This study looks at wood curio carving in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe, Africa. Although the local people, Ndebele and Shona, have always carved, they now face a weakened economy, due in large part to land reforms in 2000. Thus, more people sculpt wood as a form of livelihood. As one man said “Starvation taught me art”. As a result, gender roles are shifting as men and women begin to enter realms previously reserved for the other. Environmentally, carvers poaching trees deforests the woodlands. As more individuals turn to making crafts sustainability deteriorates.

Voting methods were used by Metsähallitus in a real strategic participatory planning case in a regional working group context. The general aim of the study was to find out whether learning and collaborative decision making could be adequately supported by using the voting methods in the regional stakeholder group.

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.

Recently, researchers indicated great changes in the chemistry of atmosphere due to faster oxidation of soil organic carbon. The increases of greenhouse gasses especially CO2 concentration can affect climate, plant physiology, microbial activity, soil organic matter, and decomposition. Soil can be a store or source for atmospheric CO2. The amount of soil organic carbon stored in the soil or release to the atmosphere depends on net ecosystem productivity and heterotrophic respiration.

The promise of the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) to deliver its dual objectives is currently under public scrutiny. In land-use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF) activities through afforestation and reforestation projects, known as A/R CDM, the deliverables that demonstrate sustainable development remain unclear. While the methods to convincingly demonstrate carbon benefits are fine-tuned, there is growing concern on a lack of socio-economic benefits of the projects.

The article deals with uphill wood skidding with WOODY 110 skidder and the changes taking place in technical parameters: slip, torque, tractive forces, and weight distribution of a loaded tractor in the last three meters of skidding, which is defined as a range of stopping due to overload. The test was performed on a concave skid trail, where tractor loaded with 8 meter long fir logs stopped at the 32% incline. It stopped somewhat later when skidding with butt-end forward in comparison to skidding with top-end forward.

Up to 25 percent of all anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions are caused by deforestation, and Indonesia is the third largest greenhouse gas emitter worldwide due to land use change and deforestation. On the island of Sulawesi in the vicinity of the Lore Lindu National Park (LLNP), many smallholders contribute to conversion processes at the forest margin as a result of their agricultural practices. Specifically the area dedicated to cocoa plantations has increased from zero (1979) to nearly 18,000 hectares (2001).

In the framework of the established long-term monitoring of the Carpathian forest ecosystems, the assessment of changes in the plant species richness, type of plant communities and biometric characteristics and health status of forest trees, for getting relevant insights regarding the effects of the type of management, pollution and climate changes upon forest biodiversity and health, is one of the major objectives.

Se realiza un recorrido por las principales prácticas forestales en Canadá y particularmente en la provincia de British Columbia. Se describen las principales formas de propiedad, gestión, aprovechamiento y conservación de los bosques. Finalmente, se repasan los objetivos de la Estrategia Forestal Canadiense, destacando aquellos que más difieren de los reflejados en la Estrategia Forestal Española.

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.

The results of measuring maximum loads on different slopes when skidding uphill with WOO DY 110 cable skidder and adapted 4WD agricultural tractor AGT 835 are described in the article. Both tractors are very different and were chosen for the purpose of finding the limits of uphill skidding. Besides the slope, the pre-designated loads of different sizes and log orientation (butt-end or top-end forward) have been main variables. The trial was conducted on two concave shaped test skid trails in the forest.