Interacting land use demands and competing interests originating from fields such as agriculture, housing, mobility and nature conservation call for integrated governance approaches that incorporate disciplinary perspectives and arbitrate between them. The German research program “Sustainable Land Management” targets this challenge and provides an umbrella for a number of regional projects involving transdisciplinary system-oriented approaches to sustainable land use, connecting researchers and practitioners.

In-depth understanding about the vertical distribution of soil organic carbon (SOC) density is crucial for carbon (C) accounting, C budgeting and designing appropriate C sequestration strategies. We examined the vertical distribution of SOC density under different land use/land cover (LULC) types, altitudinal zones and aspect directions in a montane ecosystem of Bhutan. Sampling sites were located using conditioned Latin hypercube sampling (cLHS) scheme. Soils were sampled based on genetic horizons.

Agroecology and landscape ecology are two land-use sciences based on ecological principles, but have historically focused on fine and broad spatial scales, respectively. As global demand for food strains current resources and threatens biodiversity conservation, concepts such as multifunctional landscapes and ecologically-analogous agroecosystems integrate ecological concepts across multiple spatial scales.

A one year field trial was carried out on three adjacent unfertilised plots; an 18 year old grassland, a 14 year old established Miscanthus crop, and a 7 month old newly planted Miscanthus crop. Measurements of N2O, soil temperature, water filled pore space (WFPS), and inorganic nitrogen concentrations, were made every one to two weeks. Soil temperature, WFPS and NO3− and NH4+ concentrations were all found to be significantly affected by land use.

The increase in population and the expansion of built-up areas into natural and agricultural areas results in more than just loss of open spaces surrounding cities. Reduced accessibility to nature, visual intrusion of buildings into natural viewsheds, and changes in runoff requires us to assess these impacts on open spaces. Our aim in this paper was to examine and demonstrate how topography can be incorporated into modeling and analyzing environmental impacts of cities.

Vegetation and land-cover changes are not always directional but follow complex trajectories over space and time, driven by changing anthropogenic and abiotic conditions. We present a multi-observational approach to land-change analysis that addresses the complex geographic and temporal variability of vegetation changes related to climate and land use.

Water is both a key and limited resource in the Okavango Catchment of Southern Africa. It is vital for the ecosystem and the three riparian states Angola, Botswana and Namibia who use the water of the catchment for multiple purposes including pastoralism, farming and tourism. Socioeconomic changes, primarily strong population growth and increasing development demands pose significant challenges for the Okavango Catchment and its Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM). In this paper, we first review the socioeconomic background and the current and projected water situation.

Some authorities argue that land is the most fundamental of natural resources. If their arguments fail to convince, we certainly have to cede that land is a limited natural resource. Aside from a few thousand Moken living on the Andaman Sea, humans are tied to the land. Most of us live, eat and sleep on land, even oil rig workers in the Gulf of Mexico, Filipino merchant seamen, Japanese fishermen and British naval ratings divide their lives between sea and land.

This study examines whether there is a biodiversity benefit (“dividend”) associated with the existence and management of conservation reserves in the extensive and largely natural landscape of northern Australia. Species richness and abundance of vertebrate fauna and the intensity of a range of disturbance factors were compared across a set of 967 sampled quadrats, located either in pastoral lands, Indigenous lands or conservation reserves, with all sampled quadrats within a single vegetation type (open forests and savannah woodlands dominated by Eucalyptus miniata and/or E. tetrodonta).

Urban areas are directly or indirectly responsible for the majority of anthropogenic CO2 emissions. In this study, we characterize observed atmospheric CO2 mixing ratios and estimated CO2 fluxes at three sites across an urban-to-rural gradient in Boston, MA, USA. CO2 is a well-mixed greenhouse gas, but we found significant differences across this gradient in how, where, and when it was exchanged. Total anthropogenic emissions were estimated from an emissions inventory and ranged from 1.5 to 37.3 mg·C·ha−1·yr−1 between rural Harvard Forest and urban Boston.

We present an analysis of the impacts of weather change and large-scale vegetation conservation programs on the vegetation dynamics in China’s Loess Plateau from 2000 through 2009. We employed a multiple lines of evidence approach in which multi-scale data were used. We employed Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) data, acquired by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) at 500 m to identify significant vegetation increases in the Loess Plateau since 2000. We found increases in NDVI for 48% of the Loess Plateau between 2000 and 2009.

Intensity Analysis has become popular as a top-down hierarchical accounting framework to analyze differences among categories, such as changes in land categories over time. Some aspects of interpretation are straightforward, while other aspects require deeper thought. This article explains how to interpret Intensity Analysis with respect to four concepts. First, we illustrate how to analyze whether error could account for non-uniform changes. Second, we explore two types of the large dormant category phenomenon. Third, we show how results can be sensitive to the selection of the domain.