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Land use, land cover change in urban pastoral interface. A case of Kajiado County, Kenya

December, 2014
Kenya

Suitable location and influx of immigrants have made pastoral peri-urban Kajiado County a centre of two conflicting interests; urban sprawl and agricultural intensification. To understand the resulting trends over the period 1984-2010 satellite image based analysis of land use cover changes and interviews with landowners were conducted. Interviews focused on the changes and trends in land use, their causes and future forecasts. Percentage changes in land use and land cover types for the years 1984 to 2004, 2004 to 2010 and 1984 to 2010 were determined.

Protected Areas and Deforestation : New Results from High Resolution Panel Data

Reports & Research
November, 2014

This paper investigates the
effectiveness of protected areas in slowing tropical forest
clearing in 64 countries in Asia/Pacific, Africa, and Latin
America for the period 2001-2012. The investigation compares
deforestation rates inside and within 10 kilometers outside
the boundary of protected areas. Annual time series of these
deforestation rates were constructed from recently published
high-resolution data on forest clearing. For 4,028 parks,

Satellite monitoring of land-use and land-cover changes in northern Togo protected areas

Journal Articles & Books
November, 2014
Togo

Remote-sensing data for protected areas in northern Togo, obtained in three different years (2007, 2000, and 1987), were used to assess and map changes in land cover and land use for this drought prone zone. The normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) was applied to the images to map changes in vegetation. An unsupervised classification, followed by classes recoding, filtering, identifications, area computing and post-classification process were applied to the composite of the three years of NDVI images.

subpixel mapping algorithm combining pixel-level and subpixel-level spatial dependences with binary integer programming

Journal Articles & Books
November, 2014
Global

A new subpixel mapping (SPM) algorithm combining pixel-level and subpixel-level spatial dependences is proposed in this letter. The pixel-level dependence is measured by the spatial attraction model (SAM) with either surrounding or quadrant neighbourhood, while the subpixel-level dependence is characterized by either the mean filter or the exponential weighting function. Both pixel-level and subpixel-level dependences are then fused as the weighted dependence in the constructed objective function.

Application of remote sensing techniques in wildlife management

Journal Articles & Books
November, 2014

Application of the satellite remote sensing techniques to wildlife research began from discernment of the individual animal and/or evaluation of animal behavior from the photography experiments. Satellite remote sensing to wildlife research at the present has applied for the purpose of evaluating the animal habitat. Trends in satellite remote sensing for wildlife are evaluating the index of wildlife habitat and estimating relationship with an environmental variables and animal distribution.

An Initial Assessment of the Economic Value of Coastal and Freshwater Wetlands in West Asia

Peer-reviewed publication
September, 2014

Many countries in West Asia, defined in this study as the Arabic-speaking countries of the Arabian Peninsula plus Turkey and Iran, have enacted environmental conservation laws but regional underlying drivers of environment change, such as rising incomes and fast-growing populations, continue to put pressure on remaining wetlands. This paper aims to inform conservation efforts by presenting the first regional assessment of the economic value of coastal and freshwater wetlands in West Asia.

New Cropland on Former Rangeland and Lost Cropland from Urban Development: The “Replacement Land” Debate

Peer-reviewed publication
September, 2014

In this study, a land use/land cover change analysis method was developed to examine patterns of land use/land cover conversions of cropland to urban uses and conversions of rangeland to cropland uses in the United States (US) Midwest region. We used the US 2001 and 2006 National Land Cover Datasets (NLCD) for our spatial analyses of these conversion trends.

Calibrating and Validating a Simulation Model to Identify Drivers of Urban Land Cover Change in the Baltimore, MD Metropolitan Region

Peer-reviewed publication
September, 2014

We build upon much of the accumulated knowledge of the widely used SLEUTH urban land change model and offer advances. First, we use SLEUTH’s exclusion/attraction layer to identify and test different urban land cover change drivers; second, we leverage SLEUTH’s self-modification capability to incorporate a demographic model; and third, we develop a validation procedure to quantify the influence of land cover change drivers and assess uncertainty.

Integrating Land Cover Modeling and Adaptive Management to Conserve Endangered Species and Reduce Catastrophic Fire Risk

Peer-reviewed publication
September, 2014

Land cover modeling is used to inform land management, but most often via a two-step process, where science informs how management alternatives can influence resources, and then, decision makers can use this information to make decisions. A more efficient process is to directly integrate science and decision-making, where science allows us to learn in order to better accomplish management objectives and is developed to address specific decisions.

Sustainable Woodfuel Supplies from the Dry Tropical Woodlands

September, 2014

Dry tropical woodlands provide around 80
percent of the energy needs of both urban and rural
populations in Africa and are of similar importance on a
more localized scale in other areas. They also provide
livestock fodder, building poles and many of the daily needs
of the rural people living in and around them. Concern about
the degradation and depletion of these woodlands date back a
long time. Large numbers of woodfuel projects were launched