Forests play an important role in the livelihoods of ethnic communities living in the south-eastern region, the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHTs), of Bangladesh. Over decades, deforestation and land degradation have markedly affected ethnic peoples’ livelihoods in the CHTs. Although communities once managed extensive forest commons to support their livelihood needs, population explosion triggered fragmentation of common land leading to a gradual decline in livelihood opportunities.

Protection of private lands through conservation easements has garnered recent attention from scientists and conservation practitioners. Questions remain, however, about the specific characteristics and activities driving landowners’ interest in conservation easements and their willingness to consider granting them. Resolving these questions could improve prospects for private land conservation by helping land conservation organizations identify and better understand potential easement grantors.

The paper provides a coherent pattern identification analysis of the impacts of coastal land use and land cover (LULC) on evapotranspiration (ET) under the impact of seawater intrusion. The study applied the Landsat satellite data to characterize the LULC at Laizhou Bay, Shandong Province, China. Then, the ET and heat fluxes were estimated using the surface energy balance algorithm for land model with two-time phase thermal infrared band images and regional surface parameters.

Land-use and land-cover change profoundly affect human well-being and, therefore, have become a major topic for society. A thorough understanding of past and present processes transforming landscapes is essential for guiding future developments toward the sustained provision of the ecosystem services humans critically depend upon. Drawing on the driving forces and resilience frameworks, we identify possible variables and patterns of land change, connecting them to empirical findings in three case study areas in the Swabian Alb region, southwestern Germany.

Over the past decades, the Gujarat state of India experienced intensive agricultural and industrial activities, fertilizer consumption and abstraction of groundwater, which in turn has degraded the ground water quality. Protection of aquifers from nitrate pollution is a matter of prime concern for the planners and decision-makers. The present study assessed the spatial and temporal variation of groundwater nitrate levels in areas with different land use/land cover activities for both pre- and post-monsoon period.

Testate amoebae that inhabit peat are sensitive indicators of water table position. In this study, we used testate amoebae in sediments from a mire in the western Alps (Lac du Thyl) to: (1) reconstruct the hydrology of the site over the last 7,000 years, (2) determine how hydrological changes affected testate amoebae diversity and (3) infer past trophic state shifts. The study site is located in one of the driest valleys of the Alps and is thus very sensitive to hydrological changes.

Lidar and orthophotograph-derived land cover are combined with in situ vegetation measurements to assess habitat characteristics typifying four species of butterflies with differing habitat preferences across a large spatial extent (∼30,000 ha) in northern Idaho, USA. Lidar data are employed to characterize both vegetation structure and topography, whereas digital orthophotographs and in situ vegetation measurements are employed to quantify surrounding land use and larval host plant cover, respectively.

Residents, developers and civic officials are often faced with difficult decisions about appropriate land uses in and around metropolitan boundaries. Urban expansion brings with it the potential for negative environmental impacts, but there are alternatives, such as conservation subdivision design (CSD) or low-impact development (LID), which offer the possibility of mitigating some of these effects at the development site.

Human activities as well as natural events can dramatically affect land degradation negatively or positively. In Egypt, agriculture is a key sector of the economy. Land reclamation seeks to transfer desert areas to agricultural land and support the construction of new villages. The agricultural productivity improvement of these Newlands is slow and requires considerable time due to their fragility and sensitivity to desertification.

Mangroves in Kenya provide a wide range of valuable services to coastal communities despite their relatively small total area. Studies at single sites show reductions in extent and quality caused by extraction for fuel wood and timber and clearance for alternative land use including saltpans, aquaculture, and tourism. Such studies suggest that Kenyan mangroves are likely to conform to the general global trend of declining area but there are no reliable recent estimates of either total mangrove extent or trends in coverage for the country.

Understanding the relationships between biodiversity and land-use is a key element for the development of effective conservation strategies. We studied a mid-altitude steppe-like area of Southern France, the Causse de Sauveterre, that has been grazed for many centuries. The decrease of human population during the 20th century, particularly since the end of 2nd World War, and the ongoing changes in agricultural practices may have dramatic effects on many biodiversity components of these landscapes.

As in many other developing countries, cities in Bangladesh have witnessed rapid urbanization, resulting in increasing amounts of land being taken over and therefore land cover changing at a faster rate. Until now, however, few efforts have been made to document the impact of land use and land cover changes on the climate, environment, and ecosystem of the country because of a lack of geospatial data and time-series information.