Flood spreading is one of the suitable strategies to control and benefit from floods which in turn improve the groundwater recharge, makes soil more fertile, and increases nutrients in soil. It is also a method for reusing sediment, which is usually wasted. Thus, selection of suitable areas for flood spreading and directing the flood water into permeable formations are amongst the most effective strategies in flood spreading projects.

Property rights, the agricultural price index, forest area, population, income and timber price are important factors in the deforestation process. The aim of this study was to test the impact of these factors on deforestation in Iran using an environmental Kuznets curve (EKC). The autoregressive distributed lag approach was also used to estimate the deforestation function. The existence of an inverted U-shaped EKC for deforestation in Iran was confirmed.

Soil loss is a major concern for land managers due to its influence on biomass production, surface water quality and landscape beauty. In Somalia, the risk of soil loss is accelerated by the removal of vegetation, bad land use practices and negative impacts of urbanization. The political upheavals and consequent insecurity in the country are major limitations for detailed database and research in soil loss.

Atemporal and intertemporal use of public lands, the determination of optimal levels of wilderness designation and habitat preservation, and the appropriate regulation of natural resources have all been "hot button" issues in the American West for quite some time now. In this paper, I propose and describe a research agenda which promises to yield interesting and useful new policy insights into these fractious resource issues.

The effects of land use policy and socioeconomic changes on urban landscape dynamics have been increasingly investigated around the world, but our knowledge of the underlying processes of these effects is still inadequate for sustainably managing urban ecosystems.

A key activity in Phase 1 of REDD+—the UN’s Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) forestry mitigation mechanism—is the development of policies and measures (PAMs) to define where and how emissions reductions and carbon stock enhancements and conservation will be achieved. This paper provides contextual data and information for the development of PAMs specifically for the buffer zones of protected areas in the Peruvian Amazon, sites where REDD+ has the potential to generate considerable social and ecological co-benefits.

Information about changes in, and causes of, land use/land cover (LULC) is crucial for land use resource planning. We investigated the processes involved in LULC change (LUCC) in the Dongjiang Watershed, in Southern China, over a 15-year period to gain a better understanding of the causes of the main types of LUCC. Using a depth transition matrix and redundancy analysis (RDA), the major types and causes of LUCC for each LULC type over the past 15 years were identified. LUCC exhibited obvious net change, relatively low persistence, and high swap change.

Obtaining information about soil properties under different agricultural uses to plan soil management is very important with a view to sustainability in the different agricultural systems. The aim of this study was to evaluate changes in certain indicators of the physical quality of a dystrophic Red Latosol (Oxisol) under different agricultural uses. The study was conducted in an agricultural area located in northern Paraná State.

Quantifying the amount of forest and change in the amount of forest are key to ensure that appropriate management practices and policies are in place to maintain the array of ecosystem services provided by forests. There are a range of analytical techniques and data available to estimate these forest parameters, however, not all ‘forest’ is the same and various components of change have been presented. Forest as defined by use and forest as defined by cover are different, although it is common for scientists and policy makers to infer one from the other.

The mountains of northern Vietnam have lost significant forest cover during the last decades due to the conversion from natural vegetation to cultivated land, leading to the depletion of soil organic matter and land degradation. The study evaluated bamboo as an alternative cropping strategy in the northern central upland of Vietnam. We analyzed above-ground carbon fixing capacity of bamboo, accumulation of soil organic carbon, and socio-economic aspects as compared to other land use systems.

We used the process-oriented niche model CLIMEX to estimate the potential global distribution of serrated tussock under projected future climates. Serrated tussock is a drought-tolerant, wind- and human-dispersed grass of South American origin that has invaded pastures in Australia, Europe, New Zealand, and South Africa. The likely effect of climate change on its potential global distribution was assessed by applying six climate-change scenarios to a previously developed model.

Food security remains an ongoing global concern: the challenge of ensuring food availability, access, and utility for all, at all times, is yet to be met. The body of literature relating to food security is growing immensely. Land administrators are part of the discourse. Their arguments are spread disparately across academic and professional publications. The distinction between scientific work and political rhetoric is increasingly blurry: the role of land administration needs to be more concisely articulated.