The effects of intensifying the management of 15% of the Swedish forest land on potential future forest production over a 100-year period were investigated in a simulation study.

Biomass harvesting for energy production and forest health can impact the soil resource by altering inherent chemical, physical and biological properties. These impacts raise concern about damaging sensitive forest soils, even with the prospect of maintaining vigorous forest growth through biomass harvesting operations. Current forest biomass harvesting research concurs that harvest impacts to the soil resource are region- and site-specific, although generalized knowledge from decades of research can be incorporated into management activities.

Les nouvelles sur l’état de l’agriculture en Afrique sont en grande partie décourageantes, mais on entrevoit des lueurs d'espoir. Quelques efforts stimulants réalisés par des agriculteurs et chercheurs africains au cours des dix dernières années ont sensiblement augmenté la productivité agricole dans certains pays et pour certains produits. Ces cas peuvent servir de modèles pour de futurs efforts, mais seulement si les responsables des politiques de développement et les professionnels comprennent les processus qui ont amené ces résultats, et les éléments clé de leur succès.

Changes in resource selection associated with human predation risk may alter elk distributions and availability for harvest. We used Global Positioning System data collected from telemetered female elk (Cervus elaphus) to evaluate effects of refuges (areas where hunting was prohibited), spatial variation in hunting risk, and landscape attributes on resource selection within an established Greater Yellowstone Area, USA, winter range. We also evaluated elk distributions during and outside of a late-season hunting period.

Understanding the relationships between biodiversity and land-use is a key element for the development of effective conservation strategies. We studied a mid-altitude steppe-like area of Southern France, the Causse de Sauveterre, that has been grazed for many centuries. The decrease of human population during the 20th century, particularly since the end of 2nd World War, and the ongoing changes in agricultural practices may have dramatic effects on many biodiversity components of these landscapes.

It is now widely accepted that agricultural intensification drives the decline of biodiversity and related ecosystem services like pollination. Conservation management, such as agri-environment schemes (AES), has been introduced to counteract these declines, but in Western European countries these tend to produce mixed biodiversity benefits. Not much is known about the effects of AES in Central and Eastern European countries. We evaluated the effect of reduced stocking rates (0.5cow/ha vs. >1cow/ha) on bees and insect-pollinated plants in semi-natural pastures in Hungary.

Seeding rangeland following wildfire is a central tool managers use to stabilize soils and inhibit the spread of invasive plants. Rates of successful seeding on arid rangeland, however, are low. The objective of this study was to determine the degree to which water availability, invasive plant abundance, and seeding technology influence postfire seedling establishment. Across four fire complexes, whole plots were either seeded using a rangeland drill, seeded by hand where seeds could be placed at an exact depth, or left as unseeded controls.

Dominant plant species are often used as indicators of site potential in forest and rangelands. However, subspecies of dominant vegetation often indicate different site characteristics and, therefore, may be more useful indicators of plant community potential and provide more precise information for management. Big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata Nutt.) occurs across large expanses of the western United States.

Two long-term (16 year) experiments on intensively managed pastures compared extensive grazing, abandonment and continued intensive grazing and were assessed for impacts on soil parameters, plant nutrient content and ecological indicator values. There was a reduction in soil carbon and nitrogen in the abandoned treatment compared to the intensively managed treatment at the wetter site. At the drier site, extensive grazing resulted in a build up of soil carbon. There was a build up of dead organic matter and a reduction in the nutritive value of the vegetation as grazing was reduced.

The socio-economic changes of the last decades have resulted in changes in traditional land uses with consequent abandonment of large farmland areas in the Mediterranean region. We assessed the response of species richness and composition, and species functional traits to decreasing land use intensity in a Montado system, an agro-pastoral system characteristic of the Alentejo, Southern Portugal. Additionally, we investigated whether plant functional types can be established based on the response to decreasing land use intensity in these systems.