Protected areas are regarded as the most important tool in the conservation toolbox. They cover > 12% of the Earth's terrestrial area, with over half of this designated since 1970, and are thus a unique example of governments and other stakeholders consciously changing management of land and water at a significant scale. The Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) has a global programme to complete ecologically-representative protected area networks, and this is driving the creation of large numbers of new protected areas.

Like many fishes native to western Great Plains streams, the Arkansas darter Etheostoma cragini has declined, apparently in response to changes in flow regimes and habitat fragmentation. We investigated the effectiveness of translocation as a management strategy to conserve this threatened species in the Arkansas River basin of southeastern Colorado.

Increasingly, landowners are establishing hardwood plantations to satisfy their land management goals. Unfortunately, little is known about how competition control affects initial seedling survival and subsequent investment returns for hardwood plantations. This study examines five alternative competition control regimes for southern oak establishment. The regimes include no site preparation, disking only, sub-soiling with rotary mowing, herbicides only, and herbicides with rotary mowing and sub-soiling.

Land use, land use change and forestry activities play an important role in determining whether soil is a sink or source of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO₂). The effects of land use change on greenhouse gases and climate change are receiving greater attention in many developing countries. We simulated changes in soil organic carbon (SOC) pool over 100 years (1950-2050) under managed dense Shorea forest (DS), rainfed upland (Bari) and irrigated low land (Khet) of Pokhare Khola, a mid-hill watershed of Nepal, using the Century model.

Question: Small and marginal forest populations are a focus of attention because of their high biodiversity value as well as the risk of population decline and loss. In this context, we ask to what extent a small, marginal Quercus suber (Cork oak) population located in the eastern Iberian Peninsula (Valencia, Spain) has the capacity for self‐regeneration and what are the factors that determine its recruitment variability. Location: Quercus suber forest in Pinet (Valencia, Spain).

The paper examined Land Management through agroforestry in the context of sustainable agriculture in Southeastern Nigeria. From 6 rural communities, 180 households were interviewed; and data analysed using descriptive statistics and ordinary least square regression model. Research findings show that Agro forestry played prominent, critical roles in Land Management. Farmers practiced home gardens, alley cropping, improved fallow, multipurpose trees and shrubs on cropland and contour boundary planting of trees.

The pattern of soil respiration and its responsible factors are still unclear in subalpine ecosystems. In this study, we used a static chamber system to measure soil respiration in a primary Abies fabri (Masters) Craib forest, a secondary A. fabri forest and a clear-cut land on Gongga Mountain, east of Tibetan Plateau in China. Our results showed there were substantial diurnal and temporal variations in these three subalpine ecosystems. The diurnal coefficient of variation (CV) of soil respiration was lowest in primary forest (20.5%), and highest in clear-cut land (40.4%).

The fate and turnover of microbial carbon (C) in an arable soil following crop residue addition likely depends on the quality of both native soil organic matter (SOM) and residues. We labeled the microbial biomass with ¹³C-glucose and followed the microbial ¹³C turnover into different SOM pools under the influence of three plant amendments (mature wheat, immature wheat, and vetch) in a laboratory incubation experiment using a soil with two different contents of organic C (0.9 and 1.3 %) owing to different soil management.

Accurate information about three-dimensional canopy structure and wildland fuel across the landscape is necessary for fire behaviour modelling system predictions. Remotely sensed data are invaluable for assessing these canopy characteristics over large areas; lidar data, in particular, are uniquely suited for quantifying three-dimensional canopy structure. Although lidar data are increasingly available, they have rarely been applied to wildland fuels mapping efforts, mostly due to two issues.

Increasing landscape heterogeneity and organic farming practices are known to enhance species richness in agroecosystems. However, little is known about the consequences of these management options on other biodiversity components such as community composition, phylogenetic structure and functional diversity which may be more closely linked to ecosystem functioning. We surveyed semi‐natural plant communities within the uncultivated field margins of 18 arable farms in Skåne, south Sweden.