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While non-operating agricultural and absentee forest landowners across the U.S. and Europe are an important group of landowners, our understanding of them remains relatively limited. In this paper, we conduct a systematic literature review on these landowners to encapsulate a current lay of the land in terms of what we know about these landowners and move the dialogue on this topic forward. Eighty-one articles are identified in our search of empirical literature. For each of the landowner types, we discuss their demographics and the three primary themes that emerged related to land management: participation in land management decisions, attitudes regarding land use and ownership, and resource needs in working with these landowners. For agricultural non-operating landowners, we find limited participation in land management decisions, particularly among women, a variety of individual and social factors play a role in involvement, and while they have pro-conservation attitudes, implementation of conservation practices is more limited. Absentee forest landowners we find are more willing to use management plans, yet less willing to engage in active management and risk reduction. These landowners have a range of attitudes regarding land use, with studies highlighting recreation, conservation, and profit motivations. Our review concludes with identifying specific needs for more research and outreach on these landowners. • Systematic review of 81 papers on non-operating agricultural and absentee forest landowners. • Agricultural landowners have limited participation in land management decisions. • Forest landowners use management plans more than active management practices. • More information and outreach, for women landowners in particular, is needed. • We need additional research (especially qualitative) focused on these two groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract The way in which research-based knowledge is used, interpreted and communicated by different actors can influence the dynamics of conservation conflicts. The conflict that occurs between grouse shooting interests and the conservation of birds of prey in Scotland is notoriously complex, involving multiple actors at multiple levels, and shaped by the values and world views of these actors. This paper explores how research-based knowledge is used in the debate by six key organisations, and looks to understand the drivers that may influence knowledge use and interpretation in this, and other, cases of conservation conflict. Research was used to both legitimise and reinforce certain world views, and to support associated political actions that would cause these to become reality. Actors offered divergent interpretations of the same piece of research, emphasising different findings and outcomes. Research-based knowledge was thus employed by actors to support or counter the 'status quo', and challenge other claims that clashed with their own values. Although the intention of such knowledge use is unclear, the selective reconstruction of research by actors could stem from, and reiterate, divergent value systems. This may pose significant challenges to conflict mitigation efforts; whilst some may look to research-based knowledge as the bringer of truth, its interpretation by different actors may exacerbate existing rifts between stakeholders; promoting polarisation of views. Mitigation strategies should be sensitive to this, and aim to improve the inclusiveness and transparency of the knowledge transfer process. Highlights • Research-based knowledge has an important role in conservation conflicts. • Analysis showed evidence of conceptual and strategic knowledge use. • Research was used to legitimise or challenge the 'status quo'. • Interpretation of research-based knowledge could reflect and reinforce different value systems. • Knowledge use can promote polarisation of views between stakeholder groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is well-recognised that to achieve long-term sustainable and resilient land management we need to understand the coupled dynamics of social and ecological systems. Land use change scenarios will often aim to understand (i) the behaviours of land management, influenced by direct and indirect drivers, (ii) the resulting changes in land use and (iii) the environmental implications of these changes. While the literature in this field is extensive, approaches to parameterise coupled systems through integration of empirical social science based models and ecology based models still need further development. We propose an approach to land use dynamics modelling based on the integration of behavioural models derived from choice experiments and spatially explicit systems dynamics modelling. This involves the specification of a choice model to parameterise land use behaviour and the integration with a spatial habitat succession model. We test this approach in an upland socio-ecological system in the United Kingdom. We conduct a choice experiment with land managers in the Peak District National Park. The elicited preferences form the basis for a behavioural model, which is integrated with a habitat succession model to predict the landscape level vegetation impacts. The integrated model allows us to create projections of how land use may change in the future under different environmental and policy scenarios, and the impact this may have on landscape vegetation patterns. We illustrate this by showing future projection of landscape changes related to hypothetical changes to EU level agricultural management incentives. The advantages of this approach are (i) the approach takes into account potential environmental and management feedbacks, an aspect often ignored in choice modelling, (ii) the behavioural rules are revealed from actual and hypothetical choice data, which allow the research to test the empirical evidence for various determinants of choice, (iii) the behavioural choice models generate probabilities of alternative behaviours which make them ideally suited for integration with simulation models. The paper concludes that the modelling approach offers a promising