Severe soil erosion and food security problems are the most important issues in the Loess Plateau of northern China, which are closely related to the over-cultivation and poor management of marginal land resources. Alleviation of these unsustainability problems requires, among many other things, alternative and innovative cropping systems. This paper describes the identification of such cropping systems and their quantitative evaluation.

The province of New Brunswick (NB), Canada and the state of Maine (ME), USA are heavily forested jurisdictions whose forests provide many social, ecological, and economic functions. Roughly a third of NB and ME’s forested land is owned by private, non-industrial owners [sometimes called family forests or woodlot owners]. The choices of thousands of individual parcel owners of forest land determine the fate of these ecosystems. Ownership of forest land implies a social contract between the landowners and the rest of society.

Human activities in many parts of the world have greatly changed the natural land cover. This study has been conducted on Pichavaram forest, south east coast of India, famous for its unique mangrove bio-diversity. The main objectives of this study were focused on monitoring land cover changes particularly for the mangrove forest in the Pichavaram area using multi-temporal Landsat images captured in the 1991, 2000, and 2009.

Due to the progressive forest expansion in European mountain areas triggered by agricultural abandonment, semi-natural meadows and pastures of great ecological and aesthetic value are disappearing. The aim of this study is to predict and analyse the future evolution of land use and land cover (LULC) in the Stubai Valley, Central Alps. We propose a computational Population Dynamics P system (PDP) model that incorporates the main LULC change processes like plant production, grazing, abandonment and reforestation.

Organic carbon (OC) sequestration in degraded semi‐arid environments by improved soil management is assumed to contribute substantially to climate change mitigation. However, information about the soil organic carbon (SOC) sequestration potential in steppe soils and their current saturation status remains unknown. In this study, we estimated the OC storage capacity of semi‐arid grassland soils on the basis of remote, natural steppe fragments in northern China. Based on the maximum OC saturation of silt and clay particles

Grasslands are an important land use in Europe with essential functions for feed and ecosystem service supply. Impact assessment modelling of European agriculture and the environment needs to consider grasslands and requires spatially explicit information on grassland distribution and productivity, which is not available. This paper presents and analyses spatially explicit data of grassland productivity and land use across regions in Europe. Data are extracted from various regional, national and international census statistics for Europe, extending eastwards to the Ural Mountains.

Land means the basic part of the natural environment, the basic instrument of human life, activity and immovable property, which is being disposed of in the process of land relation. Land should be used when coordinating private and public interests as well as environment protection requirements.

Europe is characterized not only by large geomorphological variability but also by a long history of land use. This resulted in a highly variegated landscape. Based on the IGBP‐transect initiative, a north south transect was established across Europe ranging from north Sweden to central Italy in order to study effects of global change. Mainly process oriented studies were established on plots along the transect, and these were used to establish functional relationships as basis for landscape integration.

The fundamental land use/land cover change (LUCC) of Naoli River (NLR) Basin in Sanjiang Plain since 1954 is characterized with a very significant shrink of wetland area, primarily due to agricultural reclamation, especially farm construction. In this paper, LUCC data of six periods were generated to explore the process of LUCC in NLR; the driving factors were discovered and the regression analysis of these driving factors was realized using the Dyna-CLUE model; and the land use pattern of 2020 in NLR Basin was projected under six scenarios.

Land use/cover change (LUCC) is a major indicator of the impact of climate change and human activity, particularly in the Sahel, where the land cover has changed greatly over the past 50 years. Aerial and satellite sensors have been taking images of the Earth's surface for several decades. These data have been widely used to monitor LUCC, but many questions remain concerning what type of pre-processing should be carried out on image resolutions and which methods are most appropriate for successfully mapping patterns and dynamics in both croplands and natural vegetation.

We describe a bio-economic model for Nassella neesiana (Chilean needle grass) that estimates the net benefit of a containment programme for the weed in Canterbury as the difference between the cost of containment and the costs incurred over time should the weed spread within sheep and beef pastoral systems. Logistic spread is assumed with the maximum area that could be invaded (772,080 ha) determined by constraining a climate niche model for the weed to susceptible farm system types within productive land use capability classes.

An assessment of sensitivity to land degradation has been carried out in the Extremadura region, SW Spain, by means of a modelling approach developed by the European Commission funded MEDALUS project (Mediterranean Desertification and Land Use) which identifies such areas on the basis of an index (Environmentally Sensitive Area index, ESA index) that incorporates data on environmental quality (climate, vegetation, soil) as well as anthropogenic factors (management).