Forest Tenure

Hainan, the largest tropical island in China, belongs to the Indo-Burma biodiversity hotspot. The Changhua watershed is a center of endemism for plants and birds and the cradle of Hainan’s main rivers. However, this area has experienced recent and ongoing deforestation and habitat fragmentation.

Geospatial information of small mangrove islands in the Philippines is usually lacking. Such information is vital to monitor mangrove cover change and craft plans for their sustainable management. This study was conducted to provide some land use information about Banacon Island in Bohol province.

Increasing land utilization through diverse forms of human activities, such as agriculture, forestry, urban growth, and industrial development, has led to negative impacts on the water quality of rivers.

Understanding agricultural ecosystems and their complex interactions with the environment is important for improving agricultural sustainability and environmental protection. Developing the necessary understanding requires approaches that integrate multi-source geospatial data and interdisciplinary relationships at different spatial scales.

During the last few decades, land use changes have largely affected the global warming process through emissions of CO₂. However, C sequestration in terrestrial ecosystems could contribute to the decrease of atmospheric CO₂rates. Although Mediterranean areas show a high potential for C sequestration, only a few studies have been carried out in these systems.

CONTEXT: Understanding the consequences of changes in land use and land cover is among the greatest challenges in sustainability science, yet key themes related to land cover change are often left out of sustainability assessment tools.

By altering fluxes of heat, momentum, and moisture exchanges between the land surface and atmosphere, forestry and other land‐use activities affect climate.

Although local variation in territorial predator density is often correlated with habitat quality, the causal mechanism underlying this frequently observed association is poorly understood and could stem from facultative adjustment in either group size or territory size.

AIM: To evaluate trend analysis of earth observation (EO) dense time series as a new way of describing and mapping changes in ecosystem functioning at regional to global scales. Spatio‐temporal patterns of change covering 1982–2011 are discussed in the context of changes in land use and land cover (LULCC). LOCATION: Global.

Historic land‐cover/use change is important for studies on climate change, soil carbon, and biodiversity assessments. Available reconstructions focus on the net area difference between two time steps (net changes) instead of accounting for all area gains and losses (gross changes).

Protected area downgrading, downsizing and degazettement (PADDD) is a global phenomenon that has not received formal attention in Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) policies designed to reduce forest carbon emissions and conserve biodiversity. Here, we examine how PADDD affects deforestation and forest carbon emissions.

During the past century, humans converted extensive areas of tropical forest into cultivated lands. Three distinct processes, each predominant during a different historical period, have driven the destruction of the forests.