Suppression of historical fire regimes has changed the composition and structure of many fire-dependent ecosystems, frequently resulting in decreased grazing productivity and biodiversity in grasslands and savannas. Land managers have attempted to reverse these trends through the application of prescribed fire, but regulations and liability concerns often deter them. District court judges play a key role in defining the legal context of prescribed burning by interpreting applicable statutes in personal injury or property damage cases resulting from escaped prescribed fire.

The report is based on a collaboration between the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in South Africa and the Land Portal Foundation, in collaboration with local partners, in individual countries. It is based on a wide-ranging survey of sources of land information in South Africa, conducted by the CSIR, ‘Sources of Land Information in South Africa and their Institutional Context’, published as a companion document.

The design of efficient Green Infrastructure —GI— systems is a key issue to achieve sustainable development city planning goals in the twenty-first century. This study’s main contribution is the identification of potential GI elements to better align the environmental, social and economic perspectives in the GI design by including information about the use, activities, preferences and presence of people. To achieve this, user generated content from Location Based Social Network —LBSN— Foursquare is used as a complementary data source.

Effective protection of biodiversity in areas of high conservation value requires trade-offs between local use of natural resources and conservation restrictions. The compromise is often difficult to reach, which causes conflicts over the management priorities of existing and potential protected areas. Ecosystem services (ES) perspective offers a promising avenue for diagnosing and reconciling contrasting interests concerning the use of benefits from ecosystems.

As central policies for biodiversity conservation in agricultural landscapes in the European Union (EU), the Habitats Directive and Agri-environmental programmes (AEP) have largely failed to halt biodiversity loss. In response, the German federal state of Saxony combined the instrument of management plans with AEPs to support the implementation of the Habitat Directive. In this study, we investigate the determinants of a farmers’ decisions to adjust their farming practices.

The conciliation between different issues such as agriculture production, biodiversity conservation and water management remains unsolved in many places in the world. As a striking example, the wet grasslands of the Marais Poitevin region (France) presents many obstacles against the integration of these issues, especially in terms of public policy design.

The aim of the present study is to test empirically the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis for 42 Romanian counties over the 2000-2014 period. Specifically, we investigate the existence of an inverted U-shaped curve relationship between residential built-up land and economic development in a low-income EU country undergoing rapid and profound transition. We do so by making innovative use of spatial panel econometric techniques.

Grasslands are among the most endangered ecosystems in the world. They supply vital resources for society, support an abundance of wildlife species, and store rich carbon reserves beneath their surfaces. Despite this, only a fraction of original grasslands in the United States now remains, and their rate of conversion to cropland has recently reaccelerated. This paper discusses opportunities that are immediately available to reduce the loss of U.S. native grasslands (i.e., prairie) and advance toward collective goals in grassland conservation.

Under the banner of a "New Green Revolution for Africa," agricultural intensification programs aim to make smallholder agriculture more productive as well as "climate smart". As with Green Revolutions in Asia and Mexico, agricultural innovations (hybrid seeds, agronomic engineering, market linkages,and increased use of fertilizer and pesticides) are promoted as essential catalysts of agriculture-led economic growth.

This research develops the novel concept of an economic ecosystem service sustainability index from the perspective of total income theory, and presents its empirical application at the spatial unit scale of the agroforestry farm. This paper compares the results accrued from applying the refined standard System of National Accounts (rSNA) and the authors’ Agroforestry Accounting System (AAS).

Area-based targets for afforestation are a frequent and prominent component of policy discourses on forestry, land use and climate change emissions abatement. Such targets imply an expected contribution of afforestation to the net reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, yet the nature of afforestation undertaken and its geographical distribution means that there is considerable uncertainty over the eventual emission reductions outcomes.

Chinese croplands have changed considerably over the past decades, but their impacts on the environment remain underexplored. Meanwhile, understanding the contributions of human activities to vegetation greenness has been attracting more attention but still needs to be improved. To address both issues, this study explored vegetation greening and its relationships with Chinese cropland changes and climate. Greenness trends were first identified from the normalized difference vegetation index and leaf area index from 1982–2015 using three trend detection algorithms.