Land abandonment is common in the Mediterranean Basin, a global biodiversity hotspot, but little is known about its impacts on biodiversity. To upscale existing case-study insights to the Pan-Mediterranean level, we conducted a meta-analysis of the effects of land abandonment on plant and animal species richness and abundance in agroforestry, arable land, pastures, and permanent crops of the Me...

aeolian process and subsequently soil erosion are key factors in dryland environments. such phenomena are related not only to geoecological factors (lithology, topography, and climatology) but also to land-use and plant cover changes. formation of new sand dunes in damghan explains the development of human activities over the past. the aim of this study is to explain the land use changes and th...

In a semiarid region of central Iran, effects of parent materials, physiography and landscape position, land use, andmanagement practices on association of organic carbon with secondary (aggregates) particles and aggregate stability canhave important consequences in terms of carbon sequestration and budgeting, deciding on the proper land use strategy andsuitable soil conservation practices. It ...

The market value of residential lot size and market response to increasing housing prices have become increasingly important as regional policy makers have sought to limit the size of urban areas. Using sales data on recently constructed homes in the Portland Metro area for the years 1996-97, we have examined the effect of lot size on the sales price of detached and attached single family homes...

This paper studies how land reform and population growth affect land inequality, incorporating indirect effects owing to their influence on household divisions and land market transactions. An intra-household model of joint production explains how divisions and land transactions emerge to avoid inefficient free-riding, and how they are affected by land reform and growth in household size. These...

Among local faunas, the maximum body size and taxonomic affiliation of the top terrestrial vertebrate vary greatly. Does this variation reflect how food requirements differ between trophic levels (herbivores vs. carnivores) and with taxonomic affiliation (mammals and birds vs. reptiles)? We gathered data on the body size and food requirements of the top terrestrial herbivores and carnivores, ov...

This paper uses an economic agent-based model of land use in a hypothetical urban fringe community to examine the effects of large-lot zoning on land conversion, land prices, and the spatial configuration and density of new development. The model incorporates the actions of heterogeneous housing consumers, developers, and farmer/landowners who make economic decisions in land and housing markets...

We investigated the influence of riparian and whole watershed land use as a function of stream size on surface water chemistry and assessed regional variation in these relationships. Sixty-eight watersheds in four level III U.S. EPA ecoregions in eastern Kansas were selected as study sites. Riparian land cover and watershed land use were quantified for the entire watershed, and by Strahler orde...

Current and past land use practices are critical in determining the distribution and size of global terrestrial carbon (C) sources and sinks. Although fossil fuel emissions dominate the anthropogenic perturbation of the global C cycle, land use still drives the largest portion of anthropogenic emissions in a number of tropical regions of Asia. The size of the emission flux owing to land use cha...

Agricultural economists have long debated the efficiency and viability of smallholder agriculture. While much research has shown that small farmers in developing regions are often more efficient than larger farmers, some have challenged the validity of that evidence, citing potential problems that come with farmers' selfreporting of land size. If smaller farmers systematically under-report the ...