A large number of vegetation indices have been developed and widely applied in terrestrial ecosystem research in the recent decades. However, a certain limitation was observed while applying these indices in research in dry areas due to their low sensitivity to low vegetation cover. In this context, the objectives of this study are to develop a new vegetation index, namely, the Generalized Diff...

The preparation of vegetation cover maps by used the land inventory and a traditional method has a lot of cost and time. But today, remote sensing is one of the main sources of data collection and information production for study and monitoring land resources, and was efficient tools for providing quickly and timely data and information needs for program planning in the natural resource filed. ...

A vegetation cover increase has been identified at global scales using satellite images and vegetation indices. This fact is usually explained by global climatic change processes such as CO(2) and temperature increases. Nevertheless, although these causes can be important, the role of socioeconomic transformations must be considered in some places, since in several areas of Northern Hemisphere ...

We tested the Moment Distance Index (MDI) in combination with texture features for the summer vegetation mapping in the eastern Pamir Mountains, Tajikistan using the 2014 Landsat OLI (Operational Land Imager) image. The five major classes identified were sparse vegetation, medium-dense vegetation, dense vegetation, barren land, and water bodies. By utilizing object features in a random forest (...

Tree cover is a key variable for ecosystem functioning, and is widely used to study tropical ecosystems. But its determinants and their relative importance are still a matter of debate, especially because most regional and global analyses have not considered the influence of agricultural practices. More information is urgently needed regarding how human practices influence vegetation structure....

High-latitude ecosystems play an important role in the global carbon cycle and in regulating the climate system and are presently undergoing rapid environmental change. Accurate land cover data sets are required to both document these changes as well as to provide land-surface information for benchmarking and initializing Earth system models. Earth system models also require specific land cover...

Many land-management agencies are caught between decreased budgets and increasing public interest. Furthermore, semi-arid landscapes are sensitive to management prescriptions and use, and require a significant amount of monitoring in order to assess vegetation productivity and health. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the use of Landsat Enhanced Thematic Mapper (ETM) Imagery to monitor ...

Land cover is affected by many factors including economic development, climate and natural disturbances such as wildfires. The ability to evaluate how fire regimes may alter future vegetation, and how future vegetation may alter fire regimes, would assist forest managers in planning management actions to be carried out in the face of anticipated socio-economic and climatic change. In this paper...

Detection of change is the measure of the distinct data framework and thematic change information that can direct to more tangible insights into underlying process involving land cover and landuse changes. Monitoring the locations and distributions of land cover changes is important for establishing links between policy decisions, regulatory actions and subsequent landuse activities. Change det...