This study detects patterns of land-use and land-cover changes in the last three decades (1972–2004) and analyses its causative factors in the Upper Dijo River catchment, Midwest escarpment of Ethiopian Rift Valley. Data captured through the synergy of an aerial photo, satellite image and ground-based socio-economic survey were analysed by GIS and SPSS. The results showed a decline in shrub-grassland and riverine trees at 21.5 and 16.3 ha per year, respectively, and increase in plantation trees, annual crops and bare/open grasslands at 2.8, 12.5 and 24.8 ha per year, respectively.

We exploited publicly available satellite- and aircraft-based imagery to estimate urban vegetation cover fraction and land use by class for a semiarid urban area that includes Phoenix, AZ, USA, using low-cost and technologically modest tools. This technique is also used to evaluate two satellite-derived tree cover datasets as well as to compare estimates from the present study with land cover data generated from another study performed using the same study domain.

Sustainable land use planning involves both policy- and farmer-oriented agricultural land use strategies. In this paper, a spatially and temporally explicit multi-scale decision support system that reveals the biophysical indicators affecting land use choices of these different stakeholders, is explained and demonstrated. It comprises three different environmental assessment tools, designed to run with data supplied by traditional soil surveys and organised into a land resources information system.

Population growth in cities along with migration from rural areas dramatically increases the Land Use and Land Cover (LULC) changes. This study was conducted in Çanakkale province consisting of central part and its vicinities where rapid population growth and development have been taken place. This study aimed to determine LULC changes using remotely sensed data and geographical information system (GIS) techniques between 1987 and 2010.

Shrub cover has increased in semi-arid regions worldwide. This change has generally been viewed as land degradation, due to shrub-induced declines in pastoral productivity. As a consequence, widespread management treatments to reduce shrub density have been applied in many pastoral areas. These treatments, however, often do not have long-term positive benefits for forage production.

The documented importance of intergenerational human capital transfers in agriculture generally gives us reason to suspect that such transfers may be important in a forestry context and that there may be important implied differences between first-generation woodland owners and multigeneration woodland owners with respect to their motivations and future intentions.

Landscape connectivity is of paramount importance not only in maintaining both functionality and resilience of social-ecological systems, but also in providing Ecosystem Services (ESs). Despite recent efforts, several issues still need to be faced to fully integrate ESs evaluation relating to landscape connectivity into effective plans and environmental assessment procedures. Choosing an appropriate scale of analysis is one of the most problematic topics, since it can profoundly affect the evaluation of single patch contribution to global connectivity.

Increasing the accuracy of thematic maps produced through the process of image classification has been a hot topic in remote sensing. For this aim, various strategies, classifiers, improvements, and their combinations have been suggested in the literature. Ensembles that combine the prediction of individual classifiers with weights based on the estimated prediction accuracies are strategies aiming to improve the classifier performances.

The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), Article 12 of the Kyoto Protocol allows Afforestation and Reforestation (A/R) projects as mitigation activities to offset the CO2 in the atmosphere whilst simultaneously seeking to ensure sustainable development for the host country. The Kyoto Protocol was ratified by the Government of India in August 2002 and one of India's objectives in acceding to the Protocol was to fulfil the prerequisites for implementation of projects under the CDM in accordance with national sustainable priorities.

Household food consumption data is used to estimate likely changes in diet under healthy eating guidelines, and the consequences this would have on the agricultural sector in England and Wales. The first step entails imposing nutrient restrictions on food consumption following dietary recommendations.