This article explores evidence of deforestation and forest management practices in the Maya lowlands during the pre-Columbian period. In the early twentieth century, scholars first began to examine the role of the environment in the rise and collapse of the great southern Maya polities of the Classic period, proposing that deforestation was an important factor in their political fragmentation and depopulation between the eighth and tenth centuries. In the last twenty-five years, this hypothesis has gained broad acceptance largely due to research at the ancient city of Copan, Honduras.

Sustainable and resilient cropping systems are required in southern Africa to arrest declining soil fertility and offset the future negative effects of climate change. Conservation agriculture (CA) has been proposed as a potential system for improving soil quality and providing stable yields through minimum soil disturbance, surface crop residue retention (mulching) and crop rotations or associations. However, concerns have been raised about the lack of evidence of the benefits of CA for small-scale farmers in southern Africa.

Increasing soil degradation in southern Africa and the potentially negative effects of climate change demand ?greener? solutions to reverse this trend. Conservation agriculture (CA) has been proposed as one of those solutions and field level data show marked benefits of this new cropping system. Nevertheless, the use of rotations and/or associations in CA systems is challenging at both the farm and community level. Intercropped maize (Zea mays L.) with grain legumes, cowpea and pigeonpea (Cajanus cajan L. (Millsp.)), as well as maize rotated with cowpea (Vigna unguiculata L.

Land affected by contamination from human activities has been identified as a major environmental problem in developed countries and there are established mechanisms for identifying, prioritising, characterising, assessing and remediating the land so that risks to human health and environmental receptors are minimised. However, comparative mechanisms and approaches for sustainable land management are often lacking in developing countries such as Cameroon.

Sustainable land management involves preservation of soil properties associated with soil quality and fertility. Conservation or no-tillage farming by retaining crop residues after harvesting can considerably contribute to soil fertility and crop productivity. The objective of this study is to evaluate and compare effects of two agricultural practices, conventional using mouldboard ploughing (CP) and no-tillage (NT), on soil fertility and on root growth of maize. The study is conducted on two adjoined fields on Chernozem in Eastern Austria.

The aim of this paper is to outline current foundations for sustainable landscape management in the Vilhelmina Model Forest, northwest Sweden. A case study revealed that the remaining patches of undisturbed or less disturbed boreal forest ecosystems comprise multiple values and, thus, constitute the basis for landscape planning. By identifying these patches, it is also possible to construct a spatial planning infrastructure for implementing sustainable management and land use.

Sedge dominated peatlands do not rehabilitate well after being drained for rangelands and specific approaches are required in order to restore these sites. Restoration by blocking drainage canals aims to recover peatland functions, principally by raising the water table. Field surveys in Ruoergai, China identified the status of peatland degradation and satellite image analysis concluded that most of Ruoergai's peatlands are degraded mainly due to drainage and overgrazing.

Testate amoebae represent a crucial component of soil microfauna and have been studied extensively in ombrotrophic peatlands. However, little is known about their ecology in moorlands which are important habitats in terms of biodiversity and carbon storage potential. Moorlands are under threat from a range of factors such as drainage, burning, over grazing, pollution and climate change.

Phytoremediation could be a sustainable remediation alternative for conventional remediation technologies. However, its implementation on a commercial scale remains disappointing. To emphasize its sustainability, this paper examines whether and how the potential economic benefit of CO2 abatement for different crops used for phytoremediation or sustainable land management purposes could promote phytotechnologies. Our analysis is based on a case study in the Campine region, where agricultural soils are contaminated with mainly cadmium.

A key challenge of land-use modelling for supporting sustainable land management is to understand how environmental feedback that emerges from land-use actions can reshape land-use decisions in the long term. To investigate this issue, we apply the Human–Environment System framework formulated by Scholz (2011) as a conceptual guide to read typical feedback loops in land-use systems. We use an agent-based land-use change model (LUDAS) developed by Le et al.