Land cover change monitoring is important for climate and environmental research. An automated approach for updating land cover maps derived from Landsat-like data is urgently needed to process large amounts of data. Change detection is an important part of the updating approach; however, pseudo-changes commonly occur because satellite images acquired in different seasons can capture phenological differences.

Marginal land use changes can abruptly result in non-marginal and irreversible changes in ecosystem functioning and the economic values that the ecosystem generates. This challenges the traditional ecosystem services (ESS) mapping approach, which has often made the assumption that ESS can be mapped uniquely to land use and land cover data. Using a functional fragmentation measure, we show how landscape pattern changes might lead to changes in the delivery of ESS.

Human-induced land cover changes are causing important effects on the ecological services rendered by mountain ecosystems, and the number of case-studies of the impact of humans on soil erosion and sediment yield has mounted rapidly. In this paper, we present a conceptual model that allows evaluating overall changes in erosion regulation after human disturbances. The basic idea behind this model is that soil erosion mechanisms are independent of human impact, but that the frequency–magnitude distributions of erosion rates change as a response to human disturbances.

The area of land occupied by exurban residential development is significant and has been increasing over the past several decades in the United States. Considerable attention has been drawn to the measurement of regional-scale patterns of land-cover change and assessment of its environmental and socioeconomic consequences. Yet little is known about the quantity of land-cover change within individual exurban residential parcels, which reflect homeowner preferences, land-management strategies, and the ecosystem services they generate.

We examined macroinvertebrate community data from Missouri reference streams collected approximately 12 years apart to evaluate whether substantial changes in community metrics and/or taxonomic composition occurred over that period. We used analysis of variance to test whether metrics differed between years or between other variables and used non-metric multidimensional scaling to examine compositional differences among samples and the environmental variables that were most associated with these differences.

CONTEXT: Landscape transition drives environmental change across the globe. However, landscape and its change are complex with high spatial heterogeneity, which challenges strategic decision-making. OBJECTIVES: This paper aims to derive management meaningful units based on landscape status and change analysis and the generalization of landscape spatial heterogeneity. METHODS: Based on contrasting cases from Finland (Vanajavesi) and China (Baota District), this paper analyzed the landscape attributes and change since 2000.

An Observing System Simulation Experiment (OSSE) for the Aquarius/SAC-D mission that includes different models for forward and retrieval processes is presented. This OSSE is implemented to study the errors related to the use of simple retrieval models in passive microwave applications. To this end, a theoretical forward model was introduced, which is suitable to reproduce some of the complexities related to canopy vegetation scattering.

Rapid land use/land cover changes have taken place in many cities of Turkey. Land use and land cover changes are essential for wide range of applications. In this study, Landsat TM satellite imageries date from 1987, 1993, 2000 and 2010 were used to analyse temporal and spatial changes in the Western Black Sea Region of Turkey. Zonguldak and Eregli two largest and economic important cities which have been active coal mining and iron fabric areas.

The conservation of Himalayan forests is big concern in view of global agenda. Many studies in this endeavor reported that the rate of forests degradation is posing a severe threat to the landscape and existing biodiversity in the Himalayas.

Flows from river basins in northwestern Canada have been rising in the last two decades as a result of climate warming. In the wetland‐dominated basins that characterise the southern margin of permafrost, permafrost thaw and disappearance, and resulting land‐cover change, is occurring at an unprecedented rate. The impact of this thaw on runoff generation in headwater basins is poorly understood.

The interaction between land use/cover change and landscape pattern is pivotal in research concerning global environmental change. This study uses three different Landsat images of 1989, 1998 and 2009 to study the land use/cover and landscape pattern changes in the middle reaches of the Tarim River basin. envi®, erdas®, ArcGIS® and fragstats® software were used to analyse the land use/cover changes. The objectives of study were to map and study the changes in land use/cover and landscape pattern, and propose some possible factors in making the land use/cover changes from 1989 to 2009.

In this paper a new approach for fractal based dimensionality reduction of hyperspectral data has been proposed. The features have been generated by multiplying variogram fractal dimension value with spectral energy. Fractal dimension bears the information related to the shape or characteristic of the spectral response curves and the spectral energy bears the information related to class separation.