the hyrcanian forests have been highly exploited in recent decades by human impacts. easy access, abundance and variety of valuable forest yields have led to population growth density, creation of new residential areas and deforestation activities. change detection is one of the main methods of management and evaluation of natural resources. we investigated forest changes in southern surroundin...

This paper analyzes the interactions between land use and forest cover in the Upper Midwest, USA from 1970 to 1990. New data are presented and interpreted to evaluate the effects of land-use changes, especially abandonment of agriculture and dispersed development, on forest cover throughout the region. Forest-cover data were collected from Landsat satellite imagery and land use was interpreted ...

One of the least understood aspects of aquatic ecology is the role of riparian zones of lakes, and how these habitats and their functions are impacted by human development of lakeshores. We investigated the effects of residential lakeshore development on littoral coarse woody debris (CWD) distribution and on riparian forest characteristics by comparing 18 lakes in the U.S. Pacific Northwest wit...

this study was conducted in dez and karkheh regions in southwestern iran to model habitatsuitability of the persian fallow deer dama dama mesopotamicus and assessing trend of habitat changes since1989. a total of 22 confirmed presence records of the species were collected from 1988 to 2003. maxentapproach was used to develop habitat suitability model with regards to nine environmental variables...

Natural environments and the amenities they offer have fueled much of the population growth in the rural United States (Deller et al. 2001, English et al. 2ooo). In fact, the fastest growing counties in the United States during the early 1990s were non-metropolitan counties that were destinations for retirees or that offered outdoor recreation opportunities (Johnson and Beale 1994). Migration t...

This paper presents a case study of the economic damages to homeowners in a northern New Jersey community due to an exotic forest insect-the hemlock woolly adelgid. Hedonic property value methods are used to estimate the effect of hemlock health on property values. A statistically significant relationship between hemlock health and residential property values is established. Moreover, there are...

This paper provides evidence that the combination of land-use restrictions and an increasing demand for housing can create incentives to induce forest fires as a means to circumvent regulation and increase the supply of land available for residential construction. I estimate the effect of the price of housing on the incidence of forest fires using Spanish data by region for 1991-2005. The resul...

Understanding how human land use patterns influence mosquito ecology and the risk of mosquito-borne pathogens is critical for the development of disease management strategies. We examined how different environments influenced mosquito species composition, abundance, and West Nile virus (WNV) infection rates in central Illinois. Using a combination of gravid traps and CDC light traps, adult mosq...