Land degradation continues to be an enormous challenge human societies, reducing food security, emitting greenhouse gases and aerosols, driving the loss of biodiversity, polluting water, undermining a wide range ecosystem services beyond supply water climate regulation. Climate change will exacerbate several processes. Investment in diverse restoration efforts, including sustainable agricultura...

In late August 2005, 80 researchers from more than 15 countries convened for a 4-day conference entitled “The Tenth Anniversary of 51 Peg b: Status and Prospects for Hot Jupiter Studies”. The meeting was held at l’Observatoire de Haute-Provence, the location of the 1.93-m telescope and ELODIE spectrograph used to discover the planetary companion to 51 Peg roughly 10 years ago. I summarize sever...

A decision support system with over one billion rows of data has been developed at Lands’ End using the IBM DATABASE 2” (DB2@) relational database management system. This corporate database is a subset of an Information Warehouse” framework and functions as both a decision support system server and an application enabler. The corporate database uses operational data gathered from order processi...

Degraded lands have often been suggested as a solution to issues of land scarcity and as an ideal way to meet mounting global demands for agricultural goods, but their locations and conditions are not well known. Four approaches have been used to assess degraded lands at the global scale: expert opinion, satellite observation, biophysical models, and taking inventory of abandoned agricultural l...

1. Significance of Land Reclamation 2. Evaluation of Possible Expansion of Arable Lands 3. Peculiarities and Principles of Efficiency Evaluation 4. History of the Question 5. Expenses for Construction of Reclamation Systems and Land Development 6. Running Costs. Income 7. Methods of Economic Efficiency Evaluation 7.1 Traditional Methods 7.2 Discounting methods. 7.3 Uncertainty and Risk Calculat...