Monthly measurements of leaf area index (LAI) and the fraction of absorbed photosynthetically active radiation (fAPAR) taken at approximately monthly intervals were collected along three 750 m transects in a Kalahari woodland near Mongu in western Zambia. These data were compared with MODIS NDVI (MOD13, Collection 3) and MODIS LAI and fAPAR products (MOD15, Collection 3) over a 2 year period (2...

introduction: soil organic matter is influenced strongly by vegetation cover and management, therefore it is proposed as the main indicator of soil quality and health. the changes in soil organic matter status occur much more rapidly in the labile pools than in organic c. thus, labile pools can be used as early indicators of changes in total organic matter that will become more obvious in the l...

This is the first study on the seasonal biodiversity of black flies and evaluation of ecological factors influencing their distribution at Doi Pha Hom Pok National Park, northern Thailand. Larvae were collected from six fixed-stream sites in relation to altitude gradients from May 2011 to April 2013. The water temperature, water pH, conductivity, total dissolved solids (TDS), salt, water veloci...

Understory plant communities play critical ecological roles in forest ecosystems. Both above- and below-ground ecosystem properties and processes influence these communities but relatively little is known about such effects at fine (i.e., one to several meters within-stand) scales, particularly for forests in which the canopy is dominated by a single species. An improved understanding of these ...

Describing urban terrain and land use/land cover (LULC) characteristics accurately is an essential element in environmental modeling, assessment and management. Urban terrain and LULC information are especially important in meteorological modeling applications, such as simulations of atmospheric flow over cities, defining surface energy budgets, and fate and transport studies of urban contamina...

Advances in animal tracking technologies have reduced but not eliminated positional error. While aware of such inherent error, scientists often proceed with analyses that assume exact locations. The results of such analyses then represent one realization in a distribution of possible outcomes. Evaluating results within the context of that distribution can strengthen or weaken our confidence in ...

The application of hydrological and water quality models is an efficient approach to better understand the processes of environmental deterioration. This study evaluated the ability of the Annualized Agricultural Non-Point Source (AnnAGNPS) model to predict runoff, total nitrogen (TN) and total phosphorus (TP) loading in a typical small watershed of a hilly region near Taihu Lake, China. Runoff...

This paper assesses the combined effect of field plot size and LiDAR density on the estimation of four forest structure attributes: volume, total biomass, basal area and canopy cover. A total of 21 different plot sizes were considered, obtained by decreasing the field measured plot radius value from 25 to 5 m with regular intervals of 1 m. LiDAR data densities were simulated by randomly removin...

Closed canopy vegetation often prevents the colonization of plant species. Therefore the majority of plant species are expected to appear at the initial phase of post-agricultural succession in mesic forest environment with moderate levels of resources. This hypothesis was tested with data from the BuellSmall Successional Study, NJ, USA, one of the longest continuous fine-scale studies of old-f...

We examine changes in canopy cover for adult western juniper from the 1960s to 1994 in central Oregon using repeat aerial photography. We compare changes at four sites with a land-use history of minimal anthropogenic disturbance to changes on adjacent sites that have a disturbance history more typical of central Oregon rangelands. Canopy cover increased at all sites, but afforestation on sites ...