The management of pastures is very important to reduce soil erosion. A special attention is generally needed for the wood pastures which combine livestock grazing with trees and shrubs. In this paper, we investigated the differencess between the wood pastures and tree-less pastures and their role to prevent or mitigate the soil erosion. The soil erosion assessment has been performed by using of RUSLE and GIS. The model has been applied in two study-polygons with wood pasture and tree-less pasture located in the northern part of Hartibaciului Tableland (Romania). Our outcomes showed and highlighted by comparison that wood pastures have a lower predicted annual soil loss than pastures with accidental presence of trees. This fact suggests that wood pastures are more resilient to soil erosion than tree-less pasture. The metholology tried to calibrate a preliminary model of soil erosion assessment for wood pastures into the southern part of Transylvania.

Anthropic induced changes in land use modify the habitat and microhabitat conditions for many species. Afforestation and grazing abandonment in steppe-like grasslands alters the characteristics of open natural areas. We aim to understand the habitat preferences of the European Green lizard in a nature reserve affected by both processes, using CORINE land cover and data recorded in the field. The results show that the species prefers sparsely shrubbed areas and edge habitat but avoids the interior of the pine plantation and totally open grassland. On microhabitat scale, most preferred structures were shrubs and logs. CORINE Landover data yields statistically less robust information than the microhabitat features recorded in the field Management measures should aim to increase habitat heterogeneity and to decrease compact afforested areas.