land cover

Many boreal waters are currently becoming browner with effects on biodiversity, fish production, biogeochemical processes and drinking water quality. The question arises whether and at which speed this browning will continue under future climate change. To answer the question we predicted the absorbance (a₄₂₀) in 6347 lakes and streams of the boreal region under future climate change.

Cloud forest streams are diverse ecosystems that provide valuable services (i.e., drinking water), but are threatened by anthropogenic activities on the watershed.

In northern New Mexico, complex interactions among climate, land use, and the associated reduction of surface fire in forest and savanna communities facilitated the expansion of piñon-juniper woodlands.

Land conversion in sub‐Saharan Africa has profound biophysical, ecological, political and social consequences for human well‐being and ecosystem services. Understanding the process of land cover changes and transitions is essential for good ecosystem management policy that would lead to improved agricultural production, human well‐being and ecosystems health.

Human‐induced land use and land cover (LUC) changes threaten the ecosystem services of the vulnerable tropical afro‐alpine vegetation. Several LUC change studies are available for the Ethiopian highlands, but relatively little is known about LUC change in the afro‐alpine zones.

There are both semantic and technical differences between land use (LU) and land cover (LC) measurements. In cartographic approaches, these differences are often neglected, giving rise to a hybrid classification.

There are widespread concerns about urban sprawl in China. In response, modeling and assessing urban expansion and subsequent land use and land cover (LULC) changes have become important approaches to support decisions about appropriate development and land resource use.

Understanding how landscape, host, and pathogen traits contribute to disease exposure requires systematic evaluations of pathogens within and among host species and geographic regions. The relative importance of these attributes is critical for management of wildlife and mitigating domestic animal and human disease, particularly given rapid ecological changes, such as urbanization.

Declining crop and livestock production due to a degrading land resource base and changing climate among other biophysical and socio-economic constraints, is increasingly forcing rural households in Zimbabwe and other parts of Southern Africa to rely on common natural resource pools (CNRPs) to supplement their household food and income.

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.

Mapping the land-cover pattern dominated by complex Mediterranean silvo-pastoral systems with an accuracy that enables precise monitoring of changing tree-cover density is still an open challenge.

Iberian dehesa and montado are paradigmatic high nature value (HNV) agroforestry systems in Europe. Nevertheless their conservation status is uncertain as a consequence of their typological variety, different intensity of management practices on the ground, and other ongoing processes challenging their long-term sustainability.