Cities are characterized by dynamic interactions between socio-economic and biophysical forces. Currently more than half of the global population reside in cities which influence the global biogeochemical cycles and climate change, substantially exacerbating pressures on urban pollution, water quality and food security, as well as operating costs for infrastructure development. Goods and services such as aesthetic values, water purification, nutrient recycling, and biological diversity, that urban ecosystems generate for the society, are critical to sustain.

Estimating regional carbon (C) stocks and understanding their dynamics is crucial, both from the perspective of sustainable landscape management and global change feedback. This study combines remote sensing techniques and a coupled GIS-CENTURY model to estimate regional biomass C stocks and SOC dynamics for Guiera senegalensis shrub communities in Senegal's Peanut Basin. A statistical model relating field-measured shrub aboveground biomass C at training plots to satellite image-derived shrub abundances was developed and used to estimate regional biomass C across a major part of the Basin.

Whether aggravated agricultural drought in the Sahel is related to a changing climate (meteorological drought, i.e., deficit of rainfall or unfavourable rainfall distribution) or to land use and land degradation (soil-water drought, i.e., decreased water infilitration and water holding capacity) is a much-debated issue.

The recent 9-billion-gallon increase in corn-based ethanol production, which resultedfrom a combination of rising gasoline prices and a suite of Federal bioenergy policies,provides evidence of how farmers altered their land-use decisions in response toincreased demand for corn. As some forecasts had suggested, corn acreage increasedmostly on farms that previously specialized in soybeans. Other farms, however, offsetthis shift by expanding soybean production.

The effects of agricultural practices on runoff water quality are a major concern worldwide, particularly where there is the potential to cause harm to aquatic ecosystems receiving the runoff. Cropping land has been identified as a major source of pollutants in the Fitzroy Basin, the largest catchment discharging into the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) lagoon. However, knowledge of pollutant generation rates in runoff from the dryland cropping (grains) industry's best management practices (BMPs) on Vertisol soils is limited, partly due to the scarce distribution of these soils worldwide.

Iberian dehesa and montado are paradigmatic high nature value (HNV) agroforestry systems in Europe. Nevertheless their conservation status is uncertain as a consequence of their typological variety, different intensity of management practices on the ground, and other ongoing processes challenging their long-term sustainability. The existing broad gradients of dehesa and montado types impose difficulties in estimating not only their distribution and extent, but also their condition, since probably not all these agroforestry systems should readily be considered as HNV.

The enclosure system is an increasingly popular approach for land rehabilitation among communities inhabiting the arid and semi-arid lands in Africa. However, the mixed results associated with its adoption by households call for an in-depth understanding of the management regimes.

Regional estimates of soil carbon pool have been made using various approaches that combine soil maps with sample databases. The point soil organic carbon (SOC) densities are spatialized employing approaches like regression, spatial interpolation, polygon based summation, etc. The present work investigates a data mining based spatial imputation for spatial assessment of soil organic carbon density. The study area covers Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka states of India.

In the last 100 years or so, desertification, degradation, and woody plant encroachment have altered huge tracts of semiarid rangelands. It is expected that the changes thus brought about significantly affect water balance in these regions; and in fact, at the headwater-catchment and smaller scales, such effects are reasonably well documented. For larger scales, however, there is surprisingly little documentation of hydrological change.

Increasing interest in wetlands for environmental management requires an understanding of the location, spatial extent, and configuration of the resource. The National Wetlands Inventory is the most commonly used data source for this information. However, its accuracy is limited in some contexts, such as agricultural and forested wetlands. An large number of studies have mapped wetlands worldwide from the perspective of land use and land cover change. However, information on the actual wetland planting areas annually is limited, which greatly impacts ongoing research.