Agricultural crops and pasturelands cover 24–38% of the global land area, and thus the ecological services that agricultural systems provide are of utmost societal importance. An important determinant of ecosystem services provision from European farmland is the amount and spatial arrangement of trees, shrubs and woodlands that are integrated into the respective land-use systems.

A voluntary conservation approach may reveal environmentally minded landowners who are willing to protect their lands with a compensation that is lower than the market price based compensation. Consequently, voluntary conservation programs may induce lower costs than traditional obligatory programs, such as a land taking. We compared the costs accrued from land purchasing with those from temporal land leasing. The costs included both direct costs, such as fees of land acquisition and compensation payments in land leasing, and transaction costs.

Change in the extent and quality of native vegetation in rural landscapes in Victoria has not occurred evenly, or predictably, across the state over the past 50 years. There is variation in the presence of remnant native vegetation across land tenure, agronomic potential and from site-specific historical events. Even when there is an increase in native vegetation on farmland, it is uncertain how different landholders perceive this change and the extent to which environmental programs influence their management.

Soil quality (SQ) assessment from farmers' point of view can be used as a primary indicator for planning sustainable agriculture. Despite this fact, limited information is documented with regard to SQ indicators, for example weed species, crop types and management practices from farmers' knowledge perspectives. The aims of this study are to analyse factors that determine farmers' knowledge of SQ, identify SQ indicators of weed species and crop types across different SQ status and assess soil‐and‐crop management practices that maintain SQ in the Mai‐Negus catchment, northern Ethiopia.

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).

Large-scale development projects often overlap forest areas that support the livelihoods of indigenous peoples, threatening in situ conservation strategies for the protection of biological and cultural diversity. To address this problem, there is a need to integrate spatially-explicit information on ecosystem services into conservation planning. We present an approach for identifying conservation areas necessary to safeguard the provision of important ecosystem services for indigenous communities.

This project is funded by the European Commission under its Asia Pro Eco II Program. It is undertaken by the International Water Management Institute (IWMI), Sri Lanka; COSI, Sri Lanka; the International Water and Sanitation Centre (IRC), the Netherlands; NGO Forum for Drinking Water Supply and Sanitation, Bangladesh; and the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI), Sweden. The project pilot cities are Rajshahi City in Bangladesh and Kurunegala City in Sri Lanka.

Soil quality has important implications for sustainable agricultural development and food self-sufficiency in many developing countries. A decrease in soil nutrient stocks, one of the components of soil quality, necessitates more inputs and greater management skills in order to compensate for the reduction in nutrients availability. This is why the interaction of agricultural development and soil quality management attracts widespread attention from researchers.

Agricultural land values and cash rental rates in South Dakota, by region and by state, are primary topics of this report. The target audience are farmers and ranchers, landowners, ag professional (lenders, rural appraisers, professional farm managers), and policy makers interested in ag land market trends. This report contains results of the 2010 Farm Real Estate Market Survey, the 20th annual SDSU survey developed to estimate ag land values and cash rental rates by land use in different regions of South Dakota.

Climate change mitigation mechanisms related to reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD) may provide significant opportunities for re-arranging political networks and overcome forest governance problems, of which land tenure is the main constraint for REDD and reforestation projects in the Amazon. We present a case study of a pilot REDD project associated with reforestation and payment for environmental services in Apuí, southern Amazonas.

The review of efficiency indicators of farmlands use was given. Their classification was analyzed and positive and negative sides of their various kinds were considered. Efficiency dependence of farmland use on value of specialization factor was investigated. Offers on perfection of system of the indicators characterizing rationality and efficiency of application of farmlands were made and also new approaches to an estimation of economic efficiency of their use were offered. The research was realized in the conditions of the Republic of Belarus.

In course of the research there was resulted the developed model of optimization of the sizes of land tenure of the agricultural enterprises. The research was realized in the conditions of the Republic of Belarus. As a result of realized research the optimum sizes of land tenure of the agricultural organizations with combinational organizational-industrial structure for average conditions of republic were established.