Global biodiversity is changing rapidly driven by human alteration of habitat, and nowhere this is more dramatic than in insular habitats. Yet land-cover change is a complex phenomenon that not only involves habitat destruction but also forest recovery over different time scales. Therefore, we might expect species to respond in diverse ways with likely consequences for the reorganization of regional assemblages. These changes, however, may be different in tropical islands because of their low species richness, generalist habits and high proportion of endemics.

Calibration and validation of soil moisture satellite products requires data records of large spatial and temporal extent and for diverse land cover types. Obtaining this data, especially for forests, can be challenging. These challenges can include the remoteness of the locations, and expense of equipment. A location with a long record of soil water content data and the potential provide this important data is the Boreal Ecosystem Research and Monitoring Sites (BERMS) in Saskatchewan Canada. In and around the BERMS study area, there are five long-term soil water content profile stations.

The influence of land use patterns on water quality in a river system is scale‐dependent. In this study, a four‐order hierarchical arrangement method was used to select water sampling sites and to delineate sub‐basins in the Daliao River Basin, China. The 20 sub‐basins were classified into four spatial scales that represented four different stream orders. Pearson correlation analysis was used to quantify relationships between land use composition and the river's physical‐chemical variables for all samples collected.

Remotely sensed imagery is currently used as an efficient tool for agricultural management and monitoring. In addition, the use of remotely sensed imagery in Europe has been extended towards determination of the areas potentially eligible for the farmer subsidies under the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), through interactive or automatic land cover identification.

Despite many studies highlighting the widespread occurrence and effects of resource movement between ecosystems, comparatively little is known about how anthropogenic alterations to ecosystems affect the strength, direction and importance of such fluxes. Hydrological regime and riparian land use cause well-documented changes in riverine larval invertebrate communities.

AIM: We map estimated historical population declines resulting from species‐specific models of sensitivity to habitat fragmentation for three forest‐dependent chameleons. LOCATION: East Usambara Mountains, Eastern Arc Mountains, Tanzania. METHODS: We surveyed three chameleon species (Rhampholeon spinosus, Rhampholeon temporalis and Trioceros deremensis) along 32.2� km of transects and used a hierarchical, distance‐sampling model to estimate densities. The model included habitat characteristics at the landscape (patch) and local (transect) scales while accounting for detectability.

This study uses the Holocene lake sediment of Lake Ķūži (Latvia, Vidzeme Heights) for environmental reconstruction with multi-proxy records including lithology, computerised axial tomography scan, grain-size analysis, geochemistry, diatoms and macrofossils, supported by AMS radiocarbon dating. Numerical analyses (PCA; CONISS) reveal three main phases in the development of the lake. Response to the Lateglacial–Holocene transition in Lake Ķūži took place around 11,300 cal. BP.

Provision of clean freshwater is an essential ecosystem service that is under increasing pressure worldwide from a variety of conflicting demands. Water yields differ in relation to land‐cover type. Successful resource management therefore requires accurate information on yields from alternative vegetation types to adequately address concerns regarding water production. Of particular importance are upper watersheds/catchments, regardless of where water is extracted.

Temporarily open/closed estuaries in South Africa are being subjected to varying degrees of catchment land-cover transformation. Natural landscapes and hydrological functions are integral to the functioning of estuaries. The relationship between catchment land-cover and the health of the East Kleinemonde Estuary was investigated between 2011 and 2013, using geographic information system (GIS) techniques to delineate and quantify land-cover in the whole catchment, in the lower section of the catchment, and in the 1 km and 100 m buffer zones surrounding the estuary.

Ecosystem services to agriculture, such as pollination, rely on natural areas adjacent to farmland to support organisms that provide services. Native insect pollinators depend on natural or semi‐natural land surrounding farms for nesting and alternative foraging resources. Despite interest in conserving pollinators through habitat restoration, the scale at which land use affects pollinators and thus crop pollination services is not well understood. We measured abundance of native, wild bee pollinators and the pollination services they provided to highbush blueberry Vaccinium corymbosum L.

Low or medium spatial resolution satellite images are used for environmental monitoring in remote, extremely cold areas such as Antarctica. However, they cannot provide detailed spatial and spectral information over Antarctic areas. For obtaining this information, we propose an Antarctic land-cover classification method using IKONOS and Hyperion data over Terra Nova Bay, Antarctica. High spatial resolution IKONOS imagery enabled the detection of detailed, accurate boundaries between areas of snow, ice, vegetation, water and rock.

The long-term record of global Landsat data is an important resource for studying Earth's system. Given the identified gaps in Landsat data and the undetermined future status of Landsat data availability, alternatives to Landsat imagery need to be tested in an operational environment. In this study, forest land cover and crown closure maps generated from Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) and System Pour 1'Observation de la Terre (SPOT) data were compared to Landsat-based map products currently in use by the grizzly bear habitat-mapping program.