An unprecedented land conservation effort is presently underway in the Gulf of Mexico Coastal Region (GCR) due to an influx of funds from settlements related to the 2012 RESTORE Act. A complete understanding of the priorities of the states in the GCR is critical to ensure that land conservation planning efforts are implemented effectively and efficiently. The paper reviews past, current, and future land conservation priorities in the GCR to inform strategic planning efforts.

With about 107 million hectares of moist forest, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is a perfect paradox of a natural resources endowed country caught in repeated economic and socio-political crises. Democratic Republic of Congo possesses about 60% of the Congo basin’s forest on which the majority of its people rely for their survival.

Recreation and tourism are important ways that people interact with and derive benefits from natural environments. Understanding how and where nature provides recreational opportunities and benefits is necessary for management decisions that impact the environment. This study develops and tests an approach for mapping tourism patterns, and assessing people’s preferences for cultural and natural landscapes, using user-generated geographic content.

This paper shows how the slow process of forestland restitution, which is unfolding in Romania since 1991 has eroded the threads of sustainable forest management by an insidious institutional amnesia (IA). The four symptoms of this harmful process (frequent reorganization, transition from paperwork to electronic media, fewer people motivated to join public services, and popularity of radical changes) were analyzed from the legal standing point as well as from practitioners’ perspective.

To gain a social license to operate and grow, companies should have effective community engagement activities, social impact assessment processes, environmental and social impact management procedures, and human rights-compatible grievance redress mechanisms in place. In this way, environmental impacts and social impacts would likely be identified and addressed before issues escalate and social risk amplifies. Companies also need to treat communities with respect and be mindful of local culture. Where these things are not done, there will be no social license to operate.

The denitrification rate in C2H2-amended intact soil cores and soil N2O fluxes in closed static chambers were monitored in a Mediterranean irrigated maize-cropped field. The measurements were carried out during: (i) a standard fertilization management (SFM) activity and (ii) a manipulation experimental (ME) test on the effects of increased and reduced application rates of urea at the late fertilization.

At the 2018 meeting of the Permanent European Conference for the Study of the Rural Landscape (PECSRL), that took place in Clermont-Ferrand and Mende in France, the Institute for Research on European Agricultural Landscapes e.V. (EUCALAND) Network organized a session on traditional landscapes. Presentations included in the session discussed the concept of traditional, mostly agricultural, landscapes, their ambiguous nature and connections to contemporary landscape research and practice.

Social media data provide an unprecedented wealth of information on people’s perceptions, attitudes, and behaviors at fine spatial and temporal scales and over broad extents. Social media data produce insight into relationships between people and the environment at scales that are generally prohibited by the spatial and temporal mismatch between traditional social and environmental data. These data thus have great potential for use in socio-environmental systems (SES) research.

The present paper focuses on an integrated evaluation methodology aimed at measuring the attractiveness of rural landscapes. The landscapes under observation are two exceptional contexts in Piedmont (Italy): The Moraine Amphitheatre of Ivrea and the vineyard landscape of Langhe, Roero and Monferrato, which have recently been included in the UNESCO World Heritage List.

Land restitution carries implicit recognition of some previous claim to ownership, but when are first claims recognized? The concepts of first possession and original acquisition have long been used as entry points to Western concepts of property. For Austronesia, the concept of precedence is used in customary systems to justify and describe land claims and Indigenous authority. Conflict and political change in Timor-Leste have highlighted the co-existence of multiple understandings of land claims and their legitimacy.

In Colombia, right-wing leadership returned to power after winning the presidential elections in 2018 in a campaign in which they opposed the previous government, primarily because of the negotiations and peacemaking with the FARC-EP (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia—Ejército del Pueblo ‘Armed Revolutionary Forces of Colombia—People’s Army’), Colombia’s largest guerrilla organization.

This paper examines how proximity to an ethanol plant influences land-use and crop choice among producers. We estimated a Tobit model of crop choice within parcels located in Central Nebraska in a 2014 sample period in order to analyze changes in land-use and crop choice. We employed Geographic Information System (GIS) databases to access relevant data on crop choice and other land uses in the study area parcels, in addition to detailed information on the location and capacity of irrigation wells.