Anthropogenic forces that alter the physical landscape are known to cause significant soil erosion, which has negative impact on surface water bodies, such as rivers, lakes/reservoirs, and coastal zones, and thus sediment control has become one of the central aspects of catchment management planning. The revised universal soil loss equation empirical model, erosion pins, and isotopic sediment core analyses were used to evaluate watershed erosion, stream bank erosion, and reservoir sediment accumulation rates for Ni Reservoir, in central Virginia.

Mapping groundwater discharge zones at broad spatial scales remains a challenge, particularly in data sparse regions. We applied a regional scale mapping approach based on thermal remote sensing to map discharge zones in a complex watershed with a broad diversity of geological materials, land cover and topographic variation situated within the Prairie Parkland of northern Alberta, Canada. We acquired winter thermal imagery from the USGS Landsat archive to demonstrate the utility of this data source for applications that can complement both scientific and management programs.

This paper describes the spatiotemporal changes pertaining to land use land cover (LULC) and the driving forces behind these changes in Doodhganga watershed of Jhelum Basin. An integrated approach utilizing remote sensing and geographic information system (GIS) was used to extract information pertaining to LULC change. Multi-date LULC maps were generated by analyzing remotely sensed images of three dates which include LandSat TM 1992, LandSat ETM+ 2001 and IRS LISS-III 2005.

Three quarters of the global human population will live in coastal areas in the coming decades and will continue to develop these areas as population density increases. Anthropogenic stressors from this coastal development may lead to fragmented habitats, altered food webs, changes in sediment characteristics, and loss of near-shore vegetated habitats. Seagrass systems are important vegetated estuarine habitats that are vulnerable to anthropogenic stressors, but provide valuable ecosystem functions.

Currently, there is a major concern about the future of nutrient loads discharged into the Baltic Sea from Polish rivers because they are main contributors to its eutrophication. To date, no watershed-scale studies have properly addressed this issue. This paper fills this gap by using a scenario-modeling framework applied in the Reda watershed, a small (482� km²) agricultural coastal area in northern Poland. We used the SWAT model to quantify the effects of future climate, land cover, and management changes under multiple scenarios up to the 2050s.

Forestry plantations represent about 4� % of the global land cover and demand for wood is steadily increasing worldwide. Impacts of forest plantations on biodiversity are controversial; forest plantations could positively influence biodiversity by producing a buffer zone between native forests and agriculture, while replacement of native forests with plantations could reduce biodiversity. Chile is one of the main producers of wood worldwide, and production is largely based on intensively managed monocultures of exotic tree species.

PURPOSE: The study aimed to use the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model to simulate erosion processes in an alpine–prealpine catchment in order to provide data and information that may be relevant for managers so as to minimize reservoir siltation and water quality degradation. The main objective was to assess sediment production across the catchment and sediment supply to the main reservoir. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The Barasona reservoir catchment (1,509� km²) is located in the Central Spanish Pyrenees, in the Ebro Basin.

Latin American subtropical dry ecosystems have experienced significant human impact for more than a century, mainly in the form of extensive livestock grazing, forest products extraction, and agriculture expansion. We assessed the regional-scale effect of land use and land cover (LULC) on patterns of richness distribution of trees, birds, amphibians, and mammals in the Northern Argentine Dry Chaco (NADC) over c. 19 million hectares. Using species distribution models in a hierarchical framework, we modeled the distributions of 138 species.

Patterns of land-use and land-cover change are usually grouped into one of two categories defined by the dominant trend: (1) deforestation resulting from expanding agriculture and (2) forest expansion, usually related to the abandonment of marginal lands. At regional scale, however, both processes can occur simultaneously even in the absence of net change. Given the focus on net change, such redistribution of agricultural and natural and seminatural lands has been generally overlooked.

Land cover change (LCC) is important to assess the land use/land cover changes with respect to the development activities like irrigation. The region selected for the study is Vaal Harts Irrigation Scheme (VHS) occupying an area of approximately 36, 325 hectares of irrigated land. The study was carried out using Land sat data of 1991, 2001, 2005 covering the area to assess the changes in land use/land cover for which supervised classification technique has been applied.

The arctic forest-tundra ecotone (FTE) represents a major transition zone between contrasting ecosystems, which can be strongly affected by climatic and biotic factors. Expected northward expansion and encroachment on arctic tundra in response to climate warming may be counteracted by natural and anthropogenic processes such as defoliating insect outbreaks and grazing/browsing regimes.

Hydrological and land use changes can affect species in human altered landscapes. Typically the impacts of hydrological and land use changes are examined separately, with hydrological determinants used to explain the distribution of species in water dependent and aquatic habitats and land use factors used to examine terrestrial species. However, given the connectedness of aquatic and terrestrial habitats, stressors originating in one domain may be important in the other.