Tropical lowland rainforests are increasingly threatened by the expansion of agriculture and the extraction of natural resources. In Jambi Province, Indonesia, the interdisciplinary EFForTS project focuses on the ecological and socio-economic dimensions of rainforest conversion to jungle rubber agroforests and monoculture plantations of rubber and oil palm. Our data confirm that rainforest transformation and land use intensification lead to substantial losses in biodiversity and related ecosystem functions, such as decreased above- and below-ground carbon stocks. Owing to rapid step-wise transformation from forests to agroforests to monoculture plantations and renewal of each plantation type every few decades, the converted land use systems are continuously dynamic, thus hampering the adaptation of animal and plant communities. On the other hand, agricultural rainforest transformation systems provide increased income and access to education, especially for migrant smallholders. Jungle rubber and rubber monocultures are associated with higher financial land productivity but lower financial labour productivity compared to oil palm, which influences crop choice: smallholders that are labour-scarce would prefer oil palm while land-scarce smallholders would prefer rubber. Collecting long-term data in an interdisciplinary context enables us to provide decision-makers and stakeholders with scientific insights to facilitate the reconciliation between economic interests and ecological sustainability in tropical agricultural landscapes.

Hyperspectral remote sensing enables the large-scale mapping of canopy biochemical properties. This study explored the possibility of retrieving the concentration of nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, calcium, magnesium, and sodium from mangroves in the Berau Delta, Indonesia. The objectives of the study were to (1) assess the accuracy of foliar chemistry retrieval, (2) compare the performance of models based on support vector regression (SVR), i.e. ε-SVR, ν-SVR, and least squares SVR (LS-SVR), to models based on partial least squares regression (PLSR), and (3) investigate which spectral transformations are best suited. The results indicated that nitrogen could be successfully modelled at the landscape level (R 2 = 0.67, root mean square error (RMSE) = 0.17, normalized RMSE (nRMSE) = 15%), whereas estimations of P, K, Ca, Mg, and Na were less encouraging. The developed nitrogen model was applied over the study area to generate a map of foliar N variation, which can be used for studying ecosystem processes in mangroves. While PLSR attained good results directly using all untransformed bands, the highest accuracy for nitrogen modelling was achieved using a combination of LS-SVR and continuum-removed derivative reflectance. All SVR techniques suffered from multicollinearity when using the full spectrum, and the number of independent variables had to be reduced by singling out the most informative wavelength bands. This was achieved by interpreting and visualizing the structure of the PLSR and SVR models.

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The waste of synthetic dyes from the textile industry causes environmental problems, and it is categorized as hazardous wastes. In contrast, the use of natural dyes is reported to produce fewer pollutants. However, the use of mordant for improving the quality of the dyeing process may release hazardous pollutants because mordant that is commonly used contains heavy metals. In order to claim that the use of natural dyes promotes the sustainable textile industry, it is challenging to find alternative sources of mordant-like materials that are environmental-friendly. It has been reported that tannins could replace mordant for dyeing process using natural dyes. This paper discussed the sustainability of the use of natural dyes in the textile industry based on economic, environmental and social aspects.

Higher education institutions must have a strategy change management in the increasingly competitive business environment. A continous performance improvement should be made accordingly. This study was conducted with the case of MSP-IPB, to analyze the priority of academic services improvement which were oriented in student satisfaction. This study used a survey design. Conducted using SERVQUAL instrument with 195 active students of undergraduate program in academic year 2014/2015 as respondents. Principal component analysis (PCA) was used to assess the SERVQUAL dimension that was most important to address to enhance students" satisfaction with MSP-IPB. The finding of this study suggest that the academic service performance of MSP-IPB needs to be improved because it shows negative gap value for all service quality attributes. Priority in changes management performed is to focus on internal factors of MSP-IPB. Recommendations change management strategy as follow to make service standards for the overall education services, to build customer relationship management (CRM) system, to build the capacity of MSP-IPB through the principles of good university governance, improvement of contents curriculum, teaching materials, and changes in teaching methods and to reallocate the resources that can support the success of improving the quality of education services provided. Results from this study indicate that the university management must make changes and improvements oriented student satisfaction for facing the era of globalization and increasingly severe business challenges in the present and in the future.