The interaction between landuse change, nitrogen deposition, water recharge and carbon sequestration was investigated in the EU 5th Framework Programme project called AFFOREST. An important aspect of the project was the development of the AFFOREST spatial Decision Support System, designed to look at these issues simultaneously. The development of the nitrogen deposition module is described in t...

The extension of urban perimeter markedly cuts available productive land. Hence, studies in urban sprawl analysis and modeling play an important role to ensure sustainable urban development. The urbanization pattern of the Greater Asmara Area (GAA), the capital of Eritrea, was studied. Satellite images and geospatial tools were employed to analyze the spatiotemporal urban landuse changes. Objec...

There is significant uncertainty about the effects of global change on the vegetation and animal productivity of pasture and rangeland ecosystems. This paper presents a synthesis of progress made between 1994 and 1999 in the Global Change and Terrestrial Ecosystems (GCTE) Pastures and Rangelands Core Research Project 1 (CRP1) network, a world-wide network of 83 full-time equivalent researchers ...

mashhad city, according to the latest official statistics of the country is the second populated city after tehran and is the biggest metropolis in the east of iran. considering the rapid growth of the population over the last three decades, the city’s development area has been extended, significantly. this significant expansion has impacted natural lands on suburb and even some parts e.g. rang...

Spatial measures of terrestrial biomass that are accurate and repeatable are important to monitoring landscape condition and modeling productivity in the world’s grassland and savanna (i.e., rangeland) ecosystems. Remote sensing offers potential to characterize seasonal changes in biomass in a consistent and non-destructive manner. A high degree of structural and spatial heterogeneity [1] and i...

Globally, new combinations of introduced and native plant and animal species have changed rangelands into novel ecosystems. Whereas many rangeland stakeholders (people who use or have an interest in rangelands) view intentional species introductions to improve forage and control erosion as beneficial, others focus on unintended costs, such as increased fire risk, loss of rangeland biodiversity,...

Human activities such as research & development, infrastructure or management are of major importance for agricultural productivity. These activities can be summarized as agricultural land-use intensity. We present a measure, called the τ -factor, which is an alternative to current measures for agricultural landuse intensity. The τ -factor is the ratio between actual yield and a reference yield...

Land desertification is one of the most serious environmental and social-economic problems in the North China. The processes of desertification mainly have being controlled by the interaction of human activities and fragile eco-environment, that means the pattern and intension of landuse are major factors for development or reverse of desertification. Because of the increasing pressure of popul...