route for linking socio-economic and ecological features of socio-ecological systems. Furthermore, our proposed approach allows testing of the underlying socio-economic and environmental drivers and their interaction in real environmental systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Past water resource developments in dryland regions rarely estimated the full suite of environmental and social impacts arising from damming and diverting water for food production. Nowadays there is a greater focus on sustainable resource development which considers the economic, social and environmental costs and benefits. A challenge is to apply tools and methods which can capture the often disparate knowledge and data describing many costs and benefits. This paper describes a proof of concept application of a large Bayesian Decision Net to estimate the total utility of water resource development according to criteria of social, economic and environmental sustainability. We focus on two water-scarce catchments in remote northern Australia which are under investigation for development. The study catchments contain a diverse set of ecosystem services and socio-cultural values, including important Indigenous values and high value freshwater ecosystems. The Bayesian Decision Net was shown to have many properties that made it useful for performing a social, economic and environmental sustainability assessment, in particular its ease of construction; its ability to handle quantitative and qualitative data types; its preservation of system knowledge and; its ease of use in aiding decision making. From the perspective of the sustainability assessment in our case study, the total utility of water resource development for new irrigation is negative in both the studied catchments. The overall utility of water resource development could be positive if irrigation development is highly sensitive to the environment and there are very low environmental impacts, and much higher net economic returns to irrigators eventuate, possibly through higher commodity prices, lower capital costs of irrigation development or some combination of both. Highlights • Development of water resources involves trade-offs between economy and environment. • Integrated social-environment-economy sustainability (SEES) assessments support trade-offs analyses. • Bayesian Decision Networks (BDNs) support SEES assessments with diverse data types. • BDN applied to irrigation development scenarios of two remote catchments in north Australia. • The economic and ecosystem service benefits of the case study irrigation developments are questionable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under changing land use in tropical Asia, there is evidence of forest product diversification through implementation of tree-based farming by smallholders. This paper assesses in two locations, West Java, Indonesia and eastern Bangladesh, current land use conditions from the perspective of smallholder farmers, the factors that facilitate their adoption of tree farming, and the potential of landscape-scale approaches to foster sustainable land management. Data were collected through rapid rural appraisals, focus group discussions, field observations, semi-structured interviews of farm households and key informant interviews of state agricultural officers. Land at both study sites is typically fragmented due to conversion of forest to agriculture and community settlement. Local land use challenges are associated with pressures of population increase, poverty, deforestation, shortage of forest products, lack of community-scale management, weak tenure, underdeveloped markets, government decision-making with insufficient involvement of local people, and poor extension services. Despite these challenges, smallholder tree farming is found to be successful from farmers' perspectives. However, constraints of local food crop cultivation traditions, insecure land tenure, lack of capital, lack of knowledge, lack of technical assistance, and perceived risk of investing in land due to local conflict (in Bangladesh) limit farmers' willingness to adopt this land use alternative. Overcoming these barriers to adoption will require management at a landscape scale, including elements of both segregation and integration of land uses, supported by competent government policies and local communities having sufficiently high social capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims at identifying driving forces behind land use change and the determinants of investment in land management in pastoral and agro-pastoral communities. Data were collected from 182 households through a household survey and focus group discussions. Starting with narratives, an econometric approach was used to identify the determinants. The result shows that frequent droughts repeatedly undermining herd rebuilding capacity, the transformation of rights to land, emphasis placed in crop-farming by the training and extension interventions, communal land loss, and expansion of communal enclosure have affected change in land use. Benefits from the use of crop stalk as feed source, grazing on communal land, keeping relative's herd and access to training services significantly affect preference for dual form of property rights. Moreover, the econometric model predicts that having large number of plots encourages investment in land management, dependency ratio, sharing of land with neighbours, extensive land use behaviour, and participation in rotating labour undermine such an investment. This suggests the need to restore the role of customary authorities and social networks in land management. Moreover, the effect of state interventions in providing training, improved seeds and land management technologies will be unsustainable without considering the role of customary authorities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Invasive species wreak an estimated $1.4 trillion in damages globally, each year. To have any hope of reducing this damage, best-practice control strategies must incorporate behavior change interventions. Traditional interventions, based on the knowledge-transfer model, assume that if land managers are