There are widespread concerns about urban sprawl in China. In response, modeling and assessing urban expansion and subsequent land use and land cover (LULC) changes have become important approaches to support decisions about appropriate development and land resource use. Guangzhou, a major metropolitan city in South China, has experienced rapid urbanization and great economic growth in the past few decades. This study applied a series of Landsat images to assess the urban expansion and subsequent LULC changes over 35 years, from 1979 to 2013.

Faced with the low success rates of protected areas in conserving natural forests and supporting rural development, the Malagasy government recently chose to transfer forest resource management to local communities. Feedback about the implementation of this new policy suggests that agriculture continues to drive deforestation. This article explores farmers' household livelihood strategies and land use changes in response to changing forest access rules arising from community-based land management.

Soil erosion and contamination are two main desertification indices or land degradation agents in agricultural areas. Global climate change consequence is a priority to predict global environmental change impacts on these degradation risks. This agro-ecological approach can be especially useful when formulating soil specific agricultural practices based on the spatial variability of soils and related resources to reverse environmental degradation.

Among the main effects of human activities on the environment are land use and resulting land cover changes. Such changes impact the capacity of ecosystems to provide goods and services to the human society. This supply of multiple goods and services by nature should match the demands of the society, if self-sustaining human–environmental systems and a sustainable utilization of natural capital are to be achieved. To describe respective states and dynamics, appropriate indicators and data for their quantification, including quantitative and qualitative assessments, are needed.

Attitude surveys among affected groups are established tools for integrating actors into decision-making concerning wildlife management. However, the complexity of attitudes and the fact that general attitudes toward wildlife may differ from those toward specific management measures reveal the risk of misinterpreting the data obtained. This article explores these problems based on a quantitative survey of hunters and landowners living close to the Bavarian Forest National Park, Germany.

Human‐induced land use and land cover (LUC) changes threaten the ecosystem services of the vulnerable tropical afro‐alpine vegetation. Several LUC change studies are available for the Ethiopian highlands, but relatively little is known about LUC change in the afro‐alpine zones. In this study, LUC changes between 1964 and 2012 were mapped for the afro‐alpine zone of Lib Amba Mountain, part of the Abune Yosef Mountains in North Ethiopia. Historical LUC was derived from georeferenced aerial photographs of 1964 and 1982, and the present LUC (2012) from Bing Map satellite imagery.

The soil erodibility factor of RUSLE is one of the important indicators of land degradation. It can be measured either directly under natural or simulated rainfall condition or indirectly estimated by empirical models. A geospatial variation of this factor is essential for prioritization of reclamation measures. However, geospatial upscaling of soil erodibility factor is very uncertain because of its dynamic nature and dependent on the parameters used in the model.

A kérdések széles területet ölelnek fel, ami folytatható a földvédelemmel, a kör-nyezetvédelemmel, a földadó kérdésével stb. A politikának – kompromisszumokkal és megegyezéssel – mielőbb lépnie kell, mert a rendezett birtokviszonyok növelik a földárat, élénkítik a termőföld iránti keresletet. Az emelkedő árak ugyanakkor bővítik a földkínálatot, végeredményben élénkül az egész földpiac. Ez a leghatékonyabb eszköz a termőfölddel kapcsolatos spekulációk visszaszorítására.Van-e azonban esély a megegyezésre? Politikai síkon aligha!

Understanding the patterns of land degradation indicators can help to identify areas under threat as basis for designing and implementing site-specific management options. This study sort to identify and assess the patterns of land degradation indicators in selected districts of western Kenya. The study employed the use of Land Degradation Sampling Framework (LDSF) to characterize the sites. LDSF a spatially stratified, random sampling design framework consisting of 10km×10km blocks and clusters of plots.

The present research aims to obtain a better insight into the agreement between land evaluation results and actual crop spatial distribution by comparing biophysical land suitability with different crop frequency parameters and with crop rotations derived from multi-year crop maps. The research was carried out in the Flumen district (33,000 ha), which is located in the Ebro Valley (Northeast Spain). Land evaluation was based on a 1:100,000 soil survey according to the FAO framework for the main crops in the study area (alfalfa, winter cereals, maize, rice and sunflower).

Remote sensing data is routinely used in ecology to investigate the relationship between landscape pattern as characterised by land use and land cover maps, and ecological processes. Multiple factors related to the representation of geographic phenomenon have been shown to affect characterisation of landscape pattern resulting in spatial uncertainty. This study investigated the effect of the interaction between landscape spatial pattern and geospatial processing methods statistically; unlike most papers which consider the effect of each factor in isolation only.

Applying a difference‐in‐difference approach with propensity score matching, we examine the impact of participation in the Entry Level Stewardship (ELS) scheme on cereal farm incomes in eastern England. We assess the extent to which impacts are related to a) the source of income affected – whether only from agricultural or total business income; b) the channel of the impact – through land use and/or labour input; and c) the level of impacts through time. In addition, we assess the appropriateness of the level of the ELS payment.