Vegetation exerts a strong control on water balance and key hydrological variables like evapotranspiration, water yield or even the flooded area may result severely affected by vegetation changes. Particularly, transitions between tree- and herbaceous-dominated covers, which are taking place at increasing rates in South America, may have the greatest impact on the water balance.

This study measures the public preferences for cultivated land protection as a case study of Wenling City, China, using the choice experiment (CE) approach. The estimation results indicate that the most important attribute for cultivated land protection in Wenling City was land facility, followed by land fertility and then by landscape improvement.

The patchwork of government influences that shape the protection and management of construction mineral resources--sand, gravel, and crushed stone--includes statutes, regulations, guidance documents, and court decisions at the federal, state, and local level. Across the Washington-Baltimore metropolitan area, both these influences and the experiences that the counties have had in managing construction mineral resources range widely.

Integration of the Russian Federation in the international community, to find the most effective ways to implement the military and land reforms require a comprehensive study. The paper identifies the main problems that hinder the effective implementation of the reform of the conversion, the ways of their solutions, including use of the experience of the advanced countries of the European Union. Identified military objects to be conversion, shown combining them into groups according to various criteria. Proposed a typology of ex-military territories.

Climate change, food crises and deterioration of the environment create immense challenges in water management. In the Netherlands land subsidence, high population density and intensity of land use aggravate these problems. Increased awareness of these problems and civil society's participation in the discussions complicate these challenges. The Netherlands' Government Service for Land and Water Management (DLG), an organisation specialising in integrated land development, has tackled these problems at a regional/local scale.

The state of Oregon’s (USA) land use planning framework has long been characterized by tensions between state and local authority, between traditionally-defined “urban” and “rural” concerns, and between the competing interests of various landowners.

Recent land cover change estimates show overall decline of tropical forests at the regional and global scales caused by multiple social, cultural and economic factors. There is an overall concern on the prevailing land use practices, such as shifting cultivation and extraction of forest materials as agents of forests losses, but also new, emerging land uses are threatening tropical forests. Understanding of the long-term development and driving forces of forest changes are needed, especially at local levels where many decisions on forest policies and land uses are made.

Quantitative assessment of the impacts of climate change on groundwater levels is important for sustainable groundwater use. This study examined the Tedori River alluvial fan in Ishikawa Prefecture, Japan, where paddy fields occupy 45 % of the total area. A regional groundwater flow model simulated future groundwater levels in response to 38 climate change projections generated for each of three GCMs, using three GHG emission scenarios with the ELPIS-JP datasets.

The assessment of groundwater vulnerability to pollution has become a useful tool for groundwater pollution prevention and control. Following the theory of overlay index method and with the aid of GIS technique and a statistical method, this study employed a modified DRASTIC model to assess the groundwater vulnerability to nitrate in Jilin City of northeast China.

Soils are the biggest carbon store in the world (1500Gt, e.g. 1.5×10²¹g). The European Commission indicates the accounting of soil organic carbon (SOC) variations in space and time as the first step in the strategy for soil protection. It is indeed necessary in evaluating the risk of soil organic matter decline and soil biodiversity decline, and when evaluating the role played by soils in global CO₂ accounting. Previous maps of SOC variations in Italy did not consider the direct effect of climate. There is a marked inter-dependence between SOC and climate.