Landscape modification has been increasing in the past few decades. In particular, the biodiversity of tropical rainforests has been threatened by an intensive loss of habitat and changes in land use policies [1-3]. These processes modify the spatial pattern of the remaining forests increasing for example patch isolation [3,4], potentially affecting wildlife through changes in ecological proces...

the notion of sustainable development has rapidly gained considerable attention since the lastdecades of the twentieth century. it has become a locus for global paradigm shift on environment and development issues particularly after rio conference in 1992. the comparative analysis of agenda 21 and major un documents, mdg, and rio+20 as well as some major sources are made to provide a context fo...

1. introduction environmental changes can be monitored at many scales but the scale of landscape and region has more information in support of sustainable spatial planning. the availability of remote sensing imagery provides multi-scale observation with periodic repetitions over time. landscape and regional scales are adequately covered by satellite images. remote sensing images provide non-ave...

Urbanization continues to accelerate and profoundly transform the surface of the earth, resulting in devastating effects on the structure and functioning of ecosystems throughout the world. In the Phoenix metropolitan region, urbanization has dramatically changed the Sonoran Desert landscape in the past several decades. To understand how urban ecosystems work and to achieve ecological sustainab...

Although coloniality is widespread among mammals, it is still not clear what factors influence composition of social groups. As animals need to adapt to multiple habitat and environmental conditions throughout their range, variation in group composition should be influenced by adaptive adjustment to different ecological factors. Relevant to anthropogenic disturbance, increased habitat modificat...

the notion of sustainable development has rapidly gained considerable attention since the lastdecades of the twentieth century. it has become a locus for global paradigm shift on environment and development issues particularly after rio conference in 1992. the comparative analysis of agenda 21 and major un documents, mdg, and rio+20 as well as some major sources are made to provide a context fo...

urban environments rely on the surrounding natural ecosystems remnants as providers of ecosystemfunctions, therefore these areas not only support a unique biodiversity but also have a social value for maintainingpublic health andwellbeing. for this reason, urbanization is considered to be one the biggest threats to ecosystems,leading to native biodiversity simplification and, thus, to a detrime...

Many studies have assessed the effect of landscape patterns on spatial ecological processes by simulating these processes in computer-generated landscapes with varying composition and configuration. To generate such landscapes, various neutral landscape models have been developed. However, the limited set of landscape-level pattern variables included in these models is often inadequate to gener...