The pressing need for increased agricultural production in the years ahead can only be met by more efficient use of our land and water resources including more widespread and better irrigation in those regions where rainfall is inadequate. Production gains will be shortlived unless the attendant hazards of salinization, water logging and lowered fertility are kept in check by effective planning and management based on a thorough understanding of the soil conditions. Soil survey and land classification are generally accepted essential preliminaries to investment in irrigation development.

The habitat of tsetse fly (Glossina spp.) depends upon climatic conditions, host

availability and land cover characteristics. In this paper, the Land Cover Classification

System (LCCS), developed by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the

United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), is proposed as a tool to harmonize

land cover mapping exercises carried out in the context of tsetse and trypanosomiasis

(T&T) research and control. Habitat modifications are

The main objective of the training workshop was to train the participants in reviewing and

analysing the remote sensing based forest classifications in their countries to facilitate the

harmonization and standardization at the sub-region and regional level and it included the

new demands of remote sensing based information for reporting to Convention on Biological

Diversity (CBD) in the year 2010. A supplementary objective was to inform the participants

about the proposed design and the implementation process of the remote sensing component

Land cover maps constitute a necessary tool for development planning and management of the territory. Furthermore, land cover maps depicting the current reality are a must in countries where, due to political changes, rapid dynamic phenomena have taken place, resulting in a complete restructuring of the agricultural and other sectors, as in the case of Bulgaria.

The scale of such maps should be large enough to provide detailed information, however it should allow for regional assessment, statistics and subsequent planning. The 1:50 000 scale is the most suited for this exercise.

Arid and semi-arid soils cover more than half of the total landscape of Chile. They occur in two distincts sectors of the country and can be conveniently referred to as 1) the Pacific Arid zone and 2) the Patagonian Arid Zone.

Common approaches to mapping green infrastructure in urbanised landscapes invariably focus on measures of land use or land cover and associated functional or physical traits. However, such one-dimensional perspectives do not accurately capture the character and complexity of the landscapes in which urban inhabitants live. The new approach presented in this paper demonstrates how open-source, high spatial and temporal resolution data with global coverage can be used to measure and represent the landscape qualities of urban environments.

This study assessed forest cover change from 1985 to 2016, analyzed community perception on forest cover change and its drivers, and suggested possible solutions in northern Ethiopia. Landsat images of 1985, 2000 and 2016, household interviews and focus group discussions were used. While dense forests and open forests increased by 8.2% and 32.3% respectively between 1985 and 2000, they decreased by 10.4% and 9.8% respectively from 2000 to 2016. Grasslands and cultivated land decreased in the first period by 37.3% and 5.5% but increased in the second period by 89.5% and 28.5% respectively.

Land use/land cover maps derived from remotely sensed imagery are often insufficient in quality for some quantitative application purposes due to a variety of reasons such as spectral confusion. Although object-based classification has some advantages over pixel-based classification in identifying relatively homogeneous land use/cover areas from medium resolution remotely sensed images, the classification accuracy is usually still relatively low.

Context: The fundamental driving force of land use and land cover (LULC) change is related to spatial and temporal processes caused by human activities such as agricultural expansion and demographic change. Landscape metrics were used to analyze post-war changes in a rural mountain landscape, the protected area of Halgurd-Sakran National Park (HSNP) in north-east Iraq. Therefore, the present work attempts to identify the temporal trends of the most fragmented land cover types between two parts of the national park.

In arid regions, oases ecosystems are fragile and sensitive to climate change, and water is the major limiting factor for environmental and socio-economic developments. Understanding the drivers of land use/cover change (LUCC) in arid regions is important for the development of management strategies to improve or prevent environmental deterioration and loss of natural resources.

This study uses a combination of remote sensing data, field interviews and observations, and landscape indices to examine the dynamics of land use and land cover (LULC), identify their driving forces, and analyze their effects on the landscape of Abaya-Chamo Basin (ACB) between 1985, 1995, and 2010. The results reveal that the landscape of ACB has changed considerably during the past 25 years between 1985 and 2010. The main changes observed imply a rapid reduction in shrubland (28.82%) and natural grassland (33.13%), and an increase in arable land (59.15%).