One of the major goals of the Sustainable Agriculture Farming initiatives at UC Davis is to provide information about the feasibility of adopting conservation tillage and cover cropping at the farm level. The project includes two tillage schemes: standard tillage (ST) and conservation tillage (CT), and three farming methods: conventional, organic, and winter legume cover crop. All three product...

Climate change has resulted in increased vulnerability of smallholder farmers in marginal areas of Zimbabwe where there is limited capacity to adapt to changing climate. One approach that has been used to adapt to changing climate is in-field water harvesting for improved crop yields in the semi- arid regions of Zimbabwe. This review analyses the history of soil and water conservation in Zimbab...

Despite their ambiguous historical record, conservation/development interventions the world over have remained a popular environmental governance tool. One of the latest global ‘trends’ are interventions to establish so-called ‘Transfrontier Conservation Areas’ (TFCAs): large contiguous spaces that are principally aimed at conserving biological diversity across national boundaries. In line with...

Many conservation biologists believe the best ethical basis for conserving natural entities is their claimed intrinsic value, not their instrumental value for humans. But there is significant confusion about what intrinsic value is and how it could govern conservation decision making. After examining what intrinsic value is supposed to be, we argue that it cannot guide the decision making conse...

Conservation paleobiology is a rapidly developing, socially relevant field that uses information from geohistorical records to address current problems in the conservation and restoration of biodiversity and ecosystem services (Dietl et al., 2015). Over the past decade, the field has achieved critical mass—filling an empty niche in the conservation landscape—with the beginnings of a core litera...

Forests and rangelands are the most important natural ecosystems which provide many economic benefits to the society due to their biodiversity and ecological functionalities. Dashtenaz wildlife refuge, Sari, is a sylvan region, covering 55 ha of rangeland with abundant diversity, is refuge of an endangered species of deer called Dama mesopotamica. In this study, Contingent Valuation Method (CVM...