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The potential of marginal lands to improve food security, support bioenergy production or ecosystem services has globally got a lot of attention. Defining agricultural marginal land is a task that involves more than just considering the land's quality, its definition changed a lot during the last two centuries. Development of new technologies and policy trends require the concepts of prime land and marginal land to be renewed from time to time. Although much research has been done on the concept of marginal land, it is currently limited by the lack of a clear, globally accepted definition. There are four major sources of criteria of marginal lands: economic (e.g., rent cost, land value), geographical (e.g., temperature, slope, precipitation), ecosystem-based (e.g., protected areas, recreation, ecosystem services), soil suitability (e.g., yield capability, physical and chemical soil properties). The categorisation of agricultural land into groups like productive, marginal or unproductive often depends on the cultivation or management type. Since conceptions of marginal land are dynamic both in time and space, flexible policy and practical solutions are needed for their non-degrading use, which in any case shall support nature-based socioeconomic development. To maintain the socioeconomic value of these areas, it is crucial to develop rural areas that are economically or biophysically marginalised. High nature value farming, bioenergy crops by sustainable land management and afforestation are highly recommended. Choosing the right management can transform marginal land into an optimal soil condition or incorrect management can degrade prime land into marginal land (unproductive land). This paper provides a review and categorisation of the historical and new developments of marginal land concepts especially those which are working with agricultural aspects, including land management and reclamation. It could give a strong basis for further research in topic of marginal land. [Display omitted] • Marginal lands are depending on the spatial scale and the regional conditions. • Marginal land can be turned suitable for the objective of the use. • Marginal lands are dynamic both in time and space. • Flexible policy and practical solutions are needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Urban Atlas population data is adequate for green space provision estimations. • Buffer zone-based isochrone maps underestimate walking times. • Green space provision estimation is more sensitive to spatial than thematic data Editor name-Raffaele Lafortezza. A liveable city requires urban green spaces (UGS) in many locations, since such spaces have a direct impact on the quality of life and overall well-being of city dwellers. UGS provision analyses therefore have been attracting a number of researchers, practitioners and decision makers for recent years using various methodologies. In this study, we conduct reference UGS provision analysis using accurate input data, calculating the population with access to a UGS within fifteen minutes of walking, with a one-minute resolution. These results are employed as reference for quantifying the spatial accuracy of buffer zone-based isochrone maps and the overall (thematic and scale) accuracy of the European Environmental Agency's Urban Atlas population database in UGS provision estimation. The estimated differences between the Urban Atlas and the reference data in UGS provision assessment are 11.8 % (6861 people) within 10 min and 11.8 % (7050 people) within 15 min of walking. The difference between estimates from buffer zone-based isochrone maps and the reference is 2.1 % (1479 people) within 10 min and 0.1 % (77 people) within 15 min of walking. Further statistical analyses reveal that the spatial accuracy (correlation coefficient with reference = 0.7878) of the buffer zone-based map's impact on the result of UGS provision estimation is more than the overall accuracy of the Urban Atlas' population database (correlation coefficient with reference = 0.9798). These results may potentially enhance the knowledge about the limitations, usefulness and reliability of the buffer zone-based isochrone maps and the European-scale land cover and population dataset in spatial analyses of UGS provision. The results of this study can be used for improving the accuracy of buffer zone- and Urban Atlas-based UGS provision mapping estimates at local and regional scales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• -Identify the Eurasian skylark habitat and nonhabitat types identified. • -Eurasian skylark's landscape-composition preferences determined. • - Impact of the scale of land cover dataset in population estimation. • -Impact of data granularity (buffer zones) in population estimation assessed. The habitat and occurrence of farmland birds are strongly determined by the agricultural-landscape structure. Changes in land cover composition and configuration are one of the main causes of the significant decline in abundance of the Eurasian skylark (Alauda arvensis) in recent decades. This farmland-bird species is common in agricultural areas of Eurasia. In this study we investigate the land use factors involved in the decline in Central Europe, Hungary. We used two different land use/land cover (LULC) datasets, which were compiled at different scales: the Ecosystem Map of Hungary (EMH), a very precise LULC map based on a 0.04-ha minimum mapping unit, and the Corine Land cover (CLC) dataset, built using a 25-ha minimum mapping unit. We studied the impact of landscape composition and configuration on skylark abundance by using negative-binomial generalized linear models. After identifying skylark preferences among LULC categories at different scales, we calculated the EMH and CLC dataset-based landscape indices (such as mean patch size and mean fractal dimension index) of the skylark preferred (arable lands, pastures, grasslands and meadows) and the nonpreferred (artificial surfaces, forests, complex cultivation patterns and waters) LULC classes. Then we compared the results with field observations of skylark abundance in the database of Hungarian Common Bird Monitoring (MMM). On the basis of statistical analysis of connections between the landscape indices and the skylark-abundance data, we estimated skylark abundance for those areas where the skylark-abundance datasets from field observation were not available. We also tested the estimates by assessing model sensitivity when we input different-scale LULC data and used different observation windows (grain size). Our statistical model using EMH dataset explained 41.22% variance of the skylark abundance data, while the rest, 58.78% of variance is not accounted by the model presumably due to local environmental factors not considered in our model. The regional scale (CLC-based) estimation of skylark abundance yielded significantly lower accuracies (33.76% in 1200 m radius buffer zones and 34.11% in 600 m radius buffer zones). We conclude that the size of the landscape windows (grain size) land cover has a significant impact on the relationship between skylark and landscape structure. Our results can help to test the usefulness and limitations of the different-scale LULC databases and to find the optimal grain size for modelling and estimating farmland-bird abundance data and may support landscape scale conservation management plans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]