Landscape stewardship is increasingly understood within the framing of complex social-ecological systems. To consider the implications of this, we focus on one of the key characteristics of complex social-ecological systems: they are relationally constituted, meaning that system characteristics emerge out of dynamic relations between system components. We focus on multi-actor collaboration as a key form of relationality in landscapes, seeking a more textured understanding of the social relations between landscape actors.

Rural settlement consolidation (RSC) has a critical role in facilitating the transformation of human settlement and land use transition in the rural revitalization process. RSC involves a diversity of stakeholder groups with complex and intertwined concerns. It is therefore crucial to identify the key stakeholders and their main concerns to effectively align rural planning and policymaking. However, this line of research remains underdeveloped. This study provides a novel and holistic network perspective for unpacking the complex relationships among different stakeholders.

The relationships between territorial governance and the pursuit of sustainable development are evidenced to be critical. Exploratory tools, like Geographic Information Systems (GIS), enable us to comprehend the patterns, dynamics, and parameters of land-use changes over the years. The results from such studies could be used in the design of a sustainable territorial governance strategy.

Increased environmental and social risk, ubiquitous information technology, and growing demands for and growing threats to democracy and public participation will alter the education and practice of all the design professions and the geographically oriented sciences, and the ways in which their activities towards influencing environmental and social change are organized and carried out. We all know about these trends, but we do not take them seriously enough. We are not adapting fast enough towards education or professional practice that is collaborative and globally oriented.

Cover crops (CCs) minimize the loss of soil in permanent cropping systems where the soil is usually bare due to intense tillage or overuse of herbicides. The topsoil, the richer layer in soil organic carbon and organic matter (OM), is affected by water erosion. Nature-based solutions appear as a suitable option for sustainable farming. In this study, the effectiveness of two years of CC management to reduce the OM loss is evaluated in a rainfed vineyard in a rolling landscape (Huesca, NE Spain). Two sediment traps collected runoff over 15 months.

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Pan evapotranspiration (E) is an important physical parameter in agricultural water resources research. Many climatic factors affect E, and one of the essential challenges is to model or predict E utilizing limited climatic parameters. In this study, the performance of four different artificial neural network (ANN) algorithms i.e., multiple hidden layer back propagation (MBP), generalized regression neural network (GRNN), probabilistic neural networks (PNN), and wavelet neural network (WNN) and one empirical model namely Stephens–Stewart (SS) were employed to predict monthly E.

The fast-growing palm oil economy has stimulated a significant expansion of oil palm plantations in Indonesia. The uncontrolled development of large oil palm plantations has raised complex socio-ecological issues, including changes of ecological landscapes, organization of production, and farming household livelihood systems. For two oil palm villages with different ecological settings, this article describes changes in land cover, how production is organized, and the income structure changes due to rural economic development.

Estonian and Latvian rural inhabitants enjoy many factors enhancing the quality of life, such as the peace and quiet of the countryside, fresh food and rural activities. However, these benefits are insufficient to overcome poor employment prospects in rural areas. Place-shaping practices have transformative powers that are instrumental in achieving sustainable change in communities.

The study gives an insight into the domain of seasonal mountain settlements for summer cattle grazing (katuns), characteristic for the mountainous areas in the Mediterranean basin. The area of the Kuči Mountain in Montenegro was chosen for the case study. The area contains numerous characteristics exemplary for the topic—193 katuns with more than 2900 belonging housing and subsidiary objects.

Chinese croplands have changed considerably over the past decades, but their impacts on the environment remain underexplored. Meanwhile, understanding the contributions of human activities to vegetation greenness has been attracting more attention but still needs to be improved. To address both issues, this study explored vegetation greening and its relationships with Chinese cropland changes and climate. Greenness trends were first identified from the normalized difference vegetation index and leaf area index from 1982–2015 using three trend detection algorithms.

The paper evaluates landscape development, land-use changes, and transport infrastructure variations in the city of Martin and the town of Vrútky, Slovakia, over the past 70 years. It focuses on analyses of the landscape structures characterizing the study area in several time periods (1949, 1970, 1993, 2003); the past conditions are then compared with the relevant current structure (2018). Special attention is paid to the evolution of the landscape elements forming the transport infrastructure.