Soil water repellency reduces infiltration capacity, enhancing overland flow and even runoff production, and may produce patchiness in water infiltration at the hillslope scale. Knowledge about hydrophobicity in rangelands of Mediterranean type climate and its relation with vegetation cover and land management is sparse. The objectives of the present work are to determine the degree and spatial occurrence of soil water repellency and to define its relationship with site characteristics, such as soil, vegetation and land management in rangelands of SW Spain.

This special issue has presented some of the specific findings of the RE-Impact Project which was commissioned and funded by the EuropeAid Cooperation Office from 2007 until its conclusion in 2010. The project aimed to provide impact assessment frameworks and influence relevant policies through direct involvement in bioenergy projects and policy analysis in South Africa, Uganda, India and China. The papers summarised here have covered issues related to Jatropha curcas and forest-based bioenergy in these countries.

Agricultural nonpoint source (NPS) pollution at the Three Gorges reservoir area in China has been increasingly recognized as a threat to aquatic environment in recent years due to the serious eutrophication problem. Adsorbed NPS pollution is one of the major forms of NPS pollution in mountainous regions, the essential of the adsorbed NPS pollution is soil loss. Thus, simple, highly sensitive and continuous methods are required to simulate and quantify sediments yield at watershed scales.

Land cover changes affect local surface energy balances by changing the amount of solar energy reflected, the magnitude and duration over which absorbed energy is released as heat, and the amount of energy that is diverted to non-heating fluxes through evaporation. However, such local influences often are only crudely included in climate modeling exercises, if at all. A better understanding of local land conversion dynamics can serve to inform inputs for climate models and increase the role for land use planning in climate management policy.

Aggregates are known to provide physical protection to soil organic matter shielding it from rapid decomposition. Spatial arrangement and size distribution of intra-aggregate pores play an important role in this process.

Sustaining freshwater systems in the face of rapid changes in land use continue to be a major challenge in lake watersheds. Lake Egirdir is a major freshwater lake in Turkey and is significant in supporting several ecosystem services of the region. The nutrient loading from both point and nonpoint sources has reduced the quality of the tributaries and the lake ecosystem. There is a need for comprehensive modeling of strategies to protect the lake and watershed ecosystems.

An average of 16 years' data at sites in the upper Taireri River catchment was used to determine if water quality had changed commensurate with an increase in the irrigated area and land-use change. To help remediate perceived gaps in the nutrient modelling software Overseer®, data was also collected from a low-intensity border dyke and high-intensity spray-irrigated property. Filterable reactive phosphorus concentrations increased over time and were attributed to the irrigation of poor anion storage capacity (ASC) soils and irrigation-return flows.

In this study, the potential land use planning for rural communities and agricultural development is examined with a multi-criteria analysis and Geographical Information System. For this purpose, geological, geomorphological and socio-economic data and natural hazard maps were chosen as major factors affecting both land uses. The Analytical Hierarchical Process method was applied to evaluate these factors and the uncertainty of their weight alterations estimated.

Conservation subdivisions have emerged as a development option for communities wishing to conserve important ecological features and maintain rural character without decreasing housing density. Yet, these alternatives to conventional subdivisions rarely are used. We used logistic regression models to identify variables that predict county level success at adopting an ordinance and having a conservation subdivision built.

The study of the effect of habitat fragmentation on species that inhabit residual patches requires the investigation of the relationship existing between species distribution and landscape components. To understand which components of landscape mosaics are more influential for species’ persistence, we compared the distribution of two arboreal rodents proved to be sensitive to habitat fragmentation, the hazel dormouse Muscardinus avellanarius and the red squirrel Sciurus vulgaris.

Soil erosion by water is a major environmental threat to the sustainability and productive capacity of agriculture in many tropical and sub-tropical regions of the world. In temperate regions, meanwhile, the ‘off-site’ transport of sediment and pollutants into nearby water courses and the ‘muddy flooding’ of properties and infrastructure pose a much greater threat.

Peri-urban ecosystems are often managed as recreation areas or to enhance aesthetic value on the urban fringe. Scholars and land-use practitioners lack a current understanding of the supply of and the demands for these peri-urban ecosystem services (ES). In this study, we analysed the perceptions of 500 users and interest groups regarding the ES provided by the Bilbao Metropolitan Greenbelt (BMG) ecosystems in northern Spain, and we compared these perceptions to the demands for ES. The objective of this study is to understand user preferences and to thereby better orient land use planning.