Growing crops for bio-fuels is often criticized because of its direct competition for land for food production. The recent price increases on world food markets are partly a result of this competition. For instance, cereals prices have increased by more than 60% percent since 2005 and in 2006 sugar prices peaked on a level twice as high as the level of previous years. There are concerns whether...

Protected areas throughout the world are key for conserving biodiversity, and land use is key for providing food, fiber, and other ecosystem services essential for human sustenance. As land use change isolates protected areas from their surrounding landscapes, the challenge is to identify management opportunities that maintain ecological function while minimizing restrictions on human land use....

The earth's surface, due to its natural conditions and its structure is always changing and reshaping. One of the created deformations is the land subsidence. This is the most dangerous events which can be seen in most urban areas especially in the agricultural plains today. This study aims at zoning land subsidence and recognition of geometrical factors in southwest of Tehran. To estimate and ...

Land Use patterns reflect the nature of economic activity as well as natural resources of a country. The evaluation and assessment of land uses leads to diagnose the patterns of resources of a country which can further be developed in order to gain and maintain self sufficiency in the resources needed for human and economic development. The monitoring of land use change is highly difficult and ...

If all resources are harnessed, and adequate measures taken to minimize soil degradation, sufficient food to feed the population in 2020 can be produced, and probably sufficient for a few billion more. These were the key conclusions from a Discussion Meeting held at the Royal Society in London in December 1996. The meeting entitled ‘Land resources: on the edge of the Malthusian precipice?’ atte...

The persistence of transhumance systems requires continued access to key pastoral resources that together allow the seasonal movement of livestock herds over long distances. In dryland West Africa, these pastoral resources are vulnerable to competing land uses particularly agriculture. The mapping of pastoral resources is needed as a necessary but insufficient first step in local to national ef...

How do people value environmental resources? To estimate public valuation of natural resources, researchers often conduct surveys that ask people how much they would be willing to pay to preserve or restore threatened natural resources. However, these survey responses often elicit complex affective responses, including negative reactions toward proposed destructive land uses of those resources....

In rural areas of developing countries, farming systems tend to be household-based. These household production systems are also highly integrated with land-based natural resources such as forests, range areas and pasture lands. Households depend on these resources for fuels, animal food, building materials, fruits and medicines, and often these resources have ownership and control structures th...

Geospatial technologies like Remote Sensing and Geographical Information Systems (GIS) have been widely used in land resources survey and environmental monitoring. Assessment and monitoring of natural resources like land, soil, water and vegetation and socio-economic conditions and integrating them in a spatial information platform like GIS will facilitate the effective management of land resou...

To secure adequate food supply is the major challenge for humanity in the 21st century. Growing world population andits urbanization put pressure on this basic need, which is further threatened by the constant loss of fertile land. Theassessment of sustainability of food supply under increasing pressure on land resources has been selected as one of themost important priority topics ...