The transition of land between forest and grassland has important implications for greenhouse gas emissions and removals. In this paper, we use New Zealand as a case study to comprehensively assess, compare and quantify the net climate change impact of shifting land use between temperate forest and grassland. Forests store large amounts of carbon in their biomass, whereas grasslands contain relatively little biomass carbon. These biomass changes tend to dominate the carbon balance under land-use change.

Future land-use changes are predicted to be influenced by both climate-driven environmental changes and concomitant changes in local economic conditions. Assessing the impact of climate change on ecosystems, and the goods and services that they provide, therefore requires an understanding of the dynamic link between land-cover, ecosystem services and economic-driven land-use decisions. The economic land allocation model (ALUAM) simulates the competition between forest and a range of agricultural land-uses to estimate land-use conversions in a spatially explicit manner at high resolution.

Subsidence in Yunlin County, Taiwan, is serious and continuous. The Taiwan High Speed Rail (THSR) route crosses the subsidence area and might be affected by differential settlements. It is important to evaluate the pumping quantity for water resource management and to predict the subsidence for land resource management to mitigate the subsidence problem in Taiwan.

Desertification has been widely treated as one of the major environmental hazards in the world by scientific communities and the public. Monitoring the dynamics and causes of desertification is essential to provide important instruction for desertification control strategies and rational planning of land use in arid and semi-arid areas.

Cumulative human impacts across the world's oceans are considerable. We therefore examined a single model taxonomic group, the penguins (Spheniscidae), to explore how marine species and communities might be at risk of decline or extinction in the southern hemisphere. We sought to determine the most important threats to penguins and to suggest means to mitigate these threats. Our review has relevance to other taxonomic groups in the southern hemisphere and in northern latitudes, where human impacts are greater.

Charismatic groups of animals and plants often are proposed as sentinels of environmental status and trends. Nevertheless, many claims that a certain taxonomic group can provide more-general information on environmental quality are not evaluated critically. To address several of the many definitions of indicator species, we used butterflies to explore in some detail the attributes that affect implementation of indicators generically.

Climate change will cause major changes in ecosystems. Therefore, it is crucial that climate change policy consider the value of all services that are provided by watershed ecosystems. For this purpose, geospatial data and economic analysis are combined to determine a monetary value for wetland ecosystem goods and services (EGSs) in the watersheds of the Yamaska and Bécancour Rivers (Quebec, Canada). From published studies of wetland economic evaluations, we selected 51 relevant studies from 21 countries and performed a benefit transfer using meta-analysis.

Natural and anthropogenic processes are causing extensive and rapid ecological, social, and economic changes in arid and semiarid ecosystems worldwide. Nowhere are these changes more evident than in the Great Basin of the western United States, a region of 400,000 km² that largely is managed by federal agencies.

This project, carried out as a follow-up to M.Sc thesis research,
aimed at addressing issues identified as climate change priorities
was a direct result of the urgent climate change adaptation
priorities identified in Kabale district during the MSc. research.
Upon completion of the MSc. research, a Field Attachment
Programme Award (FAPA)was provided to disseminate the
results of the MSc research. The project used participatory
approaches to disseminate climate change adaptation strategies

Climate change and recurrent drought in many of the world's dry places continue to inspire the search for economically attractive measures to conserve water. This study analyzes water conservation practices in irrigated agriculture in a sub-basin in North America's Rio Grande. A method is developed to estimate water savings in irrigated agriculture that result from public subsidies to farmers who convert from surface to drip irrigation. The method accounts for economic incentives affecting farmers' choices on irrigation technology, crop mix, water application, and water depletion.

This paper examines possible expected climate adaptations in a U.S. land use and livestock context. By using a Fractional Multinomial Logit model, we find that climate variables are affecting the allocation of land use by reducing crop land and increasing pasture land. Our projections indicate that more cropping land would be altered to livestock land under climate change. In addition, cattle stocking rate could increase by the end of this century along with more pasture land or less cattle inventory because of higher temperature.
Replaced with revised version of paper 01/26/11

Based on the same data source of Landsat TM/ETM+ in 1990s, 2000s and 2010s, all urban built-up areas in China are mapped mainly by human interpretation. Mapping results were checked and refined by the same analyst with the same set of criteria. The results show during the last 20 years urban areas in China have increased exponentially more than 2 times. The greatest area of urbanization changed from Northeastern provinces in 1990s to the Southeast coast of China in Jiangsu, Guangdong, Shandong, and Zhejiang in 2010s. Urban areas are mostly converted from croplands in China.