Agri-environment schemes (AES) are central to the conservation of Europe's farmland biodiversity. The UK Government's Public Service Agreement target seeks to reverse the decline of farmland birds in England by 2020 through the use of AES. The Entry Level Stewardship (ELS) scheme, introduced in 2005, is the first non-competitive, broad-uptake stewardship scheme designed to deliver simple but effective environmental management on farms throughout England.

Climate change, food crises and deterioration of the environment create immense challenges in water management. In the Netherlands land subsidence, high population density and intensity of land use aggravate these problems. Increased awareness of these problems and civil society's participation in the discussions complicate these challenges. The Netherlands' Government Service for Land and Water Management (DLG), an organisation specialising in integrated land development, has tackled these problems at a regional/local scale.

Sustainability of agricultural land use is determined by economic and environmental characteristics of land resources. The method for land use assessing, which enables to determine the type of its environmental and economic status (EES), was developed. The method includes the calculation of performance indicators, drafting the scale and the determination of the cumulative EES for land.

The aim of this paper is to set-up the algorithm for determining the degree of workabilityof the soil, to help the owners of family farms to plan working hours of agricultural machines, i.e.with the machine park management. The plans, which would be made by use of these algorithmsand based on the accurate information of the cultivation conditions, would result in the appropriateuse of time and capacity of the agricultural machines. In some sectors, such as agriculture or certainindustries, chance that certain event occurs plays a very important role.

Land-use and vegetation cover have been linked to the nutrient levels (nitrogen, phosphorus) of surface waters in several countries. However, the links generally relate to streams and rivers, or to specific types of standing water, for example shallow lakes in a geologically defined region.

Tajikistan, with 93% of its surface area taken up by mountains and 65% of its labor forceemployed in agriculture, is judged to be highly vulnerable to risks, including climate changerisks and food insecurity risks. The article examines a set of land use policies and practices thatcan be used to mitigate the vulnerability of Tajikistan’s large rural population, primarily byincreasing family incomes. Empirical evidence from Tajikistan and other CIS countries suggeststhat families with more land and higher commercialization earn higher incomes and achievehigher well-being.

The implicit hydrologic dimensions of international efforts to mitigate climate change, specifically potential impacts of the Clean Development Mechanism-Afforestation/Reforestation (CDM-AR) provisions of the Kyoto Protocol (KP) on global, regional and local water cycles, are examined. The global impact of the redistribution of water use driven by agriculture and land use change, of which CDM-AR can be a contributing factor, is a major component of ongoing global change and climate change processes.

It might be considered unlikely that inadequate access to land would be one of the major causes of rural poverty in Zambia. However, evidence presented in this paper shows that economically viable arable land is not in great abundance in Zambia after considering the current situation with respect to access to road infrastructure and access to services and markets. In fact, access to land is already a major problem for large segments of the rural population in Zambia.

The article is devoted to the actual development factors and regularities of the existence of ecologically dangerousprocesses of agriculture. The questions of intensification of agriculture and scientific and technological progress and analyzesthe system of state management of land resources.

The development of synergies between efforts to mitigate land degradation and biological diversity decline can enhance effectiveness, speed up implementation and avoid potential conflicts. Due to the variable nature of these processes and to the variable characteristics of the areas where they occur, there is no general rule linking land degradation and biological diversity decline. Thus, a geographically limited approach focusing on drivers of change may provide a more appropriate base upon which synergies can be built. This exercise is undertaken for the case of northern Mediterranean.

Land use reflects the needs, demands and values of human society. We can see two antagonistic trends of land use change in Slovakia over the past few decades. Land use change towards more intensive in some areas (vicinity of cities, highways, lowlands), but others (uplands and mountains with traditionally agricultural used) are abandoned and left to their own spontaneous dynamic. The abandonment of agriculture is a pattern common to all industrialized countries, especially in hilly and mountain ranges (Farina, A., 2007).