Many of the large, donor-funded community-based conservation projects that seek to reduce biodiversity loss in the tropics have been unsuccessful. There is, therefore, a need for empirical evaluations to identify the driving factors and to provide evidence that supports the development of context-specific conservation projects.

This study was carried out to evaluate the effects of deforestation on physical and chemical properties of soils under native forest in the Mediterranean region of northwestern Jordan. Land use/cover maps of 1953, 1978 and 2002 were interpreted and analysed within GIS to quantify the shift from forest to rainfed cultivation. Six sites were sampled in a non-changed forest and in cultivated fields, three for each. Different soil properties of texture, bulk density, organic matter, total nitrogen, pH, cation exchange capacity (CEC), phosphorous and potassium were analysed.

This article analyses the mechanism behind the changes in agricultural land use arising from climate variables, agricultural policies and socio-economic pressures. The study presented here has undertaken an integrated methodology in the estimation of future land use change in Europe. The scenarios constructed in this study include estimates not only of changes in the climate baseline, but also of possible future changes in socio-economics.

This paper explores the concept of agricultural resilience in the context of climate change relatedwater scarcity. Specifically, the impact of water scarcity on agricultural production is analyzedto derive the timing of exit decisions for farmers faced with the prospect of decliningprofitability in agriculture but increasing benefits from land rezoning in future. The prospects ofland rezoning are modeled as a poison process which may or may not be influenced by farmer’swater abstraction decisions.

Soils are a vital substrate for agricultural production, play a central role in regulating the global carbon budget, and are a valuable source of biodiversity. Yet estimates of the global area affected by soil and land degradation are continuing to increase. For decades, soil scientists have called for a legally binding, international policy framework to guide the sustainable use of soils, but a piecemeal legislative approach has prevailed instead. With over 200 international environmental agreements currently in force, there is political reluctance for another one.

We focused on land units as landscape characteristics and selected seven typical land units on a land catena comprising two areas of southern Mongolia. Hierarchical analysis was used to test the hypothesis that a land unit's edaphic factors could explain the differences in vegetation responses to grazing.

Both climate and agricultural policy changes are commonly seen as important drivers for agricultural production. In this study, scenarios of climate and political change were calculated for the Upper Danube catchment area using the regional optimization model ACRE. Two political scenarios were calculated for the year 2020. One scenario assumes the continuation of the Common Agricultural Policy reform 2003 the other assumes a strong shift away from payments of the first pillar to payments of the second pillar of the CAP.

This study assesses the presence of a forest transition - that is, a shift from net deforestation to net reforestation - in Vietnam during the 1990s, and describes its key attributes relevant for global environmental change issues. Using Fuzzy Kappa and other indicators, we compared forest cover estimates and spatial patterns from global and national land cover maps from the early and late 1990s, and compiled other available statistics for years before and after that period.

Soil erosion and subsequent degradation has been a contributor to societal collapse in the past and is one of the major expressions of desertification in arid regions. The revised universal soil loss equation (RUSLE) models soil lost to water erosion as a function of climate erosivity (the degree to which rainfall can result in erosion), topography, soil erodibility, and land use/management.