Groundwater exploration in the Western Doon valley has been carried out to delineate the groundwater potential and groundwater quality zones suitable for domestic purposes based on the integrated use of Remote Sensing and Geographical Information Systems (GIS). The Western Doon Valley, occupying broad synclinal troughs in the evolving fold-thrust system of sub-Himalaya, which is filled by post-Siwalik fluvial and debris flow deposits in the late Quaternary-Holocene.

Agent-based models of land use and cover change (ABMs/LUCC) have traditionally represented land-use and land-cover changes as arising from social, economic and demographic conditions, while spatial ecological models have tended to simulate the environmental impacts of spatially aggregated human decisions.

Conservation and monitoring of forest biodiversity requires reliable information about forest structure and composition at multiple spatial scales. However, detailed data about forest habitat characteristics across large areas are often incomplete due to difficulties associated with field sampling methods. To overcome this limitation we employed a nationally available light detection and ranging (LiDAR) remote sensing dataset to develop variables describing forest landscape structure across a large environmental gradient in Switzerland.

On the basis of research and the data of large-scale soil mapping of the old drained territories new threshold values of the organic substance content in peat-mineral horizon for branch degraded histosols from agropeat soils are presented in the conditions of the Republic of Belarus. In course of the study there were analyzed arable peat soils and residual glezative degroturfzems (peat and inorganic soil, mineral and residual turf, mineral and post-turf ones).

This paper examines the combined effects of catchment complexity in terms of physiography, land use patterns, and lithology on the export of dissolved inorganic nitrogen and dissolved silica from heterogeneous nested catchments in the Grand-Duchy of Luxembourg. Using results from water quality monitoring at 24 sampling sites, we determined the first-order controls on these fluxes.

Complexity embedded in coastal management leads to numerous questions as to how inherent spatial and temporal linkages among evapotranspiration (ET), depth to groundwater and land-use/land-cover change (LUCC) could affect the dynamics among these seemingly unrelated events. This article aims to address such unique dynamics in the nexus of physical geography and ecohydrology.

Groundwater vulnerability assessment is an important task in water resources and land management. The most sophisticated among the vulnerability assessment techniques is the GIS-based DRASTIC model. However, despite its popularity, it is marred with excessive subjectivity glitches; little research has been conducted to address the shortcomings associated with this method. This study investigates various issues regarding the application of the GIS-based DRASTIC model through a critical review of relevant literatures.

The Cerrados of central Brazil have undergone profound landscape transformation in recent decades due to agricultural expansion, and this remains poorly assessed. The present research investigates the spatial-temporal rates and patterns of land-use and land-cover (LULC) changes in one of the main areas of agricultural production in Mato Grosso State (Brazil), the region of Primavera do Leste. To quantify the different aspects of LULC changes (e.g.

Economic globalization manifests in landscapes through regional integration initiatives involving trans-boundary infrastructure. While the relationships of roads, accessibility and land cover are well-understood, they have rarely been considered across borders in national frontier regions. We therefore pursue an analysis of infrastructure connectivity and land cover change in the tri-national frontier of the southwestern Amazon where Bolivia, Brazil and Peru meet, and where the Inter-Oceanic Highway has recently been paved.

Species distribution models (SDMs) are often used in conservation planning, but their utility can be improved by assessing the relationships between environmental and species response variables. We constructed SDMs for 30 stream fishes of Maryland, USA, using watershed attributes as environmental variables and presence/absence as species responses. SDMs showed substantial agreement between observed and predicted values for 17 species.

CONTEXT : Understanding the variability of vegetation distribution and its determinants is a central issue for addressing the effects of edges on ecological processes. Recent studies have revealed inconsistencies in the patterns of responses to edge effects that raise important questions about their determinants. We investigated the edge effect response patterns by adapting a recently proposed continuous approach to the case of small forest fragments in southwestern France.