A variety of tools can be employed in support of environmental policy objectives, but achieving preferred outcomes also requires the cooperation of private landholders and others with vested interests in the land. The Land Stewardship project in the state of Victoria, Australia, is an initiative devoted to exploring the ways in which private landholders could be encouraged towards more sustainable land management.

This project, carried out as a follow-up to M.Sc thesis research,
aimed at addressing issues identified as climate change priorities
was a direct result of the urgent climate change adaptation
priorities identified in Kabale district during the MSc. research.
Upon completion of the MSc. research, a Field Attachment
Programme Award (FAPA)was provided to disseminate the
results of the MSc research. The project used participatory
approaches to disseminate climate change adaptation strategies

The management of soils is an important issue for policy makers in Ethiopia. However, most of the interventions designed to conserve the soil resources have fallen short of the expectations, performing impressively in the short run, but proving unsustainable on a long-term basis. There are no simple explanations for the failure of these interventions to reverse soil degradation, but it has been evident for some time that there is an uneasy connection between 'objective' assessments of the state of the land and the way this information is used in the policy-making processes.

Groundwater vulnerability assessment is an important task in water resources and land management. The most sophisticated among the vulnerability assessment techniques is the GIS-based DRASTIC model. However, despite its popularity, it is marred with excessive subjectivity glitches; little research has been conducted to address the shortcomings associated with this method. This study investigates various issues regarding the application of the GIS-based DRASTIC model through a critical review of relevant literatures.

Slash and burn agriculture is a traditional and predominant land use practice in Madagascar and its relevance in the context of forest preservation is significant. At the end of a cycle of culture, the fields become mostly weed covered and the soil fertility starts to drop. As a consequence, these fields are abandoned (they are called “monka”) and the farmers, in the best case, re-use old surfaces where the vegetation has recovered to some extent. Nevertheless, some of the farmers continue to extend part of their cultures into the natural forest.

Plant-derived carbon compounds enter soils in a number of forms; two of the most abundant being leaf litter and rhizodeposition. Our knowledge concerning the predominant controls on the cycling of leaf litter far outweighs that for rhizodeposition even though the constituents of rhizodeposits includes a cocktail of low molecular weight organic compounds which represent a rapidly cycling source of carbon, readily available to soil microbes.

Since the 1950s, intensification and scale enlargement of agriculture have changed agricultural landscapes across Europe. The intensification and scale enlargement of farming was initially driven by the large-scale application of synthetic fertilizers, mechanization and subsidies of the European Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). Then, after the 1990s, a further intensification and scale enlargement, and land abandonment in less favored areas was caused by globalization of commodity markets and CAP reforms.

Public land management agencies, such as the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), are charged with managing rangelands throughout the western United States for multiple uses, such as livestock grazing and conservation of sensitive species and their habitats. Monitoring of condition and trends of these rangelands, particularly with respect to effects of livestock grazing, provides critical information for effective management of these multiuse landscapes.

Following western settlement, fire was suppressed directly and indirectly by Euro-American land management practices. Currently, reintroduction of fire into sagebrush steppe systems may be desirable, but long-term fire effects are not well-known. In this 15-year study we used a generalized linear mixed modeling approach to analyze the response of native and invasive grass species to fire in an Artemisia tridentata subsp. wyomingensis (Wyoming big sagebrush) community in north-central Oregon, United States.