Among the main effects of human activities on the environment are land use and resulting land cover changes. Such changes impact the capacity of ecosystems to provide goods and services to the human society. This supply of multiple goods and services by nature should match the demands of the society, if self-sustaining human–environmental systems and a sustainable utilization of natural capital are to be achieved. To describe respective states and dynamics, appropriate indicators and data for their quantification, including quantitative and qualitative assessments, are needed.

Attitude surveys among affected groups are established tools for integrating actors into decision-making concerning wildlife management. However, the complexity of attitudes and the fact that general attitudes toward wildlife may differ from those toward specific management measures reveal the risk of misinterpreting the data obtained. This article explores these problems based on a quantitative survey of hunters and landowners living close to the Bavarian Forest National Park, Germany.

Human‐induced land use and land cover (LUC) changes threaten the ecosystem services of the vulnerable tropical afro‐alpine vegetation. Several LUC change studies are available for the Ethiopian highlands, but relatively little is known about LUC change in the afro‐alpine zones. In this study, LUC changes between 1964 and 2012 were mapped for the afro‐alpine zone of Lib Amba Mountain, part of the Abune Yosef Mountains in North Ethiopia. Historical LUC was derived from georeferenced aerial photographs of 1964 and 1982, and the present LUC (2012) from Bing Map satellite imagery.

The soil erodibility factor of RUSLE is one of the important indicators of land degradation. It can be measured either directly under natural or simulated rainfall condition or indirectly estimated by empirical models. A geospatial variation of this factor is essential for prioritization of reclamation measures. However, geospatial upscaling of soil erodibility factor is very uncertain because of its dynamic nature and dependent on the parameters used in the model.

To address the effects of land use and land cover (LULC) on soil structure formation and the significance on preferential flow during infiltration, dye tracer experiments were conducted on five sites differing in LULC, yet displaying similar soil textural characteristics and parent material. Two grassland sites, two farmland sites (tilled and untilled) and one site located in a deciduous forest were investigated. At each site, the same sprinkling experiment was carried out with a Brilliant Blue FCF solution of 4gL⁻¹ to visualize flow paths.

One of the recurrent shortcomings of water policy in France is the control of diffuse agricultural pollution. Numerous lacunae and incoherencies in the French Rural, Public Health, and Environmental Codes have hindered the effective implementation of efficient protection measures. In this paper, we underline the extent to which these incoherencies have hampered the emergence of cooperative agreements (CAs) between farmers and drinking water service providers.

The Baekdudaegan Mountain Range is a backbone of the Korean Peninsula which has special spiritual and sentimental significance for Koreans and significant ecological value to diverse organisms. Despite the importance of this region, however, the natural environment of Baekdudaegan has been severely threatened by a variety of human activity and tremendous forest fires. To make management and restoration plans for the deforested areas, it is necessary to investigate quantitatively such natural and human-induced physical changes.

A kérdések széles területet ölelnek fel, ami folytatható a földvédelemmel, a kör-nyezetvédelemmel, a földadó kérdésével stb. A politikának – kompromisszumokkal és megegyezéssel – mielőbb lépnie kell, mert a rendezett birtokviszonyok növelik a földárat, élénkítik a termőföld iránti keresletet. Az emelkedő árak ugyanakkor bővítik a földkínálatot, végeredményben élénkül az egész földpiac. Ez a leghatékonyabb eszköz a termőfölddel kapcsolatos spekulációk visszaszorítására.Van-e azonban esély a megegyezésre? Politikai síkon aligha!

Understanding the patterns of land degradation indicators can help to identify areas under threat as basis for designing and implementing site-specific management options. This study sort to identify and assess the patterns of land degradation indicators in selected districts of western Kenya. The study employed the use of Land Degradation Sampling Framework (LDSF) to characterize the sites. LDSF a spatially stratified, random sampling design framework consisting of 10km×10km blocks and clusters of plots.

The present research aims to obtain a better insight into the agreement between land evaluation results and actual crop spatial distribution by comparing biophysical land suitability with different crop frequency parameters and with crop rotations derived from multi-year crop maps. The research was carried out in the Flumen district (33,000 ha), which is located in the Ebro Valley (Northeast Spain). Land evaluation was based on a 1:100,000 soil survey according to the FAO framework for the main crops in the study area (alfalfa, winter cereals, maize, rice and sunflower).

Applying a difference‐in‐difference approach with propensity score matching, we examine the impact of participation in the Entry Level Stewardship (ELS) scheme on cereal farm incomes in eastern England. We assess the extent to which impacts are related to a) the source of income affected – whether only from agricultural or total business income; b) the channel of the impact – through land use and/or labour input; and c) the level of impacts through time. In addition, we assess the appropriateness of the level of the ELS payment.

The distributed hydrology soil vegetation model (DHSVM) is applied in the 107 km² Nam Mae Rim watershed (NMRW) in northern Thailand. Simulations using land cover scenarios for 1989 and 2002, extreme deforestation, and forest, each run with and without roads, show that roads have very small effects on the mean water fluxes, but significantly increase peak flows for all land cover scenarios. The magnitude of the road effect on peak flow depends on the land cover context in which the roads are placed.