Long-term changes in three eastern Canadian lake records with different land use histories: a multiproxy study

The major topic of this article is the evaluation of the regional differentiation of the long-term changes in land use in Czechia. This study searches the spatial and temporal differentiation of the changes and their driving forces since the 19th century. The comprehensive land use land cover change database (LUCC Czechia Database) which comprises cadastral data on the land use in the years 1845, 1896, 1948, 1990, 2000, and 2010 for more than 8000 units, was the main data source. The chief benefit of this article can be seen in the methodical procedures of the application of the “Rate of heterogeneity” (H) derived from the Gini coefficient in the research of the differentiation/inequality of the long-term land use change. GIS modeling tools were used to calculate the selected geographical characteristics (altitude and slope) of the examined units for the purpose of searching the factors of the land use changes. The results show a strong trend in the differentiation of the long-term land use changes. Two main antagonistic processes took place in the land use structure during the observed period of 1845–2010. The fertile regions experienced agricultural intensification with the concentration of the arable land in these regions. On the other hand, the infertile regions experienced extensification, accompanied by afforestation and grass planting during the last decades. The influence of natural conditions (altitude and slope) on the distribution of the land use has been growing—the arable land has been concentrated into the lower altitudes and, more significantly, into less steep areas. Grasslands and forests predominantly occupy the less favored areas with higher altitudes and steeper slopes. The built-up areas have been strongly concentrated and regionally polarized. In 1845, half of the Czech built-up areas were concentrated in 31% of the total country area, whereas in 2010, it was in 21%.

Soil microorganisms are essential for maintaining the function and health of agricultural ecosystems. However, the responses of microbial communities to long-term changes in land use have been insufficiently explored. Hence, based on a 15 years of field experiments in the northeast Mollisol region of China, we applied the Illumina high-throughput sequencing technology to study the effects of different land use types, including conventional tillage (CT), bare land (BL), no tillage (NT), natural vegetation restoration (NVR), and afforestation (AF), on bacterial communities along the soil profile (0–5 cm, 5–10 cm, 10–20 cm, and 20–30 cm) and co-occurrence networks and identified their relationships with soil physicochemical properties. The findings indicated that the land use type as well as soil depth affected the diversity and structure of bacterial communities significantly. There was no marked difference in the diversity of bacterial communities between CT and NT at different soil depths, except for a depth of 20–30 cm. In NT, NVR, and AF, the relative abundance of Actinomycetota and Firmicutes was higher than that in CT. Conversely, CT showed a remarkably higher abundance of Proteobacteria and Acidobacteriota than BL, NT, NVR, and AF. Compared with CT and BL, increased stability and complexity of the community co-occurrence networks was identified for NT, NVR, and AF. Additionally, the diversity and composition of bacterial communities were correlated with the soil’s total nitrogen (TN), pH as well as total organic carbon (TOC). Our study revealed the potential mechanism by which long-term land use changes affected the distribution of soil bacterial communities, which was of high importance for sustainable development of agriculture and optimal management of land resources.

Improving estimates of soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks and their long-term temporal changes in agricultural soils in Ireland

Linkages between soil erosion and long-term changes of landscape pattern in a small watershed on the Chinese Loess Plateau

The world-wide debate on land degradation in arid lands, usually linked to local land use practices, does not reflect methodological advancements in terms of assessments and monitoring that integrate local communities’ knowledge with ecological methods. In this paper, we evaluated the efficacy of three different methods related to herder assessments and monitoring of land degradation; herder knowledge and ecological methods of assessing impacts of livestock grazing along gradients of land use from settlement and joint monitoring of selected marked transects to understand long-term vegetation changes in southwestern Marsabit northern Kenya. The performance of each method was carefully evaluated and interpreted in terms of the indicators used by herders and ecologists. Herder interpretations were then related to ecologists’ empirical analysis of land degradation. The Rendille nomads have a complex understanding of land degradation which combines environmental and livestock productivity indicators, compared to conventional scientific approaches that use plant-based indicators alone. According to the herders, the grazing preference of various livestock species (e.g., grazers versus browsers) influences perceptions of land degradation, suggesting degradation is a relative term. The herders distinguished short-term changes in vegetation cover from long-term changes associated with over-exploitation. They attributed current environmental degradation around pastoral camps, which shift land use between the alternating wet and dry seasons, to year-round grazing. We deduced from long-term observation that herders interpret vegetation changes in terms of rainfall variability, utilitarian values and intensification of land use. Long-term empirical data (23 years) from repeated sampling corroborated herder interpretations. Land degradation was mostly expressed in terms of declines in woody plant species, while spatial and temporal dynamics of herbaceous species reflected the effects of seasonality. The efficacy of the three methods were inferred using explanatory strengths of ecological theory; insightfulness of the methods for describing land degradation and the likelihood of using the methods for promoting local community participation in the implementation of the UN Convention on Combating Desertification (CCD) and the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).

