Many of the issues of importance to forest management and policy have important social components. Yet, in the South, social research on forests has lagged behind economic and biophysical research. In this paper we identify some important new opportunities for social research on forests in the South, focusing on non industrial private forests because they represent the majority of the South's timberland. We identify six important areas for social research. One, research on diversity of forest land owners and how different landowners relate to and use their forests.

In 2006, the Midwest Invasive Plant Network's Research Committee conducted a web-based survey to help identify research needs and interactions between land managers and researchers working to manage invasive plants in the Midwest. Of 192 responses, 30% identified themselves as researchers and 70% identified themselves as managers. Researchers and managers rated working together on invasive plant issues as high or medium in importance, but neither group rated the current level of cooperation as high, with over 90% describing current cooperation as low or medium.

Spatial modifications should be introduced in areas where members of the local community actively participate in consolidation projects. Social acceptance is the key prerequisite for successful land consolidation. How should the sequence of land consolidation measures be planned in a rural area whose inhabitants have not expressed their opinions about the project? Are the existing criteria, which are applied to evaluate land consolidation measures mostly in agricultural regions, sufficient?

The aim of this study was to compare the agricultural land market in Poland and in the selected countries of the European Union. The present paper compares the price changes of agricultural land in Poland and the EU. This research contains the information on institutions involved in agricultural land management in the selected EU countries. The paper presents the current state of the Polish market and its prospects for the land. Therefore, the development of the agricultural real estate market in Poland covers the years from 2004 to 2012.

Immovable property tax is one of the national taxes the administration of which is subjected to continuous changes. Frequent amendments to the law “On Immovable Property Tax” (1997) also evidence the mentioned changes. The procedure for tax calculation, tax base, and tax rates has been considerably changed in the course of time. The research provides a discussion on the changes in tax formation, development, and administration in Latvia to understand better the essence of immovable property tax.

Already during the Land Reform, land properties of several land parcels were formed in the rural areas. Another factor that benefits to the fragmentation of farm properties is development of land market because buying or renting land for farm size building, it is not always possible to find adjacent land plot. Consequently, the land fragmentation not only makes land management difficult, but also increases the transport costs. With this rural land tenure system, competitive and efficient agricultural production cannot be discussed, so a large part of rural areas remains untreated.

To comply with the requirements of the EU Directive 2009/28/EC for using renewable energy sources (RES) in Latvia, the agricultural industry has to become a significant supplier of resources to energy producers and consumers. An increase in the area sown with maize is forecasted by exploiting the unused agricultural land to expand biogas production. The agricultural area has decreased by 2% in Latvia over the recent decade, and 16% of its total agricultural area are not exploited anymore.

In Greece, there is no official inventory for the activity land use, land use change and forestry. The national forest inventory was completed in 1992. Using the data of this inventory, the carbon store of woody biomass of Greece has been estimated by FAO-TBFRA (2000) as 52.04 millions t C, of which 46.36 millions t C is above stump biomass and 8.67 millions t C is stump and root biomass.