The present study focuses on the transformations of a typical Mediterranean agroforestry landscape of southern Italy (high Agri Valley – Basilicata region) that occurred over 24 years. In this period, the valuable agricultural and natural areas that compose such a landscape were subjected to intensive industry-related activities linked to the exploitation of the largest European onshore oil reservoir. Landsat imagery acquired in 1985 and 2009 were used to detect changes in forest areas and major land use trajectories.

As cities continue to expand and ever more people migrate to urban areas, current unsustainable patterns of urbanisation and ineffective policies are no longer acceptable. The typical approaches that maintain the separation between rural and urban neglect all of the ways that connect both worlds. And nowhere else are rural and urban areas more linked than within the food system.

Original Source

Nature threads the very fabric of human lives in remote forest areas of developing countries. Unfortunately, we do not fully understand how ecosystem services (such as human health benefits) could be secured by conserving natural capital. Thus, we analyze a rich dataset on disease, climate, demography, land uses, and conservation policies in the Brazilian Amazon. Unsurprisingly, we find that the health dividends vary across conservation policies and are small relative to the overall burden of these diseases.

Modern society uses massive amounts of energy. Usage rises as population and affluence increase,and energy production and use often have an impact on biodiversity or natural areas. To avoid a business-as-usual dependence on coal, oil, and gas over the coming decades, society must map out a future energy mix that incorporates alternative sources. This exercise can lead to radically different opinions on what a sustainable energy portfolio might entail, so an objective assessment of the relative costs and benefits of different energy sources is required.

This paper looks at the crucial issue of dry-season groundwater-availability in the state of Maharashtra, India. We look at the two key hydro-climatological measurements which are used to implement groundwater policy in the state, viz., water levels in 5000+ observation wells across the state and aggregate rainfall data. We see that there is substantial variation in groundwater levels within and across the years in most wells. We argue that for a large number of these observation well locations, aggregate

Numerous climate change effects on biodiversity have been anticipated and documented, including extinctions, range shifts, phenological shifts, and breakdown of interactions in ecological communities, yet the relative balance of different climate drivers and their relationships to other agents of global change (for example, land use and landuse change) remains relatively poorly understood.