The productivity of semi-arid rangelands on the Arabian Peninsula is spatially and temporally highly variable, and increasing grazing pressure as well as the likely effects of climatic change further threatens vegetation resources. Using the Al Jabal al Akhdar mountains in northern Oman as an example, our objectives were to analyse the availability and spatial distribution of aboveground net primary production (ANPP) and the extent and causes of vegetation changes during the last decades with a remote sensing approach.

Spatially distributed hydrological models require information on the land cover pattern, as it directly influences the generation of run‐off. However, it is not clear which detail of land cover information is suitable for simulating the catchment hydrology. A better understanding of the relationship between the land cover detail and the hydrological processes is therefore required as it would enhance a successful application of the hydrological model.

Vector borne diseases are a threat to human health. Little attention has been paid to the prevention of these diseases. We attempted to identify the significant wetland characteristics associated with the spread of chikungunya, dengue fever and malaria in Kerala, a tropical region of South West India using multivariate analyses (hierarchical cluster analysis, factor analysis and multiple regression).

Regional estimates of soil carbon pool have been made using various approaches that combine soil maps with sample databases. The point soil organic carbon (SOC) densities are spatialized employing approaches like regression, spatial interpolation, polygon based summation, etc. The present work investigates a data mining based spatial imputation for spatial assessment of soil organic carbon density. The study area covers Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka states of India.

Scale is a fundamental concept in landscape ecology and considerable attention has been given to the scale-dependent relationships of landscape metrics. Many metrics have been found to exhibit very consistent scaling relationships as map resolution (i.e., pixel or grain size) is increased. However, these scaling relationships tend to break down when attempting to ‘downscale’ them, and the scaling function is often unable to accurately predict metric values for finer resolutions than the original data. The reasons for this breakdown are not well understood.

This research was carried out with the aim of presenting an environmental management plan for steel production complex (SPC) in central Iran. Following precise identification of the plant activities as well as the study area, possible sources of environmental pollution and adverse impacts on the air quality, water, soil, biological environment, socioeconomic and cultural environment, and health and safety of the employees were determined considering the work processes of the steel complex. Afterwards, noise, wastewater, and air pollution sources were measured.

Increasing interest in wetlands for environmental management requires an understanding of the location, spatial extent, and configuration of the resource. The National Wetlands Inventory is the most commonly used data source for this information. However, its accuracy is limited in some contexts, such as agricultural and forested wetlands. An large number of studies have mapped wetlands worldwide from the perspective of land use and land cover change. However, information on the actual wetland planting areas annually is limited, which greatly impacts ongoing research.

Montados form a heterogeneous landscape of wooded matrix dominated by cork and/or holm oak with open areas characterized by fuzzy boundaries. Montado supports a high biological diversity associated to low intensity management and a landscape diversity provided by a continuous gradient of land cover. Among other features this permits the classification of montados as a High Nature Value (HNV) system.

Human activities have created high nutrient surpluses in agricultural lands due to the increasing rate of chemical fertilizer application and the increase in livestock production. To analyse the nutrient characteristics and estimate the nutrient load in streams, we conducted extensive field survey and water quality experiments from 2007 to 2008 in Koise River, a major river of the Lake Kasumigaura watershed, Japan. Water quality indicators of total nitrogen (TN), total phosphorus (TP) and total organic carbon (TOC) were investigated.

Land cover changes affect local surface energy balances by changing the amount of solar energy reflected, the magnitude and duration over which absorbed energy is released as heat, and the amount of energy that is diverted to non-heating fluxes through evaporation. However, such local influences often are only crudely included in climate modeling exercises, if at all. A better understanding of local land conversion dynamics can serve to inform inputs for climate models and increase the role for land use planning in climate management policy.

This paper proposes an automatic framework for land cover classification. In majority of published work by various researchers so far, most of the methods need manually mark the label of land cover types. In the proposed framework, all the information, like land cover types and their features, is defined as prior knowledge achieved from land use maps, topographic data, texture data, vegetation’s growth cycle and field data.

Lake Chad in Africa experienced severe droughts in the 1970s and 1980s and overexploitations of water resulting in a decline of water level in the Lake and surrounding rivers. Such droughts and overexploitation of water caused a significant change of land use and water management practices over the last 50� years. Understanding the change of land use and land cover is, therefore, crucial to understand disturbance of the water cycle around the Lake.