To meet growing population demands for food and other agricultural commodities, agricultural land-use intensification and extensification seems to be increasing in the Abbay (Upper Blue Nile) basin in Ethiopia. However, the amount, location and degree of suitability of the basin for agriculture seem not well studied and/or documented. From global data sources, literature review and field investigation, a number of agricultural land suitability evaluation criteria were identified.

Ecological restoration through exclosure establishment has become an increasingly important approach to reversing degraded ecosystems in rangelands worldwide. The present study was conducted in northwestern Ethiopia where policy programs are aiming to restore degraded lands. Changes in soil properties following establishing exclosures on communal grazing lands were investigated. A space-for-time substitution approach was used to monitor changes in soil properties after conversion of communal grazing lands to exclosures with ages of establishment ranging from 1 to 7-years.

Planning effective landscape interventions is an important tool to fight against land degradation and requires knowledge on spatial distribution of runoff. The objective of this paper was to test models that predict temporal and spatial distribution of runoff. The selected models were PED-WM, HBV-IHMS and SWAT. We choose 7 km2 Awramba watershed in the Lake Tana basin with detailed hydrological information for testing these models.

Degraded lands—lands that have lost some degree of their natural productivity through human activity—account for over 20 percent of forest and agricultural lands in Latin America and the Caribbean. Some 300 million hectares of the region’s forests are considered degraded, and about 350 million hectares are now classified as deforested. The agriculture and forestry sectors are growing and exerting great pressure on natural areas. With the region expected to play an increasingly important role in global food security, this pressure will continue to ratchet up.

In addition to global events and food policy changes, 2015 also saw important developments with potentially wide repercussions in individual countries and regions. This chapter offers perspectives on major food policy developments across the major regions: Africa, the Middle East and North Africa, Central Asia, South Asia, East Asia, and Latin America and the Caribbean.

To meet growing population demands for food and other agricultural commodities, agricultural land-use intensification and extensification seems to be increasing in the Abbay (Upper Blue Nile) basin in Ethiopia. However, the amount, location and degree of suitability of the basin for agriculture seem not well studied and/or documented. From global data sources, literature review and field investigation, a number of agricultural land suitability evaluation criteria were identified.

A research was carried out in 2015-2016 in the Rostov region with the help of "VEGA-Science" satellite. The intensity of irrigated land in one of the farms in the region was estimated. Field experiments were carried out in accordance with the procedures adopted by GOST 17.4.3.01-83, GOST 28168-89, OST 56 81-84. To delineate the boundaries of fields and add them into the database, high-resolution data were used: the scene of 2015-09-28. 14 thematic maps to estimate the degree of degradation (from 0 to 3 points) were made up for the entire study area.

Aim of the paper is to explore the possibilities of application of orthophoto maps in determination of land degradation. One of the forms of remote sensing is aerial photography. Orthophoto maps are made from aerial photography with specialized software orthophoto maps were analysed in perspective for several years – from 2005 to 2011.The results are based on the expert. With each year possibilities of application of orthophoto maps are expanding. During the research, data of survey and SWOT analysis of determination of land degradation by orthophoto maps.