Small mammals, such as European rabbits (Oryctolagus cuniculus), plateau pikas (Ochotona curzoniae) and prairie dogs (Cynomys spp.), traditionally have been perceived as pests and targeted for control within their native ranges, where they perform essential ecosystem roles and are considered keystone species. These species can reach high densities, and have been subjected to eradication campaigns because of their putative negative impact on natural habitats and agriculture and their competition with livestock for forage.

Arable land soils generally have lower organic carbon (C) levels than soils under native vegetation; increasing the C stocks through improved management is suggested as an effective means to sequester CO2 from the atmosphere. China's arable lands, accounting for 13% of the world's total, play an important role in soil C sequestration, but their potential to enhance C sequestration has not yet been quantitatively assessed.

Land and water institutions play a vital role in managing and sustaining land and water resources as well as enhancing economic development and poverty alleviation efforts. While a lot has been done in terms of understanding the micro-determinants of farmers decisions in land and water conservation, there is little attempt to understand the broad macro-institutional and organizational issues that influence land and water management decisions.

The state of Iowa requires developing total maximum daily loads (TMDLs) for over 400 water bodies that are listed on the 303(d) list of the impaired waters. The Raccoon River watershed, which covers approximately 9400 km2 of prime agriculture land and represents a typical Midwestern corn-belt region in west-central Iowa, was found to have three stream segments impaired by nitrate-N. The Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) was applied to this watershed to facilitate the development of a TMDL.

Water discolouration is one of the key water quality problems faced by UK water companies taking raw water from peatland catchments. A water colour model has been developed using a combined Geographical Information System and Multicriteria Evaluation approach. The model was used to predict water colour production potential based on key land management practices controlling colour production in UK upland catchments.

Remote sensing techniques have potential for peatland monitoring, but most previous work has focused on spectral approaches that often result in poor discrimination of cover types and neglect structural information. Peatlands contain structural "microtopes" (e.g., hummocks and hollows) which are linked to hydrology, biodiversity and carbon sequestration, and information on surface structure is thus a useful proxy for peatland condition.

The Wind Erosion Prediction System (WEPS) is a process-based model and needs to be verified under a broad range of climates, soils, and land management practices. Occasional poor performance of the WEPS erosion submodel (Single-event Wind Erosion Evaluation Program, or SWEEP) in simulating small amounts of erosion of loessial soils, which contribute to poor air quality in the Columbia Plateau region of the U.S. Pacific Northwest, has been partly attributed to overestimation of threshold friction velocity (u*t).

Based on 2004 CEAP-ARMS Phase II data, higher-sales farms not participating in a conservation programme adopted farmland conservation structures much more intensively on wheat fields than did any other farm-size type among conservation programme participants or non-participants. Survey results suggest that wheat farms not participating in a conservation programme more frequently adopted infield conservation structures, while conservation programme participants more often installed field perimeter conservation structures.

In Ethiopia, exclosures in landscapes have become increasingly important to improving ecosystem services and reversing biodiversity losses. The present study was conducted in Gomit watershed, northern Ethiopia, to: (i) investigate the changes in vegetation composition, diversity and aboveground biomass and carbon following the establishment of exclosures; and (ii) analyse the economic returns of aboveground carbon sequestration and assess the perception of local communities on land degradation and exclosures.

Vegetated buffer zones (BZs) between a cultivated field and a watercourse reduce erosion and load of particle-bound phosphorus (P), but decay of abundant vegetation increases the potential of BZs to act as a source of readily algal-available P. To quantify temporal variations in P and nitrogen (N) contents of the grassy vegetation of BZs on a clay soil (Vertic Cambisol) in south-western Finland, plant samples were collected six times between May 2005 and April 2006 from natural BZs, BZs grazed by cattle and BZs harvested by cutting and removal of the yield.