Widespread anthropogenic land-cover change over the last five centuries has influenced the global climate system through both biogeochemical and biophysical processes. Models indicate that warming from carbon emissions associated with land cover conversion have been partially offset if not outweighed by cooling from elevated albedo, but considerable uncertainty remains partly because of uncertainty in model treatments of albedo.

Land use and management practices may influence plant C inputs and soil CO2 emission. We evaluated the effect of a combination of irrigation, tillage, cropping system, and N fertilization on plant biomass C, soil temperature and water content at the 0- to 15-cm depth, and CO2 emission in a sandy loam soil from April to October, 2006 to 2008, in western North Dakota.

The Ethiopian Rift Valley is a dry land zone where for a long time pastoral communities have made their living from acacia-based woodlands. But many pastoralists have changed from a pastoral way of life to mixed farming over time. The aim of this study was to evaluate land-use and land cover (LULC) changes in the Central Rift Valley dry lands of Ethiopia, and determine the role of drought vulnerability as a driver. A combination of GIS/remote sensing techniques, drought vulnerability analyses, field observation and surveying were employed.

Urbanization effects on ecosystem functions are both important and complex, characterized by scale multiplicity, spatial heterogeneity, and intensive human disturbances. Integrating the hierarchical structure of urban landscape pattern with ecosystem processes through simulation modeling can facilitate our understanding of human–environment interactions in urban environment.

Texture in high resolution satellite images requires substantial improvement in the conventional segmentation algorithms. The use of wavelet packet transforms for texture analysis and image classification of high spatial resolution LISS IV imagery provide more details about the urban areas. This paper analyses the performance of a combination of Wavelet Packet Statistical Features (WPSFs) and Wavelet Packet Co-occurrence Features (WPCFs) for the classification of LISS IV images. The classification accuracy per pixel is improved in this paper by varying the window size.

In several tropical regions of the world, formerly widespread forests have been reduced to scattered remnants, and many tree species are becoming increasingly endangered. Knowledge on the population status of rare species is essential to inform conservation efforts and, in particular, the use of native species for reforestation projects stemming from emerging land-use strategies. We studied 20 mostly red-listed native species in remnant forests on five limestone-, four volcanic- and one ultramafic site(s) across the Visayas in the Philippines, with 40 plots being assessed at each site.

The promise of the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) to deliver its dual objectives is currently under public scrutiny. In land-use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF) activities through afforestation and reforestation projects, known as A/R CDM, the deliverables that demonstrate sustainable development remain unclear. While the methods to convincingly demonstrate carbon benefits are fine-tuned, there is growing concern on a lack of socio-economic benefits of the projects.

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.

The unequal distribution of agricultural land is often cited as a source of inefficiency in agriculture. Previous cross-country studies of agricultural productivity differences, though, have not considered land inequality. This article addresses this issue by using cross-country data on inequality in operational holdings of agricultural land from Deininger and Squire (1998) . In an estimation of an agricultural production function, the Gini coefficient for land holdings is found to have a significant negative relationship with productivity.

The research of the landscape structure and its changes was carried out in a part of the Horná Orava region. Landscape structure was studied and compared in 2 periods (1958 and 2001). Two types of changes were identified: anthropogenic and succession. Succession processes were spontaneous, anthropogenic-conditioned or successive, which were linked with land use changes, reduction of traditional management of non-forest vegetation (mowing, grazing) and consequent climax succession.

Due to constant decrease in farmlands, it is important to identify the best lands useful for sustainable agriculture (productive and profitable agriculture that protects the environment and that is socially equitable). This requirement has resulted in the development of land suitability maps for agriculture by combining several factors of various natures and of differing importance.