SUMMARY Operational monitoring of vegetative cover by remote sensing currently involves the utilisation of vegetation indices. Vegetation indices are widely used for assessing and monitoring ecological variables such as vegetation cover, above-ground biomass and leaf area index. This study reviewed and evaluated different vegetation indices for estimating vegetation cover in rangelands in Cente...

Executive Summary The EPA Region VII R-EMAP project seeks to determine the condition of fisheries resources in the states of Missouri, Kansas, and Nebraska. Preliminary evidence from fish tissue studies has suggested that fisheries resources in these states have been adversely impacted by chemical pollutants. The Region VII R-EMAP study consequently focuses on the following questions: 1) What i...

Multiple endmember spectral mixture analysis (MESMA) has been widely applied for estimating fractional land covers from remote sensing imagery. MESMA has proven effective in addressing inter-class and intra-class endmember variability by allowing pixel-specific endmember combinations. This method, however, assumes that each land cover type has an equal probability of being included in the model...

negative impacts of gully erosion in marly areas are severe due to improper landuse practices such as irrigation, tillage, overgrazing and degradation of vegetation cover. the objective of this research was to evaluate gully thresholds related to plant vegetation cover and landuse change in the agriculture (ag), fair rangeland (fr) and weak rangeland (wr) areas of ghaasr-e-shirin, kermanshah, i...

Arctic ecosystems have been afflicted by vast changes in recent decades. Changes in temperature, as well as precipitation, are having an impact on snow cover, vegetation productivity and coverage, vegetation seasonality, surface albedo, and permafrost dynamics. The coupled climate-vegetation change in the arctic is thought to be a positive feedback in the Earth system, which can potentially fur...

Urbanization-associated land use and land cover (LULC) changes lead to modifications of surface microclimatic and hydrological conditions, including the formation of urban heat islands and changes in surface runoff pattern. The goal of the paper is to investigate the changes of biophysical variables due to urbanization induced LULC changes in Indianapolis, USA, from 2001 to 2006. The biophysica...

landfill is one of the primary methods for urban solid waste disposal. in order to reduce theenvironmental adverse effects and to protect the public health and human welfare, evaluating the landfill isutmost importance. in this research work evaluation procedure for the current condition of ahvaz city urbansolid waste landfill site with criteria of local screening method (lsm) is outlined. in t...

Abstract. Rangeland vegetation dynamics encompass all processes of changes in vegetation composition and structure over time. Investigating the rangeland ecosystem dynamics makes it possible to determine the effects of climatic and management conditions on qualitative and quantitative changes of the vegetation in a specific period of time. Accordingly, data collection and measurements for evalu...

the study of the exclosure effects on the vegetation changes undergrazing and non-grazing conditions in the rangeland areas has particularimportance in the rangeland improvement and revivification projects. theresearch was accomplished in semi-steppe khoybilehvar area, from 1999 to2005. vegetation cover was annually measured within fixed plots during transact.the results showed that during nine...