This study examines whether there is a biodiversity benefit (“dividend”) associated with the existence and management of conservation reserves in the extensive and largely natural landscape of northern Australia. Species richness and abundance of vertebrate fauna and the intensity of a range...

Multipurpose mosaic (“ecoagriculture”) landscapes can serve the purpose of land sharing to combine objectives of agricultural production and biodiversity conservation. Rewarding the people who shape and maintain those landscapes could act as a mechanism to generate added-value representing...

A landscape perspective is generally recognized as essential for conservation biology. The main underlying reason is that species respond to features of the landscape at various spatial scales, for example habitat area, connectivity, and matrix habitats. However, there is also an...

Targeted illegal harvesting of hardwood in the woodland of Namibia’s Kavango region threatens forest stands. In a transforming setting, where wood is increasingly traded through value chains on a globalized market, local harvesters have complex incentives but also a crucially important...

Financial capitalism has driven profound changes in urban land use patterns in Majorca, at the Balearic Islands (Spain). This archipelago is a major tourist destination located in the Mediterranean basin, with 4,492 km² of surface area, 1,113,114 inhabitants and 12,316,399 tourists (2011), of...

Northern Botswana is influenced by various socio-ecological drivers of landscape change. The African elephant (<i>Loxodonta africana</i>) is one of the leading sources of landscape shifts in this region. Developing the ability to assess elephant impacts on savanna vegetation is important to promote...

The Siwalik Hills is one of the most fragile and vulnerable ecosystems in the Nepalese Himalaya where soil erosion and land degradation issues are fundamental. There is very limited knowledge on soil erosion processes and rates in this region in comparison to other regions of the Himalaya. The...

We build upon much of the accumulated knowledge of the widely used SLEUTH urban land change model and offer advances. First, we use SLEUTH’s exclusion/attraction layer to identify and test different urban land cover change drivers; second, we leverage SLEUTH’s self-modification capability to...

Urban-rural distinctions are particularly challenging in the context of fast growing cities in the developing world. Through an example of the Indian city of Bangalore, we demonstrate the case for development of more continuous approaches of urban representation that are needed in many parts of...

Many countries in West Asia, defined in this study as the Arabic-speaking countries of the Arabian Peninsula plus Turkey and Iran, have enacted environmental conservation laws but regional underlying drivers of environment change, such as rising incomes and fast-growing populations, continue to...