sustainable development

Urbanization increases impervious area, generates pollution and transforms the configuration, composition and context of land covers and thus has direct or indirect impacts on aquatic systems. Detecting land use-water quality relationships is of significance for both urban sustainable development and environmental risk management.

Large rivers are particularly under pressure due to multiple uses which often have severe impacts on ecosystems, or water quality and flow. Conflicting aims and a lack of integration and cooperation in planning and management are not beneficial to sustainable management.

The geological environment has been heavily polluted by chemical substances over the past few decades. Pollution sources located on the earth’s surface or underground have affected the quality of the environment. A significant amount of impact could be reduced if the allocation of potential pollution sources was based on an evaluation of environmental conditions.

The northeastern China is an important commodity grain region in China, as well as a notable corn belt and major soybean producing area. It thus plays a significant role in the national food security system. However, large-scale land reclamation and non-optimum farming practices give rise to soil degradation in the region.

This contribution refers to a companion modelling approach applied to the study of interactions between social and environmental dynamics in a small protected island, part of a biosphere reserve.

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.

Karst terrains are generally regarded as a fragile and vulnerable environment. China’s karst is mainly developed in pre-Triassic, old-phase, hard, compact carbonate rock. The lack of soil cover in bare karst land can enhance desertification.

Groundwater exploration in the Western Doon valley has been carried out to delineate the groundwater potential and groundwater quality zones suitable for domestic purposes based on the integrated use of Remote Sensing and Geographical Information Systems (GIS).

Area-based information obtained from remote sensing and aerial photography is often used in studies on ecological footprint and sustainability, especially in calculating biocapacity. Given the importance of the modifiable areal unit problem (MAUP; i.e. the scale dependency of area-based information), a comprehensive understanding of how the changes of biocapacity across scales (i.e.

This paper mapped and valued key inter-related drylands ecosystem services of importance to pastoralists, crop farmers, the tourism industry, conservationists, and policy planners in the Ewaso Ng’iro basin, the largest of the five major basins in Kenya. We used an ecosystem services approach where only final benefits are valued to avoid double counting.

Policy initiatives in India, such as the Social Forestry Program and later the Joint Forest Management, were introduced for their co-benefits, including forest protection, employment opportunities, and added income for communities living in and around the forests. The evolution of these forest policies is critically reviewed.

The hyper-arid conditions, low inherent soil fertility, water scarcity, and marginal water quality collectively constrain the local agriculture production in Abu Dhabi, UAE. To achieve this, an integrated suitability assessment was conducted considering soil resources, relief/slope, and water resources and forms the focus of the present study.