This paper demonstrates a systems framework for assessment of environmental impacts from ‘green initiatives’, through a case study of meso-scale, anthropogenic–biogenic interactions. The following cross-sectoral green initiatives, combining the emerging trends in the North East region of the United Kingdom, have been considered – increasing the vegetation cover; decarbonising road transport; decentralising energy production through biomass plants.

Bird aircraft collisions (bird strikes) are a recognized safety hazard and land uses that attract birds hazardous to aircraft should be avoided on and near airports. Many airfields contain large areas of anthropogenic grassland habitats, often dominated by cool season grasses. Land managed as native warm season grasses (NWSG) potentially could increase bird strike hazards on and near airports by attracting hazardous birds and harboring small mammals that are prey for hazardous raptors.

The habitat preferences of the endemic Vietnam Crocodile Newt, Tylototriton vietnamensis were investigated on two scales: (1) at Yen Tu Nature Reserve, Bac Giang Province, Vietnam, while compiling information about pond occupancy and developing a qualitative comparison among breeding sites and (2) by developing a Species Distribution Model based on climate and land cover data identifying further suitable habitats in northern Vietnam. A factor analysis followed by a multiple linear regression showed 94% support for our occupancy ranking model. Our results suggest that T.

Soil contamination by heavy metals has become a widespread dangerous problem in many parts of the world, including the Mediterranean environments. This is closely related to the increase irrigation by waste waters, to the uncontrolled application of sewage sludge, industrial effluents, pesticides and fertilizers, to the rapid urbanization, to the atmospheric deposition of dust and aerosols, to the vehicular emissions and to many other negative human activities.

While diverse, native riparian vegetation provides important functions, it remains unclear to what extent these assemblages can persist in urban areas, and under what conditions. We characterized forested riparian vegetation communities across an urbanizing metropolitan area and examined their relationships with surrounding land cover. We hypothesized that native and hydrophilic species assemblages would correlate with forest cover in the landscape.

Remote sensing images obtained by remote sensing are a key source of data for studying large-scale geographic areas. From 2013 onwards, a new generation of land remote sensing satellites from USA, China, Brazil, India and Europe will produce in 1year as much data as 5 years of the Landsat-7 satellite. Thus, the research community needs new ways to analyze large data sets of remote sensing imagery. To address this need, this paper describes a toolbox for combing land remote sensing image analysis with data mining techniques.

Models to predict species’ ranges have chiefly been limited to abiotic variables. However, the full ecological niche depends on a myriad of factors, both biotic and abiotic, that often correspond to completely different data types. We applied a methodology based on data mining techniques to construct ecological niche models composed of biotic as well as abiotic variables using three quite different sets of variables: climatic layers, maps of land cover and point collections of Mexican mammals.

It is important to identify nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) from non-point sources (NPS) to protect watershed water quality. However, few studies have been conducted in a large basin to determine the sources and causal factors of N and P from multiple land use and soil types. In this study, the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) was applied in support of the Small-scale Watershed Extended Method (SWEM) in the Three Gorges Reservoir Region (TGRR), China. The first-order error analysis (FOEA) was used to identify the key sub-processes that affected the occurrence of NPS pollution.

In scope of an IWRM concept for the Federal District, Western Central Brazil we developed a planning support tool, which enables non-experts to test the effects of land-use and land-cover change (LULCC) on landscape processes and landscape functions (LPF) related to sediment generation and retention. For this purpose we developed the web-based tool Letsmap do Brasil. The tool has two principal layers. The upper layer contains information on land use and its effect on LPF, i.e. sediment retention, runoff control, nitrogen loss control and agronomic value.

Human land use contributes significantly to the growth of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Changes in land management practices have been proposed as a critical and cost-effective mechanism for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and promoting the storage of additional carbon in vegetation and soils. However many discussions of the potential for land use to mitigate climate change only take into account biophysical factors such as vegetation and land cover and neglect how the agency of land owners themselves affects whether additional carbon storage can be achieved.

Climate change in the Mediterranean is expected to lead to lower total rainfall and soil moisture, together with higher storm intensities; different vegetation types are expected to react positively or negatively to these and other changes. Climate change could therefore have positive or negative impacts on runoff and soil erosion during storms, and previous research has indicated that the impacts could be different at the field, hillslope and catchment scales.

Total phosphorus (TP) concentrations are known to be a significant factor influencing fish populations in Minnesota lakes. Consequently, a primary focus of the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources to address fish habitat in lakes across the state has been to determine relationships between TP concentrations and watershed conditions in Minnesota lakes. Because phosphorus concentrations in Minnesota lakes vary widely corresponding to differences in geomorphology, nutrient criteria were established by the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency for specific ecoregions.