Sand dunes encroachment is a challenge that faces land development in North African countries. Movement of these dunes threatens cultivated lands, roads, and urban settlements. Geographic information system (GIS) provides a tool for cartographic modeling of risk of sand dunes encroachment. This study modeled the potential risk of sand dunes encroachment related to their terrain characteristics in the Western Desert of Egypt. The Food and Agricultural Organization's land cover map of Egypt derived from Landsat Thematic Mapper was used to locate the sand dunes bodies.

PURPOSE: The peri-urban region to the south east of Madrid contains a mixture of housing, manufacturing industry and farming, some of which disperse metals, in particular cadmium, copper, lead, and zinc, into the soil. We have mapped the concentrations of these elements and identified the major influences on their distributions. MATERIAL AND METHODS: We sampled the topsoil at 125 sites across 1,050� km² of peri-urban land to the south east of the city on two grids, one nested inside the other. At each site, we measured the current contents of the four trace elements in the soil.

This article examines the transition from shifting cultivation to rubber production for a study area in northern Laos PDR using an agent-based model of land-cover change. A primary objective of the model was to assess changes in household-level inequality with the transition from shifting cultivation to rubber adoption. A secondary objective was to develop explanations for the rate of rubber adoption in the study area.

Green spaces considered natural remnants in urban environments play a key role in promoting environmental quality and forming a sustainable city. Nowadays, development of urban spaces has taken a hasty growth. In the meanwhile, the natural green spaces are severely damaged. The current study aims at investigating the trend of changes in green space of Tabriz City, the second large industrial city in Iran, on the basis of landscape ecology principles. In order to prepare the land-cover maps, Landsat TM and IRS LISS-III of the years 1989 and 2006 were applied.

Chongqing Municipality, located on the upper reaches of the Yangtze River, is one of China’s four largest megacities, comparable with Shanghai, Beijing, and Tianjin. In recent years, Chongqing and its surroundings have been experiencing severe environmental problems, such as urbanization, pollution, and deforestation, due to the rapid economic development of China’s inland region.

Manure is applied to cropland areas with varying surface cover to meet single-year or multiple-year crop nutrient requirements. The objectives of this field study were to: (1) examine runoff water quality characteristics following land application of manure to sites with and without wheat residue, (2) compare the water quality impacts of land application of manure to meet 0-, 1-, 2-, 4-, and 8-year P-based requirements for corn, and (3) evaluate the effects of varying runoff rates on runoff nutrient loads.

Humans have fundamentally altered global patterns of biodiversity and ecosystem processes. Surprisingly, existing systems for representing these global patterns, including biome classifications, either ignore humans altogether or simplify human influence into, at most, four categories. Here, we present the first characterization of terrestrial biomes based on global patterns of sustained, direct human interaction with ecosystems. Eighteen “anthropogenic biomes” were identified through empirical analysis of global population, land use, and land cover.

Precise soil quality assessment is critical for designing sustainable agriculture policies, restoring degraded soils, carbon (C) modeling, and improving environmental quality. Although the consequences of soil quality reduction are generally recognized, the spatial extent of soil degradation is difficult to determine, because no universal equation or soil quality prediction model exists that fits all ecoregions. Furthermore, existing soil organic C (SOC) models generate estimates with uncertainties that may exceed 50%.

The paper presents the development of a groundwater potential index (GWPI) map of the Araniar River basin, India, through an overlay analysis of climatic, geologic, geomorphic, soil and land use/land cover features of the basin using Landsat5 Thematic Mapper (TM) data and ArcGIS9.2. A correlation analysis of the developed GWPI map was carried out with a yield map of the basin to standardize the weights assigned to each theme.

Oil exploitation and road development have strongly fragmented the coastal landscapes, leading to profound ecological consequences. The dynamic relationships between oil wells, roads, and landscape fragmentation indices in the Yellow River Delta, China were explored. Oil wells, roads and land cover were mapped from TM images in 1992, 2000, 2006, and 2009, respectively. Changes and relationships were compared among three selected typical sections using linear regression models.

Over the last few decades, many researchers have produced landslide susceptibility maps using different techniques including the probability method (frequency ratio), the analytical hierarchy process (AHP), bivariate, multivariate, logistics regression, fuzzy logic and artificial neural network In addition, a number of parameters such as lithology, slope, aspect, land cover, elevation, distance to stream, drainage density, distance to lineament, seismicity, and distance to road are recommended to analyze the mechanism of landslides.

Lithology is an important characteristic of the terrestrial surface, whose properties influence chemical weathering rates. Specifically non-silicate minerals may contribute significantly to the weathering derived fluxes from silicate-dominated lithological classes. The Japanese Archipelago consists of predominantly silicate-dominated lithologies with a high proportion of volcanics.