Teasing out how species respond to human-induced environmental changes has become a priority for addressing the challenges posed by the need to conserve biodiversity. Although land abandonment is widespread, the threat it can represent to biodiversity remains poorly understood. To address this issue, we used data from eight long-term studies in a region with widespread land abandonment that has been identified as a biodiversity hotspot, the north-west Mediterranean Basin.

Assessments of potential environmental impacts of non-point source (NPS) pollutants at local and regional scales are necessary as a basis for effective management strategies to protect precious resources such as land and water. Intensive watershed scale study is therefore necessary to develop management strategies for abating the agricultural NPS pollution. The major goal of the present study was to identify the critical areas of an agricultural watershed and recommend the best management practices using a physical process based watershed scale model, soil water assessment tool (SWAT).

Land managers increasingly need to collect, store, and analyze monitoring and assessment datasets that include multiple methods and occur over multiple years. The Database for Inventory,Monitoring and Assessment (DIMA) is a highly customizable software tool for data collection, management, and interpretation. DIMA is a free Microsoft Access database that can be used easily without extensive knowledge of Access (download DIMA from http://jornada.nmsu.edu/monit-assess/dima/download).

Livestock production in Latin America has replaced tropical dry forests with conventional monocultures pastures (CP) that have degraded soils. As an alternative to CP, intensive silvopastoral systems (ISS) have been developed with multi-canopied vegetation that mimics native forest (F). The litter inputs and year-round presence of the tree rhizosphere in ISS, contribute to the formation of “fertile islands,” which is expected to impact biological activity and crop productivity.

Monitoring exchangeable sodium percentage (ESP) and sodium adsorption ratio (SAR) variability in soils is both time-consuming and expensive. However, in order to estimate the amounts of amendments and land management, it is essential to know ESP and SAR variations and values in sodic or saline and sodic soils. Thus, presenting a method which uses easily obtained indices to estimate ESP and SAR indirectly is more optimal and economical. Input data of the current research were 189 soil samples collected based on a regular networking approach from Miankangi region, Sistan plain, Iran.

Launched in 1994, the Alternatives to Slash-and-Burn Programme is a multidisciplinary collaborative research effort aimed at addressing the issue of deforestation. This article analyzes the genesis and the history of this research effort and the causes of its successes and failures. I will show that despite the genuine commitment of the ASB Programme to achieve comprehensive analysis linking the social and the biophysical realms, its conclusions and recommendations were biased in favor of biophysical models whose adoption by farmers remained low.

In European peatlands which have been drained and cut-over in the past, re-vegetation often stagnates after the return of a species-poor Sphagnum community. Re-introduction of currently absent species may be a useful tool to restore a typical, and more diverse, Sphagnum vegetation and may ultimately improve the functioning of peatland ecosystems, regarding atmospheric carbon sequestration. Yet, the factors controlling the success of re-introduction are unclear. In Ireland and Estonia, we transplanted small and large aggregates of three Sphagnum species into existing vegetation.

We investigate the trade-off agricultural producers face between profits and stewardly activities when selecting farm practices. Instead of the profit-maximization framework, we model producer behavior in an expanded utility framework, built on production technology, and including two utility components: self and social interests. The framework introduces inherent heterogeneity and social/environmental motivations into farmer behavior. Based on this model, we hypothesize that there are farmers that are willing to forego some profit to engage in stewardly farm practices.