The impact of land-cover types on soil erosion and runoff, as well as on physico-chemical soil properties, was monitored. The study area, an agroforestry landscape was located in Sierra Nevada Mountains in south-eastern Spain. Eight land-cover types were investigated: farmland planted with olive, almond, and cereals; forest with P. halepensis and P. sylvestris; shrubland; grassland; and abandoned farmland. The erosion plots replicated twice were located on hillslopes, where erosion and runoff were measured after 22 storm events.

The Cropland Data Layer (CDL) contains crop and other specific land cover classifications obtained using remote sensing for the conterminous United States. This raster-formatted and geo-referenced product has been widely used in such applications as disaster assessments, land cover and land use research, agricultural sustainability studies, and agricultural production decision-making. The traditional CDL data distribution channels include paper thematic maps, email data requests, CD/DVD media, and ftp bulk downloading.

The assessment of cultural ecosystem services, in our case landscape aesthetics, is the most commonly investigated but least formalized issue in the scope of the ecosystem services concept. In contrast to ecological or economic aspects, the assessment of aesthetics cannot easily be based on quantitative information. Therefore, two different methodological approaches that assess landscape aesthetics either from an objective or a subjective point of view have been established in the past. This article presents in its first part an objective, landscape metrics-based assessment approach.

Remotely sensed imagery is currently used as an efficient tool for agricultural management and monitoring. In addition, the use of remotely sensed imagery in Europe has been extended towards determination of the areas potentially eligible for the farmer subsidies under the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), through interactive or automatic land cover identification.

Despite many studies highlighting the widespread occurrence and effects of resource movement between ecosystems, comparatively little is known about how anthropogenic alterations to ecosystems affect the strength, direction and importance of such fluxes. Hydrological regime and riparian land use cause well-documented changes in riverine larval invertebrate communities.

After summarizing experience of various countries in the field of landscape monitoring, it appears that the real changes of landscape have to be observed in a large scale (not smaller than 1:10,000) in order to avoid generalization of small landscape elements.

Statistical models that describe species-environmental relationships are important components within many wildlife conservation strategies. These models are typically developed from studies conducted on small geographic scales (hundreds of square kilometres), representing a relatively small range in environmental conditions. Such local models from local studies are often then extrapolated to predict the suitability of other unsampled regions.

The Pearl River Delta (PRD) region in southern China has experienced rapid urbanization and dramatic economic growth in last 25 years. Using identical observed meteorology for lateral boundary conditions, two one-month simulations were conducted: one using the original United States Geological Survey (USGS) 24-category land cover data (namely NU) and the other using the urban land cover data from 2004 Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) satellite images (namely HU) as lower boundary conditions in a mesoscale model.

Invasive species are especially problematic when introduced into ecosystems with native congeners. The extent to which niches overlap in space determines whether the introduced species threatens the native one or the native species can escape competition or the effect of control. We compared the spatial distribution in relation to landscape and land-use/ land-cover variables of introduced and native Phragmites australis (common reed) in a landscape of protected freshwater wetlands in Quebec, Canada. Results showed that the wetlands still serve as refuges for native P. australis.

The long-term change of the whole spectra of precipitation intensity in China is examined using observed daily data recorded at 477 surface stations for the period from 1961 to 2008. The results show a spatially coherent decrease of trace precipitation despite different reduction magnitudes among the regions. For measurable precipitation, significant regional and seasonal characteristics are observed. In autumn, the whole measurable precipitation decreased over Eastern China (east of 98°E).

Spatial and temporal variability in extreme rainfall, and its interactions with land cover and the drainage network, is an important driver of flood response. “Design storms,” which are commonly used for flood risk assessment, however, are assumed to be uniform in space and either uniform or highly idealized in time. The impacts of these and other commonly-made assumptions are rarely considered, and their impacts on flood risk estimates are poorly understood.

Shoreline changes along the south Gujarat coast has been analyzed by using USGS Digital Shoreline Analysis System (DSAS) version 4.3. Multi-temporal satellite images pertaining to 1972, 1990, 2001 and 2011 were used to extract the shoreline. The High water line (HTL) is considered as shoreline and visual interpretation of satellite imageries has been carried out to demarcate the HTL based on various geomorphology and land use & land cover features. The present study used the Linear Regression Method (LRR) to calculate shoreline change rate.