Land retirement is ceasing irrigation with the goal of reducing load, in general, of dissolved constituents and, in particular, of trace elements, present in subsurface drainage generated from irrigated lands. Retirement is achieved through a process of goal setting, strategy development and determining effects, developing land selection criteria, implementation, and monitoring. In this study, effects of land retirement are evaluated using hydrologic,soil and economic models as well as results from a field demonstration study.

The influence of social others in private landowner decision-making has received limited attention despite growing support for peer-to-peer learning and landowner cooperative behavior. We applied social network analysis (SNA), a relatively novel methodology in the context of private forestry, to evaluate the influence of landowners' social networks on their forestry management decisions and as related to current policy arrangements in Wisconsin, USA.

Utilization of biomass from logging residues for renewable energy production depends on forest harvesting businesses. As biomass markets emerge, businesses will need to adapt to meet operational requirements. Logging businesses that supplied biomass for energy production in Virginia were surveyed regarding operations and attitudes. Results show that businesses across a broad range of total production levels (150 to 6250 tons/wk) harvested biomass and roundwood using integrated harvesting operations with whole tree chippers. Businesses had produced biomass an average of 6.8 years.

African wild dogs (Lycaon pictus) are often the least popular large carnivore among game ranchers because of their perceived impact on prey populations. Landowner perceptions include that wild dogs greatly deplete prey during their three-month denning period, take prey that could otherwise be sold for hunting and cause prey to move away from the vicinity of their den sites. Landowners’ tolerance towards African wild dogs could thus be improved with a more rigorous understanding of the actual impact of wild dogs on prey populations during the denning period.

Successful land claims on protected areas by previously disenfranchised communities often result in co-management agreements between claimant communities and state conservation agencies. South Africa, in particular, has pursued co-management as the desired outcome of land claims on its protected areas. We review four cases of co-management on protected areas in South Africa, and reflect on the appropriateness of the pursuit of co-management as the preferred outcome of land claims.

We used aerial photographs, satellite images, and field surveys to monitor forest cover in the core zones of the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve in Mexico from 2001 to 2012. We used our data to assess the effectiveness of conservation actions that involved local, state, and federal authorities and community members (e.g., local landowners and private and civil organizations) in one of the world's most iconic protected areas. From 2001 through 2012, 1254 ha were deforested (i.e., cleared areas had

Much information on restoration and management exists for wet tropical forests of Central America but comparatively little work has been done in the dry forests of this region. Such information is critical for reforestation efforts that are now occurring throughout Central America. This paper describes processes of degradation due to land use and provides a conceptual framework for the restoration of dry tropical forest. Most of this forest type was initially harvested for timber and then cleared for cattle in the last century (1930–1970).

Policymakers seek ways to encourage fuel reduction among private forest landowners to augment similar efforts on federal and state lands. Motivating landowners to contribute to landscape-level wildfire protection requires an understanding of factors that underlie landowner behaviour regarding wildfire. We developed a conceptual framework describing landowners’ propensity to conduct fuel reduction as a function of objective and subjective factors relating to wildfire risk.

The province of New Brunswick (NB), Canada and the state of Maine (ME), USA are heavily forested jurisdictions whose forests provide many social, ecological, and economic functions. Roughly a third of NB and ME’s forested land is owned by private, non-industrial owners [sometimes called family forests or woodlot owners]. The choices of thousands of individual parcel owners of forest land determine the fate of these ecosystems. Ownership of forest land implies a social contract between the landowners and the rest of society.