Although the literature is full of references to soil degradation under forest cultivation, very little information is available on changes in soil properties following deforestation of the Hyrcanian area in northern Iran. Also, the literature provides little information on the effects of conversion from deforested cropland to grazing, a likely direction of land-use change in northern Iran. The objective of this study was to assess the effect of conversion of native forests into farmlands and/or grazing lands on soil properties and nutrients in the Hyrcanian forest.

This article reviews the level of current scientific understanding regarding the impact of future change in the large-scale climate-earth system on ecosystem services. Impacts from sea level rise, ocean acidification, increases in ocean temperature, potential collapse of the thermohaline circulation; failure of the South Asia monsoon; the melting of sea ice, the Greenland Ice Sheet and the West Antarctic Ice Sheet; changes in water availability; and Amazonia forest dieback, are considered.

Soils with andic features are known to be very important as regards both ecosystem fertility and susceptibility to land degradation. In recent years there has been an increasing number of finds of these soils in non-volcanic mountain ecosystems (NVME) in different parts of the world under different environmental settings. In Italian NVME there has been extensive investigation proving that these soils have a much wider distribution than previously thought. But despite these important findings, very little is known about their genesis or properties.

Gully erosion is a worldwide matter of concern because of the irreversible losses of fertile land, which often have severe environmental, economic and social consequences. While most of the studies on the gullying process have investigated the involved mechanisms (either overland flow incision, seepage or piping erosion), only few have been conducted on the controlling factors of gully wall retreat, an important, if not the dominant, land degradation process and sediment source in river systems.

This paper focuses on the reconstruction of Holocene climatic and environmental changes in two archaeological sites of southwestern and north-central Calabria (southern Italy). It is based on a comparison of geoarchaeological, pedological and pedoanthracological data from soil profiles in the coastal hilly and inland mountainous surroundings of Palmi and Cecita Lake, respectively. At the Palmi site, the representative soil profile includes settlements and artefacts ranging from late Neolithic to late early Bronze Age and undifferentiated historical epochs.

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.

The conversion of marginal croplands to tree plantations, as an option to address climate change, land degradation, and irrigation water scarcity, as well as to improve the welfare of local population requires prior analysis.

Sustainable water resources management plans depend on reliable monitoring of land use –land cover (LULC) changes. The use of the remote sensing techniques in LULC changes detection brings consistency and reliability to the decision maker at regional scale. Three temporal data sets of images were used to obtain the land cover changes in this study: Landsat-5 Thematic Mapper (TM) acquired in 1984, and Landsat-7 enhanced Thematic Mapper acquired in 2000 and 2005 consequently. Each temporal data set consists of four Landsat scenes, which were mosaicked to cover the whole Nile Delta.

In Ethiopia, not only farmers but also the public and private sector partners are still hesitant to invest in sustainable land management (SLM). This study focuses on the Central Rift Valley and explores the potential for co-investments in SLM, where public and private sector partners support farmers with material, capital, knowledge, etc. A survey revealed current bottlenecks for co-investments and requirements needed to collaboratively invest in SLM.

Global changes in climate today present hostile weather conditions which pose considerable threats to the rich and poor alike. The capacity for developing countries to cope with these impacts is weak and a development concern. The post-conflict West African nation of Sierra Leone is no exception. In fact, rural areas are exposed to high degrees of vulnerability, livelihood insecurity and hostile environments. This paper explores the experiences of rural people and identifies impacts and coping mechanisms used in response to these changes.

This study provides a framework for the joint analysis of long-term land cover changes and climatic variations at regional scale. The land cover distribution observed in Italy in 1960, 1990, and 2006 was compared with trends in annual precipitation and the aridity index estimated during 1951–2007. Annual rainfall decreased by 0.41% per year during the examined period with the consequent increase in the aridity index (0.48% per year). Both rainfall decrease and aridity increase followed a non-uniform spatial distribution impacting differently the Mediterranean landscape mosaic.

Land degradation is a primary issue that affects environmental conservation and socioeconomic development. However, ecological restoration has complex and poorly understood consequences for the structure and composition of future ecosystems and socioeconomic systems. To illustrate the complexity of ecological restoration, we discuss the potential links between China's ongoing large-scale ecological restoration practices and the resulting changes of natural factors such as landscape characteristics, climate, and vegetation communities.