We conducted a 3-year study designed to examine the relationship between disturbance from military land use and stream physical and organic matter variables within 12 small (<5.5 km2) Southeastern Plains catchments at the Fort Benning Military Installation, Georgia, USA. Primary land-use categories were based on percentages of bare ground and road cover and nonforested land (grasslands, sparse ...

Photosynthetic vegetation (PV) and non-photosynthetic vegetation (NPV) are important ground cover types for desertification monitoring and land management. Hyperspectral remote sensing has been proven effective for separating NPV from bare soil, but few studies determined fractional cover of PV (f pv) and NPV (f npv) using multispectral information. The purpose of this study is to evaluate seve...

Horqin Sandy Land is located in northeast China (4241’-4515’N, 11835’-12330’E). The wind-sand topography in Horqin Sandy Land can be described as two series--sand deposition and wind erosion. Wind is the natural force for the formation of wind-sandy environment, under windsandy environment, the wind erosion processes such as sand drifting, dust-storm, etc. occurred frequently because of the fre...

Over the past four decades, land use/land cover (LU/LC) change, coupled with persistent drought, has resulted in the decline of groundwater levels in Horqin Sandy Land. Accordingly, this study quantifies changes in LU/LC and groundwater storage (GWS). Furthermore, it investigates the effects of LU/LC changes on GWS. GWS changes are estimated using Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE)...

A physically based, variably saturated flow model was developed to predict soil water dynamics, evapotranspiration (ET) from the vadose zone, and recharge to (or exfiltration from) the saturated zone using mean daily atmospheric forcings and to identify the value of diurnal climate forcings on those predictions. The vadose zone flow is modelled using the Galerkin finite element technique to sol...

Plant species affect soil bacterial diversity and compositions. However, little is known about the role of dominant plant species in shaping the soil bacterial community during the restoration of sandy grasslands in Horqin Sandy Land, northern China. We established a mesocosm pots experiment to investigate short-term responses of soil bacterial diversity and composition, and the related soil pr...

Desertification is a serious threat to the sustainability of the environment and to human habitation. Kerqin sandy land is the largest sandy land in China, and is one of the most important origins of sandstorms in Northern China. Land desertification and frequent sandstorms in the spring strongly affect the growth of grassland vegetation and crops, and the effective of eco-environment in this r...

Rainfall patterns and land cover are two important factors that affect the runoff generation process. To determine the surface and subsurface flows associated with different rainfall patterns on sloping Ferralsols under different land cover types, observational data related to surface and subsurface flows from 5 m × 15 m plots were collected from 2010 to 2012. The experiment was conducted to as...

Cities are experiencing rapid population growth and consequently extensive urbanization. Land-use/land-cover change is one of the important elements worldwide, which significantly affect the environment. This study aims to describe the emergence of urban heat and cool islands as a result of changes in land-use/land-cover. Land surface temperature over a 32-year period in Isfahan city, Iran was ...

Remotely sensed imagery is a type of data that is compatible with the monitoring and mapping of changes in built-up and bare land within urban areas as the impacts of population growth and urbanisation increase. The application of currently available remote sensing indices, however, has some limitations with respect to distinguishing built-up and bare land in urban areas. In this study, a new i...