The Alps provide a high habitat diversity for plant species, structured by broadand fine-scale abiotic site conditions. In man-made grasslands, vegetation composition is additionally affected by the type of landuse. We recorded vegetation composition in 216 parcels of grassland in 12 municipalities representing an area of 170 70 km in the south-eastern part of the Swiss Alps. Each parcel was ch...

BACKGROUND Several authors, most prominently Jared Diamond (1997, Guns, Germs and Steel), have investigated biogeographic determinants of human history and civilization. The timing of the transition to an agricultural lifestyle, associated with steep population growth and consequent societal change, has been suggested to be affected by the availability of suitable organisms for domestication. T...

Global climate change and increasing urbanization worldwide intensify the need for a better understanding of human heat stress dynamics in urban systems. During heat waves, which are expected to increase in number and intensity, the development of urban cool islands could be a lifesaver for many elderly and vulnerable people. The use of remote sensing data offers the unique possibility to study...

Introduction Landsat Thematic Mapper ( TM ) imagery was used to analyze patterns of landscape diversity in the seasonal tropical forests of northeastern Guatemala. TM radiance and the radiance coefficient of variation (CV) were significant in discriminating land-cover types. Cluster analysis of TM4, TM5, and TM7 radiance produced six distinct types of landcover. Green leaf biomass from TM4 and ...

Disturbance shapes plant communities over a wide variety of spatial and temporal scales. How natural and anthropogenic disturbance interact to shape ecological communities is highly variable and begs a greater understanding. We used five censuses spanning the years 1990–2011 from the 16ha Luquillo Forest Dynamics Plot (LFDP) in northeast Puerto Rico to investigate the interplay of human landuse...

Accurate quantification of land use/cover change (LULCC) is important for efficient environmental management, especially in regions that are extremely affected by climate variability and continuous population growth such as West Africa. In this context, accurate LULC classification and statistically sound change area estimates are essential for a better understanding of LULCC processes. This st...

The urbanization processes and its keen relationship with the spatio-temporal variability of land use-land cover (LULC), surface temperature urban heat island (HI) within district towns in Rangpur division Bangladesh has been assessed using multi-spectral Landsat satellite images from 1991 to 2021.The supervised classification approach was used retrieve LULC types such as water body, built-up a...

Mapping land use/land cover (LULC) changes at regional scales is essential for a wide range of applications, including landslide, erosion, land planning, global warming etc. LULC alterations (based especially on human activities), negatively effect the patterns of climate, the patterns of natural hazard and socio-economic dynamics in global and local scale. In this study, LULC changes are inves...

Rapid urbanization with intense land use and land cover (LULC) change and explosive population growth has a great impact on water quality. The relationship between LULC characteristics and water quality provides important information for non-point sources (NPS) pollution management. In this study, we first quantified the spatial-temporal patterns of five water quality variables in four watershe...