From landslide characterization to nature reserve management:The“Scialimata Grande di Torre Alfina”landslide Geosite(Central Apennines,Italy)

Italy is characterized by widespread geomorphological instability,among which landslides leave impressive marks on the landscape.Nevertheless,landslide bodies may represent key sites for thematic and educational itineraries,especially in protected areas,where their management becomes an important issue.Our study focuses on the"Monte Rufeno Nature Reserve"(Central Apennines,Italy),where iconic landslides are present.Here,the"Scialimata Grande di Torre Alfina"landslide(SGTA)is listed in the regional Geosite database.This work aims to propose a multiscale procedure for landslide analysis,in terms of both hazard sources but also educational and geoheritage enhancement opportunities in natural reserves.After performing a Landslide Susceptibility conditional Analysis(LSA)for the reserve territory,attention was focused on the SGTA,to define properly its features and morphodynamics.A multi-disciplinary approach was adopted,by applying both remote sensing(UAV structure from motion,Photointerpretation)and field survey(geomorphological and GPS monitoring).From the LSA,based on drainage density,curvature,and slope triggering factors,the road and trail susceptibility maps were derived,as base tools for future risk assessments and trail paths management within the reserve.At the SGTA scale,the monitoring showed a displacement of up to 23 m during the time interval between 2015 and 2018.The landslide dynamics seem to be driven by alternating dry and extremely wet periods;moreover,leaks from the aqueduct in the detachment area and piping effects through clays may have also decreased the substrate cohesion.The SGTA complex influence on the Paglia River valley geometry was also hypothesized,underlining the action of landslide through different spatial scales(on-site and off-site)and on different environment features(sediment connectivity,hydrology).Finally,the SGTA appears highly representative of the geomorphic dynamics within the Nature Reserve(i.e.,scientific value)and it could be classified as an active geosite.Since the site was featured by a tourist trail,adequate management strategies must be adopted,considering the educational value and safety issues.

Floristic Composition, Population Structure, and Recruitment Status of Plant Species: A Case Study of Farmer-Managed Natural Regeneration Practices in Arid and Semi-Arid Lands in Kenya

The technique of Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration (FMNR) is being promoted as a cost-effective approach for restoring degraded arable dry lands. Its effectiveness has been observed in many countries across the globe, where it is a traditional practice, and is now being encouraged across the African continent. This study aimed to evaluate the impact of FMNR on floristic Composition, Vegetation Structure, and Regeneration Status of woody Plant Species in the severely degraded Central Rift, Kenya. The study systematically assessed how FMNR influenced species composition, vegetation structure and regeneration status from two sample plots involved in FMNR practices. Transect lines and quadrats methods were utilized to collect data, specifically regarding the floristic composition, vegetation structure, and regeneration status of woody plant species. Quadrats and sub-quadrats of varying sizes (10 m by 10 m, 5 m by 5 m, and 1 m by 1 m) were nested along the transect lines for data collection. Furthermore, measurements of tree growth and development, including root collar diameter, diameter at breast height (D130) and heights within the study blocks, were taken. The data was then analyzed using R-software. Results showed a marked progressive increase in numbers of trees, saplings, seedlings, shrubs and herbs in all FMNR sites and reductions in all non-FMNR sites. The study advocates for widespread promotion of the FMNR practice both as an environmental conservation and restoration strategy.

Theory and practice of value management and its innovation for natural resources from the perspective of sustainable development

The supreme obstacle for sustainable development of natural resources is the scarecity, bottleneck. So how to promote the sustainable utilizing and increase the using efficiency of natural resources is worth studying. This paper suggests that we should improve the model and means of evaluating method and value management based on th~ theory of natural resource compensation. This paper discusses the User Cost Method based on the microeeonomicaspect which can change the evaluating method for natural resources. From the perspective of value managemen model, we should use the User Cost Method to realize the linkage and integration of micro and macro eompensation for natural resources. Based on the evaluating and aecounting idea User Cost Method, this paper presents a theo. retical framework to harmonize and link micro and macro compensation for natural resources. At present, we should seek the new approach and method to manage natural resources, so can we realize the capitalization managemen focusing on the vahte management for natural resources.

