Amazonian plant management is perhaps nowhere as intense as in homegardens and swiddens. A quantitative ethnobotanical study was conducted in Indigenous Territory and National Park Isiboro-Sécure, Bolivia, to investigate plant use and management in homegardens and swiddens by local Yuracaré and Trinitario ethnic groups. Ethnobotanical data of plants were obtained from 11 Yuracaré and 11 Trinitario participants through semistructured interviews.

Agroforestry systems have been re-evaluated with a renewed scientific interest as appropriate models for achieving sustainable production while maintaining planned and associated biodiversity and agroecosystem functioning. Traditional bamboo-tree gardens in West Java are known to play substantial ecological and socioeconomic roles. In this study, we attempted to elucidate the relationship between income generation and biodiversity by studying 83 bamboo-tree gardens that varied in species composition and degree of commercialization.

SummaryThe relationship between woody fuel consumption and fireline intensity was assessed using data collected at controlled fires and wildfires in south-western Western Australia, central Victoria and south-eastern New South Wales. The combined dataset consisted of fires in a range of dry eucalypt forests. Fire behaviour varied from slow, self-extinguishing prescribed burns to intense, fast—moving fires burning under conditions of extreme fire danger. Fireline intensity ranged from 50 kW m⁻ˡ to

We investigated the use of a satellite‐derived vegetation index to detect changes in biomass productivity in different land management regimes in drylands of the Northern Negev. Two well‐documented management regimes, conservation and afforestation using a contour trenching technique were monitored. Biomass data on annual vegetation were collected from field survey and compared to a time series of the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI). A significant relationship between NDVI and biomass (r� =� 0.83, P�

Replicated measurements of Net Ecosystem CO₂ Exchange (NEE) were made on four arable plots using two eddy covariance (EC) towers that were moved at regular intervals. Replicated plots were created by dividing a large arable field into four approximately equal areas (∼2.5ha). Regular adjustments of the EC measurement height (1.5-1.9m) due to seasonal changes in canopy height ensured that the analyzed fluxes were derived from the individual plots. This was sufficient to make high-quality flux measurements with the energy balance accounting for up to 96% of the available energy in the system.

The premise of this paper is that the key to effective water resources management is understanding that the water cycle and land management are inextricably linked: that every land use decision is a water use decision. Gains in agricultural water productivity, therefore, will only be obtained alongside improvements in land use management. Expected increases in food demands by 2050 insist that agricultural production - and agricultural water use - must increase.

Land issues, exploitation of natural resources, and Forests of Rural Communities in the periphery of Kinshasa, DRC. Peri-urban forests are under strong anthropic pressure. Any activity needs a previous identification of stakeholders, landscape perception, socio-economic trends in local communities and their relationships with land and natural resources. Kinshasa (capital of Democratic Republic of Congo, DRC) is a 10 millions inhabitants city with rapid growth and increasing impacts on surrounding villages linked with forest natural resources.

Research was conducted in northern Namibia to document and investigate the value of local knowledge connected with soil and land management, in particular with respect to the cultivation of grain legumes. Participatory approaches were used to describe and map the indigenous land unit (ILU) classification system in four villages. Soil and crop analyses indicated good correspondence between conventional productivity assessments and farmers' more qualitative descriptions of the ILUs.

Recent observations show that human-induced climate change (CC) and land transformation (LT) are threatening wildlife globally. Thus, there is a need to assess the sensitivity of wildlife on large spatial scales and evaluate whether national parks (NPs), a key conservation tools used to protect species, will meet their mandate under future CC and LT conditions. Here, we assess the sensitivity of 277 mammals at African scale to CC at 10[prime] resolution, using static LT assumptions in a 'first-cut' estimate, in the absence of credible future LT trends.

Grasslands in South Africa have been extensively transformed and fragmented, but are poorly protected. Commercial afforestation poses a particular threat to grassland biodiversity because areas suitable for forestry coincide with those supporting the greatest richness of endemic and threatened biota. To comply with international forestry standards, commercial timber growers leave “ecological networks” of interconnected open corridors within plantations: however, the value of these networks for conservation is unclear.

The impacts of agricultural practices and landscape composition on bee communities were investigated in 14 sites located in four Western European countries (Belgium, France, the Netherlands and Switzerland). Standardized interviews with farmers assessed agricultural practices in terms of agricultural inputs (nitrogen fertilization and pesticides), livestock density and crop types. The proportion of semi-natural habitats was calculated for each site. We showed negative effects of agricultural intensification on species richness, abundance and diversity of wild bees.