properly educated about risks and strategies, they will develop supportive attitudes and implement appropriate control strategies. However, the social sciences have produced a large number of behavioral models and frameworks that demonstrate that knowledge transfer, by itself, fails to change behavior. The challenge then lies in knowing which behavioral model to choose, and when, from a potentially overwhelming ‘universe’. In this paper, we review nine behavior theories relevant to invasive species management. We then introduce the Behavior Change Wheel as a tool for integrating these theories into a single practical framework. This framework links drivers of and barriers to behavior change with intervention strategies and policies, in what we consider, from an applied perspective, to be an important advance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Decision making in land management can be greatly enhanced if the perspectives of concerned stakeholders are taken into consideration. This often implies negotiation in order to reach an agreement based on the examination of multiple alternatives. This paper describes a spatial web/agent-based modeling system that was developed to support the negotiation process of stakeholders regarding land development in southern Alberta, Canada. This system integrates a fuzzy analytic hierarchy procedure within an agent-based model in an interactive visualization environment provided through a web interface to facilitate the learning and negotiation of the stakeholders. In the pre-negotiation phase, the stakeholders compare their evaluation criteria using linguistic expressions. Due to the uncertainty and fuzzy nature of such comparisons, a fuzzy Analytic Hierarchy Process is then used to prioritize the criteria. The negotiation starts by a development plan being submitted by a user (stakeholder) through the web interface. An agent called the proposer, which represents the proposer of the plan, receives this plan and starts negotiating with all other agents. The negotiation is conducted in a step-wise manner where the agents change their attitudes by assigning a new set of weights to their criteria. If an agreement is not achieved, a new location for development is proposed by the proposer agent. This process is repeated until a location is found that satisfies all agents to a certain predefined degree. To evaluate the performance of the model, the negotiation was simulated with four agents, one of which being the proposer agent, using two hypothetical development plans. The first plan was selected randomly; the other one was chosen in an area that is of high importance to one of the agents. While the agents managed to achieve an agreement about the location of the land development after three rounds of negotiation in the first scenario, seven rounds were required in the second scenario. The proposed web/agent-based model facilitates the interaction and learning among stakeholders when facing multiple alternatives. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In arid and semi-arid regions, unregulated land use changes as a result of poor planning, and the expansion of agricultural and livestock activities increase the risk of desertification and other potentially severe environmental impacts. Several consequences of improper land management practices are soil deterioration and erosion, which may be intensified by meteorological events. This paper presents a historical evaluation of the temporal and spatial evolution of soil deterioration in the southern Chihuahuan Desert in Mexico. A multi-temporal analysis of the study area during the 1995–2016 period was carried out using satellite data (Landsat series). Two seasons were analyzed to determine the influence of external events such as rainfall and wind: dry and rainy. The identification of soil conditions was based on the Brightness Index (BI) considering the complete satellite data set. The soil conditions were classified into five categories according to their reflectance values: highly deteriorated, deteriorated, in the process of being deteriorated, in good condition and other (clouds, water, non-soil). The change detection maps clearly show a growing trend wherein areas of deteriorated and eroded soil increase over time. Agriculture and strong winds are the two main factors involved in the soil deterioration process of the study region. • Deficient agricultural practices and strong winds precursors to desertification. • Spatial-temporal identification of deteriorated soil in arid/semi-arid zones. • Spectral analysis based method for categorization of soil conditions. • Comparative analysis of sensitivity in rainy and dry seasons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Socio-economic development combined with changing hydrological factors represents a challenge for extending flood protection. In particular, land owners should be encouraged to use their land in a way that improves its water retention capacity. However, problems of fairness may arise because a landowner can benefit or lose out depending on the use of other lands. This paper sets out to study the possibility of applying game theory through a cooperative game to solve this problem. Specifically, we look for a sharing rule function to help the planners to distribute the total benefit among landowners, taking into account a principle of stability. We concentrate on enhancing upstream water retention and focus on the role played by forests as natural water retention features. This is a methodological contribution that analyzes land use management for flood retention. Land planners, governments and landowners could use cooperative games as a flood risk management tool. With this method, compensations and benefits could be established to raise awareness and encourage land owners to cooperate. • A game theoretical model for land flood mitigation in river basins is presented. • We present three optimal stable methods for compensation between land owners. • Cooperative games are a useful tool for flood risk management. • Compensations could be established through game theory to encourage land owners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]