Socioecology Research Today

Protected forests are sometimes encroached by surrounding communities. But patterns of cover change can vary even within one given setting – understanding these complexities can offer insights into the effective maintenance of forest cover. Using satellite image analyses together with historical information, population census data and interviews with local informants, we analysed the drivers of [...]

There is growing recognition that humans are faced with a critical and narrowing window of opportunity to halt or reverse some of the key indicators involved in the environmental crisis. Given human activities’ scale and impact, as well as the overly narrow perspectives of environmental research’s dominant natural sciences, a major effort is necessary to [...]

Recent estimates of additional land available for bioenergy production range from 320 to 1411 million ha. These estimates were generated from four scenarios regarding the types of land suitable for bioenergy production using coarse-resolution inputs of soil productivity, slope, climate, and land cover. In this paper, these maps of land availability were assessed using high-resolution [...]

Of eight species groups examined, five (farmland plants, bumblebees, butterflies, solitary bees and epigeal arthropods) were negatively associated with crop yield, but the shape of this relationship varied between taxa. It was linear for the abundance of bumblebees and species density of butterflies, concave up for the abundance of epigeal arthropods and butterflies and concave [...]

For over a century, the Menominee Tribe harvested timber from their forest; during this time the volume of standing timber increased, a sign of sustainable forest management. The Menominee selection of a green golden rule path has been made through consistent and long-standing efforts to reject the analysis provided by industrial forestry. The choices made [...]

In the past, deforestation, mainly driven by the conversion of natural forests to agricultural land, contributed up to one-fifth of global human induced carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. Substitution of bioenergy for fossil energy is an intensely discussed option for mitigating CO2 emissions. This paper, by applying a global land-use model and a global energy–economy–climate model, [...]

Push-pull technology (www.push-pull.net) is based on a novel cropping system developed by the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology, Rothamsted Research (UK) and national partners for integrated pest, weed and soil management in cereal-livestock farming systems. Stemborers are attracted to Napier grass (Pennisetum purpureum), a trap plant (pull), and are repelled from the main [...]

Agriculture can serve as an important engine for economic growth in developing countries, yet yields in these countries have lagged far behind those in developed countries for decades. One potential mechanism for increasing yields is the use of improved agricultural technologies, such as fertilizers, seeds, and cropping techniques. Public sector programs have attempted to overcome [...]

Developing countries are required to produce robust estimates of forest carbon stocks for successful implementation of climate change mitigation policies related to reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD). Here we present a “benchmark” map of biomass carbon stocks over 2.5 billion ha of forests on three continents, encompassing all tropical forests, for the early [...]

This paper summarizes recent (2000–2008) rates of extraction, including both conversion and harvest, derived from national forest inventories for North America (the United States, Canada, and Mexico). During the 2000s, 6.1 million ha/yr were affected by harvest, another 1.0 million ha/yr were converted to other land uses through gross deforestation, and 0.4 million ha/yr were [...]