Farmland ownership fragmentation is one of the important drivers of land-use changes. It is a process that in its extreme form can essentially limit land management sustainability. Based on a typology of land degradation and its causes, this process is here classified for the first time as an underlying cause which through tenure insecurity causes land degradation in five types (water erosion, wind erosion, soil compaction, reduction of organic matter, and nutrient depletion).

Forests cover about 40 % of the European Union (EU), providing a wide spectrum of invaluable ecosystem services to more than half a billion people. In order to protect and harness this crucial asset, EU policies are advancing multifunctional management. This study lays a basis for such an effort by mapping the supply of key forest ecosystem services (FES) across the entire EU: wood, water supply, erosion control, pollination, habitat protection, soil formation, climate regulation and recreation.

Despite the increasing importance of studies dealing with acceptance in the field of land use, few theoretical-conceptual reflections and reviews have been published. To address this gap, this paper offers a critical and systematic review of recent literature regarding acceptance and land use. Our aim is to synthesise the contributions of these publications in order to advance scientific debate on this topic. The data set consists of 132 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters and is dominated by empirical papers (mostly quantitative studies) and European case studies.

We examined the preferences for wetland conservation among urban and rural dwellers in Malaysia. A choice experiment using face-to-face interviews with urban and rural households was employed. Wetland conservation alternatives were described in terms of environmental protection zones, biodiversity protection, recreational services and flood. Each alternative was connected to a cost for the household, which was a reduction in subsidies for daily goods. Using a latent class model, we identified three groups with distinctly different preferences.

Community-based wind energy projects, with their small-scale, yet sizeable presence, provide a valuable opportunity to understand how individuals make sense of changes to their communities and to the surrounding landscape. Here, we examine the results of a 2013 mail survey of individuals residing in the vicinity of a 2MW wind turbine that is located on the edge of the historic coastal town of Lewes, Delaware in the United States, and adjacent to Delaware Bay and the Great Marsh Preserve.

Driven by the development of information and communications technology as well as the spread of social networking services (SNS), access to spatial information has changed the way people select sites or areas. This study determines whether new urban place selection—that is, the selection of places in a way that differs from the classic locational principle of land use—occurs via SNS by examining changes in the location of Food and Beverage(F&B) retail facilities patronized by citizens daily.

The contribution of small farms to local food supply, food security and food sovereignty is widely acknowledged at a global level. In the particular case of Europe, they often are seen as an alternative to large and specialised farms. Assessing the real role of small farms has been limited by a lack of information, as small farms are frequently omitted from agricultural censuses and national statistics.

Colombia’s Andean-Amazonian foothills are among the most pressing deforestation hotspots in the country. Yet, the relationships and dependencies of underlying deforestation drivers are not well understood. For an adequate territorial reorganization in the post-conflict era that is sensitive to local context, a targeted analysis of the present situation at the local level is required. This study investigates direct and indirect deforestation drivers, relationships among these and potential measures to lower deforestation post-conflict.

While strengthening women’s land rights is increasingly on national and international agendas, there is little consensus on how to understand women’s tenure security. Analyses of women’s land rights often use very different definitions of land rights, from formal ownership to women’s management of plots allocated to them by their husbands. This paper identifies aspects of women’s tenure that should be included in indicators. It then provides a conceptual framework to identify the various dimensions of women’s land tenure security and the myriad factors that may influence it.

Pervasive food insecurity and poverty in much of the world drives vulnerable populations to harvest natural resources as a means of generating income and meeting other household needs. Wild edible plants (WEPs) are a particularly common and effective coping strategy used to increase socio-ecological resilience in Sub-Saharan Africa where agricultural systems are often sensitive to environmental perturbations and instability. WEPs are collected across the landscape, from agricultural areas to government-managed hilltops with varying degrees of success and legality.

Blue-green infrastructure (BGI) is becoming a more popular means of dealing with climate change and climate change-related events. However, as the concept of BGI is relatively new, many urban and rural planners are unfamiliar with the barriers they may face during the lifecycle of a BGI project. As a result, some have been hesitant to adopt BGI solutions. The literature has unveiled many of the barriers that inhibit the successful development of BGI, however, this information has yet to be presented in a manner that allows for easy identification.

Enabling knowledge exchange between scientists and decision-makers is becoming increasingly necessary to promote the development of effective decision-support tools (DSTs) for environmental management. Participation of stakeholders in the design process beyond a basic level of consultation is essential for promoting trust in modelled outputs and accelerating eventual uptake of resulting tools and models by end-user communities. This study outlines the development of a DST to visualise and communicate the spatial and temporal patterns of E.