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In our country, ecologists are increasingly called to play a more active role in natural resource management and in rural ecosystem and landscape planning. The effectiveness of management and planning depends to a large extent on the ability to transform the human behaviors that most influence the state of ecosystems and landscapes. Therefore, the capacity of research processes and results in ecology to transform the reality of territories can be enhanced by its integration with conceptual and methodological elements of the human behavioral sciences. In the territory, changes in land use and land cover are the result of a multiplicity of decisions made by those individuals that affect and benefit from ecosystems, mostly farmers. This paper reviews theories, concepts, methods and applications of social psychology to make visible and discuss their real and potential contributions to the research and management of rural ecosystems and landscapes subject to transformation by agriculture, which are illustrated by studies in the Argentine Dry Chaco. The Theory of Planned Behavior proved to be a conceptual and analytical model of great synoptic value to understand the endogenous motivational factors that influence the formation of intentions to conserve remnant forests by agricultural producers. The social valuation of ecosystem services made it possible to observe the diversity of identities and valuation profiles that coexist in the territory. Finally, overlapping trade-off and indifference curves proved to be a simple and powerful tool for linking ecological and preference trade-offs, and for identifying barriers and opportunities for farmers to transition to land use systems that are both biophysically efficient and socially acceptable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a complex environmental, productive and socioeconomic scenario, on November 28th, 2007, the National Act N°26.331 of "Minimum Standards for the Environmental Protection of Native Forests" (known as the "Forest Law") was sanctioned in Argentina with the purpose of protecting native forests at the national scale. In this article, we aim to critically synthesize the available information about this law ten years after its sanction from an approach that takes into account environmental, economic and social aspects. In particular, we characterize the performance of this law in the Chaco Region in different dimensions, identify its main challenges and describe a series of proposals that from the science and technology sector can contribute to its (re)design and implementation in the context of the revisions of the Provincial Native Forest Land Use Planning Programs. In order to accomplish these objectives, we integrated information available from different sources, such as laws and regulations (national and provincial), scientific literature, reports from government agencies and NGOs and newspaper articles. The Forest Law installed in the public opinion of our country the problems related to the loss of native forests and has positioned itself as the main national instrument for forest conservation. Although deforestation rates lowered in the Chaco Region, there is no clear evidence that this reduction was due to its application. The Forest Law in the Chaco Region presents a series of challenges to improve its performance in terms of its effectiveness, equity and social legitimacy. In this paper, we present ten observations that emerge from the review carried out. On the other hand, linked to these observations, we outline a series of research and action proposals for enhancing the performance of the law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]