Leah H. Samberg

Rainforest Alliance · Global Programs

Resilience quantifies the ability of a system to remain in or return to its current state following disturbance. Due to inconsistent terminology and usage of resilience frameworks, quantitative resilience studies are challenging, and resilience is often treated as an abstract concept rather than a measurable system characteristic. We used a novel,...

As a multi-jurisdictional, non-fire-adapted region, the Sonoran Desert Ecoregion is a complex, social-ecological system faced increasingly with no-analogue conditions. A diversity of management objectives and activities form the socioecological landscape of fire management. Different managers have different objectives, resources, and constraints, a...

Plantations support local economies and rural livelihoods in many mountainous regions, where poverty and a fragile environment are often interlinked. Managing plantations sustainably and alleviating poverty is a major challenge. This study reports on the findings of a household livelihood survey in the central mountainous region of Hainan Island, a...

Expansion of large-scale tree plantations for commodity crop and timber production is a leading cause of tropical deforestation. While automated detection of plantations across large spatial scales and with high temporal resolution is critical to inform policies to reduce deforestation, such mapping is technically challenging. Thus, most available...

The benefits nature provides to people, called ecosystem services, are increasingly recognized and accounted for in assessments of infrastructure development, agricultural management, conservation prioritization, and sustainable sourcing. These assessments are often limited by data, however, a gap with tremendous potential to be filled through Eart...

Changes in fire frequency, size, and severity are driving ecological transformations in many systems. In arid and semi-arid regions that are adapted to fire, long-term fire exclusion by managers leads to declines in fire frequency, altered fire size distribution, and increased proportion of high severity fires. In arid and semi-arid systems where f...

What are the known factors that improve resource governance and conservation when women have a say in the management of local forests and fisheries? We reviewed a large body of literature to address this question and identified 11 studies that compare the governance and conservation results of mixed-gender resource management groups with men-only o...

Pastures and rangelands underpin global meat and milk production and are a critical resource for millions of people dependent on livestock for food security1,2. Forage growth, which is highly climate dependent3,4, is potentially vulnerable to climate change, although precisely where and to what extent remains relatively unexplored. In this study, w...

Hundreds of millions of the world’s poorest people directly depend on smallholder farming systems. These farmers now face a changing climate and associated societal responses. We use mapping and a literature review to juxtapose the climate fate of smallholder systems with that of other agricultural systems and population groups. Limited direct evid...

Despite a growing body of research about rangeland degradation and the effects of policies implemented to address it on the Tibetan Plateau, little in-depth research has been conducted on how pastoralists make decisions. Based on qualitative research in Gouli Township, Qinghai province, China, we analyze the context in which Tibetan herders make de...

Background Information about the global structure of agriculture and nutrient production and its diversity is essential to improve present understanding of national food production patterns, agricultural livelihoods, and food chains, and their linkages to land use and their associated ecosystems services. Here we provide a plausible breakdown of gl...

Background Information about the global structure of agriculture and nutrient production and its diversity is essential to improve present understanding of national food production patterns, agricultural livelihoods, and food chains, and their linkages to land use and their associated ecosystems services. Here we provide a plausible breakdown of gl...

Background Information about the global structure of agriculture and nutrient production and its diversity is essential to improve present understanding of national food production patterns, agricultural livelihoods, and food chains, and their linkages to land use and their associated ecosystems services. Here we provide a plausible breakdown of gl...

Smallholder farming is the most prevalent form of agriculture in the world, supports many of the planet's most vulnerable populations, and coexists with some of its most diverse and threatened landscapes. However, there is little information about the location of small farms, making it difficult both to estimate their numbers and to implement effec...

Interventions to improve crop yields in rural China through collaboration between researchers and farmers illustrate how the goal of increasing global food production can be approached locally. See Letter p.671

Background: Women often use natural resources differently than men yet frequently have minimal influence on how local resources are managed. An emerging hypothesis is that empowering more women in local resource decision-making may lead to better resource governance and conservation. Here we focus on the forestry and fisheries sectors to answer the...

Livestock grazing is the principal land use in arid central Asia, and range degradation is considered a serious problem within much of the high-elevation region of western China termed the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau (QTP). Rangeland degradation on the QTP is variously attributed to poor livestock management, historical-cultural factors, changing land...

Background Women often use natural resources differently than men yet frequently have minimal influence on how local resources are managed. An emerging hypothesis is that empowering more women in local resource decision-making may lead to better resource governance and conservation. Here we focus on the forestry and fisheries sectors to answer the...

The authors would like to add the following affiliation for Peter Søgaard Jørgensen of paper [1]: 8 International Network of Next-Generation Ecologists, Universitetsparken 15, Building 3, Copenhagen 2100, Denmark[...].

Effective integration in science and knowledge co-production is a challenge that crosses research boundaries, climate regions, languages and cultures. Early career scientists are crucial in the identification of, and engagement with, obstacles and opportunities in the development of innovative solutions to complex and interconnected problems. On 25...

Conservation strategies are increasingly driven by our understanding of the processes and patterns of gene flow across complex landscapes. The expansion of population genetic approaches into traditional agricultural systems requires understanding how social factors contribute to that landscape, and thus to gene flow. This study incorporates extensi...

Within conservation, the need to measure the impacts on people from conservation initiatives such as projects and programs is growing, but understanding and measuring the multidimensional impacts on human well-being from conservation initiatives is complex. To understand the constituent components of human well-being and identify which components o...

In light of limited conservation funding, global conservation initiatives are increasingly focused on regions of the planet that have been identified as valuable on the basis of their species diversity, the vulnerability of resident species to extinction, or the perceived pristine nature of their ecosystems. Regions that have been resilient to high...

Background/Question/Methods In the highlands of southern Ethiopia, a diverse and intensive subsistence agroecosystem dominates a rugged mountainous landscape. Biophysical and socioeconomic landscape features affect gene-flow of crop species and determine the extent and structure of genetic diversity. Understanding how genetic diversity is distribut...

The Ethiopian highlands are a center of diversity for numerous globally important crops. Heterogeneous landscapes, traditional agricultural practices, and inaccessibility have created and maintained diverse subsistence agroecosystems. We surveyed sixty-three farms in twelve communities of the Gamo highlands and found high levels of on-farm diversit...

Background/Question/Methods In the highlands of southern Ethiopia, a diverse and intensive subsistence agroecosystem dominates a heterogeneous mountain landscape. Biophysical and socioeconomic landscape features affect gene-flow of crop and tree species and determine the extent and structure of genetic diversity. Understanding how genetic diversit...