New residential developments in the Southeastern United States peaked in early 2006, but since then declined leaving numerous residential developments stalled in various stages of construction. The status of 119 previously identified (2009) abandoned residential housing developments was reinvestigated in 2013 using the most current available high-resolution aerial photography with a randomly selected number of sites (40) in Greenville, Pickens and Spartanburg Counties in South Carolina.

The successful implementation of habitat conservation measures demands regular and spatially explicit monitoring and reporting on conservation status at a range of scales, based on indicators of both habitat range and condition (structure and functions required for long-term maintenance). Such is the case with the Natura 2000 protected areas in Europe.

Andisols present exceptional physical properties, making up 24%), however, during summer they can reach volumetric water contents near to the permanent wilting point quickly at a depth of 5 cm. The water table altitude was directly related to the temporal changes of θFᵢₑₗd measured at a depth of 50 cm, highlighting the fact that the saturated and unsaturated zones are connected.

There has been a concerted effort by the international scientific community to understand the multiple causes and patterns of land-cover change to support sustainable land management. Here, we examined biophysical suitability, and a novel integrated index of “Economic Pressure on Land” (EPL) to explain land cover in the year 2000, and estimated the likelihood of future land-cover change through 2050, including protected area effectiveness.

Image fusion assists in visual interpretation, mapping, change detection and many other applications. Multispectral and Panchromatic images are fused to produce images having enhanced spatial and spectral properties. These properties are generally distorted from original images. The aim of this paper is to identify the effectiveness of the several fusion techniques based on the distortions and applications.

Digital image classification is the process of sorting all the pixels in an image into a finite number of individual classes. But, it is difficult to classify satellite images since they include both pure pixels and boundary pixels. The boundary pixels are ‘mixed’ pixels, representing an area occupied by more than one ground cover. That is, class boundaries represented by pixels, are not sharp but fuzzy. This paper discuses the application of Adaptive Neuro-Fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) for classification of remotely sensed images that contains mixed pixels.

We report the effects of shifting cultivation on water quality in 16 creeks investigated once in 2007 and twice in 2008 in 16 apparently similar small neighboring watersheds, each of 3 to 5 ha, at four locations around Barkal sub-district under Rangamati District of Chittagong Hill Tracts in Bangladesh. Concentrations of SO₄ ²⁻ and K⁺, and pH in creek water were lower, and NO₃-N and Na⁺ concentrations were higher in shifting-cultivation land compared to land with either plantation or natural forest or a combination of these cover types.

In this paper we present an application of aerial remote sensing to the analysis of spatial information in a mountainous area of central Italy by applying texture measures and landscape indices. Land cover data acquired in different time periods are used to calculate measures of landscape pattern and structure at pixel level (tone and texture variables) and patch‐level (landscape indices). Images of the patches from the 1950s, 1980s and 1990s have been derived from the tone‐texture classification of scanned black‐and‐white photographs.

Urbanization in China accompanies economic development and population growth. Changes in land use leads to changes in both meteorological and chemical fields. In this study, the impact of land use change in Jing-Jin-Ji (JJJ, indicating Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei) and Yangtze River Delta (YRD) areas on meteorology and ozone concentrations are studied using the WRF–Chem model. Land use change is represented by two different land cover data sets: USGS and MODIS.

This study analyses forest dynamics and land use/land cover change over a 43-year period using spatial-stand-type maps of temporal forest management plans of Karaisalı Forest Enterprise in the Eastern Mediterranean Region of Turkey. Stand parameters (tree species, crown closures and developmental stages) of the dynamics and changes caused by natural or artificial intervention were introduced and mapped in a Geographic Information System (GIS) and subjected to fragmentation analysis using FRAGSTATS.

AIM: Global environmental changes challenge traditional conservation approaches based on the selection of static protected areas due to their limited ability to deal with the dynamic nature of driving forces relevant to biodiversity. The Natura 2000 network (N2000) constitutes a major milestone in biodiversity conservation in Europe, but the degree to which this static network will be able to reach its long‐term conservation objectives raises concern.

Suburban areas continue to grow rapidly and are potentially an important land-use category for anthropogenic carbon-dioxide (CO₂) emissions. Here eddy covariance techniques are used to obtain ecosystem-scale measurements of CO₂ fluxes (FC) from a suburban area of Baltimore, Maryland, USA (2002–2006). These are among the first multi-year measurements of FC in a suburban area. The study area is characterized by low population density (1500inhabitants km⁻²) and abundant vegetation (67.4% vegetation land-cover).