Soil organic carbon (OC) storage across regions is influenced by climate and parent materials, which determine soil properties like clay content and mineralogy. Within homogeneous soil regions, land use and management practices are further important controls for soil OC contents and turnover.

The Dublin SURGE (Soil Urban Geochemistry) Project is Dublin’s first baseline survey of heavy metals and persistent organic pollutants in topsoils and is part of a Europe-wide initiative to map urban geochemical baselines in ten cities. 1,058 samples were collected as part of a stratified random sampling programme in the greater Dublin area to give an overview of baseline conditions in the city. Samples were analysed for 31 inorganic elements including heavy metals.

Peru contains the fourth largest area of tropical forest in the world, yet faces a worsening net deforestation rate. In 2008, to address this threat, the national government announced its ambition to reduce deforestation to zero by 2021. Via literature review and key informant interviews, this study assess two years of REDD+ readiness preparations according to six readiness functions. A mixed pattern of outcomes emerge. Although significant advances were made by various local-level initiatives, national-level efforts continue to struggle.

To establish a national inventory of soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks and their change over time, soil was sampled in 1986, 1997 and 2009 in a Danish nation‐wide 7‐km grid and analysed for SOC content. The average SOC stock in 0–100‐cm depth soil was 142 t C ha⁻¹, with 63, 41 and 38 t C ha⁻¹ in the 0–25, 25–50 and 50–100 cm depths, respectively. Changes at 0–25 cm were small. During 1986–97, SOC in the 25–50‐cm layer increased in sandy soils while SOC decreased in loam soils. In the subsequent period (1997–2009), most soils showed significant losses of SOC.

Efforts to reduce land‐based non‐point source (NPS) pollutions from watersheds to coastal waters are ongoing all around the world. In this study, annual yield of NPS nitrogen (NPS‐N) pollution in Jiaodong Peninsula, China from 1979 to 2008 was estimated. The results showed that: from 1979 to 2008, NPS‐N yields exhibited significant inter‐annual variations and an increasing trend on decadal scale. High NPS‐N yield was mainly found in east and south parts, as well as the urbanized coastal regions in Jiaodong Peninsula.

The Tarim Basis is a major source of windblown dust in China. Land management and use can greatly impact windblown dust, thus, models such as the Wind Erosion Prediction System (WEPS) are important for identifying management practices that reduce the emission of dust. The objective of this study was to test the performance of the WEPS erosion submodel (the Single-event Wind Erosion Evaluation Program (SWEEP)) under contrasting agricultural land use types in the Tarim Basin of northwest China.

AIMS AND BACKGROUND: Soil fertility quality index is a useful indicator that helps to improve sustainable land use management and achieve economical yield in agriculture production. The objectives of this study were to evaluate the changes of soil fertility quality between the 1980s and 2000s in different cropping systems and its significance to crop productivity and sustainability.

Traffic noise is becoming a more prominent fixture in urban environments as cities and highways expand to accommodate the growing human population. Birds, in particular, rely heavily on vocal communication and have recently been shown to change the structure of their signals in response to environmental noise. Our objective was to determine the impact of traffic noise on Red-winged Blackbird (Agelaius phoeniceus) song structure and song timing.

The application of the ecosystem services (ES) concept in land use planning has great potential to enhance the awareness of planning actors on their interactions. At the same time it can contribute to improve the linkage between the role of land use patterns and the understanding of land system functioning and its contribution to human well-being. The concept should be developed in a way that can be applicable in socio-ecological systems where nature and society are capable of enhancing their roles mutually.

This paper presents a method to quantify cultural ecosystem services (ES) and their spatial distribution in the landscape based on ecological structure and social evaluation approaches. The method aims to provide quantified assessments of ES to support land use planning decisions. A GIS-based approach was used to estimate and map the provision of recreation and aesthetic services supplied by ecosystems in a peri-urban area located in the Basque Country, northern Spain.

Green infrastructure (GI) is a strategic planning instrument to achieve sustainable development. The main functions of GI are to protect biodiversity and safeguard and enhance the provision of ecosystem services (ES). In this paper we present the development of a semi-quantitative place-based method, aiming at assessing GI based on the provision potential of all main ES. Our method combines a wide spectrum of GIS data with expert assessments. Here we focus especially on how interaction with experts and local and regional actors impacted the method development.

This article aims to explain and demonstrate the origin and development of a subsidence basin caused by coal mining as well as to point out important aspects of this phenomenon in engineering geology. Engineering geology needs to deal with a number of issues related to the origin and development of subsidence basins in areas affected by deep coal mining. An interesting case study from the Upper-Silesian Basin in the northeast of the Czech Republic near the Polish border is presented in this paper.