A relevant issue in Remote Sensing (RS) and GIS is related to the analysis and the characterization of Land Use Land Cover (LULC) changes, very useful for a wide range of environmental applications and to efficiently undertake landscape planning and management policies. The methodology described has been applied to a case-study conducted in the area of the Province of Avellino (Southern Italy)....

BACKGROUND Tsetse flies are the primary vector for African trypanosomiasis, a disease that affects both humans and livestock across the continent of Africa. In 1973 tsetse flies were estimated to inhabit 22% of Kenya; by 1996 that number had risen to roughly 34%. Efforts to control the disease were hampered by a lack of information and costs associated with the identification of infested areas....

Global climate change and increasing urbanization worldwide intensify the need for a better understanding of human heat stress dynamics in urban systems. During heat waves, which are expected to increase in number and intensity, the development of urban cool islands could be a lifesaver for many elderly and vulnerable people. The use of remote sensing data offers the unique possibility to study...

Aggregation and visualization of geographical data are an important part of environmental data mining, environmental modelling, and agricultural management. However, it is difficult to aggregate geospatial data of the various formats, such as maps, census and survey data. This paper presents a framework named PlaniSphere, which can aggregate the various geospatial datasets, and synthesizes raw ...

A frequent method used to assess land use / land cover (LULC) change is the comparison (overlay) of digital maps of an area within a geographic information system (GIS). However, positional errors of the maps involved in the comparison tend to create “false” change polygons and to overestimate LULC change. In this work, a simple method to improve change estimates by detecting and correcting err...

The Kathmandu Valley of Nepal epitomizes the growing urbanization trend spreading across the Himalayan foothills. This metropolitan valley has experienced a significant transformation of its landscapes in the last four decades resulting in substantial land use and land cover (LULC) change; however, no major systematic analysis of the urbanization trend and LULC has been conducted on this valley...

Achieving more timely, accurate and transparent information on the distribution and dynamics of the world’s land cover is essential to understanding the fundamental characteristics, processes and threats associated with human-nature-climate interactions. Higher resolution (~30–50 m) land cover mapping is expected to advance the understanding of the multi-dimensional interactions of the human-na...

Land cover, a critical variable in the epidemiology of kala-azar, can be remotely characterized by customizing and integrating "state-of-the-art" imagery at different spatial scales from different sensors onboard satellites. A study was conducted at four levels (national, state, district and village) investigating the role of land use/land cover (LULC) for leishmaniasis transmission resulting i...

The modelling of land use and land cover changes is essential to the assessment of consequent environmental impacts. The L1 platform, a domain specific language has been used to model dynamically possible evolution of an agricultural patchy landscape through the simulation of both land useland cover and landscape features changes considering the multi-scaled natural forces and human decisions. ...

This study examines the spatial and temporal patterns of the surface urban heat island (SUHI) intensity in the Phoenix metropolitan area and the relationship with land use land cover (LULC) change between 2000 and 2014. The objective is to identify specific regions in Phoenix that have been increasingly heated and cooled to further understand how LULC change influences the SUHI intensity. The d...