It is widely recognised that the appropriate representation for expert judgements of uncertainty is as a probability distribution for the unknown quantity of interest. However, formal elicitation of probability distributions is a non-trivial task. We provide an overview of this field, including an outline of the process of eliciting knowledge from experts in probabilistic form. We explore approaches to probabilistic uncertainty specification including direct elicitation and Bayesian analysis.

It is challenging to perform spatial geochemical modelling due to the spatial heterogeneity features of geochemical variables. Meanwhile, high quality geochemical maps are needed for better environmental management. Soil organic C (SOC) distribution maps are required for improvements in soil management and for the estimation of C stocks at regional scales. This study investigates the use of a geographically weighted regression (GWR) method for the spatial modelling of SOC in Ireland. A total of 1310 samples of SOC data were extracted from the National Soil Database of Ireland.

We assessed past and present vegetation patterns in relation to land use on a municipal commonage in South Africa. We asked specifically whether the reassignment of the commonage for the use of historically disadvantaged town residents after 1994 has impacted negatively on the vegetation of the commonage. Analysis of land cover change using aerial photography time series revealed that the most significant human impacts on the Bathurst commonage occurred prior to 1942 due to heavy and uncontrolled communal land use.

The availability during the last decades of remotely sensed images and global climatic data allow us to analyse the “Earth system” as a whole in order to develop concepts for global environmental management. This system can be considered a complex, dissipative, dynamic entity, far from thermodynamic equilibrium (Schellnhuber, 1999). Energy balance has been considered for many decades to understand the functioning of ecosystems, the biosphere or the Earth planet as a whole, but it is also possible to study our planet from a thermodynamic point of view.

Groundwater resources of the Tarsus coastal plain (Mersin, Turkey) are being exploited heavily for a variety of purposes and they are under a serious threat from nonpoint source pollution from the conflicting land use practices and saltwater intrusion due to overpumping. In this study, vulnerability of groundwater to nonpoint source pollution was assessed using GIS techniques and employing both Generic and Pesticide DRASTIC models. Calculated vulnerability indices ranged between 68–206 and 69–236 for Generic and Pesticide DRASTIC, respectively.

Due to the accelerated growth of society, the gaps between the capacity of ecosystems to provide services and human needs are steadily widening. Natural, semi-natural, or managed ecosystems had been able to provide ecosystem services to meet the needs of social development. Four agricultural ecosystem services (net primary production (NPP), carbon sequestration and oxygen production (CSOP), water interception, soil conservation and agriculture production) were quantified in Guanzhong-Tianshui economic region.

Coyotes (Canis latrans) have expanded to live in urban areas with limited natural habitat. A year long coyote howl survey combined with geospatial information systems (GIS) was applied to locate populations within a metropolitan region, to determine the habitats where coyotes most frequently occur, and to estimate group sizes within this urbanized region. Surveys were conducted along the perimeters of natural areas and urban-residential communities.

Knowledge of resource selection patterns can provide important information for species conservation. During spring 2010 and 2011, we investigated habitat selection by territorial rock ptarmigan Lagopus muta helvetica males in a protected area of the western Italian Alps. We located males from 30 randomly selected survey points, and we measured the proportions of cover-type categories found within a 37-ha area surrounding each observed bird using three classification maps of differing information and resolution.

The National Wildlife Refuge System is the world’s largest network of lands set aside specifically for wildlife conservation. For refuge planners and managers tasked with maintaining ecological integrity and wildlife habitat, many uncertainties exist. In forests in the Upper Midwest, for instance, exotic earthworms are impacting ecosystem structure and function, but their community composition and effects on refuges is unknown.

The purpose of this study was to predict wind erosion in dry field in order to alleviate the wind-blown soil problems thereafter. A well-known computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation was utilized to predict soil erodibility under changeable wind flows over complex terrain by coupling the erosion mechanism. The erosion mechanism was investigated by field measurements and derived as a modified form of the WEQ (wind erosion equation) to represent short-term wind erosion.

We model the occurrence of European wild rabbit in fragmented environments in a mountainous area of northwestern Spain (Gerês–Xurés Biosphere Reserve). We carried out a field survey by sampling the presence/absence of pellets in 237 plots (100 × 100� m) selected at random below an altitude of 800� m. For modelling purposes, we considered eight predictors related to vegetation, topography, human influence and heterogeneity.

Understanding the patterns of species richness and their environmental drivers, remains a central theme in ecological research and especially in the continental scales where many conservation decisions are made. Here, we analyzed the patterns of species richness from amphibians, reptiles and mammals at the EU level. We used two different data sources for each taxon: expert-drawn species range maps, and presence/absence atlases. As environmental drivers, we considered climate and land cover.