Variants of Indigenous forest management reflect distinct historical and political-economic contexts. Indigenous forest management was largely unrecorded in the colonial period and, in the present, can range from industrial to ecosystem-based forest management, autonomous management and rentier practices. Evidence of Indigenous forest management has assumed political importance in those nation-states that require historical evidence of past land use and occupancy as the basis for negotiation of Indigenous-titled lands.

Land is a non-renewable resource with limited availability and, therefore, a very important issue is the preservation of useful properties of land and comprehensive and sustainable land use. The process of land and soil degradation (decline of properties) leading to the formation of degraded land have been observed due to the influence of various economic activities and environmental conditions.

The aim of this thesis is to evaluate the influence of edge effect on vegetation succession in black alder forests. 30 permanent study plots with size of 20×50 m were established with strips at several distances from the edge towards the center of the stand. Stands in study plots fell into three categories – with adjacent clearcut to S or SW created up to 10, 20-40 or more than 41 year ago. In all study plots living trees and dead wood was measured and vegetation was described by layers and the presence of rare epiphytic lichens was recorded.

For the review at hand, Clarivate Analytic's web of science search platform was searched for the keyword combination forest+plantation. The search found 944 articles with the mentioned keywords in their topic that were published between 2010 and 2017. The top 3 subtopics identified were soil, carbon and water in order of abundance. The overview over current research in each of these subtopics to plantation forests naturally show strong overlaps with biodiversity as well as ecological aspects of plantation forests.

Study region : In this study, 33 catchments across the Lower Mekong Basin in Southeast Asia are examined to detect historical changes in their hydrological response via a model-based methodology.Study focus : Intensive development over the past half century across Southeast Asia’s Lower Mekong Basin has inevitably affected natural resources. Large areas have been converted from forests for subsistence and commercial agriculture, and urban development. We implement an innovative approach to screen hydrologic data for detecting impacts of such large-scale changes on hydrological response.

We review seven certification systems for verifying carbon trading from forestry and other land uses, and evaluate evidence of their effectiveness in generating social and environmental co-benefits. Published research on non-carbon co-benefits was located by searching the three principal bibliographic databases in this area of science: CABI, ISI Web of Science Core Collection and SCOPUS. We included studies published in English from 2000 to 2016. Our searches yielded 679 studies after duplicates were removed.

Soil samples in 349  sampling plots were obtained within the LUCAS project in 2009; from these, 205 soil samples were collected in agricultural lands (grasslands, arable lands, grasslands overgrown by trees and shrubs), and 133 soil samples were obtained in forests (deciduous, coniferous and mixed forests), as well as 7 soil samples–in scrublands.