A letter from the Prime Minister dated 16 January 2008, and cited in the Constitution Court Ruling No 15/2552, in defense of the Community Forest Bill shows how “community rights” are often seen as contingent upon the responsibility of the communities to take care of the forest. Interestingly, the strategic rights claiming process and discourse associated with the community forest movement are also based on a similar argument of responsibility to protect the forest.

This analysis assesses community based organization (CBO) performance including conflict management over three years among about 150 floodplain CBOs and reviews experience in the five forest protected areas with co-management.

Forest cover monitoring plays an important role in the implementation of climate change mitigation policies such as Kyoto protocol and Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD). In this study, we have monitored land cover using the PALSAR (Phased Array type L-band Synthetic Aperture Radar) full polarimetric data based on incoherent target decomposition.

Forest dynamics, such as deforestation, reforestation and afforestation, could be caused by the natural and human-induced disturbances. Traditional methods rarely quantify the history of such disturbances along a continuous temporal trajectory; yet, such disturbance history often determines system course and evolution. We adopted a retrospective perspective to study system history by implementing a newly proposed entropy index.

Testate amoebae that inhabit peat are sensitive indicators of water table position. In this study, we used testate amoebae in sediments from a mire in the western Alps (Lac du Thyl) to: (1) reconstruct the hydrology of the site over the last 7,000 years, (2) determine how hydrological changes affected testate amoebae diversity and (3) infer past trophic state shifts. The study site is located in one of the driest valleys of the Alps and is thus very sensitive to hydrological changes.

The article as a factor in the development of competition in the market of timber resources the mechanism of public-private partnership on the basis of priority investment projects in the area of forest. Present-
ed a systematic analysis of the implementation of investment projects, problems and prospects of development of the competitive environment in the industry.

It is important to reclam degraded soils in forest nurseries to get quality planting material. Organic wastes and fertilizers on their base may be used for it. The aim of the research is to evaluate the effectiveness of influence of non-traditional fertilizers on the basis of organic waste on fertility of sod-podzolic soils, growth of seedlings and saplings of trees in forest nurseries. In the course of the research such problems as influence of non-conventional fertilizers on properties of sod-podzolic soils were studied.

Central India hosts one of the largest repositories of archaeological sites in the world having a semi-arid climate and distinct eco-geography which is prone to rapid change due to human activities. This paper discusses the changes in land use and land cover for the past twenty-three years in the region altering the rich cultural heritage, revealing by the presence of numerous painted rock-shelter sites in the region. The land cover and land use changes in terms of deforestation, urban growth and development and sandstone mining have been evaluated in the present study.

The aim of the research is to analyse the landscape structure changes from the end of the Soviet times in 1974–1986 until 2005 when market economy existed in Lithuania. The changes of landscape structure were observed in 100 sample areas (squares) each of them having 2.5 km2 area and distributed in different landscape types. The changes in sample areas (squares) with determination of land cover structure transformations were observed using topographic photos and ortophoto images at a scale 1:10 000.

ECOSEL is a voluntary market mechanism that attempts to match willing sellers of forest ecosystem services with willing buyers. The goal of this paper is to show how multi-objective programming can be used to generate minimum-cost management alternatives for a real ECOSEL auction where optimal production plans for carbon sequestration, mature forest habitat and timber revenues are to be identified. The case study is suggestive of one of the most sophisticated uses of ECOSEL that might work for some but not all forest landowners.

The forest transition (FT) hypothesis implies that changes in a region's forest cover follow a determinable pattern of decline and later re-expansion over time, which is supposed to be similar across regions and countries. Such a uniform pattern – if empirically proven and quantified – might help in establishing REDD+ baselines (i.e., references against which reductions in the emissions from deforestation and forest degradation of developing countries could be measured, and subsequently be rewarded).