Many conservation land managers working with invasive plants rely largely on their own experience and advice from fellow managers for controlling weeds, and rarely take into consideration the scientific literature, a concrete example of a knowing–doing gap. We argue that invasion scientists should directly teach managers best practices for control. In 2013, we created a training program on five invasive plant species, specifically tailored to Québec (Canada) environmental managers. The course material was science-based, and included details on methods and costs.

For 25 years the Australian Landcare program has encouraged rural land managers to work cooperatively to resolve natural resource management issues across the nation. Landcare has spread and the model is used internationally. Despite its successes, Landcare has come under criticism for not sufficiently directing land management practices towards environmental sustainability. This criticism sees it as having maintained the “status quo”.

The term, Working Knowledge, is introduced to describe the content of a local cross-cultural knowledge recovery and integration project focussed on the indigenous-owned Oriners pastoral lease near Kowanyama on the Cape York Peninsula, Queensland. Social and biophysical scientific researchers collaborated with indigenous people, non-indigenous pastoralists, and an indigenous natural resource management (NRM) agency to record key ecological, hydrological and geomorphological features of this intermittently occupied and environmentally valuable ‘flooded forest’ country.

Meyer’s Parrot Poicephalus meyeri has the widest distributional range of any African parrot. There are six subspecies distributed throughout the African subtropics, all of which manage to breed successfully during the winter dry season when few other cavity-nesting birds are actively nesting. In 2004, we recorded Meyer’s Parrots feeding on four cryptic arthropod larvae incubating inside fruits and pods in their seasonal diet. All of these were previously unknown in the diet of African parrots.

Agricultural practices and land use significantly influence soil carbon storage. The processes that are affected by land use and management are generally understood, but uncertainties in projections are high. In this paper, we investigate the long-term effects of chronosequential land use change from grassland to cropland and vice versa on soil carbon stock dynamics in four fields on a Swedish farm. Between 1850 and 1920, three of the fields were converted from grassland into cropland, and one was converted back to grassland in 1971.

The intensification of agricultural practices contributes to the decline of many taxa such as insects and wild plants. Weeds are serious competitors for crop production and are thus controlled. Nonetheless, weeds enhance floral diversity in agricultural landscapes. Weeds provide food for insects in exchange for pollination. The stability of mutualistic interactions in pollination networks depends on conservation of insect pollinator and weed communities. Some agricultural practices can destabilize interactions and thus modify the stability of pollination networks.

The error in slope gradient estimates provided by digital elevation models propagates to spatial modelling of erosion and other environmental attributes, potentially impacting land management priorities. This study compared the slope estimates of Shuttle Radar Topographic Mission (SRTM) DEMs with those generated by interpolation of topographic contours, at two grid cell resolutions. The magnitude and spatial patterns of error in DEM slope, and derived erosion estimates using the Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation (RUSLE), were evaluated at three sites in eastern Australia.

Fertilizers that are spread on agricultural fields can leach into aquifers and contaminate groundwater sources for drinking water particularly with nitrate. Modeling this phenomenon can help in evaluating the impact of current or future agricultural practices on nitrate content within an aquifer. The three-dimensional Water flow and Nitrate transport Global Model (WNGM), that was previously developed and applied to a well-capture zone, is actually used to simulate future land management scenarios over the same zone.

The northwest of Scotland is a stronghold for two of the UK's rarest bumblebee species, Bombus distinguendus and Bombus muscorum. The predominant form of agricultural land management in this region is crofting, a system specific to Scotland in which small agricultural units (crofts) operate rotational cropping and grazing regimes. Crofting is considered to be beneficial to a wide range of flora and fauna. However, currently there is a lack of quantitative evidence to support this view with regard to bumblebee populations.

Volcanic soils in their natural state often require some amelioration to accommodate their use for agriculture. Tepetates are defined as hardened volcanic tuffs derived from geo-pedological processes; they have been partially altered by weathering. Tepetates occupy extensive areas of Mexico's Central Highlands and some of them have been adapted for agricultural use after the mechanical breaking up of this hard material. In their native condition tepetates contain only traces of C, N and available P.

Changes in hydrological cycle have been experienced as the result of the global climate change which may have caused undetermined increase or decrease in the location and reserve of water resources which are already undetermined in various parts of the world.