The growing multifunctionality in agriculture, combined with privatisation of previously public agricultural extension services, has resulted in a pluralistic land management advisory system. Despite benefits in terms of increased client orientation and greater advisor diversity, it is argued that these changes have resulted in the fragmentation of the land management advisory system and a reduction of interaction within the advisory system and between the advisory system and science.

Land use and management practices may influence plant C inputs and soil CO2 emission. We evaluated the effect of a combination of irrigation, tillage, cropping system, and N fertilization on plant biomass C, soil temperature and water content at the 0- to 15-cm depth, and CO2 emission in a sandy loam soil from April to October, 2006 to 2008, in western North Dakota.

Although recent climatic warming has markedly increased fire activity in many biomes, this trend is spatially heterogeneous. Understanding the patterns and controls of this heterogeneity is important for anticipating future fire regime shifts at regional scales and for developing land management policies. To assess climatic and land cover controls on boreal forest fire regimes, we conducted macroscopic‐charcoal analysis of sediment cores and GIS analysis of landscape variation in south‐central Alaska, USA.

Much of the coastal sage scrub habitat in Southern California that existed prior to European settlement has been developed for human uses. Over the past two to three decades, public agencies and land conservation organizations have worked to acquire some of the remaining lands for preservation. Many of these lands are degraded by past intensive livestock grazing, farming, and frequent fires, and the native flora has been replaced by weedy, exotic annual grasses and forbs, mostly of Mediterranean origin.

An analysis of adaptive landscape amelioration of lands with a geomorphologic classification of characteristic types of agrolandscapes is given. Control of drought and soil-destroying processes is based on a systems approach, including organizational-economic and agro-, phyto-, forest, and hydraulic amelioration measures. The system of ameliorative procedures takes into account the ecological ameliorative requirements and limitations with the developed criteria and standardized evaluation parameters of soils and waters when realizing the concept of adaptive landscape management.

Rainfall variability is a challenge to sustainable and profitable cattle production in northern Australia. Strategies recommended to manage for rainfall variability, like light or variable stocking, are not widely adopted. This is due partly to the perception that sustainability and profitability are incompatible. A large, long-term grazing trial was initiated in 1997 in north Queensland, Australia, to test the effect of different grazing strategies on cattle production.

The National Park Service (NPS) and other land management agencies have interest in managing bison herds under “natural” conditions; yet demographic features of natural populations are not well described. One solution to this issue involves the analysis of historical bison (Bison spp.) jump data. We conducted a literature search of archeological data associated with bison jump sites in North America with the goal of analyzing the data and summarizing historical bison demographics. We identified six locations with adequate information to conduct vertical life-table analyses.

We conducted a survey of 3321 Forest Service employees involved in compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) followed by five focus groups to investigate agency views of the purpose of agency NEPA processes and their appropriate measures of success. Results suggest the lack of a unified critical task for Forest Service NEPA processes and that employees' functions relevant to NEPA influence their views of its meaning.

Summary The recognition that biodiversity conservation requires more than a system of reserves has led to the need to consider the outcomes of land management actions, such as timber harvesting, in the matrix land outside reserves. The design of harvesting systems can be guided by the natural disturbance regime, which in Tasmania's lowland wet eucalypt forests is infrequent, intense wildfire.