Coastal marine ecosystems can be managed by actions undertaken both on the land and in the ocean. Quantifying and comparing the costs and benefits of actions in both realms is therefore necessary for efficient management. Here, we quantify the link between terrestrial sediment runoff and a downstream coastal marine ecosystem and contrast the cost-effectiveness of marine- and land-based conserva...

Biosphere Reserves attempt to align existing biodiversity conservation with sustainable resource use, specifically for improving socio-economic circumstances of resident communities. Typically, the Biosphere Reserve model is applied to an established landscape mosaic of existing land uses; these are often socio-ecological systems where strict environmental protection and community livelihoods a...

Freshwater ecosystems are the most threatened ecosystems worldwide. Argentinian-protected areas have been established mainly to protect vertebrates and plants in terrestrial ecosystems. In order to create a comprehensive biodiverse conservation plan, it is crucial to integrate both aquatic and terrestrial systems and to include macroinvertebrates. Here, we address this topic by proposing priori...

Concerns over the effects of private land use on the supply of environmental amenities have led to an increasing global reliance on conservation contracting initiatives (Ferraro and Kiss 2002). The term “conservation contracting” describes the contractual transfer of payments from one party (e.g., government) to another (e.g., landowner) in exchange for land use practices that contribute to the...

A common approach to the conservation of farmland biodiversity and the promotion of multifunctional landscapes, particularly in landscapes containing only small remnants of non-crop habitats, has been to maintain landscape heterogeneity and reduce land-use intensity. In contrast, it has recently been shown that devoting specific areas of non-crop habitats to conservation, segregated from high-y...

In this study, we analyze the effect of property taxes on changes between agricultural, forestry, Conservation Reserve Program, and developed land uses in Louisiana. We estimate a random parameters logit model of land-use conversion from the National Resources Inventory plot data. Our results indicate that land-use changes are inelastic with respect to property taxes. Simulation shows that curr...

Runoff assessment and estimation is crucial for watershed management as it provides information that is needed to expedite the course of watershed planning and development. The most commonly used model due to its simplicity and versatility in runoff estimation is the soil conservation service curve number developed by the United States Department of Agriculture. The study estimates the surface ...

s. Bloodworth, H., and T. Sobecki. 2002. Land use biodiversity index as a soil quality indicator. In Making conservation tillage conventional: Building a future on 25 years of research; Proceedings of 25 Annual Southern Conservation Tillage Conference for Sustainable Agriculture, Auburn, AL, USA, 24-26 June, 2002, Pp.219-221. E. van Santen, editor. Auburn, AL: Alabama Agricultural Experiment St...

report, was the deep divergence of the rosada lineage at the base of the Conolophus clade. “The species alters the current thinking about the timing of diversification of land iguanas, which was previously supposed to have occurred in the Pleistocene era,” the researchers write. “In addition to the taxonomic implications, this form, which we recognise as a good species, is very important becaus...

Protected areas (PAs) and payments for ecosystem services (PES) are key global land conservation policies, yet there are few empirical comparisons of their impacts. We study how PAs and PES affected forest conservation, poverty reduction and population change at the locality level in Mexico in the past decade. We find that both generated an approximately 20% reduction in expected forest cover l...