In this paper, we prove the nonvanishing and some special cases of the abundance for log canonical threefold pairs over an algebraically closed field k of characteristic $p> 3$. More precisely, we prove that if $(X,B)$ be a projective log canonical threefold pair over k and $K_{X}+B$ is pseudo-effective, then $\kappa (K_{X}+B)\geq 0$, and if $K_{X}+B$ is nef and $\kappa (K_{X}+B)\geq 1$, then $K_{X}+B$ is semi-ample.

As applications, we show that the log canonical rings of projective log canonical threefold pairs over k are finitely generated and the abundance holds when the nef dimension $n(K_{X}+B)\leq 2$ or when the Albanese map $a_{X}:X\to \mathrm {Alb}(X)$ is nontrivial. Moreover, we prove that the abundance for klt threefold pairs over k implies the abundance for log canonical threefold pairs over k.

We prove the finiteness of log pluricanonical representations for projective log canonical pairs with semi-ample log canonical divisor. As a corollary, we obtain that the log canonical divisor of a projective semi log canonical pair is semi-ample if and only if the log canonical divisor of its normalization is semi-ample. We also treat many other applications.

We use reduction maps to study the minimal model program. Our main result is that the existence of a good minimal model for a Kawamata log terminal pair (X,Δ) can be detected on a birational model of the base of the (KX+Δ)-trivial reduction map. We then interpret the main conjectures of the minimal model program as a natural statement about the existence of curves on X.