Mapping and assessment of ecosystem services in agricultural landscapes as required by the EU biodiversity policy need a better characterization of the given landscape typology according to its ecological and cultural values. Such need should be accommodated by a better discrimination of the landscape characteristics linked to the capacity of providing ecosystem services and socio-cultural benefits. Often, these key variables depend on the degree of farmland heterogeneity and landscape patterns.

The drivers and pressures experienced by farmland, forestry and upland sites in the UK Environmental Change Network (ECN) over the last 20 years are reported through the lens of recognised approaches to the assessment of ecosystem service delivery. Temporal trends in ecosystem service delivery were examined using two methods: qualitative narratives and quantitative scoring of ecosystem service delivery according to land cover. While all sites included in this study are within the same national governance unit (i.e.

In this study, the impact of different urban development scenarios on neighbourhood climate are examined. The investigation considers the relative impact differing policy/planning choices will have on the local-scale climate across a city during a typical climatological year (TCY). The aim is to demonstrate a modelling approach which couples a climate-based land classification and simple urban climate model and how this can be used to examine the impact differing urban forms and design strategies have on neighbourhood scale partitioning of energy and resulting consequences.

Quantifying and mapping ecosystem services (ES), their indicators and their relationships is of crucial importance for environmental management. In this article, we analyze the spatial distribution of multiple-ES indicators at three locations on the pioneer fronts of the Brazilian Amazon. We identify trade-offs and synergies between six ES indicators for soil, vegetation and biodiversity characterization.

CONTEXT: Weather surveillance radars (WSR) have been used to locate roost sites used by Purple Martins (Progne subis) for decades. Improvements in radar data processing and accessibility now make it possible to monitor roosts over a broad spatial scale. OBJECTIVES: We sought to locate all of the Purple Martin roosts in North America and to use the data to evaluate (1) the land cover types associated with roosts (2) relationships among roost persistence, land cover type, and regional population trends.

CONTEXT: The urban heat island (UHI) is a well-documented pattern of warming in cities relative to rural areas. Most UHI research utilizes remote sensing methods at large scales, or climate sensors in single cities surrounded by standardized land cover. Relatively few studies have explored continental-scale climatic patterns within common urban microenvironments such as residential landscapes that may affect human comfort.

The urbanization of watersheds is a highly dynamic global phenomenon that must be monitored. With consequences for the environment, the population, and the economy, accurate products at adequate spatial and temporal resolutions are required and demanded by the science community and stakeholders alike. To address these needs, a new Impervious Surface Area (ISA) product was created for a Portuguese Watershed (Mondego river) from Landsat data (a combination of leaf-on multispectral bands, derived products, and NDVI time series), using Regression Tree Models (RTM).

CONTEXT: Golden-cheeked warblers (Setophaga chrysoparia), an endangered wood-warbler, breed exclusively in woodlands co-dominated by Ashe juniper (Juniperus ashei) in central Texas. Their breeding range is becoming increasingly urbanized and habitat loss and fragmentation are a main threat to the species’ viability. OBJECTIVES: We investigated the effects of remotely sensed local habitat and landscape attributes on point occupancy and density of warblers in an urban preserve and produced a spatially explicit density map for the preserve using model-supported relationships.

Community assembly rules have been extensively studied, but its association with regional environmental variation and land use history remains largely unexplored. Land use history might be especially important in Mediterranean forests, considering their historical deforestation and recent afforestation.

The proliferation of artificial lighting at night is one of the key anthropogenic changes associated with urbanised areas as well as some non-urban areas. Disruption to natural light/dark regimes can have considerable effects on the timing of different behaviours of birds, particularly during the breeding season. However, the effect of artificial lights on the timing of behaviours during winter has received relatively little attention, despite the fact that time partitioning of foraging can have implications for avian winter survival.

Urban greenery is a favoured approach applied towards reducing urban warmth and climate discomfort, but ascertaining its measured and perceived effectiveness in tropical climates is relatively understudied. To this end, we investigated microclimate differences within an urban park (the Singapore Botanic Gardens) to assess if variations in plot-scale land cover affect both objective (measured) and subjective (surveyed) microclimate data.

Previous studies at the scale of a city have shown that surface soil nutrients, pH, and soil organic matter (SOM) can vary by land cover, land use, and management. This study was conducted in Baltimore County, Maryland, to quantify the differences in characteristics of soil in a residential neighborhood and adjacent forest patch sampling at a fine scale. The first objective was to compare soil characteristics in a residential neighborhood among ecotope types of forest, lawn, and planting beds that were underlain by the same parent material and thus only differed in plant cover.