International agricultural policies to address hunger and malnutrition in the tropics and sub-tropics have typically been based on approaches to the intensification of farming systems effective in industrialised economies where the social, economic, and environmental conditions and the infrastructure are very different to those in Africa.
Ecological compensation provides innovative ecological solutions for addressing land degradation and guaranteeing the sustainable provision of essential ecosystem services.
Widespread interference of human activities has resulted in major environmental problems, including pollution, global warming, land degradation, and biodiversity loss, directly affecting the sustainability and quality of the environment and ecosystem.
Land use–land cover (LULC) alteration is primarily associated with land degradation, especially in recent decades, and has resulted in various harmful changes in the landscape.
The Han River Basin is a main agricultural production area and a water source for the middle route of the South-to-North Water Diversion Project in China. Over the past 20 years, human exploitation and ecological construction have disturbed the sustainability of land productivity in the Han River Basin.
Agriculture terraces constitute a significant element of the Mediterranean landscape, enabling crop production on steep slopes while protecting land from desertification. Despite their ecological and historical value, terrace cultivation is threatened by climate change leading to abandonment and further marginalization of arable land imposing serious environmental and community hazards.
Although changes in ecosystems in response to climate and land-use change are known to have implications for the provision of different environmental and ecosystem services, quantifying the economic value of some of these services can be problematic and has not been widely attempted.
Fragmentation has long been considered the primary cause for ecosystem degradation and biodiversity loss worldwide. Forest fragmentation affects ecosystem functioning and biodiversity in multiple ways. Here, we ask how forest fragmentation influences aboveground biomass storage (AGB) in sub-tropical forests in China.
The Maloti-Drakensberg (MD) is the largest and highest-elevation mountain system in southern Africa. Covering 40,000 km2 and reaching 3500 m, the MD provides a range of ecosystem services (ES) to the entire southern African region—benefitting diverse users and extending well beyond the mountains.
Land desertification is a global environmental problem, leading to the deterioration of the ecological environment and is an issue that threatens humans. Hongsibu, located in Ningxia, northwest China, is a semi-desert area with the largest domestic single-site ecological resettlement area for poverty alleviation based on the wine industry.
