Agricultural activities have dramatically altered our planet's land surface. To understand the extent and spatial distribution of these changes, we have developed a new global data set of croplands and pastures circa 2000 by combining agricultural inventory data and satellite-derived land cover data. The agricultural inventory data, with much greater spatial detail than previously available, is used to train a land cover classification data set obtained by merging two different satellite-derived products (Boston University's MODIS-derived land cover product and the GLC2000 data set).

Politics is about access and power, and access to freshwater resources in rural China is complicated and understudied. China's massive size and diverse climate make it hard to generalize about freshwater resources in rural areas of the country. On balance, China is not water-scarce, yet geographic and temporal variations in water availability are dramatic, with China's driest areas receiving far less precipitation than the wettest areas. Rural areas are the locus of competition among freshwater users including agriculture, power companies, industry, households and ecosystems.

The beginning of the restitutional land reallocation reform in 1991 brought a rapid change in agricultural land utilisation and user groups resulting in the decrease of state land users’ categories and the growth of private agricultural land areas used by farmers and other natural and legal entities. The aim of the article is to analyse the stability of farmers farms and their agricultural areas in Lithuania during the period between 2009 and 2014.

Land market has started to develop extremely in the Czech Republic since 2002. The annual sale and purchase of estates represented 0.2% of the total land resources between 1993-2001. The sale and the purchase represented 2.9% of total land resources after 2002 and especially after the EU accession of the Czech Republic. These values of sale are the highest from the EU countries. On the other side, land prices decreased slightly in comparison with the prices before the EU accession. Prices of agricultural land are significantly lower than in the EU-15.

The aim of this article has been to identify and evaluate main factors which influence the agricultural land market in Poland. Statistical data from two institutions, namely the Agricultural Property Agency (APA) and the Central Statistical Office (CSO) as well as the author’s research have been used in the paper. The time horizon of the analysis covers the years 1992-2012. The lower limit was determined by the start of operation of the Agency of Agricultural Property of the State Treasury and the launching of a process of transformation in agriculture state.

The current support policy is increasing gaps in land management intensity among different regions of the country. The support policy for agricultural and rural development does not deal with solutions for land abandonment or environmental objectives, because the abandonment is becoming a hidden, environmental policy and rural development process, which is more expensive for society. Some alternative approaches and principles for designing a new agricultural land policy for Latvia could decrease the policy costs and make land management more targeted and acceptable for society.

The basic agricultural structure in Poland consists of small and medium family-owned farmsteads. Public funds grant their support primarily to farmers capable of competing efficiently within the EU market. In most cases, that means farmsteads covering a larger area. It is the real property market that regulates the agrarian structure. Therefore, the goal of this paper is to present the situation on the farmland market in respect to Poland's membership in the European Union.

In the research was submitted agricultural land market in Poland, in the political system transformation conditions, with consideration it function, stimulating the structural change of farming including territorial structure. There were characterized changes occurring in polish country with indication of the following processes: growing strength of agricultural land market, increasing role of agricultural lands' lease and also progressive process of land concentration and changing ownership relations.

The algorithm of the agroecological assessment of land offered. It is based on the integration of GIS and automatedprocedures morphometric analysis of digital elevation models with the results of remote sensing. The results of the design oflandscape specific agriculture of basins in view of agroecological assessment of agricultural land

The structure of ownership of agricultural land, despite of the developing market with agricultural land in recent years, has not changed considerably. Most of agricultural land in Slovakia is, even after 6 years from the entry of Slovakia into the EU, leased. According to the Structural census of farms (2001), the lease of agricultural land represents 96%, in 2010 it was 91% (EUROSTAT, 2010).

Bulgaria faced and still is facing many challenges in the accession process to the EU. Free movement of capital, and especially the development of the land market, is one of them. Although a progress has been made, land prices are still below the EU average prices. There are different reasons for this as, for example, very fragmented land after the restitution process, chaotic transactions, lack of bank credits for agricultural purposes, unrealistic expectations after the accession to the EU and others.

As a result of the Land Reform, property forming and land market, farm areas were often built up from a number of land plots (up to 20), sometimes with unfavourable order. With the rural development and stabilization of farm production, the role and tasks of rational territory organization are expected to increase significantly in the area. It can be forecasted that, as a result of land rent and further purchase and sell, and other transactions, many new farmland properties are expected to appear that will not correspond to the requirements of rational territorial organization.