introduction land use change and its effects on soils is one of the important factors that decrease soil quality. nowadays because of rapid growth of population, vast forest areas are changed into agricultural lands but chemical properties of the soils are commonly affected by changes in land usage.  converting the forest areas into agricultural lands is one of the prevalent issues in iran, esp...

Wide-ranging species cannot persist in reserves alone. Consequently, there is growing interest in the conservation value of agricultural lands that separate or buffer natural areas. The value of agricultural lands for wildlife habitat and connectivity varies as a function of the crop type and landscape context, and quantifying these differences will improve our ability to manage these lands mor...

abstract the proper management of a watershed depends on recognition of effective elements and investigation of their behavior in different conditions. till date, many researches have studied the role of topographical general characteristics on hydrologic behaviors. whereas, the changeability of hydrologic properties under different conditions, especially in iranian watershed has been rarely ta...

Experiences worldwide reveal that degraded lands restoration projects achieve little success or fail. Hence, understanding the underlying causes and accordingly, devising appropriate restoration mechanisms is crucial. In doing so, the ever-increasing aspiration and global commitments in degraded lands restoration could be realized. Here we explain that arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) biotech...

The context in which a forest exists strongly influences its function and sustainability. Unveiling the multi-scale nature of forest fragmentation context is crucial to understand how human activities affect the spatial patterns of forests across a range of scales. However, this issue remains almost unexplored in subtropical ecosystems. In this study, we analyzed temporal changes (1979-2010) in...

Understanding effects of land-use changes driven by the implementation of the "Grain for Green" project and the corresponding changes in soil organic carbon (SOC) storage is important in evaluating the environmental benefits of this ecological restoration project. The goals of this study were to quantify the current soil organic carbon density (SOCD) in different land-use types [cultivated land...

Perennial cellulosic feedstocks may have potential to reduce life-cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by offsetting fossil fuels. However, this potential depends on meeting a number of important criteria involving land cover change, including avoiding displacement of agricultural production, not reducing uncultivated natural lands that provide biodiversity habitat and other valued ecosystem se...