1. For north temperate lakes, the well-studied empirical relationship between phosphorus (as measured by total phosphorus, TP), the most commonly limiting nutrient and algal biomass (as measured by chlorophyll a, CHL) has been found to vary across a wide range of landscape settings. Variation in the parameters of these TP-CHL regressions has been attributed to such lake variables as nitrogen/phosphorus ratios, organic carbon and alkalinity, all of which are strongly related to catchment characteristics (e.g. natural land cover and human land use).

This study aims to assess CO₂ levels in China, based on the dry air column-averaged mixing ratios of CO₂ measured by the Scanning Imaging Absorption spectrometer for Atmospheric CartograpHY (SCIAMACHY) instrument on board ENVISAT and emission inventories. A land cover and statistical data set, the Regional emission inventory in Asia (REAS), was also used in this study. The results show that the spatial variations of the CO₂ concentration in the whole of China are obvious, and with clear seasonal fluctuation during 2003–2005.

While crop rotation patterns can be complex with multiple crops rotated over several years, the most common rotation practice in the Central United States is biannual rotation between corn and soybeans. We analyzed the changes in crop rotation patterns from 2003 to 2010 using the Cropland Data Layer (CDL), which provides remotely sensed land cover layers for agricultural crops in the Central United States.

Monitoring land-cover change is often done by simple overlay of two classified maps from different dates. However, such analysis tends to overestimate the rate of change. Main error sources are the mis-registration between classified maps and their thematic accuracies. This study proposes a change detection method with morphological post-processing to improve change detection accuracy in comparison with traditional post-classification by taking into account these error sources.

In Malaysia, areas under oil palm plantations have increased dramatically since the early twentieth century and have resulted in multiple conversions of land change. This paper presents a spatial and temporal model for simulation of oil palm expansion in the Kuala Langat district, Malaysia. The model is an integration of cellular automata (CA), multi-criteria evaluation (MCE), and Markov chain (MC) analysis while MCE provides transition rules of CA iterations and MC analysis assigns a transition probability to each single pixel at the time steps.

The objective of this paper was to quantify long-term land use and land cover changes (LULCC) and to identify the spatial determinants of locations of most systematic transitions for the period 1957–2009 in the Jedeb watershed, Upper Blue Nile Basin. Black and white aerial photographs of 1957 and Landsat imageries of 1972 (MSS), 1986 (TM), 1994 (TM) and 2009 (TM) were used to derive ten land use and land cover classes by integrated use of Remote Sensing (RS) and Geographic Information System (GIS).

Despite numerous ecosystem services provided by urban trees, they are continually threatened by combined natural disturbances, invasive species, development and negligent management practices. This research characterizes the amount and cause of tree loss in Worcester, Massachusetts, in the northeast United States, and neighbouring towns between 2008 and 2010 using multi-source remotely sensed imagery and historical land cover maps (1976–2009).

The integrated remote sensing (RS) and geographic information system (GIS) approach was utilized in this study to classify land use and land cover (LULC), detect changes based over time, and identify transition trends in the Marikina sub-watershed, Laguna de Bay watershed, Philippines. Landsat 5 Thematic Mapper (TM) imageries acquired in 1999 and 2006 were pre-processed and classified using a supervised classification technique with maximum likelihood classifier algorithm in RS and were used to develop maps of the sub-watershed and sub-subwatershed levels in a GIS platform.

The impacts of deforestation and land cover change upon underlying soils were examined on one hillside in central Armenia. Soil characteristics in three land cover areas—forest, coppice, and pasture—were recorded and soil samples were analyzed. Deforestation and land cover change were found to increase erosion rates. From soil horizon and structural characteristics, it can be estimated that 40 cm of soil have been lost in the pasture and 20 cm have been lost in the coppice compared to the forest. Soil organic carbon was also affected by deforestation and land cover change.

The Pampean region covers a large surface in central Argentina, but despite the extensive agricultural activities and the high nutrient levels recorded in streams of the region, few authors have analysed the influence of land use on water quality. Here, we evaluated the relationships among catchment attributes (size, morphometry and land cover) and water chemistry in 23 Pampean streams in different seasons (autumn, spring and summer) and at three spatial scales: whole catchment and two scales of riparian buffers (200 and 500 m adjacent to both stream margins).

After the industrial revolution, urban growth has been increasing, especially with technological advances. Urbanization is accelerating environmental pollution and also affects climate significantly because of land use or land cover changes. In this study, the Hydrological Simulation Program-Fortran (HSPF) model developed by the United States Environment Protection Agency (USEPA) is used for modeling the impervious areas of Eskişehir which is located in the Porsuk Stream Watershed in Inner Anatolia, Turkey.

Identifying the relative importance of climatic and other environmental controls on the interannual variability and trends in global land surface phenology and greenness is challenging. Firstly, quantifications of land surface phenology and greenness dynamics are impaired by differences between satellite data sets and phenology detection methods. Secondly, dynamic global vegetation models (DGVMs) that can be used to diagnose controls still reveal structural limitations and contrasting sensitivities to environmental drivers.