Identifying the importance of soil biology in different land use systems is critical to assess the present conditions of declining soil (C) and global land degradation while regulating soil health and biogeochemical nutrient cycling. A study was undertaken in a mixed watershed comprising of different land use systems (agricultural, grassland, agroforestry, and eroded); situated in the Shiwalik region in the foot hills of the lower Himalayas in India, a fragile ecosystem susceptible to land degradation.

The article discusses the issues of effectiveness of the FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) and PEFC (Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification) certification systems in relation to enterprises and the level to which the systems which present sustainability as a part of their ethos are accepted by consumers. The justifiability and topicality of this issue result from the increasingly strong interest in sustainability of the society as a whole as well as from the long-term vision of sector policies with respect to meeting the objectives of sustainable development.

Climate change plays an important role in shaping ecological stability of landscape systems. Increasing weather fluctuations such as droughts threaten the ecological stability of natural and anthropogenic landscapes. Uncertainty exists regarding the validity of traditional landscape assessment schemes under climate change. This commentary debates the main factors that threaten ecological stability, discussing basic approaches to interpret landscape functioning.

Sustainable development of the natural landscape has received an increasing attention worldwide. Identifying the causes of land degradation is the primary condition for adopting appropriate methods to preserve degraded landscapes. The National Geological Park of Qian-an mud forest in China is facing widespread land degradation, which not only threatens landscape development but also endangers many households and farmlands. Using the park as a research object, we identified the types of slope failure and the factors that contribute to their occurrence.

In 2015, the United Nations General Assembly unanimously adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and Sustainable Development Goals. In 2019, the release of the global assessment report of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services unfortunately demonstrated that our planet may be in more trouble than expected. The main drivers have been identified for many years and relate to human activities such as over-exploitation of natural resources leading to land degradation, deforestation, ocean and atmospheric pollution, and climate change.

Gully erosion is the destructive and dramatic form of land degradation in Northeast China. The region is the grain production and ecological security base of China where the fertile and productive Mollisols are distributed. Though the region was agriculturally developed relatively recently, it went through high intensity cultivation and fast succession processes within short-time scales. Coupled with irrational farming practice choice and land use, hillslope erosion and gully erosion are seriously threatening agricultural production and environmental stability in the region.

The character, the motion and the proportion of environment-induced migration have radically changed in recent years. Environment-induced migration is an increasingly recognized fact and has become one of the main challenges of the 21st century, and needs to be focused on to ensure sustainable growth. This new stance is due to the changing character of environmental degradation.

Soil security identifies global challenges and a series of dimensions that are necessary requirements to meet those global challenges using sustainable land management. The soil security concept is applied to two contrasting soil landscape systems with varying climate, landform and soil types. Previous methodologies for assessing land and soil capability are combined within the soil security conceptual approach.

Land degradation is a multifaceted phenomenon. In many mountainous and hilly areas that are marginal in terms of their economic and social sustainability, degradation is closely linked to population decline through ageing and outmigration, and to the abandonment of land, leading to a loss of community resilience. These processes acting together can produce positive feedback loops, with the consequential loss of socio-economic resilience at larger spatial scales that can ultimately lead to the disintegration of entire territories.

The results of the research conducted on the subject of regeneration of areas of land suffering degradation were presented, studied and analyzed to establish “families” of causes and effects, to forecast lines of action commensurate with the reversibility of the damage. The area in question is the Metropolitan City of Reggio Calabria covering the entire territory of the former province and including the Aspromonte National Park.

The quality of cultivated land has been seriously degraded due to the overuse of chemical fertilizer in China. Land conservation technologies (LCTs) have been proven to effectively address land degradation and improve land productivity. In this study, a multivariate probit model is applied to empirically analyze the correlation effects and determinants of the application of LCTs application using cross-sectional data collected on 690 large-scale grain producers from the Jiangsu and Jiangxi provinces in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River.

Labour migration in Nepal is having profound effects on land management. We take two examples from the hills of Nepal where the increasing trend in outmigration continues unabated and explore its consequences. The purpose of this study is to understand the impacts of the subsequent labour shortage on land management and how it affects households. We used data from two surveys and assessed land use change and degradation with a qualitative mapping method. The findings show that the local context leads to very different strategies in terms of land management.