Indigenous Knowledge of Natural Resource Management and Population Control for Dong Ethnic Group in Guizhou Province

Dong ethnic people have rich indigenous knowledge in terms of their daily life and production, which plays an important role in the sustainable development of their village. This paper aims to understand traditional knowledge of Dong ethnic people in resource management and population control, including traditional resource management, traditional medicinal knowledge and village regulations in Zhanli Village in Southeast Guizhou Province. The research methods include key informant interview, group discussion, participant observation and secondary data collect- ing. The results show that Zhanli villagers try their best to utilize indigenous knowledge to manage the natural resources and keep the stable population to make themselves live in a sustainable way. Indigenous knowledge plays an important role in managing their limited natural resources and keeping the population stable under an excellent condition. Zhanli villagers employ indigenous knowledge to manage natural resources and use local herbs to control the population. Village regulation terms significantly influence villagers’ awareness in resource management and birth control. Women play the chief role in employing indigenous knowledge in weaving as well as medicinal knowledge in birth control, and these kinds of knowledge are passed down through the female line. However, the inheritance style of traditional knowledge is decreasing. Indig- enous knowledge plays an important role in the sustainable development of this village, which gives implications for development practices to involve indigenous knowledge to achieve sustainable development.

Advance agriculture in the desert:the Israeli case story

The Israeli Desert constitutes 60% of the country＇s total area. Regional annual precipitation is 100-200 mm and evapora- tion reaches 2,500 mm. Traditional desert agriculture of rain fed wheat and sheep, goat and camels grazing is common. Despite the harsh climate conditions, advance agriculture is concentrated in foei where water resources exist. Desert ag- riculture takes advantage of the winter （October-April） due to a mild climate season for growing vegetables, flowers, herbs and fruit which are mostly exported to European countries. The key factor is the sustainable management of the local natural resources.

New look at territories of traditional nature use–traditional nature management lands at the coastal zone of the Ice Silk Road:a case study for the Russian Arctic

Territories of traditional nature use(TTNU)of indigenous population in the Arctic zone presents a historical model of sustainable development whose main principles are valuable for modern practice of economic activities in this region as well.Indigenous peoples traditional nature management practice in the Russian Arctic nowadays exists only within tribal community lands,though their virtual limits may be larger and known to indigenous population,helping to preserve regional identities.Preservation of TTNU in the course of modern economic development,including the Northern Silk Road coastal infrastructure,is important for regional ecological and social stability.They may be regarded as ecological buffer zones,restoring ecosystem functions important for regional sustainable development,though modern market economy treats them mainly as economic units less valuable for incomes than industrial.A new look at TTNU may be supported by their ecologicaleconomic assessment.A case study in the coastal Nenets TTNU belonging to family-clan community‘Ya’Erv’demonstrates its possible input to local sustainable development.

Resource Flows of Villages with Contrasting Lifestyles in Nanda Devi Biosphere Reserve, Central Himalaya, India

Resource use efficiency analyses of village ecosystem are necessary for effective and efficient planning of resource utilization. This paper deals with economic and energy input-output analyses of different components of village ecosystem in representative buffer zone villages, which are practicing transhumance and settled way of lifestyles in Nanda Devi Biosphere Reserve （NDBR） of Garhwal Himalaya. While the villages practicing transhumance used various natural resources spatially segregated,the villages practicing settled way of lifestyle have to manage resources from a limited spatial area through rotation and varied extraction intensities. Forests subsidized the production activity in both type of villages and the per capita resource extractions were found to be greater in tran^humance village than settled village. Though crops provided maximum energy, in terms of economic criteria, animal husbandry played important role in both settled and transhumance villages. As villages representing both the situations showed different ways of adjustments to the conservation oriented land use changes, management authority needs to address the eco-development plans fulfilling the aspirations of all people traditionally using the resources of the Reserve to reduce the conflicts and encourage their participation in the conservation of the area.

Analysis of Participatory Approach Applied in Creating a New Protected Area Anjozorobe Angavo

The political will in compliance with the Convention on Biological Diversity brings to the establishment of MSPA （Madagascar system of protected areas）. The aim is to conserve biodiversity, alleviate poverty and develop the country. Participation and involvement of local population in natural resources management, consultation with all sectors and responsibilization of regional and local authorities in protected areas management are all the basic principles of MSPA. The paper brought focus in the understanding of this participation of local actors （populations, local authorities） and in their interests to participate in the protected area management in Anjozorobe Angavo. The research has been conducted by doing investigations and meetings with local actors. A typology of participations had been done. It has been indeed noticed that the understanding was differentiated then motivations to participate were not always the environmental one. The populations＇ participation could be either by convenience, or for personal interest, or imposed participation, or conscious participation. But in order to reach the purpose of the protected areas sustainable management, the operator should admit that the participation in protected areas management is imposed naturally and should consider those differences in visions; at last, the approach should motivate local populations to participate consciously.

