The purpose of this study was to characterize the land use, vegetation structure, and diversity in the Barnowpara Sanctuary, Raipur district, Chhattisgarh, India through the use of satellite remote sensing and GIS. Land cover and vegetation were spatially analyzed by digitally classifying IRS 1D LISS III satellite data using a maximum likelihood algorithm. Later, the variations in structure and diversity in different forest types and classes were quantified by adopting quadratic sampling procedures.

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.

Agroforestry is an integrated self-sustainable land use management system that is not only capable of producing food from marginal agricultural land but also capable of maintaining and improving the quality of environment. It plays a vital role in achieving integrated rural and urban development. But reliable data on area under agroforestry is not available as methodology for estimation of area under agroforestry is not yet standardized. In this paper, we propose to use remote sensing techniques for estimation of area under agroforestry using high resolution satellite data.

Coastal wetlands are important contributors to large-lake productivity and biodiversity and mediators of lake—watershed interactions. This study explores whether the size of the watershed in which coastal wetlands are embedded (a measure of strength of connection to the terrestrial landscape) influences their background condition and response to anthropogenic landuse.

Electrocution on overhead power structures negatively affects avian populations in diverse ecosystems worldwide, contributes to the endangerment of raptor populations in Europe and Africa, and is a major driver of legal action against electric utilities in North America. We investigated factors associated with avian electrocutions so poles that are likely to electrocute a bird can be identified and retrofitted prior to causing avian mortality.

China's Horquin area in the northern farming–pastoral transition zone is undergoing rapid land degradation and rangeland modification that is impacting far broader areas as the source of material for dust storms. Multi-temporal Landsat images of the Horquin core area were used to generate a time series of land use covering about a 30-year period, 1975–2003. We show that the physical environment in Horquin deteriorated between 1975 and 2000, although this situation was more controlled after 2000.

Impact assessment of watershed development activity assumes greater importance in present day agriculture. Considering the ability of remote sensing technology in watershed monitoring and impact assessment, a study was carried out to investigate the Impact Assessment of Karnataka Watershed Development Project (DANIDA) in Koralahallihalla Sub watershed in Sindagi taluk of Bijapur district in Northern Karnataka using satellite data of two periods i.e., IRS 1 C, LISS-III data of 30 December, 1997 (pre-treatment) and IRS P6, LISS-III data of 17 December, 2004 (post-treatment).

The provision of ecosystem services at the landscape level can be significantly influenced by land management practices. Within an agriculturally dominated case study area in Saxony, Germany, a more detailed land use classification, which includes differentiated information on agricultural management practices, was utilized within the raster-based planning support tool GISCAME. “Management” refers to typical, regional crop rotations and soil tillage practices.

Although developments in remote sensing have greatly improved land cover mapping, the mixed pixel problem has not yet been fully addressed. Soft classification techniques have been introduced to address the problem, but they do not show the spatial location of the class proportions in a pixel. Subpixel mapping has been introduced to address the drawbacks of soft classifications. In this work, the feedforward backpropagating neural network (FFBPNN) was used for subpixel mapping.

We conducted extensive mist netting and radio tracking of common frugivorous, seed-dispersing, and tropical forest-dwelling blue-crowned manakins (Lepidothrix coronata; BCMA) and white-ruffed manakins (Corapipo altera; WRMA) to study their habitat use, movements, breeding success, and seed dispersal potential in the fragmented landscape of southern Costa Rica. We obtained 1354 GPS locations from 20 BCMAs and 4040 GPS locations from 54 WRMAs we tracked. These birds were dependent on forest remnants and rarely moved through open habitats.

The European Commission Directorate-General for the Environment (DG Environment) and the European Environmental Agency (EEA) have identified soil organic matter conservation and mitigation of soil loss by erosion as priorities for the collection of policy-relevant soil data at the European scale. In order to support European Union (EU) soil management policies, soil quality indicators are required that can be applied using harmonized data for the EU Member States.

Understanding species distributions and population responses to environmental parameters is important for addressing landscape-level species conservation. We assessed American black bear (Ursus americanus) resource selection based on spatial distribution of a recolonizing population in Mississippi, USA. Given the philopatric behavior of female bears and the risk-disturbance hypothesis, we predicted that bears recolonizing Mississippi would occupy areas close to their source population but avoid areas near roads and with greater human population density.