Urban areas are the most dynamic region on earth. Their size has been constantly increased during the past and this process will go on in the future. Since there is no standard policy and guidelines for construction of buildings and urban planning, cities tend to have irregular growth. Many cities in the world face the problem of urban sprawl in its suburbs. So issues of urban sprawl need to be settled with the help of technologies such as satellite remote sensing and automated change detection.

This paper examines the potential effects of urbanization on streamflow in Maine, USA, from 1950 to 2000. The study contrasts nine watersheds in southern Maine, which has seen steady urban growth over the study period, with nine rural watersheds from northern Maine. Historical population data and current land cover data are used to develop an urbanization score for each watershed. Trends in watershed urbanization over the study period are compared to trends in ecologically relevant streamflow characteristics.

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.

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.

Land cover generated from satellite images is widely used in many real-world applications such as natural resource management, forest type mapping, hydrological modeling, crop monitoring, regional planning, transportation planning, public information services, and so on. Moreover, land cover data are one of the primary inputs to many geospatial models.

Little is known about the habitat and ecology of suburban Barred Owls (Strix varia), a species sometimes considered the nocturnal equivalent of Red-shouldered Hawks (Buteo lineatus). We compared nesting habitat of Barred Owls to that of Red-shouldered Hawks nesting in suburban and urban areas, in and near the city of Cincinnati, Ohio, to determine whether any features distinguished owl nest sites from hawk nest sites.

Urban freshwaters provide a range of ecosystem services, including stormwater management, water treatment, biodiversity, and aesthetics. Management of freshwaters should aim to maximise as many of these services as possible, but managers are often focused on individual services. To test for the biodiversity value of stormwater management ponds (SMPs) in Ottawa, Canada, 20 SMPs were surveyed for macroinvertebrates using standardised sampling techniques.

Scientific interpretation of the relationships between urban landscape patterns and water quality is important for sustainable urban planning and watershed environmental protection.

Detailed, up-to-date information on intra-urban land cover is important for urban planning and management. Differentiation between permeable and impermeable land, for instance, provides data for surface run-off estimates and flood prevention, whereas identification of vegetated areas enables studies of urban micro-climates. In place of maps, high-resolution images, such as those from the satellites IKONOS II, Quickbird, Orbview and WorldView II, can be used after processing.

Tropical mangrove forests can play an important role in the functioning of adjacent marine ecosystems, by protecting them from an excess in land‐derived sediment and nutrients. The strength of this interaction may however depend on the nutrient status of the mangrove forest. This study related the nutrient status of eight mangrove forests in Phang Nga Bay (Thailand) to the land‐cover distributions in the upstream catchment areas.

CONTEXT: With rapidly expanding urban regions, the effects of land cover changes on urban surface temperatures and the consequences of these changes for human health are becoming progressively larger problems. OBJECTIVES: We investigated residential parcel and neighborhood scale variations in urban land surface temperature, land cover, and residents’ perceptions of landscapes and heat illnesses in the subtropical desert city of Phoenix, AZ USA.