Land use is expanding and intensifying in the unprotected lands surrounding many of the world's protected areas. The influence of this land use change on ecological processes is poorly understood. The goal of this paper is to draw on ecological theory to provide a synthetic framework for understanding how land use change around protected areas may alter ecological processes and biodiversity wit...

Recent climate talks in Copenhagen reaffirmed the crucial role of reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD). Creating and strengthening indigenous lands and other protected areas represents an effective, practical, and immediate REDD strategy that addresses both biodiversity and climate crises at once.

OBJECTIVES To describe the food environments experienced by American Indians living on tribal lands in California. METHODS Geocoded statewide food business data were used to define and categorize existing food vendors into healthy, unhealthy, and intermediate composite categories. Distance to and density of each of the composite food vendor categories for tribal lands and nontribal lands were...

There are large disparities in American Indian pediatric motor vehicle (MV) mortality with reports that several factors may contribute. The Fatality Analysis Reporting System for 2000-2014 was used to examine restraint use for occupants aged 0-19 years involved in fatal MV crashes on Indian lands (n = 1667) and non-Indian lands in adjacent states (n = 126,080). SAS GLIMMIX logistic regression w...

Protected areas in tropical countries are managed under different governance regimes, the relative effectiveness of which in avoiding deforestation has been the subject of recent debates. Participants in these debates answer appeals for more strict protection with the argument that sustainable use areas and indigenous lands can balance deforestation pressures by leveraging local support to crea...

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...

BACKGROUND In the British Isles, control of cattle tuberculosis (TB) is hindered by persistent infection of wild badger (Meles meles) populations. A large-scale field trial--the Randomised Badger Culling Trial (RBCT)--previously showed that widespread badger culling produced modest reductions in cattle TB incidence during culling, which were offset by elevated TB risks for cattle on adjoining l...

The fate of private lands is widely seen as key to the fate of biodiversity in much of the world. Organizations that work to protect biodiversity on private lands often hope that conservation actions on one piece of land will leverage the actions of surrounding landowners. Few researchers have, however, examined whether protected lands do in fact encourage land conservation nearby or how protec...

~ Riparian lands are among the most productive ecosystems on earth. They occupy only a small proportion of the landscape but frequently support a greater variety and abundance of animal life than adjacent habitats. ~ Important habitat components include vegetation (often taller, denser, more diverse, and more complex in riparian lands), food, standing water, shelter from predators, sites for ne...

Three soils in the Loess Plateau were selected to explore the potential of applying the decision support system for agrotechnology transfer (DSSAT) crop models in the areas and to test the CERES-Wheat model under DSSAT shell. The predicted maturity dates and grain yields were similar to the actual measured values. The manural loessial soil had the highest productivity. The loessial soil had the...