In the Three Gorges of China, there are frequent landslides, and the potential risk of landslides is tremendous. An efficient and accurate method of generating landslide susceptibility maps is very important to mitigate the loss of lives and properties caused by these landslides. This paper presents landslide susceptibility mapping on the Zigui-Badong of the Three Gorges, using rough sets and back-propagation neural networks (BPNNs). Landslide locations were obtained from a landslide inventory map, supported by field surveys.

Soil and climatic conditions as well as land cover and land management have been shown to strongly impact the structure and diversity of the soil bacterial communities. Here, we addressed under a same land cover the potential effect of the edaphic parameters on the soil bacterial communities, excluding potential confounding factors as climate. To do this, we characterized two natural soil sequences occurring in the Montiers experimental site.

An assessment system suitable to support implementation of the EU Water Framework Directive's local water management plans should build on quantitative knowledge about a suite of well-documented indicator and umbrella species’ requirements for different stream orders. Assuring high communication value for improving local public awareness and participation for restoring ecological integrity in impaired headwater streams is critical. Loss and fragmentation of forests are major threats to ecological integrity.

Worldwide, changing climates and land use practices are escalating woody-plants encroachment into grasslands, reducing biodiversity and altering ecosystem functions. The loss of alpine grasslands is a major conservation concern as they harbor many rare and endemic species. Alpine meadows in Northwest Yunnan, China, represent a global biodiversity hotspot with high species richness, beta diversity, and endemism. Shrubs have expanded greatly in the region and threaten alpine meadow biodiversity.

Fragmentation of forest landscapes and structural degradation of woodlands have a holistic negative effect on biodiversity. Bats are considered as indicators of woodland’s structural quality. However, as bats commute long distances on a nightly basis, their diversity should also be limited by large-scale drivers such as landscape and species availability in the region. Therefore we examined roles of the local species pool, landscape structure and habitat properties on species richness of bats through three spatial scales with emphasis on top–down relationships.

With an apparent abundance of idled and under-utilized agricultural land in Northern Ontario, there is interest in the ability of short-rotation forests to supply bioenergy and other possible bioproducts. Once established, Short Rotation Coppice (SRC) plantations can be harvested on (roughly) three-year cutting cycles until about age 22. Purpose-grown plantations such as these could be used as stand-alone sources of fibre or used in conjunction with sources such as natural forests or woody residues.

A software application for automatic descriptive feature extraction from image-objects, FETEX 2.0, is presented and described in this paper. The input data include a multispectral high resolution digital image and a vector file in shapefile format containing the polygons or objects, usually extracted from a geospatial database.

Nitrate and pesticide leaching led to the designation of groundwater protection zones in Denmark. The protective measures in these zones often clash with local interests in agriculture. Scenarios were used to evaluate the development of a groundwater protection zone in a farming area. Stakeholders are accorded strong influence on the scenarios. Scenario inputs comprised land cover, land use and farmers' plans and preferences, as registered in interviews with farmers. Scenarios were evaluated regarding the effect on nitrate leaching, extent of pesticide-free area and farm income.

Turkey (Türkiye) lies at the nexus of Europe, the Middle East, Central Asia and Africa. Turkey’s location, mountains, and its encirclement by three seas have resulted in high terrestrial, fresh water, and marine biodiversity. Most of Turkey’s land area is covered by one of three biodiversity hotspots (Caucasus, Irano-Anatolian, and Mediterranean). Of over 9000 known native vascular plant species, one third are endemic.

It is well recognized that aggregation of the inhomogeneous data for soils, management, and weather within a land unit for crop simulation plays a key role in the scaling-up task of crop simulation at regional scales. While the other spatial data could be obtained at a desired level, weather data might not be available in mountainous regions where the production system is comprised of many small farms.

Frequent alteration in land cover often leads to decreased stability of ecosystems which can also increase the vulnerability of rural communities to externalities of environmental change. This study carried out in parts of the coast of southwestern Nigeria utilized topographic base maps and two-time Landsat TM imageries to assess the trend in land cover changes and ecosystems degradation for the three time periods 1965, 1986 and 2001. Remote sensing, geographic information systems and landscape pattern analysis were employed for data processing and analysis.

The classification of remotely sensed images such as aerial photographs or satellite sensor images for deriving ecosystem-related maps (e.g., land cover, land use, vegetation, soil) is generally based on clustering of spatial entities within a spectral space. In most cases, Boolean logic is applied in order to map landscape patterns. One major concern is that this implies an ability to divide the gradual variability of the Earth's surface into a finite number of discrete non-overlapping classes, which are considered to be exhaustively defined and mutually exclusive.