporal variation in groundwater nitrate concentration.

Turkey is homeland of the grapevine (Vitis spp.), one of the most important agricultural products in the World. Our country, having the favorable climatic conditions for viticulture, has an important role among the viticulture farming countries of the World. The objective of this study is to determine potential growing areas of grape in Turkey by using Geographic Information Systems techniques based on topographic and climatic factors. It is important to efficiently use of our limited arable lands from the agricultural point of view.

By altering fluxes of heat, momentum, and moisture exchanges between the land surface and atmosphere, forestry and other land‐use activities affect climate. Although long recognized scientifically as being important, these so‐called biogeophysical forcings are rarely included in climate policies for forestry and other land management projects due to the many challenges associated with their quantification.

As species' geographic ranges and ecosystem functions are altered in response to climate change, there is a need to integrate biodiversity conservation approaches that promote natural adaptation into land use planning. Successful conservation will need to embrace multiple climate adaptation approaches, but to date they have not been conveyed in an integrated way to help support immediate conservation planning and action in the face of inherent spatial uncertainty about future conditions.

Groundwater vulnerability assessment is an important method for groundwater pollution risk assessment. However, vulnerability assessment results rarely consider groundwater pollution concentration. Few quantitative studies consider groundwater pollutant concentration in different hydrogeological conditions. HYDRUS-1D software can simulate different concentrations of pollutants reaching the shallow aquifer under some vadose zone conditions.

Maytenus senegalensis subsp. europaea communities are unique vegetal formations in Europe. In fact, they are considered Priority Habitat by Directive 92/43/EEC. These are ecologically valuable plant communities found in the southeast of Spain. By combining modeling methods of environmental variables, historical photo-interpretation, and fieldwork, a chronosequence of the evolution of their extent of occurrence (EOO) has been reconstructed in 1957 and 2011. Results showed a strong regression range of M. senegalensis subsp. europaea populations.

Global trends in pollinator‐dependent crops have raised awareness of the need to support managed and wild bee populations to ensure sustainable crop production. Provision of sufficient forage resources is a key element for promoting bee populations within human impacted landscapes, particularly those in agricultural lands where demand for pollination service is high and land use and management practices have reduced available flowering resources.

A number of previous studies have emphasized the determinants of land-use change, as well as the management of communal lands in the pastoral systems, without assessing the effects of such changes on pastoralists/agro-pastoralists’ food security. Therefore, the objective of this paper was to assess the determinants of food security under changing land use and land management systems—from communal to private investment—using household survey data collected from pastoral and agro-pastoral communities. The data were analyzed using ordinary least-square econometric analysis.

Changes in land use and climate and their significantly impacts on the hydrological cycle are of widespread concern to researchers and policy makers. The Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model is used to analyze the effects of land use change and climate variability in the upper Naoli River watershed in the Sanjiang plain, northeast China. The remarkable land use changes include the decrease of woodland and wetland along with the farmland increasing.

CONTEXT: Grasshoppers are a dominant herbivore assemblage globally and play an important role for ecosystem nutrient cycling. Yet, we lack a strong understanding of the relationship between grasshopper diversity and plant community composition at the landscape scale. OBJECTIVE: Our aim was to test landscape scale relationships between plant and grasshopper communities. METHODS: We used a large-scale, replicated experiment at four sites, including grazed and protected pastures across a 350 km transect and 200–400 mm precipitation gradient in the steppes of Inner Mongolia, China.

Indonesia has experienced rapid land use change over the last few decades as forests and peatswamps have been cleared for more intensively managed land uses, including oil palm and timber plantations. Fires are the predominant method of clearing and managing land for more intensive uses, and the related emissions affect public health by contributing to regional particulate matter and ozone concentrations and adding to global atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations.