the relationship between topography, land use, and topsoil moisture storage is investigated for a small catchment with undulating deep loess hilslopes in the south of the netherlands. for a period of 10 months, soil moisture profiles have been measured weekly at 15 locations throughout the catchment. a generalized additive model was employed to find relationships between the various factors inf...

The main goal of this study is to develop a general framework for building a hybrid land-cover map by the synergistic combination of a number of land-cover classifications with different legends and spatial resolutions. The proposed approach assesses class-specific accuracies of datasets and establishes affinity between thematic legends using a common land-cover language such as the UN Land-Cov...

Progressive anthropogenic disturbance can alter ecosystem organization potentially causing shifts from one stable state to another. This potential for ecosystem shifts must be considered when establishing targets and objectives for conservation. We ask whether a predator-prey system response to incremental anthropogenic disturbance might shift along a disturbance gradient and, if it does, wheth...

Landscape metrics rely on classifications of remote sensing data, and errors inherent to the classification scheme will be propagated into any spatial pattern results. This issue is compounded for metrics derived from sub-pixel unmixing techniques, since a universal method for assessing the certainty of these soft classifications has not yet been accepted. This study investigates the role of su...

The analysis of the passive microwave radiance transfer equation certifies that there is a linear relationship between satellite-generated brightness temperatures (BT) and in situ observation temperature and that land surface temperature (LST) is largely influenced by vegetation cover conditions. Microwave polarization difference index (MPDI) is an effective indicator for characterizing the lan...

This study proposed a multi-target hierarchical detection (MTHD) method to simultaneously and automatically detect multiple directional land cover changes. MTHD used a hierarchical strategy to detect both abrupt and trend land cover changes successively. First, Grubbs’ test eliminated short-lived changes by considering them outliers. Then, the Brown-Forsythe test and the combination of Tomé’s m...

Straightforward mapping of detailed heathland habitat patches and their quality using remote sensing is hampered by (1) the intrinsic property of a high heterogeneity in habitat species composition (i.e. high intra-variability), and (2) the occurrence of the same species in multiple habitat types (i.e. low inter-variability). Mapping accuracy of detailed habitat objects can however be improved ...