1. Tropical rainforests are a global conservation priority. Robust arguments supporting rainforest conservation can attract funding and shape land-use management. However, some popular assertions regarding the value of tropical forests remain largely untested. 2. This study tests the validity of two arguments in support of mature tropical rainforest conservation: first, that these forests should be conserved based on their value as potential sources of medicine.

PURPOSE: Land use in dry lands can result in a final stage where land is completely depleted or entirely degraded causing the desertification phenomenon. The first part (part 1) of this series of two articles proposed a methodology to include desertification in life cycle assessment (LCA). A set of variables to be measured in the life cycle inventory, characterization factors, and an impact assessment method for the life cycle impact assessment phase were proposed.

Literature on environmental change often highlights the importance of public policies as a key driver of land use and land cover change. However, demonstration of policy impacts in agricultural settings has been hampered by the lack of systematic analysis across landholders, who may not universally adopt government policy incentives, or time periods, which may be associated with differing policy regimes.

Climate change affected the agricultural expansion and the formation of farming-grazing transitional patterns during historical periods. This study analyzed the possible range of the boundary shift of the potential suitable agriculture area in the farming-grazing transitional zone in the northeastern China during the 20th century.

There have long been concerns that federal crop insurance subsidies may significantly impact land use decisions. It is well known that classical insurance market information asymmetry problems can lead to a social excess of risky land entering crop production. Our conceptual model shows that the problem will arise absent any information failures. This is because the subsidy is i) proportional to acres planted, and ii) greatest for the most production risky land.

Changes in the use of land in the United States produce significant economic and environmental effects with important implications for a wide variety of policy issues, including protection of wildlife habitat, management of urban growth, and mitigation of global climate change. In contrast to previous descriptive and qualitative analyses of the trends in national land use, this paper uses an econometric approach to isolate the importance of historical changes in land-use profits and key government policies in determining national land-use changes from 1982 to 1997.

This study analyses forest dynamics and land use/land cover change over a 43-year period using spatial-stand-type maps of temporal forest management plans of Karaisalı Forest Enterprise in the Eastern Mediterranean Region of Turkey. Stand parameters (tree species, crown closures and developmental stages) of the dynamics and changes caused by natural or artificial intervention were introduced and mapped in a Geographic Information System (GIS) and subjected to fragmentation analysis using FRAGSTATS.

Suburban areas continue to grow rapidly and are potentially an important land-use category for anthropogenic carbon-dioxide (CO₂) emissions. Here eddy covariance techniques are used to obtain ecosystem-scale measurements of CO₂ fluxes (FC) from a suburban area of Baltimore, Maryland, USA (2002–2006). These are among the first multi-year measurements of FC in a suburban area. The study area is characterized by low population density (1500inhabitants km⁻²) and abundant vegetation (67.4% vegetation land-cover).

The article presents ecological and economic zoning of the territory of the Republic of Belarus for the purposes of land use planning by the method of average differences, taking into account the factors which influence the efficiency of agricultural lands usage.

The use of three-dimensional (3D) property rights has for many years been a tool for providing secure and lasting rights for the use of land and its volume of space in complex situations involving land use in the urban society. The aim of this article is to investigate the reasons for introducing 3D property in a legal system. This is illustrated by using the Swedish system as an example. In general, without the possibility of forming 3D property units with direct ownership, other forms have to be used, such as indirect ownership or granted user rights.

Land use/cover change (LUCC) is one of the main factors that control the terrestrial carbon (C) cycle. We examined the effect of LUCC on topsoil C, microbial biomass C (MBC) and microbes mediated processes related to C circulation and their relationship with other soil properties in low-latitude mountain temperate forests. We selected three sites in the northwest of Cofre de Perote volcano (Mexico) in an altitudinal gradient (piedmont, lower mountain slope and mid slope).

This study detects patterns of land-use and land-cover changes in the last three decades (1972–2004) and analyses its causative factors in the Upper Dijo River catchment, Midwest escarpment of Ethiopian Rift Valley. Data captured through the synergy of an aerial photo, satellite image and ground-based socio-economic survey were analysed by GIS and SPSS. The results showed a decline in shrub-grassland and riverine trees at 21.5 and 16.3 ha per year, respectively, and increase in plantation trees, annual crops and bare/open grasslands at 2.8, 12.5 and 24.8 ha per year, respectively.