This study investigates land cover change and land ownership turnover in an area that is both the agricultural frontier and a priority conservation zone, the Sierra del Lacandón National Park (SLNP), Petén, Guatemala. The goal is to understand how the agricultural frontier changes over time with regard to population, household characteristics, and land use. This study analyzes panel-data consis...

logistic regression (lr) was used to model urban growth between the years 1987 and 2001 in gorgan city, north east of iran. three groups of variables including economic-social, land use and biophysical variables were used in the modeling practice. using covariance of the independent variables, distance to administrative and sporting centers plus distance to cities were removed. roc (relative op...

Tropical montane ecosystems of the Andes are critically threatened by a rapid land-use change which can potentially affect stream variables, aquatic communities, and ecosystem processes such as leaf litter breakdown. However, these effects have not been sufficiently investigated in the Andean region and at high altitude locations in general. Here, we studied the influence of land use (forest-pa...

Lava caves are an understudied ecosystem in the subterranean world, particularly in regard to nitrogen cycling. The diversity of ammonia oxidation (amoA) and nitrogen fixation (nifH) genes in bacterial mats collected from lava cave walls on the island of Terceira (Azores, Portugal) was investigated using denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE). A total of 55 samples were collected from 1...

CIAT is carrying out an agricultural land resource evaluation of Tropical America to create a base for the effective development and transfer of germplasm oriented technology. The study started in mid-1977 and now covers 850 million ha. It reduces land information to a common base in terms of land systems defined as repetitive patterns of climate, landscape and soils. These are delineated direc...

Understanding the effect of land use on soil carbon, nitrogen, and microbial activity associated with aggregates is critical for thorough comprehension of the C and N dynamics of karst landscapes/ecosystems. We monitored soil organic carbon (SOC), total nitrogen (TN), microbial biomass carbon (MBC), and Cmic: Corg ratio in large macro- (>2 mm), small macro- (0.25-2 mm), and micro- (0.053-0.25 m...

Land-use change accounted for 18% of global greenhouse gas emissions in 2000, making it the second largest source of emissions, after the power sector. These emissions arise from a change in the management of land by humans, such as conversion of forests to pasture land. The following sections will explain the role of the land, that is plants and soils, in the natural carbon cycle, and how chan...

Pasture ecosystems may be particularly vulnerable to land degradation due to the high risk of human disturbance (e.g., overgrazing, burning, etc.), especially when compared with natural ecosystems (non-pasture, non-cultivated) where direct human impacts are minimal. Using maximum annual leaf area index (LAImax) as a proxy for standing biomass and peak annual aboveground productivity, we analyze...