Recent economic analyses emphasize that designated open-space increases the rents on neighboring residential land, and likewise, the probability of undeveloped land converting to residential uses. This paper addresses a different question: What is the effect of local open space conservation on the rate of growth in the density of existing residential land? The analysis is relevant for exurban d...

Since the implementation of market oriented economic reform in 1978, China has been on the track of rapid urbanization. The unprecedented urbanization in China has resulted in substantial cultivated land loss and rapid expansion of urban areas. The cultivated land loss due to urbanization not only threatens food security in China, but has also led to ecological system degradation to which close...

Mammalian carnivores have suffered the biggest range contraction among all biodiversity and are particularly vulnerable to habitat loss and fragmentation. Therefore, we identified priority areas for the conservation of mammalian carnivores, while accounting for species-specific requirements for connectivity and expected agricultural and urban expansion. While prioritizing for carnivores only, w...

Land management and planning is crucial for present and future use of land and the sustainability of land resources. Physical, biological and cultural characteristics of land can be used to define Land Management Units (LMUs) that aid in decision making for managing land and communicating information between different research and application domains. This study aims to describe the classificat...

Today, ecotourism is a major tourist activity around the world. It is based on environment potential through which suitable utilization and conservation of sites under management practices including considering accurate planning, potential, and peoples’ preferences are realized. The present study was conducted to determine people’s recreational preferences using questionnaires to evaluate the e...

Today, ecotourism is a major tourist activity around the world. It is based on environment potential through which suitable utilization and conservation of sites under management practices including considering accurate planning, potential, and peoples’ preferences are realized. The present study was conducted to determine people’s recreational preferences using questionnaires to evaluate the e...

Land-use intensification is a central element in proposed strategies to address global food security. One rationale for accepting the negative consequences of land-use intensification for farmland biodiversity is that it could 'spare' further expansion of agriculture into remaining natural habitats. However, in many regions of the world the only natural habitats that can be spared are fragments...

Even under the most optimistic scenarios, during the next century human-caused climate change will threaten many wild populations and species. The most useful conservation response is to enlarge and link protected areas to support range shifts by plants and animals. To prioritize land for reserves and linkages, some scientists attempt to chain together four highly uncertain models (emission sce...

We measured the net progress of land reform in achieving a national policy goal for biodiversity conservation in the context of ongoing clearing of native vegetation and additions of land to a highly nonrepresentative (residual) reserve network, interior South Island, New Zealand. We used systematic conservation-planning approaches to develop a spatially explicit index of risk of biodiversity l...