Native grassland is one of the most heavily degraded of all North American ecosystems, and restoration of altered grasslands is a tool used to mitigate some of the biological ramifications of past land use practices. Providing habitat for grassland-dependent bird species often is one of the many goals of restoration. We evaluated the efficacy of meadow restoration for breeding birds in the Nebr...

The data saturation problem in Landsat imagery is well recognized and is regarded as an important factor resulting in inaccurate forest aboveground biomass (AGB) estimation. However, no study has examined the saturation values for different vegetation types such as coniferous and broadleaf forests. The objective of this study is to estimate the saturation values in Landsat imagery for different...

Extensive studies have investigated the relationships between climate change and vegetation dynamics. However, the geographic controls on vegetation dynamics are rarely studied. In this study, the geographic controls on the trends and variation of vegetation greenness in middle and eastern Inner Mongolia, China (mid-eastern Inner Mongolia) were investigated. The SPOT VEGETATION 10-day period sy...

Most research on boundaries between vegetation types emphasizes the contrasts and similarities between conditions on either side of a boundary, but does not compare boundary to non-boundary vegetation. That is, most previous studies lack suitable controls, and may therefore overlook underlying aspects of landscape variability at a regional scale and underestimate the effects that the vegetation...

Aim We evaluate environmental and historical determinants of modern species composition for upland vegetation types across Cape Cod, Massachusetts, a region that supports numerous uncommon species assemblages that are conservation priorities. Location The study area encompasses the entire peninsula of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, USA. Methods Historical changes in land-use and land-cover across the...

This study proposes a modified vegetation-dependent temperature-vegetation dryness index (TVDI) model for analyzing regional drought disasters in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Metropolitan Region (BTHMR) of China. First, MODIS monthly normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), land surface temperature (LST) data and land use/cover data (Land cover type2) were pre-processed as a consistent big d...

HIGHLIGHTS • Vegetation structure and composition were measured in four major green space types • Remnants and golf courses supported highest native plant richness • Residential neighborhoods and urban parks supported highest exotic plant richness • Residential neighborhoods lacked key habitat structures including old trees • Green spaces can achieve complex vegetation with both native and exot...

The aim of this study is to adapt and evaluate the effectiveness of a multi-temporal downscaled images technique for classifying the typical vegetation types of a reclaimed area. The areas reclaimed from estuarine tidal flats show high spatial heterogeneity in soil salinity conditions. There are three typical vegetation types for which the distribution is restricted by the soil conditions. A ha...

In many cultural landscapes, the abandonment of traditional grazing leads to encroachment of pastures by woody plants, which reduces habitat heterogeneity and impacts biodiversity typical of semi-open habitats. We developed a framework of mutually interacting spatial models to locate areas where shrub encroachment in Alpine treeline ecosystems deteriorates vulnerable species' habitat, using bla...

Remote-sensing phenology detection can compensate for deficiencies in field observations and has the advantage of capturing the continuous expression of phenology on a large scale. However, there is some variability in the results of remote-sensing phenology detection derived from different vegetation parameters in satellite time-series data. Since the enhanced vegetation index (EVI) and the le...