Elsevier is a world-leading provider of information solutions that enhance the performance of science, health, and technology professionals.
All knowledge begins as uncommon—unrecognized, undervalued, and sometimes unaccepted. But with the right perspective, the uncommon can become the exceptional.
That’s why Elsevier is dedicated to making uncommon knowledge, common—through validation, integration, and connection. Between our carefully-curated information databases, smart social networks, intelligent search tools, and thousands of scholarly books and journals, we have a great responsibility and relentless passion for making information actionable.
Members:
Resources
Displaying 261 - 265 of 1605Trajectories of deforestation, coffee expansion and displacement of shifting cultivation in the Central Highlands of Vietnam
Production of commodities for global markets is an increasingly important factor of tropical deforestation, taking over smallholders subsistence farming. Measures to reduce deforestation and convert shifting cultivation systems towards permanent crops have recently been strengthened in several countries. But these changes have variable environmental and social impacts, including on ethnic minorities. In Vietnam, although a forest transition - i.e.
Self-sufficiency or surplus: Conflicting local and national rural development goals in Cambodia
Cambodia is currently experiencing profound processes of rural change, driven by an emerging trend of large-scale land deals. This article discusses potential future pathways by analyzing two contrasting visions and realities of land use: the aim of the governmental elites to foster surplus-producing rural areas for overall economic growth, employment creation and ultimately poverty reduction, and the attempts of smallholders to maintain and create livelihoods based on largely self-sufficient rural systems.
Land-cover changes of biome transition zones in Loess Plateau of China
The Holdridge life zone (HLZ) model has been improved to help classify the biome transition zone (BTZ) in China's Loess Plateau. A positive and negative transformation index of land-cover (PNTIL) was developed to quantitatively evaluate the land-cover changes in every type of BTZ. Three bioclimatic datasets, with a spatial resolution of 1km×1km, were used to classify the BTZ type in Loess Plateau. These include the mean annual biotemperature (MAB), average total annual precipitation (TAP) and potential evapotranspiration ratio (PER).
Participatory multi-criteria assessment as ‘opening up’ vs. ‘closing down’ of policy discourses: A case of old-growth forest conflict in Finnish Upper Lapland
Multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA), also termed as multi-criteria assessment (MCA), is a powerful policy appraisal tool but as Stirling (2006) has suggested, it can be used both for opening up and closing down policy discourses. Our analysis of MCA in addressing a conflict between state forestry and indigenous Sámi reindeer herding in Upper Lapland, Finland, illustrates MCA's potential in promoting open discussion about policy alternatives and their consequences, and also its limitations in highly controversial policy processes.
Using an ecological economics approach to support the restoration of collapsing gullies in southern China
Land degradation and poverty are problems that must be tackled together for environmental conservation to succeed. However, it is rarely possible to move a population from degraded land to another area where the people can be more easily sustained. To find a new strategy that achieves both conservation and economic gains without the need to relocate a population, we examined/investigated a sustainable combination of ecological and economic development suitable for the restoration of areas of China with collapsing gullies, where the frequent steep slopes make restoration difficult.