A large portion of the Occidental Region of Paraguay consists of a semi-arid territory with vegetation adapted to the features of this region. For just over a decade, a process of intense deforestation has resulted from the expansion of mechanized farming, carried out without any form of land management or planning; this has led to the fragmentation of the forests in this region.

Farmers are key actors in land management confronted with society’s increasing demand for public goods. Understanding farmers’ values and motivations is essential to policy makers to foster more sustainable production practices. So far, no definite value profile for European farmers exists. Based on Schwartz’s theory of basic human values, we statistically analyzed six rounds of the European Social Survey to explore farmers’ value orientations in Austria, Denmark, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Switzerland.

Soil surveys are an essential source of information for land management although a limited budget often reduces the amount of data available. Even if the dataset is limited, geostatistics can provide a valid estimation tool through a weighted moving average interpolation (kriging). Often, however, the spatial variability of soil properties appears smoothed and short range variability is underestimated by this kind of interpolation technique. A more realistic distribution of a given variable on the territory can be obtained through models based on stochastic simulation.

The Curve Number (CN) method is an engineering and land management tool for estimating surface runoff from rainstorms. We investigated CN under continuous longterm no-till corn (Zea mays L.; watershed WS191) and compared it with other potentially high infiltration agricultural practices using data from three experimental watersheds (average area = 0.74 ha [1.83 ac]) at the North Appalachian Experimental Watershed (NAEW) near Coshocton, Ohio.

There are many controversies and conflicts surrounding land management in the Great Basin. The conflicts often revolve around the maintenance of native plant and animal communities. This paper outlines some of the historical aspects of plant community change and some of the unanticipated impacts of policies applied to the Great Basin during Euro-American exploration and settlement. This narrative provides readers with some background on the turbulent history of the Great Basin, and suggests the need for a coordinated vision for future Great Basin land management.

Inefficient irrigation and the excessive use of water on agricultural land in the Aral Sea Basin over several decades have led to saline soils. The main objective of this paper is to identify the environmental predictors to model the spatial distribution of soil salinity in a highly irrigated landscape. Soil salinity at farm scale was measured in the topsoil (Total Dissolved Solids, TDS) and down to a depth of 1.5m by electromagnetic conductivity meter (CMv) over a regular grid covering an area of approximately 15km² in Khorezm Province, Uzbekistan.

India’s farm sector sustains livelihoods for hundreds of millions of rural people, but faces serious management challenges for land, water, and energy resources. Growing dependence on groundwater threatens water resources sustainability and power sector viability. Sustaining India’s rising prosperity rests on managing groundwater. This study shows that raising power tariffs in the farm sector to achieve efficiency and sustainability of groundwater use is both socially and economically viable. The question is about how to introduce this shift.

Soil erosion along with soil particles and nutrients losses is detrimental to crop production. We carried out a 5-year (2010 to 2014) study to characterize the soil erosion and nitrogen and phosphorus losses caused by rainfall under different fertilizer application levels in order to provide a theoretical evidence for the agricultural production and coordinate land management to improve ecological environment. The experiment took place under rotation cropping, winter wheat-summer maize, on a 15° slope purple soil in Chongqing (China) within the Three Gorges Region (TGR).

In agricultural industry of the Republic of Belarus the problem of increasing the effectiveness of utilization of land resources appears one of the most actual. Annual alienation of agricultural lands and arable fields under housing construction and industrial buildings, roads and other economic object leads to implacable decline of agricultural areas. Absence of new lands, suitable for agricultural use, promotes increase of agricultural productivity by means of intensification of producing process.

Willow (Salix) communities are important components of riparian ecosystems. However, browsing by livestock and wildlife species can negatively impact willow size and abundance, and make restoration efforts difficult. A common solution has been fencing of affected willows to exclude ungulates, but fencing is expensive and may not complement desirable land management strategies. An alternative to fencing is the use of structures that limit access to streamside willows, without excluding ungulate access to the entire riparian zone.

Africa is on the verge of a mining boom. We review the environmental threats from African mining development, including habitat alteration, infrastructure expansion, human migration, bushmeat hunting, corruption, and weak governance. We illustrate these threats in Central Africa, which contains the vast Congo rainforest, and show that more than a quarter of 4,151 recorded mineral occurrences are concentrated in three regions of biological endemism—the Cameroon‐Gabon Lowlands, Eastern DRC Lowlands, and Albertine Rift Mountains—and that most of these sites are currently unprotected.