Impacts on food web properties of island invertebrate communities vary between different human land uses

Long-term changes in soil aggregation comparing forest and agricultural land use in different Mediterranean soil types

Riparian wetland rehabilitation and beaver re-colonization impacts on hydrological processes and water quality in a lowland agricultural catchment

Mapping long-term changes in savannah crop productivity in Senegal through trend analysis of time series of remote sensing data

Expansion and intensification of row crop agriculture in the Pampas and Espinal of Argentina can reduce ecosystem service provision by changing avian density

The monitoring of land cover and land use change is critical for assessing the provision of ecosystem services. One of the sources for long-term land cover change quantification is through the classification of historical and/or current maps. Little research has been done on historical maps using Object-Based Image Analysis (OBIA). This study applied an object-based classification using eCognition tool for analyzing the land cover based on historical maps in the Main river catchment, Upper Franconia, Germany. This allowed land use change analysis between the 1850s and 2015, a time span which covers the phase of industrialization of landscapes in central Europe. The results show a strong increase in urban area by 2600%, a severe loss of cropland (−24%), a moderate reduction in meadows (−4%), and a small gain in forests (+4%). The method proved useful for the application on historical maps due to the ability of the software to create semantic objects. The confusion matrix shows an overall accuracy of 82% for the automatic classification compared to manual reclassification considering all 17 sample tiles. The minimum overall accuracy was 65% for historical maps of poor quality and the maximum was 91% for very high-quality ones. Although accuracy is between high and moderate, coarse land cover patterns in the past and trends in land cover change can be analyzed. We conclude that such long-term analysis of land cover is a prerequisite for quantifying long-term changes in ecosystem services.

Factors threatening grassland specialist plants - A multi-proxy study on the vegetation of isolated grasslands

A guideline for spatio‐temporal consistency in water quality modelling in rural areas

The impact of land use and climate change on late Holocene and future suspended sediment yield of the Meuse catchment

Vegetation cover change in all the river basins leads to the changes of hydrologic response, soil erosion and sediment dynamics characteristics. Those changes are often viewed as main cause of anthropogenic and accelerated erosion rates in short term and one of the main reasons of climate change in long term. The effects of vegetation cover changes on various parts of water balance and hydrological cycle has to be deeply studied because of its important role on mankind future. The aim of present research was therefore to simulate the responses of soil erosion processes by using a process-oriented soil erosion model IntErO, with the different settings of land use for the years 1977, 1987, 1997, 2006 (2007) and 2016 (2017) in Orahovacka Rijeka watershed; a pilot river basin of the Polimlje Region for the northeastern part of Montenegro. For the current state of land use, calculated peak discharge for the Orahovacka Rijeka was 174-175 m3 s-1 (the incidence of 100 years) and there is a possibility for large flood waves to appear in the studied basin. Real soil losses, Gyear, were calculated on 2614-2921 m3 year-1, specific 229-256 m3 km-2 year-1 (1977-2017). The value of Z coefficient range from 0.444 to 0.478 and indicates that the river basin belongs to III destruction category. The strength of the erosion process is medium, and according to the erosion type, it is surface erosion. According to our analysis the land use changes in the last 40 years influenced the increase of the soil erosion intensity for 11% in the study watershed. Further studies should be focused on the detailed analysis of the land use changes trends with the other river basins at the national level, closely following responses of soil erosion to the changed land use structure. The results and approach also should be used by policymakers in all national natural resources organizations to highlight the role of management.