A geoinformatics-based land suitability assessment approach was used to examine the prospects for precision farming in the Savanna River basin in Nigeria. The procedure involved the overlay analysis of land use, land cover characteristics interpreted on Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) imagery and physico-chemical soil properties and nutrient attributes in line with FAO suitability guidelines and models. The empirical analysis revealed areas of high, moderate and marginal suitability for the cultivation of maize, yam, cassava and oil palm in the basin.

During the 1990's community-based forest management gained momentum in Nepal. This study systematically evaluates the impacts that this had on land cover change and other associated aspects during the period 1990–2010 using repeat photography and satellite imagery in combination with interviews with community members.

A cross-sectional serological study was carried out to screen the sheep and goat population of Thessaly, Greece for evidence of infection with Toxoplasma, Toxocara, Leishmania, and Echinococcus and to determine the risk factors related to herd characteristics, herd management practices, farmer status, and the bioclimatic variables associated with these zoonotic parasitic infections. A total of 540 sheep and goat serum samples were examined. The seroprevalence of infection in all examined animals was 24.5% for Toxoplasma, 32% for Toxocara, 0% for Leishmania and 85.9% for Echinococcus.

The Okavango catchment in southern Africa is subject to environmental as well as socio‐economic transformation processes such as population growth and climate change. The degradation of soil and vegetation by deforestation and overgrazing is one of the downsides of this development, reducing the capacity of the land to provide ecosystem functions and services. In this study, climate simulations are brought together with secondary socioeconomic, pedologic and remote‐sensing data in a GIS‐based assessment of the factors commonly associated with land degradation risk.

In spatial ecology, detailed covariance analyses are useful for investigating the influences of landscape properties on fauna and/or flora species. Such ecological influences usually operate at multiple scales, involving biological levels from individual to group, population or community and spatial units from field to farms and regions.

This paper presents an objective approach for quantifying the amount of mangrove loss caused by expansion of shrimp farms in three villages of Krabi Province, Thailand. Landsat images from three time periods of shrimp farm development (pre-shrimp farms – 1989, development – 2001, and post-development – 2007) were analyzed using unsupervised classification algorithm. A post-classification change detection comparison approach revealed only moderate mangrove exploitation and shrimp farms, which displaced a variety of land-cover types in addition to mangroves.

National Agriculture Imagery Program (NAIP) orthophotography is a potentially useful data source for land cover classification in the United States due to its nationwide and generally cloud-free coverage, low cost to the public, frequent update interval, and high spatial resolution. Nevertheless, there are challenges when working with NAIP imagery, especially regarding varying viewing geometry, radiometric normalization, and calibration.

The objective of this study was to quantify forest cover changes in three watersheds (Gilgel Abbay (1,646� km²), Birr (980� km²), and Upper-Didesa (1,980� km²) of the Blue Nile Basin between 1957 and 2001. Four land cover maps were produced for each watershed for 1957/1958, 1975, 1986, and 2000/2001. Nine different types of land cover were identified, five of which were forest cover classes. Between 1957 and 2001, the total forest cover increased in Gilgel Abbay (from 10 to 22� % cover) and decreased in Birr (from 29 to 22� % cover) as well as in Upper-Didesa (from 89 to 45� % cover).

Pixel-based approaches are commonly used for urban land-cover classification and change detection, but the results are often inaccurate in arid and semiarid urban landscapes due to the mixed-pixel problem and similar spectral signatures between impervious surface areas (ISAs) and bare soils. This research proposes a subpixel-based approach to examine land-cover change in Urumqi and Phoenix urban landscapes using multitemporal Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) imagery.

This paper presents a complex analysis of both the contemporary and the historic development of the geomorphic regime of the transformed reach of the Morávka River in the Czech Carpathians. The assessment concentrates on the conditions and causes of the channel development in the last c. 200years compared with the state of European channels, especially those of the Carpathian zone. The Morávka R. pattern has undergone a rapid change in the last 50years, particularly in connection with the active channel narrowing and massive incision.

Urbanization represents the most extreme form of land cover transformation and is expected to restrict dispersal of animals, both because of the structural unsuitability of the novel habitat, as well as through mechanisms associated with human activity, such as disturbance. Fragmentation of populations by urbanization is considered to be a significant threat to several endangered bird populations, although isolation has seldom been demonstrated genetically.

Particulate matter (PM) pollution has been increasingly becoming serious in Beijing and has drawn the attention of the local government and general public. This study was conducted during early spring of 2013 and 2014 to monitor the concentration of PM at three different land surfaces (bare land, urban forest, and lake) in the Olympic Park in Beijing and to analyze its effect on the concentration of meteorological factors and the dry deposition onto different land cover types.