Comparative Study on the Antibacterial Activity of Fresh and Fallen Leaves of Terminalia catappa L.

In the work reported here, the potential of different methods （cold and hot water, and ethanolic） of extraction of Indian almond （Terminalia catappa L.）, fresh and fallen leaves as an anti-bacterial agent was investigated. The hot water extract did not show any spectrum of activity against the selected bacteria while the cold water extract showed slight antibacterial activity suggesting that the effective components are heat labile. The ethanolic extracts of the leaves have higher antibiotic spectrum of activity than the cold water extract showing ethanol to be a better solvent in extracting the effective component. The fallen leaves seem to have a higher concentration of the effective component against the bacteria while ethanolic extract of the fresh leaves have similar spectrum of activity to Ciprofloxacin and Nitrofuratoin. These suggest that some effective components are lost when leaves fall off while some seem to increase in concentration. Fresh and fallen leaves contain tannin and flavonoids. In addition, the fallen leaves contain flavones. This might be responsible for the higher activity of fallen leaves extract observed against Pseudomonas and Staphylococcus spp. in our study. Combined use of extracts from fresh and fallen leaves broadened the spectrum of activity.

Impacts of Mau Forest Catchment on the Great Rift Valley Lakes in Kenya

Remote sensing and GIS applications are being widely used for various projects relating to natural resource management. Forests are very important national assets for economic, environmental protection, social and cultural values and should be conserved in order to realize all these benefits. Kenya’s forests are rapidly declining due to pressure from increased population, technological innovation, urbanization human development and other land uses. Mau forest is one of the major forests in Kenya that is a catchment area for many Great Rift Valley lakes within the country and faces a lot of destruction. Continued destruction of the Mau forest will cause catastrophic environmental damage, resulting in massive food crises and compromising the livelihoods of millions of Kenyans, and the possible collapse of the tourism industry. The purpose of this research was to investigate the relationship between the increasing rate of deforestation and the reduction of the volumes of water in the neighboring lakes between the years 1989 to 2010. Satellite images from Landsat-5 Thematic Mapper (TM) and Landsat-7 Enhanced Thematic Mapper (ETM+) were used for the detection of changes in the Mau forest and the dynamics of the neighboring water bodies that included lakes: Naivasha, Baringo, Nakuru, Elementaita and Bogoria. The research showed that from a period of 1989 to 2010 Mau forest has been decreasing due to deforestation and the water bodies have irregular dynamics in that, from 1989 to 2000, there was rise in the volume of water, this is attributed to the El Nino rains experienced in the country during the year 1997 and 1998. But between 2000 and 2010 the volume decreased as the forest is also decreasing. It is recommended that the government creates awareness to sensitize the public on the importance of such forests as catchment areas in Kenya.

Areas vulnerable to natural disasters and damage estimation of infrastructure in Busan, Korea

Since the damages caused by disasters associated with climate anomalies and the diversification of the social structure increase every year, an efficient management system associated with a damage assessment of the areas vulnerable to disasters is demanded to prevent or mitigate the damages to infrastructure. The areas vulnerable to disasters in Busan, located at southeastern part of Korea, were estimated based on historical records of damages and a risk assessment of the infrastructure was performed to provide fundamental information prior to the establishment of the real-time monitoring system for infrastructure and establish disaster management system. The results are illustrated by using geographical information system(GIS) and provide the importance of the roadmap for comprehensive and specific strategy to manage natural disasters.

SHORT COMMUNICATION Principal-agent Relationships: A Note on Biomass Depletion

Public authorities frequently mandate public or private agencies to manage their renewable natural resources.Contrary to the agency,which is an expert in renewable natural resource management,public authorities usually ignore the sustainable level of harvest.In this note,we first model the contractual relationship between a principal,who owns the renewable natural resource,and an agent,who holds private information on its sustainable level of harvest.We then look for the Pareto-optimal allocations.In the situation of an imperfect information setting,we find that the Pareto-optimal contracting depends on the probability that the harvesting level stands outside the sustainability interval.The information rent held by the agent turns out to be unavoidable,such that stepping outside the sustainability interval implies the possibility of depletion of the renewable natural resource.This,in turn,compromises the maintenance of the ecological balance in natural ecosystems.

