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.

New Caledonia is a widely recognised marine and terrestrial biodiversity hot spot. However, this unique environment is under increasing anthropogenic pressure. Major threats are related to land cover change and include fire, urban sprawling and mining. Resulting habitat loss and fragmentation end up in serious erosion of the local biodiversity. Mining is of particular concern due to its economic significance for the island. Open cast mines were exploited there since 1873, and scraping out soil to access ores wipes out flora.

This paper discusses transitions in land use evidenced by the case of the Suoi Muoi catchment area in NW mountain of Vietnam. Land use transitions were detected from LANDSAT and SPOT satellite images taken over the last 40 years. The maps showing changes in land use were linked with biophysical properties of the land such as slope gradient, elevation and soil type, and cultural characteristic of various ethnic groups by means of logistic regression model.

A ca. 2010, 30m resolution map depicting annually tilled areas across the conterminous United States was developed. Input sources included fouryears, spanning 2008–2011, of annual national-level coverage Cropland Data Layer (CDL) land cover classifications as produced by the National Agricultural Statistics Service. Derived total land area under tillage from the aggregate CDL product equaled 112.8million hectares (278.7million acres).

South Atlantic coastal plain streams are unique and understudied freshwater environments that provide crucial habitats for a wide range of aquatic taxa. We investigated patterns in fish assemblages across South Carolina's coastal plain, and developed statistical models to identify the dominant multiscale abiotic environmental factors that influence assemblage structure.

Questions: Which are the factors that influence forest and shrubland loss and regeneration and their underlying drivers? Location: Central Chile, a world biodiversity hotspot. Methods: Using land-cover data from the years 1975, 1985, 1999 and 2008, we fitted classification trees and multiple logistic regression models to account for the relationship between different trajectories of vegetation change and a range of biophysical and socio-economic factors.

Compact Airborne Spectrographic Imager (CASI) hyperspectral imagery was acquired over the Little Miami River Watershed in Ohio, USA, which was one of the largest hyperspectral image acquisitions. A hierarchical approach was employed using two different classification algorithms: ‘image object segmentation’ for level 1 and ‘spectral angle mapper’ (SAM) for level 2. This classification scheme was developed to overcome the spectral inseparability of urban and rural features and to deal with radiometric distortions due to cross-track illumination.