The natural regeneration in the dehesa has been object of numerous studies, due to the ecologic and economic importance of such ecosystems. In this work is exposed a test of acorns germination of Quercus ilex L. subsp. ballota (Desf.) Samp, in the North of Córdoba (Spain), under three environmental conditions corresponding to the most traditional land uses of the dehesa: grazing, cereal sowing and fallow, each one with a different vegetal cover. A fourth group of acorns was placed in a tree nursery under controlled conditions.

Agricultural and forest productive diversification depends on multiple socioeconomic drivers—like knowledge, migration, productive capacity, and market—that shape productive strategies and influence their ecological impacts. Our comparison of indigenous and settlers allows a better understanding of how societies develop different diversification strategies in similar ecological contexts and how the related socioeconomic aspects of diversification are associated with land cover change.

In recent decades, interest in understanding species distributions and exploring processes that shape species diversity has increased, leading to the development of advanced methods for the exploitation of occurrence data for analytical and ecological purposes. Here, with the use of georeferenced centipede data, we explore the importance and contribution of bioclimatic variables and land cover, and predict distribution ranges and potential hotspots in Norway.

Increasing community dissimilarity across geographic distance has been described for a wide variety of organisms and understanding its underlying causes is key to understanding mechanisms driving patterns of biodiversity. Both niche‐based and neutral processes may produce a distance decay relationship; however, disentangling their relative influence requires simultaneous examination of multiple potential drivers.

Socioeconomic growth and urban change have been an increasing concern for decision makers in recent decades. The monitoring, mapping, and analysis of agricultural land use change, especially in areas where urban change has been high, is crucial. The collision between traditional economic activities related to agriculture in tourist areas such as the Algarve and current demand for tourism infrastructures in urban regions is also leading to loss of economic activity.

Mapping key areas for ecosystem service (ES) supply is essential for the development of strategies that will ensure their future supply. Given the rapid development in this area of research, we performed a review of different approaches used to map ES, with a special focus on those that use social–ecological data. We used an analytical framework based on five criteria for analyzing and comparing the methodological approaches: the types of ES, availability of data sources, types of data sources, spatial scale, and methods used to model ES.

We conducted nocturnal surveys in the insular and coastal areas of Coiba National Park (CNP) and its mainland buffer zone in Panama (Chiriquí conservation site) from 2009–2012 to determine the conservation status of Crocodylus acutus. In 99 nights, we surveyed 147.2 km and captured 185 animals during nocturnal transects inspection with headlamps. Overall, sex ratio was 1.00:1.01 female/male with significant differences by size/age class and year. Females were slightly larger in total length than males (115.1 ± 56.9 cm-females, 105.4 ± 71.8 cm-males).

We assess the spatial and geomorphic fragmentation from the recent Eagle Ford Shale play in La Salle County, Texas, USA. Wells and pipelines were overlaid onto base maps of land cover, soil properties, vegetation assemblages, and hydrologic units. Changes to continuity of different ecoregions and supporting landscapes were assessed using the Landscape Fragmentation Tool (a third-party ArcGIS extension) as quantified by land area and continuity of core landscape areas (i.e., those degraded by “edge effects”).

In this study we explored the potential of open source data mining software support to classify freely available Landsat image. The study identified several major classes that can be distinguished using Landsat data of 30 m spatial resolution.

Although agriculture is amongst the world's most widespread land uses, studies of its effects on stream ecosystems are often limited in spatial extent. National monitoring data could extend spatial coverage and increase statistical power, but present analytical challenges where covarying environmental variables confound relationships of interest. Propensity modelling is used widely outside ecology to control for confounding variables in observational data.

With the availability of very high resolution multispectral imagery, it is possible to identify small features in urban environment. Because of the multiscale feature and diverse composition of land cover types found within the urban environment, the production of accurate urban land cover maps from high resolution satellite imagery is a difficult task. This paper demonstrates the potential of 8 bands capability of World View 2 satellite for better automated feature extraction and discrimination studies.

Understanding the temperature and moisture sensitivity of soil organic matter (SOM) mineralization variations with changes in land cover is critical for assessing soil carbon (C) storage under global change scenarios. We determined the differences in the amount of SOM mineralization and the temperature and moisture sensitivity of soils collected from six land-cover types, including an orchard, a cropland, and four forests, in subtropical southeastern China.