Land Grab and Land Grant:Contextualizing Landscape Justice in Social Forestry in Indonesia

Social forestry has emerged as a popular approach to achieving landscape justice by empowering local communities.However,the development and implementation of such programs often face challenges.This paper explores the concept of landscape justice within the context of Indonesian social forestry in two ways.First,it juxtaposes the social forestry program with palm oil plantations to highlight the relationship between environmental initiatives and capital expansion,and the formation of green capitalism.By examining the historical development of social forestry,the paper argues that current political and legal frameworks have facilitated the depoliticization of previously radical,anti-capitalist,and anti-palm oil civil movements,despite notionally“empowering”local communities.Second,the paper interrogates the inclusivity of the social forestry program within local communities,noting that NGOs sometimes label local people as“cooperative”or“stubborn,”thus overlooking the pre-existing social tensions.The paper posits that more attention should be given to the social foundations underlying environmental projects and the new eco-social structure arising from environmental governance.

New challenges facing traditional nature reserves: Asian elephant (Elephas maximus) conservation in China

Traditional conservation strategies can effectively preserve biodiversity within nature reserves,but may fail to mitigate the conflicts between rural development and wildlife conservation.This paper discusses the magnitude of the conflict and its development over time,focusing on elephant conservation and land resource management within and around nature reserves.We suggest that regulations alone can satisfy neither the demands to maintain biodiversity and ecosystem services nor the demands to achieve human welfare.More innovative tools such as informed landuse planning and integrated conservation development projects are called for to reduce the agricultural interface with elephant range,and therefore to alleviate the damage caused by the conflict.

Disaster Risk Management Through the Design Safe Cyberinfrastructure

Design Safe addresses the challenges of supporting integrative data-driven research in natural hazards engineering.It is an end-to-end data management,communications,and analysis platform where users collect,generate,analyze,curate,and publish large data sets from a variety of sources,including experiments,simulations,field research,and post-disaster reconnaissance.DesignSafe achieves key objectives through:(1)integration with high performance and cloud-computing resources to support the computational needs of the regional risk assessment community;(2)the possibility to curate and publish diverse data structures emphasizing relationships and understandability;and(3)facilitation of real time communications during natural hazards events and disasters for data and information sharing.The resultant services and tools shorten data cycles for resiliency evaluation,risk modeling validation,and forensic studies.This article illustrates salient features of the cyberinfrastructure.It summarizes its design principles,architecture,and functionalities.The focus is on case studies to show the impact of Design Safe on the disaster risk community.The Next Generation Liquefaction project collects and standardizes case histories of earthquake-induced soil liquefaction into a relational database—Design Safe—to permit users to interact with the data.Researchers can correlate in Design Safe building dynamic characteristics based on data from building sensors,with observed damage based on ground motion measurements.Reconnaissance groups upload,curate,and publish wind,seismic,and coastal damage data they gather during field reconnaissance missions,so these datasets are available shortly after a disaster.As a part of the education and community outreach efforts of Design Safe,training materials and collaboration space are also offered to the disaster risk management community.

Soil properties characterization for land-use planning and soil management in watersheds under family farming

Environmental monitoring of small,rural watersheds was one of the components of the Natural Re-sources Management and Rural Poverty Alleviation Program(RS-Rural)in southern Brazil.The purpose of the monitoring was to assess the impact of promoting soil conservation and environment manage-ment practices adopted by farmers and funded by the Program.In four small monitored watersheds,in a total of 95 plots representing distinct land use and soil management,surface soil was collected to characterize ground-zero of the Program by determining several soil physical,chemical and microbio-logical properties.Principal component analysis(PCA)shows soil physical,chemical and biological properties were decisive in defining the agricultural soils in the rural watersheds with family farming.The sensitivity to chemical properties provides an opportunity to improve soil quality if soil management focuses on altering those properties.Soil management practiced by tobacco farmers leads to rapid,intense degradation of some natural soil properties,especially those related to the dynamics of soil organic matter,compared with more conservationist uses(forest,regrowth,and grassland).Thus,soil management must be reoriented to avoid the progress of degradation and recover soil physical and biological quality.Cover crops and by land-abandonment to allow natural vegetation are important management strategies for the degraded soils used for tobacco production,increasing soil organic matter,nutrients and microbial activity and thus allowing further crop production.In conclusion,wa-tersheds with tobacco cropping have soils with lower quality than when under no-tillage grain pro-duction,requiring changes in land use and soil management.