This event, hosted at ODI in London, was convened to discuss the use of new technologies to map and document land rights, and their impact on land registration and administration, and provide updates on recent activities of Forum membe

Nas últimas décadas, tem-se verificado uma crescente procura de recursos energéticos, minerais e terra. No que respeita à terra (e água), o objectivo principal da procura é a produção de commodities e alimentos (sobretudo grãos), com sistemas de produção em grande escala de monoculturas, sob formas de subcontratação e pela acção de traders para abastecer o mercado internacional, em especial as grandes economias emergentes (“economias baleia”, assim designadas por consumirem muito – China e Índia).

As public land management agencies pursue region-specific resource management plans, with meaningful consideration of public attitudes and values, there is a need to characterize the complex mix of environmental attitudes in a diverse population. The contribution of this investigation is to make use of a unique household, mail/internet survey data set collected in 2007 in the Southwestern United States (Region 3 of the U.S. Forest Service).

Agroecosystems are increasingly recognized as both sources and sinks of non‐native weedy plant species as well as of native plant species, thus management of these systems has important implications for the composition of plant communities and landscape diversity. We quantified the distribution and abundance of both native and non‐native plant species along a habitat gradient representing four management zones: managed agroecosystem, the agroecosystem boundary, ecotone, and neighbouring native forest for two land uses: kiwifruit orchards and neighbouring grassland agroecosystems.

Managing non-point-source pollution of water requires knowledge of land use/land cover (LULC) influences at altering watershed scales. To gain improved understanding of relationships among LULC, soil drainage, and dissolved nitrate-N dynamics within the Calapooia River Basin in western Oregon, we selected 44 watersheds ranging in size between 3 and 33 km2 for monthly synoptic sampling of surface water quality between October 2003 and September 2004.

The purpose of this paper is to present a new concept of farm nature plan, which is one of the possible directions, how to ensure a complex approach to landscape management. The new concept, which was recently introduced in several European countries, was studied on three organic farms in Denmark. The most widely perceived strength of the concept is the delivery of specific information and knowledge to individual farm conditions, opening a dialogue with the farmer, and searching for common objectives of farm production and nature conservation.

The world’s population and food consumption are increasing drastically while natural resources are decreasing. In particular, energy use is an important component of reaching sustainability in agricultural production processes because of its shortage as resource, its influence on air pollution and its role in the economics of production. This study used system modeling to examine interactions between crop and livestock procedures and between levels of different input factors and their effects on yields in order to determine agricultural energy intensity.

Farmland resources in mountainous areas are important for regional food security and ecological security. Studies concerning changes in farmland use in mountainous areas are of considerable significance in China. Here, we analyzed marginalization characteristics of farmland in Renhuai city from 2005 to 2011 and driving factors using land information systems, surveys of farmer households and statistical data. Our results indicate that from 2005 to 2011, 3095.76 hm² of farmland was converted to forest land and natural reserve, accounting for 5.45% of the total farmland area.

Changes in total soil carbon (C), nitrogen (N) and natural-abundance N isotopes (δ15N) were measured along three forest-to-pasture chronosequences on pumice soils in the Central North Island of New Zealand. On each of the three chronosequences, exotic pine forests had been converted to intensive dairy pastures 2–11 years before sampling and samples were also taken from remaining pine forests and long-term pastures (40–80 years old).

Baseflow and precipitation in the Kickapoo River Watershed, located in the Driftless Area of Wisconsin, exhibit a step increase around 1970, similar to minimum and median flows in many other central and eastern USA streams. Potential effects on streamflow due to climatic and land management changes were evaluated by comparing volumetric changes in the hydrologic budget before and after 1970. Increases in precipitation do not fully account for the increase in baseflow, which appears to be offset by a volumetric decrease in stormflow.

Most researchers usually adopt laboratory experimental methods when studying the effects of water level variations on the concentrations of pollutants. In this study, the data from routine monitoring sites in the city of Luoyang, China, are collected and analyzed to verify the results of previous laboratory experiments and to examine whether variations in the water level affect the concentration of pollutants in different locations, particularly that of nitrates. Statistical studies conducted between 2007 and 2011 show a significant variation in the groundwater depth in the Luoyang area.