This paper provides a comparative analysis of land-use and land-cover (LULC) changes among three study areas with different biophysical environments in the Brazilian Amazon at multiple scales, from per-pixel, polygon, census sector, to study area. Landsat images acquired during the years of 1990/1991, 1999/2000, and 2008/2010 were used to examine LULC change trajectories with the post-classification comparison approach.

Landslides are the most common hazard in mountainous regions of northeast Algeria. In this study, landslide hazard zonation of Souk Ahras province was carried out using a Raster-based GIS and statistical processing. Landslide locations were defined from interpretation of aerial photographs and field surveys. Rotational, planar and complex landslides were identified.

Recently, localized heavy rainfall over highly urbanized areas has caused severe damage in Japan. Although studies have indicated that the presence of urban areas can intensify rainfall, the chaotic noise caused by differences in initial conditions can change the urban effect. Therefore, the usability of ensemble simulation methods for urban effects on a single localized heavy rainfall event must be clarified to synthesize state-of-the-art observations and numerical model studies. This study examined the difference in a localized heavy rainfall event under different initial conditions.

In this study, three-phase satellite images were used to define rules for the allocation of time and space in construction land resources based on a complex adaptive system and game theory. The decision behavior and rules of government agent, enterprise agent and resident agent in construction land growth were explored. A distinctive and dynamic simulation model of construction land growth was built, which integrated multi-agent, GIS technology and RS data and described the interaction among influencing agents.

Impervious surface mapping has become a recent concern in remote-sensing applications because of worldwide urban growth and the resultant environmental changes. However, many effective impervious surface mapping techniques developed for moderate-resolution imagery are not applicable to high spatial resolution imagery such as that of IKONOS and the Advanced Land Observing Satellite (ALOS) due to their limited number of spectral bands and the lack of middle-infrared bands.

The population of the medicinal plant, Malabar nut (Justicia adhatoda L.) is shrinking in Dun valley due to habitat fragmentation, invasion by Lantana camara, over-exploitation, and an ever-increasing human population – the most important being the increasing demand on land for agriculture, industries and the urbanization. Predicting potential geographic distribution of the species is important from species and habitat restoration point of view.

Urbanization in India is rapidly increasing. Dispersed development along highways or surrounding cities and in rural areas is resulting in serious loss of agricultural land, open space, waterbodies, and ecologically sensitive habitats. The management and monitoring of such resources require an understanding of change in land use and land cover. Vadodara City in Gujarat, India, has been chosen as the study area because it is a rapidly developing city with increasing urbanization and industrialization.

We summarized all known historical and contemporary data on the geographic distribution of Etheostoma raneyi (Yazoo Darter), a range-restricted endemic in the Little Tallahatchie and Yocona rivers (upper Yazoo River basin), MS. We identified federal and state land ownership in relation to the darter's distribution and provided quantitative estimates of abundance of the species.

Urbanization effects on ecosystem functions are both important and complex, characterized by scale multiplicity, spatial heterogeneity, and intensive human disturbances. Integrating the hierarchical structure of urban landscape pattern with ecosystem processes through simulation modeling can facilitate our understanding of human–environment interactions in urban environment.

Urban areas are the most dynamic region on earth. Their size has been constantly increased during the past and this process will go on in the future. Since there is no standard policy and guidelines for construction of buildings and urban planning, cities tend to have irregular growth. Many cities in the world face the problem of urban sprawl in its suburbs. So issues of urban sprawl need to be settled with the help of technologies such as satellite remote sensing and automated change detection.

The urban heat island (UHI) effect is the phenomenon of increased surface temperatures in urban environments compared to their surroundings. It is linked to decreased vegetation cover, high proportions of artificial impervious surfaces, and high proportions of anthropogenic heat discharge. We evaluated the surface heat balance to clarify the contribution of anthropogenic heat discharges into the urban thermal environment.

Scholars have often puzzled over why ancient socio-ecological systems (SES) have collapsed or survived overtime. This paper examines the case of the 2,000-year old Ifugao SES in the northern Philippines and the contemporary challenges they now face. Five observations can be drawn. First, the Ifugao case does not fit some of the conventional theoretical explanations for the collapse or survival of SES.