identification of rapid degradation of ecological resources requires effective environmental monitoring including ecological integrity assessment .our first aim is to analyze ecological integrity in a landscape context while developing a method to assess integrity in spite of a dearth of historical data. we used a spatial-temporal reference framework for land cover maps for assessing ecological...

The visual appearance of seamless dyed edges of luxury leather goods represents a key issue in terms of quality grading since a high-quality leather has to be characterized by homogeneously coloured and shaped edges with uniform ink thickness. Despite a huge literature produced by scientific and technical community to automate many leather manufacturing processes, since leather patches are ofte...

This study has investigated the taxon-specific responses of fauna to patch edges, and how these relate to patch attributes (patch size, seagrass biomass and water depth), and hydrodynamics in the seagrass habitat. Faunal abundances were sampled at the edge, 2 m in from the edge, and in the middle of 10 seagrass patches of variable size in Port Phillip Bay, Australia. Five of nine taxa showed ed...

The effects of biotic and abiotic factors on stem borer parasitoid diversity, abundance, and parasitism were studied in cultivated and natural habitats in four agroecological zones in Kenya. Comparing habitat types, we found partial support for the "natural enemy" hypothesis, whereby, across all localities, parasitoid diversity was higher in more diverse host plant communities in natural habita...

According to conceptual models, the distribution of resources plays a critical role in determining how organisms distribute themselves near habitat edges. These models are frequently used to achieve a mechanistic understanding of edge effects, but because they are based predominantly on correlative studies, there is need for a demonstration of causality, which is best done through experimentati...

this study investigates the application of landscape ecology in planning and design of urban ecological systems. the ecological approach to landscape planning and the concepts of designing and implementing ecological systems have gained increasing attention in the last two decades. however, the ecological systems of urban environment need more research to consider built and natural patches and ...

BACKGROUND Epipactis helleborine is an Eurasian orchid species which prefers woodland environments but it may also spontaneously and successfully colonise human-made artificial and disturbed habitats such as roadsides, town parks and gardens. It is suggested that orchids colonising anthropogenic habitats are characterised by a specific set of features (e.g., large plant size, fast flower produc...