Cultivated land in China has faced severe challenges in recent years due to rapid urbanization. In 1997, the “cultivated land requisition-compensation balance” policy was implemented by the government to maintain the quantity and quality of cultivated land. Previous studies mainly focused on the quantity changes of cultivated land. In this study, from a quality perspective, we characterized the...

The widespread acquisition of land for large-scale/commercial production of biofuel crops in Ghana has raised concerns from civil society organizations, local communities and other parties, regarding the impact of these investments on local livelihoods. This paper assessed the effect of large-scale acquisition of land for production of Jatropha curcas on farmers’ livelihoods in Ghana. The study...

Flooding is a natural disturbance affecting crop and forage production worldwide due to the detrimental effects that it provokes on most terrestrial plants (Bailey-Serres & Voesenek, 2008; Colmer & Vosenek, 2009). Over the last years, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (http://www.ippc.ch) has informed that man-induced world climate change will increase the frequency of precipitation...

Abstract Land salinization is a major obstacle to the sustainable development of agriculture in arid regions. The demand for food, fiber, fuel and fresh water has increased in the recent decades, particularly in developing nations, due to alarming rise in population. As fresh water resources and productive lands for crop production are limited, new strategies for the sustainable utilization of ...

Land degradation is a global concern. In tropical areas it primarily concerns the conversion of forest into non-forest lands and the associated losses of environmental services. Defining such degradation is not straightforward hampering effective reduction in degradation and use of already degraded lands for more productive purposes. To facilitate the processes of avoided degradation and land r...

Logging has been a much maligned feature of frontier development in the Amazon. Most discussions ignore the fact that logging can be part of a renewable, environmentally benign, and broadly equitable economic activity in these remote places. We estimate there to be some 4.5 +/- 1.35 billion m(3) of commercial timber volume in the Brazilian Amazon today, of which 1.2 billion m(3) is currently pr...

Colonization of abandoned lands by woody vegetation may be a great opportunity for ecosystem recovery given the current and future trend of land abandonment. This may help to reverse the generalized condition of ecosystem degradation of developed countries which is an urgent need. However, ecosystem recovery in abandoned lands can be seriously limited by biotic and abiotic factors. Indentify su...

Among the countries of world, Russia is one richest in agricultural land. However, a quantitative advantage poorly transformed into qualitative one. As result, there has been gradual decrease productive land, decline crop yields, use highly lands as less valuable land categories, and degradation. These negative processes cause severe damage to both sector country's economy whole. One reasons fo...