This article examines the scope for strategies to build natural assets in the hands of low-income individuals and communities. Natural assets include sources of raw materials such as forests and fisheries, and the airsheds, lands, and water bodies that provide environmental sinks for the disposal of wastes. These resources become assets when people have rights to access their benefits. Four str...

In the 1990s the federal forests in the Pacific Northwest underwent the largest shift in management focus since their creation, from providing a sustained yield of timber to conserving biodiversity, with an emphasis on endangered species. Triggered by a legal challenge to the federal protection strategy for the Northern Spotted Owl (Strix occidentalis caurina), this shift was facilitated by a s...

Throughout the Amazon region, the age of forests regenerating on previously deforested land is determined, in part, by the periods of active land use prior to abandonment and the frequency of reclearance of regrowth, both of which can be quantified by comparing time-series of Landsat sensor data. Using these time-series of near annual data from 1973-2011 for an area north of Manaus (in Amazonas...

BACKGROUND Globally, the loss of forests now contributes almost 20% of carbon dioxide emissions to the atmosphere. There is an immediate need to reduce the current rates of forest loss, and the associated release of carbon dioxide, but for many areas of the world these rates are largely unknown. The Soviet Union contained a substantial part of the world's forests and the fate of those forests a...

BACKGROUND Majority of the tiger habitat in Indian subcontinent lies within high human density landscapes and is highly sensitive to surrounding pressures. These forests are unable to sustain healthy tiger populations within a tiger-hostile matrix, despite considerable conservation efforts. Ranthambore Tiger Reserve (RTR) in Northwest India is one such isolated forest which is rapidly losing it...

Because industrial agriculture keeps expanding in Southeast Asia at the expense of natural forests and traditional swidden systems, comparing biodiversity and ecosystem services in the traditional forest-swidden agriculture system vs. monocultures is needed to guide decision making on land-use planning. Focusing on tree diversity, soil erosion control, and climate change mitigation through carb...

Hydrologic processes in the pinyon-juniper woodlands of the western region of the United States are variable because of the inherent interactions among the occurring precipitation regimes, geomorphological settings, and edaphic conditions that characterize the ecosystem. A wide range of past and present land-use practices further complicates comprehensive evaluations of these hydrologic process...

this descriptive study is carried out to determine the effectiveness of family planning programmes in iran for years 1991-96. the study revealed the following outlines: contraceptives prevalence rates increased from 42% to 67% during years 1991-96. zaro couples years of protection increased for norplant, injectable contraceptive, iud, vasectomy and tubectomy, but for candom it is decreased in y...

In 2007 Argentina passed the ‘Federal Law 26331 on Minimum Standards for Environmental Protection of Native Forests’, often referred to as Forest Law, aimed at curbing and regulating ex...

International Rice Research Institute, DAPO Box 7777, Metro Manila, 1301, Philippines. Natural Resources Institute, University of Greenwich, Central Avenue, Chatham Maritime, Kent ME4 4TB, UK. Julius Kuehn Institute, Federal Research Centre for Cultivated Plants, Institute for Plant Protection in Horticulture and Forests, Toppheideweg 88, 48161 Muenster, Germany. Department of Zoology, Universi...