The primary objective of the current study is to produce karstification potentiality maps in northeast of Khuzestan province, Iran, using both fuzzy logic and AHP models as an additional tool in hydrogeological research. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Remote Sensing (RS) are used to create two maps depicting the development of the karstification, consisting of five classes, showing th...

Urban greenspace is important for the health of cities. Up-to-date databases and information are vital to maintain and monitor growth in cities. During the last decade, advances in spaceborne hyperspectral sensors have resulted in some advantages being gained over multispectral sensors for land cover monitoring (due to increased spectral resolution). The objective of this research was to compar...

Land cover has been evaluated and classified on the basis of general features using reflectance or digital levels of photographic or satellite data. One of the most common methodologies based on CORINE land cover (Coordination of Information on the Environment) data, which classifies natural cover according to a small number of categories. This method produces generalizations about the inventor...

Characterization of snow is critical for understanding Earth’s water and energy cycles. Maps of snow from MODIS have seen growing use in investigations of climate, hydrology, and glaciology, but the lack of rigorous validation of different snow mapping methods compromises these studies. We examine three widely used MODIS snow products: the ‘‘binary’’ (i.e., snow yes/no) global snow maps that we...

Information on the distribution, area and extent of swidden agriculture landscape is necessary for implementing the program of Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD), biodiversity conservation and local livelihood improvement. To our knowledge, explicit spatial maps and accurate area data on swidden agriculture remain surprisingly lacking. However, this traditional ...

Improving biodiversity conservation in fragmented agricultural landscapes has become an important global issue. Vegetation at the patch and landscape-scale is important for species occupancy and diversity, yet few previous studies have explored multi-scale associations between vegetation and community assemblages. Here, we investigated how patch and landscape-scale vegetation cover structure wo...

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...

Monitoring land cover changes from the 1970s in West Africa is important for assessing the dynamics between land cover types and understanding the anthropogenic impact during this period. Given the lack of historical land cover maps over such a large area, Landsat data is a reliable and consistent source of information on land cover dynamics from the 1970s. This study examines land cover change...

Determining the factors that influence the distribution of woody vegetation cover and resolving the sensitivity of woody vegetation cover to shifts in environmental forcing are critical steps necessary to predict continental-scale responses of dryland ecosystems to climate change. We use a 6-year satellite data record of fractional woody vegetation cover and an 11-year daily precipitation recor...

In this investigation, the effects of enclosure, restal delayed grazing andcontinued grazing treatments on the production rate and vegetation cover were studied.Study area was SadrAbad pasture. After selecting three bands (1+1+1=3 hectare area) asthree treatments in the restricted and non restricted area, they were transected to threetransects. Then plots (1×2m2 ) were selected to measure the p...