Although recurrent fire events with very short return periods have the most dangerous effects on landscape degradation, only a few papers have explored the landscape ecological factors that drive the probability of fire recurrence. In this paper we apply a habitat suitability model for analyzing the spatial relationship between a selected set of landscape factors (mainly land use types) and fire recurrence in Sardinia (Italy) in the years 2005–2010.

Both local and regional factors determine local species richness. We investigated the relative role of local (13 soil and tree stand structure variables) and regional factors (19 climate, land cover and geographic location variables) in determining the richness of several vascular plant functional groups in indigenous forest fragments in southeastern New Zealand.

One of the prerequisites of the REDD+ mechanism is to effectively predict business-as-usual (BAU) scenarios for change in forest cover. This would enable estimation of how much carbon emission a project could potentially prevent and thus how much carbon credit should be rewarded. However, different factors like forest degradation and the lack of linearity in forest cover transitions challenge the accuracy of such scenarios. Here we predict and validate such BAU scenarios retrospectively based on forest cover changes at village and district level in North Central Vietnam.

Capsule Diet composition differed significantly between winter cereals, winter oil-seed rape, stubble fields and permanent fallows.Aims To determine the composition of the diet of Grey Partridges in autumn and winter in four agricultural land-cover types, characteristic of lowland areas of Central Europe.Methods Faecal analysis was used to determine diet.

This study developed three scenarios of future land use/land cover on a local level for the Kyung-An River Basin and its vicinity in South Korea at a 30-m resolution based on the two scenario families of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report Emissions Scenarios (SRES): A2 and B1, as well as a business-as-usual scenario. The IPCC SRES A2 and B1 were used to define future local development patterns and associated land use change.

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.

The Sanaga River is one of Sub-Saharan Africa's largest and greatly regulated rivers. Available flow data for this hydrosystem largely cover the pre- and post-regulation periods. From comparisons between unregulated (hypothetical) and observed scenarios, it has been possible to separate and to quantify hydro-climatic (groundwater + rainfall) change effects from anthropogenic impacts (especially dam-related alterations).

In past decades, the Iberian Peninsula has been shown to have suffered vegetation changes such as desertification and reforestation. Normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) and land surface temperature (LST) parameters, estimated from data acquired by the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) sensor onboard the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) satellite series, are particularly adapted to assess these changes.

An objective and reliable assessment of wildlife movement is important in theoretical and applied ecology. The identification and mapping of landscape elements that may enhance functional connectivity is usually a subjective process based on visual interpretations of species movement patterns. New methods based on mathematical morphology provide a generic, flexible, and automated approach for the definition of indicators based on the classification and mapping of spatial patterns of connectivity from observed or simulated movement and dispersal events.

Greenhouse gas emissions and land use/land cover change (LUCC) are two human activities notably affecting climate change. Will temperature and precipitation increase significantly during global warming resulting in more pronounced LUCC climatic effects? Considering the interannual forcing of these two factors, the NCAR Community Atmosphere Model (CAM4.0) was used in this study to investigate the importance of climatological background to LUCC impacts.

Much concern has been raised about how multifactor global change has affected food security and carbon sequestration capacity in China.

In the arid Southwest, migratory birds are known to use riparian stopover habitats; we know less about how migrants use other habitat types during migratory stopover. Using radar data and satellite land-cover data, we determined the habitats with which birds are associated during migration stopover. Bird densities differed significantly by habitat type at all sites in at least one season. In parts of Arizona and New Mexico upland forest supported high densities of migrants, especially in fall. Developed habitat, in areas with little upland forest, also supported high densities of migrants.