Quantifying the carbon storage of grasslands under different management strategies can help us understand how this ecosystem responds to different land management practices. To assess the C cycle and the importance of soil microbial biomass carbon, we measured the levels of soil organic carbon, biomass carbon (above- and underground) and soil microbial biomass carbon in areas with different grazing intensities and different management strategy (fenced and unfenced) in the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau.

Energy and other anthropogenic development are increasing throughout the range of Golden Eagles (Aquila chrysaetos) in western North America, and both private and government agencies have expressed concern about indirect and direct effects on Golden Eagles. To facilitate sustainable development and reduce risk to Golden Eagles, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has established guidelines to assist developers in project planning and siting. A major component of environmental impact assessment is documenting Golden Eagle spatial use near a project site before development.

The values of conservationists and planners will affect their decisions, tools, and practice, while the values of the public will affect the social acceptability of different management actions and, consequently, the likely success of implementation. This study investigates how voluntary geographic information systems (VGI) can be used to identify areas important for anthropocentric and biocentric values across a spatial planning region to inform place-based conservation planning.

Soil biota drive fundamental ecosystem processes such as decomposition, nutrient cycling, and maintenance of soil structure. They are especially active in grassland ecosystems such as the tallgrass prairie, where much of the net primary productivity is allocated belowground and ultimately processed by heterotrophic soil organisms.

Spanish rangelands occupy more than 90,000km² of land grazed by millions of domestic and wild animals. Organic matter content of soil is an essential component for fertility and productivity in both, natural and human-induced ecosystems. Despite its importance to soil quality, soil organic carbon has been little studied in these rangelands. The main goal of this study is to assess the amounts and characteristics of soil organic matter in grazed open woodlands of SW Iberia as influenced by vegetation cover and land management.

In China, and elsewhere, long-term economic development and poverty alleviation need to be balanced against the likelihood of ecological failure. Here, we show how paleoenvironmental records can provide important multidecadal perspectives on ecosystem services (ES). More than 50 different paleoenvironmental proxy records can be mapped to a wide range of ES categories and subcategories. Lake sediments are particularly suitable for reconstructing records of regulating services, such as soil stability, sediment regulation, and water purification, which are often less well monitored.

Degradation of farmland caused by salinisation is a major environmental issue in Australia. To combat salinisation a community-based approach has been adopted. This paper reviews the nature and effectiveness of this approach, describing its rationale, strengths and weaknesses. The community-based approach is shown to have been highly successful in raising awareness and providing education about the problem of dryland salinity in Australia, and has encouraged group participation in managing the problem.

Heavy losses of 6200 ha of seagrass off the Adelaide metropolitan coast since 1949 have had substantial implications for beach management, fisheries and biodiversity. Here, we describe for managers some promising initial trials to develop a cost‐effective method to rehabilitate some of these lost seagrasses.