Carbon plays a key role in determining soil health, which is defined as the soil's capacity to maintain environmental functions and biological productivity. In this study, C cycling was evaluated in soils along a gradient of land use, from native forest (NF), reforested sites (secondary forest – SF, Araucaria angustifolia – AR, Pinus elliottii – PI), clear-cut P. elliottii stands (CT) to farmland (AG). NF, AR, and SF sites had lower litter C:N ratios than PI, CT, and AG sites.

Surface and groundwater quantity and quality data are essential in many hydrologic applications and to the development of hydrologic and water quality simulation models. We describe the hydrologic data available in the Little Washita River Experimental Watershed (LWREW) of the Southern Great Plains Research Watershed (SGPRW) and Fort Cobb Reservoir Experimental Watershed (FCREW), both located in southwest Oklahoma.

Estimates of changes and possible causes of regional soil organic carbon (SOC) are critical for evaluation of potential responses of terrestrial biosphere to global changes. A total of 382 soil samples, collected in the 1980s from four counties in the Corn Belt of northeastern China, and of 1,514 samples collected in 2005 from the same area, were examined for SOC concentrations. Spatial and temporal SOC concentrations were evaluated after the 25-year interval using geostatistics and kriging interpolation method.

Quantifying recharge from agricultural areas is important to sustain long-term groundwater use, make intelligent groundwater allocation decisions, and develop on-farm water management strategies. The scarcity of data in many arid regions, especially in the Middle East, has necessitated the use of combined mathematical models and field observations to estimate groundwater recharge. This study was designed to assess the recharge contribution to groundwater from rainfall and irrigation return flow in the Mosian plain, west of Iran.

En los últimos años han sido incuantificables las aplicaciones que se han llevado a cabo mediante la utilización de las denominadas Tecnologías de la Información Geográfica, bien a través del empleo de los sistemas de información geográfica (SIG), bien mediante el manejo y el análisis de imágenes de satélite (Teledetección), o bien mediante la aplicación de técnicas estadísticas de análisis multivariantes.

Agricultural cooperatives in Slovakia still represent the most important legal form of enterprises in agriculture. Chosen indicators of financial analysis and indicators of revenues as calculated to hectare of agricultural land show that the transformed agricultural cooperatives in Slovakia are able to keep in step with newly created business companies.

Land degradation and desertification is a common feature in Mediterranean landscapes due to extensive and intensive land use and natural or man induced disturbances. The ecosystem may need external inputs to recover its composition and function as soils are often impoverished and vegetal key stone species lost. We evaluated the effects of the application of fresh and air-dried biosolids in the establishment and morphological and physiological performance of seedlings of Pinus halepensis and Quercus ilex under dry Mediterranean field conditions.

This study established the possibility of rapid evaluation of land cover structure and situation using as an example the Temelin Nuclear Power Plant (Czech Republic) emergency zone. The composition, surface representation and spatial distribution of crop species in the area of interest were assessed on the basis of satellite data analysis (Landsat 5 TM). The supervised classification method of Landsat data yielded 92% accuracy of classification into the land cover classes.

Land-use planning is one aspect of sustainable development that determines the integrity of socioeconomic and ecological nuance. Land evaluation is an approach to sustainable land-use planning, which predicts the capability of the land-use system. This means that a specific land area should be under specific use, considering certain factors and characteristics of the land and its location. In other words, lack of proper information on land capability and rational and irrational use of land leads to destruction of land resources.

Land use change is the most pervasive force driving the degradation of watershed ecosystems. This article combines an econometric model of land use choice with models of watershed health indicators to examine the effects of land use policies on watershed ecosystems through their effect on land use. Our results suggest that incentive-based land use policies and property acquisition programs can have relatively large positive impacts on watershed health, while policies that change the returns to land use are less effective.

Over the past few decades, groundwater has become an essential commodity owing to increased demand as a result of growing population, industrialization, urbanization and so on. The water supply situation is expected to become more severe in the future because of continued unsustainable water use and projected change in hydrometeorological parameters due to climate change.

Hollow-bearing trees provide habitat for diverse taxonomic groups and as such they are recognised for their importance globally. There is, however scant reference to this resource relative within urban forest patches. The functional ecology of habitat remnants along an urbanisation gradient plays an important ecological, social and economic role within urban landscapes. Here we quantify the impacts of urbanisation, landscape, environmental, disturbance (past and present) and stand variables on hollow-bearing tree density within urban forest patches.