Appropriation of public lands associated with agricultural frontier expansion is a longstanding occurrence in the Amazon that has resulted in a highly skewed land-tenure structure in spite of recent state efforts to recognize tenure rights of indigenous people and smallholders living in or nearby forests. Growing concerns to reduce environmental impacts from agricultural development have motivated state governments to place greater attention on sustainable land management and forest conservation.

Achieving forest conservation together with poverty alleviation and equity is an unending challenge in the tropics. The Makira REDD+ pilot project located in northeastern Madagascar is a well-suited case to explore this challenge in conditions of extreme poverty and climatic vulnerability. We assessed the potential effect of project siting on the livelihoods of the local population and which households would be the most strongly impacted by conservation measures.

Land use governance in the Brazilian Amazon has undergone significant changes in the last decade. At the national level, law enforcement capacity has increased and downstream industries linked to commodity chains responsible for deforestation have begun to monitor some of their suppliers’ impacts on forests. At the municipal level, local actors have launched a Green Municipality initiative, aimed at eliminating deforestation and supporting green supply chains at the territorial level.

Soil degradation in India is estimated to be occurring on 147 million hectares (Mha) of land, including 94 Mha from water erosion, 16 Mha from acidification, 14 Mha from flooding, 9 Mha from wind erosion, 6 Mha from salinity, and 7 Mha from a combination of factors. This is extremely serious because India supports 18% of the world’s human population and 15% of the world’s livestock population, but has only 2.4% of the world’s land area. Despite its low proportional land area, India ranks second worldwide in farm output.

The Australian National Soil Research, Development and Extension Strategy identifies soil security as a foundation for the current and future productivity and profitability of Australian agriculture. Current agricultural production is attenuated by soil degradation. Future production is highly dependent on the condition of Australian soils. Soil degradation in Australia is dominated in its areal extent by soil erosion. We reiterate the use of soil erosion as a reliable indicator of soil condition/quality and a practical measure of soil degradation.

The status of grazinglands in the USA is increasingly dynamic with large areas being converted to cropland in response to demands for increased crop production. Here we focus on two types of grazinglands: rangelands and pasturelands. Rangelands are usually defined as natural ecosystems in which the native vegetation is predominantly grasses, grass-like plants or shrubs, and are generally used for grazing livestock and wildlife. Pasturelands are areas specifically managed for the production of forage (native or introduced) for grazing livestock.

Tree and shrub abundance has increased in many grasslands, causing changes in ecosystem carbon and nitrogen pools that are related to patterns of woody plant distribution. However, with regard to spatial patterns, little is known about (i) how they develop; (ii) how they are influenced by grazing; or (iii) the extent to which intraspecific interactions dictate them. We addressed these questions by quantifying changes in the spatial distribution of Prosopis velutina (mesquite) shrubs over 74 years on grazed and protected grasslands.

AIM: Improving our understanding of the drivers of forest fragmentation is fundamental to mitigating the consequences of anthropogenic fragmentation for biodiversity. Moreover, the impacts of fragmentation on biodiversity depend on the spatial scale at which fragmentation occurs. Therefore, understanding how the effect of land use on fragmentation patterns varies across scales is critical to ensure that fragmentation is managed at scales relevant to the ecology of target species or to land management.

Spatio-temporal dynamics of pastoral grazing resources influences the pastoral production system. Obtaining timely and reliable information on the status of these resources will support planning and early response to climatic variability.