A large wetland drainage project was initiated in 1912 near the town of Seney, Michigan, U.S.A. This project included the construction of a series of ditches through a large peatland to drain the land for agricultural use. The largest of these ditches was the 35 km long Walsh Ditch. Much of the drained wetland affected by the Walsh Ditch is now managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as part of Seney National Wildlife Refuge.

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.

Given historical patterns of decline, the American Black Duck (Anas rubripes) has long been a species of concern. To support the identification of core Maritime habitat, the distribution of breeding ducks was mapped at the landscape scale through the combination of GIS-based land cover information and five years of intensive aerial surveys (2006–2010). A predictive, mixed effects model was used to generate the maps, based on the weighted average of coefficients for the top 95% of all-possible models (as measured by AIC weights).

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.

Vegetation data in an early 20th century map from northern Tanzania are presented and discussed for its potential of expanding the analytical time-frame in studies of land-use and land-cover change. The starting point is that much research on land-use and land-cover change suffers from a time-frame bias, caused by limitations in remote sensing data. At the same time, the use of historical maps as a complementary data-set is rather insignificant. Can information in historical maps be used to extend the baseline in land-use and land-cover change studies?

Despite legislation and voluntary initiatives aimed at protecting the environment, previously undeveloped areas of Costa Rica are subject to new development opportunities. This growth has been largely unchecked, and has led to enormous amounts of foreign direct investment. This unchecked investment has led to destabilization of the natural environment, and, in the case of the Dominical–Uvita corridor on the Pacific Coast, has led to an observed increase in landsliding activity.

Traditional ‘in situ’ measurement techniques often fail to record the spatial distribution of floodplains. In that case, remote sensing provides inexpensive and reliable methodologies to map flooded areas and compute flood damage. The identification and monitoring of floods, due to their highly dynamic nature, require the use of high-time-resolution satellite images with the drawback that such images usually have low to medium spatial resolution.

The realized distribution of animals is often delimited by climatic factors which define, next to the specific habitat and food availability, their species-specific potential distribution. We studied the environmental limitations affecting the realized breeding and wintering distributions of the Citril Finch (Carduelis citrinella), one of the few endemic bird species of European mountain ranges. To assess the environmental limits that shape the seasonal distribution, we used species distribution models (SDMs) derived from macroclimate in combination with land cover information.

Improper utilization of natural resources without any conservation work is the prime cause of the watershed deterioration. Fast developmental activities and population pressure in the hills of Khanapara–Bornihat area near Guwahati city (about 10 km east of Guwahati) results rapid alteration of the land use/land cover in the recent times. This also causes the growth of land use over the unsuitable topography. As a result, there is a general degradation of the natural resources within the area.

The regional variability in the uses of wild yams is assessed according to their availability in relation with land-use and climatic conditions from the South to the North sudanian sectors in Western Burkina Faso. The study involves field studies and modelling of the geographical distribution of yams and seeks correlations between environmental and ethno-biological data. Terrain analysis consists of phyto-ecological surveys and interviews with local inhabitants. A cluster analysis of a multi-date image of data obtained by remote-sensing is used to assess land-cover.

Bi-weekly water quality data from seven monitoring stations located within Tahtali Watershed, İzmir, Turkey and digital land use/land cover data of the same watershed are analyzed in this study. To examine the changes in land use associated with urbanization, the satellite images of the main pool of the Tahtali reservoir prior to filling and subsequent to filling, respectively, are analyzed. Aerial photos of the basin taken in 1995 (October) are compared with images taken in 2005 (November) from the IKONOS satellite through use of several GIS techniques.

We used land‐cover maps and active fire detection based on satellite imagery to evaluate the rates and spatial distribution of peatland deforestation in Southeast Asia from 1990 to 2010. Over this time period, the proportion of forest cover in the peatlands of Peninsular Malaysia, Sumatra, and Borneo fell from 77% to 36%. After two decades of extensive deforestation (31 000 km²; 4.9% yr⁻¹) strongly associated with fire activity, Sumatra has been left with just 28% of its historical forested peatlands.