Traditionally, management of rangelands is based on the successional theory for vegetation developed by Clements. This approach, which came to be known as “the range succession model”, assumes a progressive change of vegetation towards the final (climax) stage and considers grazing as a primary driver of its dynamics. This model cannot be applied in Mediterranean rangelands, however, because they are largely modified plant communities and their final stage is usually a forest or dense woodland.

Land‐cover change and ecosystem degradation may lead to biotic homogenization, yet our understanding of this phenomenon over large spatial scales and different biotic groups remains weak. We used a multi‐taxa dataset from 335 sites and 36 heterogeneous landscapes in the Brazilian Amazon to examine the potential for landscape‐scale processes to modulate the cumulative effects of local disturbances.

This work addresses the estimation of net surface longwave radiation (NSLR) from net surface shortwave radiation (NSSR) by analysing the Surface Radiation Budget Network (SURFRAD) radiation data under cloudy conditions. A general model is developed to estimate NSLR from the NSSR for cloudy skies with a root mean square error (RMSE) of 23.16 W m⁻² compared with in situ data. The model is applied to AmeriFlux data. The results show that the mean error and RMSE are –2.31 W m⁻² and 29.25 W m⁻², respectively, compared with the measurement of AmeriFlux.

Human activities influence the biodiversity of Mediterranean ecosystems and are involved in the transformation of natural habitats into farmland. We surveyed birds using the point count method on 288 plots at a 50-m radius in three altitudinal landscapes with different rural character in spring and autumn. The results showed that bird species richness in the study area was high (74 species). High total species richness was found in the upland rural landscape characterized by mixed land use and high landscape diversity.

This study provides a spatially comprehensive assessment of sustainable agricultural residue removal potential across the United States for bioenergy production. Earlier assessments determining the quantity of agricultural residue that could be sustainably removed for bioenergy production at the regional and national scale faced a number of computational limitations. These limitations included the number of environmental factors, the number of land management scenarios, and the spatial fidelity and spatial extent of the assessment.

The Maubesi Nature Reserve (MNR) is a protected lowland area in eastern Indonesia that mainly consists of mangrove forest. The objective of this paper was to demonstrate a simple technique to visualize and quantify the change in mangrove area using a 3-year dataset of Landsat TM images acquired in 1989, 2003 and 2009. The normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) was calculated to determine high and low vegetation biomass in each image.

We report estimates of the amount, distribution, and uncertainty of aboveground biomass (AGB) of the different ecoregions and forest land cover classes within the North American boreal forest, analyze the factors driving the error estimates, and compare our estimates with other reported values. A three-phase sampling strategy was used (i) to tie ground plot AGB to airborne profiling lidar metrics and (ii) to link the airborne estimates of AGB to ICESat-GLAS lidar measurements such that (iii) GLAS could be used as a regional sampling tool.

Land surface change caused by fires and succession is confounded by many site-specific factors and requires further study. The objective of this study was to reveal the spatially explicit land surface change by minimizing the confounding factors of weather variability, seasonal offset, topography, land cover, and drainage. In a pilot study of the Yukon River Basin of interior Alaska, we retrieved Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), albedo, and land surface temperature (LST) from a postfire Landsat image acquired on August 5th, 2004.

The ecological integrity of lotic ecosystems is intimately linked to the quality of their catchments. Environmental protection efforts should therefore be implemented at the relevant catchment-scale in order to support river biodiversity and associated ecosystem services. Therefore, freshwater management can greatly benefit from tools that enable spatially-explicit predictions of water quality across heterogeneous landscapes.

The Huajiang and Hongfenghu demonstration areas represent typical karst landforms and rocky desertification landscapes in Guizhou, China. These were selected for a comparison of rocky desertification and land use cover. Based mainly on 5� m resolution Spot 5, remote sensing images, topographic maps (1:10,000) and land use maps, the intensity and extent of rocky desertification, and slope characteristics of the two areas were interpreted. Spatial overlay analysis was used to compare the land use/land cover (LULC) and rocky desertification within each.

The aquatic vegetation of Číčov Lake in the Danube floodplain, which is listed in the Ramsar Convention, was investigated to address three main questions: (1) how have landscape composition and the structures of the lake and its buffer zone changed from the mid-20th century; (2) how have species richness and the abundance of the aquatic macrophyte assemblage in this lake ecosystem changed over the last 34 years; and (3) which landscape metrics can best explain these temporal changes for floating-leaved macrophytes?

Effective broad-spectrum biodiversity conservation requires that conservation strategies simultaneously meet the needs of multiple species. However, little is known about how maintaining habitat connectivity for one species or species group may also act as an umbrella for other species. We evaluated the degree to which predicted connected habitat for each of 144 different hypothetical organisms expressing range of dispersal abilities and ecological responses to elevation, roads and land cover function as an indicators of connected habitat for the others in the U.S.