Accurate assessment of changing fire regimes is important, since climatic change and people may be promoting more wildfires. Government wildland fire policies and restoration programmes in dry western US forests are based on the hypothesis that high‐severity fire was rare in historical fire regimes, modern fire severity is unnaturally high and restoration efforts should focus primarily on thinning forests to eliminate high‐severity fire.

Land degradation deteriorates biological productivity and affects environmental, social, and economic sustainability, particularly so in the semi-arid region of Northeast Brazil. Although some studies exist reporting gross measures of soil microbial parameters and processes, limited information is available on how land degradation and restoration strategies influence the diversity and composition of soil microbial communities.

Alteration in climatic pattern has resulted to a steady decline in quality of life and the environment, especially in and around urbanized areas. These areas are faced with increasing surface temperature arising mostly from human activities and other natural sources; hence land surface temperature has become an important variable in global climate change studies. In this paper, Landsat TM/ETM imagery acquired between 1997 and 2013 were used to extract ground brightness temperature and land use/land cover change in Kuala Lumpur metropolis.

Desertification is the most disturbing and detrimental cause of rural vulnerability in Cape Verde, affecting families' material and environmental resources. Combating desertification in Cape Verde is complex because it involves addressing a mixture of endogenous (manual agriculture, fuel wood and fodder extraction, land tenure and steep slopes) and exogenous drivers (high rainfall variability, climate change, prolonged drought or heavy rainfall).

AIM: Deforestation and climate change are two of the most serious threats to tropical birds. Here, we combine fine‐scale climatic and dynamic land cover models to forecast species vulnerability in rain forest habitats. LOCATION: Sulawesi, Indonesia. METHODS: We sampled bird communities on four mountains across three seasons in Lore Lindu National Park, Sulawesi, Indonesia (a globally important hotspot of avian endemism), to characterize relationships between elevation and abundance. Deforestation from 2000 to 2010 was quantified, and predictors of deforestation were identified.

The economic and ecological damages caused by wildfires are alarming. Because such damages are expected to increase with changes in wildfire regimes, this calls for more effective wildfire mitigation and adaptation strategies. Wildfire adaptation options for forestland owners include purchasing wildfire insurance, which provides compensation to those insured if a wildfire damages their properties.

To study the magnitude of land degradation, desertification or resilience in Montenegro throughout the 20th and early‐21st centuries, we rephotographed the landscapes recorded on 48 historical photographs dating back to between 1890 and 1985, and analysed in a semi‐quantitative way the land use and cover changes that had occurred using an expert rating system (six correspondents). Time‐series of hydrology and population density were analysed for the period since 1948 and were compared with the changes observed using repeat photography.

The combined effects of erosive rains, steep slopes and human land use have caused severe land degradation in the Ethiopian Highlands for several thousand years, but since the 1970s, however, land rehabilitation programmes have been established to try to reverse deterioration. In order to characterize and quantify the transformations in the north Ethiopian Highlands, a study was carried out over 8884 km² of the Tigray Highlands of northern Ethiopia.

Identifying the patterns of land cover change (LCC) and their main proximate causes and underlying driving forces in tropical rainforests is an urgent task for designing adequate management and conservation policies. The Lachuá region maintains the largest lowland rainforest remnant in Guatemala, but it has been highly deforested and fragmented during the last decades. This is the first paper to describe the patterns of LCC and the associated political and socioeconomic factors in the region over the last 50� years.

In recent decades, the problem of environmental quality and environmental safety at global, regional, and local levels has been an increasingly pressing issue. The intensive development of Siberian natural resources has resulted in the serious deterioration of the natural environment in a region which had previously had almost escaped anthropogenic impact. There are some peculiar features here associated with both specific natural conditions and types of anthropogenic influence. This paper presents data on the pollution of the environment, land degradation, and natural disasters.

To protect biodiversity and improve environmental conditions, China has invested billions of dollars in reforestation and payments for ecosystem service programs. Here, we examine the Sloping Land Conversion Program, the largest such program in the world and found that after 13� years of implementation at our study site, it has had negative impacts on natural tropical forests. GIS and remote sensing techniques revealed that both natural forests and natural shrub and grasslands were replaced by non-native monocultural plantations on Hainan Island, China, a key tropical biodiversity hotspot.

Impacts of land use and climate change on runoff were investigated by studying the runoff in the Yarlung Zangbo River basin, China. Trends in precipitation, mean air temperature, and runoff were analysed by non‐parametric Mann‐Kendall tests. Land‐use changes were examined with land‐use transition matrix and geographic information system tools. Land‐use and climate changes showed several characteristics, including increased reforestation, decreased grassland, retreat of glaciers and increased desertification.