A set of land-cover pattern maps for the Gunma Prefecture was produced to help understand and assess the ecological implications of regional spatial patterns. Covering a total area of approximately 6,360 square kilometers, about 77 percent of this area can be regarded as “vegetation cover”. The land cover map was derived from the supervised classification process with the combined use of TM, SP...

The spatial distribution of landslides is influenced by different climatic conditions and environmental settings including topography, morphology, hydrology, lithology, and land use. In this work, we have attempted to evaluate the influence of land use change on landslide susceptibility (LS) for a small study area located in the southern part of the Briga catchment, along the Ionian coast of Si...

Introduction and Research Objectives Use of organic by-products as soil amendments in agricultural production exemplifies a strategy for converting wastes to resources. Paper mill sludge is one of the largest underutilized organic by-products in Wisconsin. Paper mill sludge (PS) generation in Wisconsin increases approximately 5% per year, and 70% of all PS generated currently (740,000 dry tons)...

A generalization of the single soil layer variable infiltration capacity (VIC) land surface hydrological model previously implemented in the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory general circulation model (GClVO is described. The new model is comprised of a two-layer characterization of the soil column, and uses an aerodynamic representation of the latent and sensible heat fluxes at the land su...

Conversion of rangelands into cultivated land is one of the main challenges affecting the management of rangelands in Ethiopia. In order to inform policy makers about trends in land-use conversion, this study examined the drivers, trends, and impacts of land conversions in five locations selected in the Borana rangelands of Southern Ethiopia. This study integrated survey interviews from agro-pa...

In many parts of the world, urban planning has a renewed focus on addressing the multiple challenges associated with population growth and climate change. Focused on local needs and priorities, these planning processes are raising tensions between more compact and dense urban form to reduce energy use and associated emissions and the provision of urban green infrastructure for ecosystem service...

A simple method that incorporates coupling between bath and system and between individual bath modes is proposed. In Ž . the new locally propagating gaussian LPG approximation, the bath is modeled by Gaussians at each system site that propagate in time. Each site couples to others by the overlap of their Gaussians. In a test case with weak but non-negligible coupling, LPG is nearly as rapid as ...

We present some techniques for planning in temporal domains specified with the recent standard languange PDDL2.1. These techniques are implemented in LPG, a fully-automated system that took part in the third International Planning Competition (Toulouse, 2002) showing excellent performance. The planner is based on a stochastic local search method and on a graph-based representation called “Tempo...