Widespread anthropogenic land-cover change over the last five centuries has influenced the global climate system through both biogeochemical and biophysical processes. Models indicate that warming from carbon emissions associated with land cover conversion have been partially offset if not outweighed by cooling from elevated albedo, but considerable uncertainty remains partly because of uncertainty in model treatments of albedo.

Over the course of 1681 hours between May 5 and September 30, 2006, air temperatures measured at the 1.5-m height at seven sites in and near the city of Baltimore, MD were used to empirically model Δ [Formula: see text] R₋ₚ , the difference in air temperature between a site in downtown Baltimore and the six other sites. Variables in the prediction equation included difference between the downtown reference and each of the other sites in upwind tree cover and impervious cover as obtained from 10-m resolution geographic information system (GIS) data.

Stream fish distributions are commonly linked to environmental disturbances affecting terrestrial landscapes. In Great Plains prairie streams, the independent and interactive effects of watershed impoundments and land cover changes remain poorly understood despite their prevalence and assumed contribution to declining stream fish diversity.

We describe a process for developing an index of biotic integrity (IBI) for resident fish communities in an ecoregion that exhibits low natural species richness. From 1990 to 2006, fish community samples were collected by the North Carolina Division of Water Quality (NCDWQ) at 36 sample sites in the Cape Fear, Lumber, and Yadkin river basins within the Sandhills region of North Carolina. The NCDWQ does not currently have an IBI capable of distinguishing significant differences between reference and non-reference streams.

Texture in high resolution satellite images requires substantial improvement in the conventional segmentation algorithms. The use of wavelet packet transforms for texture analysis and image classification of high spatial resolution LISS IV imagery provide more details about the urban areas. This paper analyses the performance of a combination of Wavelet Packet Statistical Features (WPSFs) and Wavelet Packet Co-occurrence Features (WPCFs) for the classification of LISS IV images. The classification accuracy per pixel is improved in this paper by varying the window size.

A desirable feature of a global sampling design for estimating forest cover change based on satellite imagery is the ability to adapt the design to obtain precise regional estimates, where a region may be a country, state, province, or conservation area. A sampling design stratified by an auxiliary variable correlated with forest cover change has this adaptability. A global stratified random sample can be augmented by additional sample units within a region selected by the same stratified protocol and the resulting sample constitutes a stratified random sample of the region.

The Mississippi River Delta Plain has experienced substantial wetland loss from subsidence, erosion, and sea level rise, threatening coastal communities and the ecosystems that support them. The Atchafalaya River, the largest distributary of the Mississippi River, has one of the few prograding delta features along the ~200-km deltaic coastline. Understanding changes in the Atchafalaya River Delta complex (ARDC) development has critical implications for future prediction and management strategy for the Mississippi River Delta Plain.

Urbanization effects on ecosystem functions are both important and complex, characterized by scale multiplicity, spatial heterogeneity, and intensive human disturbances. Integrating the hierarchical structure of urban landscape pattern with ecosystem processes through simulation modeling can facilitate our understanding of human–environment interactions in urban environment.

The diurnal land surface temperature (LST) variation is a primary characteristic of the effects of urbanization. However, no study to date has focused on changes in diurnal LST variation in urban environments. This paper investigates the effects of urbanization on landscape pattern and diurnal LST variation of Taipei City, using MODIS thermal images and SPOT multispectral remote sensing images over the 1994–2010 period. Supervised land-cover classifications were conducted to investigate decadal land-cover changes within the study area.

The aim of our study was to explore the spectral properties of fire-scorched (burned) and non fire-scorched (vegetation) areas, as well as areas with different burn/vegetation ratios, using a multisource multiresolution satellite data set. A case study was undertaken following a very destructive wildfire that occurred in Parnitha, Greece, July 2007, for which we acquired satellite images from LANDSAT, ASTER, and IKONOS. Additionally, we created spatially degraded satellite data over a range of coarser resolutions using resampling techniques.

Knowing the influence of land use/land cover changes on the hydrological behavior of a subwatershed is essential to land use planning. The Alto Paraguaçu Watershed is a major producer of fruits and vegetables, and currently the largest producer of English potato in the north/northeast of Brazil. The water availability in the region can be considered the limiting factor to the expansion of agricultural frontiers.

Geographic information systems (GIS) allow researchers to make cost-effective, spatially explicit predictions of species' distributions across broad geographic areas. However, there has been little research on whether using fine-scale habitat data collected in the field could produce more robust models of species' distributions. Here we used radio-telemetry data collected on a declining species, the North American wood turtle (Glyptemys insculpta), to test whether fine-scale habitat variables were better predictors of occurrence than land-cover and topography variables measured in a GIS.