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Showing items 1 through 9 of 20.
  1. Library Resource
    Journal Articles & Books
    December, 2011
    United States of America

    Impervious surfaces are important environmental indicators and are related to many environmental issues, such as water quality, stream health and the urban heat island effect. Therefore, detailed impervious surface information is crucial for urban planning and environment management. To extract impervious surfaces from remote sensing imagery, many algorithms and techniques have been developed. However, there are still debates over the strengths and limitations of linear versus nonlinear algorithms in handling mixed pixels in the urban landscapes.

  2. Library Resource
    Journal Articles & Books
    December, 2011
    Iran

    This study was aimed at assessing the causes of the gully erosion and its effects on the agricultural lands in the arid region of southeastern Iran. In this study, we have used geologic maps in scales of 1:50,000 and 1:250,000, aerial photographs on a scale of 1:20,000, field observation, and GPS (global positioning system).

  3. Library Resource
    Journal Articles & Books
    December, 2011
    Africa, Middle Africa

    The authors explore three problems confronting scientists working in the central African humid forest zone and show their interconnectedness in the context of the sociopolitical history of the area. These problems emerge from different domains at different spatial scales: agricultural development, natural resource management, and landscape scale conservation. Land and livelihoods are severely constrained in central Africa. Agriculture is rarely remunerative: prices are low, technology limited, land rights contested, and labor scarce.

  4. Library Resource
    Journal Articles & Books
    December, 2011
    Egypt

    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.

  5. Library Resource
    Journal Articles & Books
    December, 2011

    The serious food crisis in 2007 has reinstated the issue of food security. In particular, it evokes an old set of questions associated with the sustainability of an adequate food supply: are we facing a systemic shortage of arable land for food production? How serious is the oil dependence of food security in relation to peak oil (the point in time when the maximum rate of global oil extraction is reached)? To answer these questions one has to study the role of technical inputs in agricultural production, especially those inputs generated from fossil energy (how much fossil energy is used?

  6. Library Resource
    Journal Articles & Books
    December, 2011

    Biodiversity is vital to several important ecosystem services that ensure sustainability of food production. In organic agriculture, land management practices that promote biodiversity and soil quality are emphasized and the goal is to maintain a sustainable agricultural system. Soil quality or soil health is the foundation for all agriculture and natural plant communities and a primary indicator of sustainable land management. Soil quality is affected by farm management and land use decisions.

  7. Library Resource
    Journal Articles & Books
    December, 2011

    Biological indicators can be used both to estimate ecological condition and to suggest plausible causes of ecosystem degradation across the U.S. Great Lakes coastal region. Here we use data on breeding bird, diatom, fish, invertebrate, and wetland plant communities to develop robust indicators of ecological condition of the U.S. Lake Superior coastal zone. Sites were selected as part of a larger, stratified random design for the entire U.S. Great Lakes coastal region, covering gradients of anthropogenic stress defined by over 200 stressor variables (e.g.

  8. Library Resource
    Journal Articles & Books
    December, 2011
    Iran

    Land-use planning is one aspect of sustainable development that determines the integrity of socioeconomic and ecological nuance. Land evaluation is an approach to sustainable land-use planning, which predicts the capability of the land-use system. This means that a specific land area should be under specific use, considering certain factors and characteristics of the land and its location. In other words, lack of proper information on land capability and rational and irrational use of land leads to destruction of land resources.

  9. Library Resource
    Journal Articles & Books
    December, 2011
    Italy, Europe

    This paper addresses two important issues for large Mediterranean city regions: the differential impact of compact urban ‘growth’ and low-density ‘sprawl’ on land cover changes (LCCs), and their final effect on changing land cover relationships (LCRs). The urban expansion of Rome (Italy) during the last 50 years and the related LCCs were investigated as a paradigmatic example of compact versus dispersed urban development.

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