Tropical dry forests represent nearly half the tropical forests in the world and are the ecosystems registering the greatest deterioration from the anthropogenic exploitation of the land. This paper presents a review on the dynamics of tropical dry forests regeneration and the main abiotic factors influencing this regeneration, such as seasonal nature, soil fertility and humidity, and natural a...

The impacts of hot, dry, and compound hot-dry extremes are significant for societies, economies, ecosystems worldwide. Such events therefore need to be assessed in the light anthropogenic climate change so that suitable adaptation measures can implemented by governments stakeholders. Here we show a comprehensive analysis over global land regions using 25 Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Ph...

Aim Wildfire is often considered more severe now than historically in dry forests of the western United States. Tree-ring reconstructions, which suggest that historical dry forests were park-like with large, old trees maintained by low-severity fires, are from small, scattered studies. To overcome this limitation, we developed spatially comprehensive reconstructions across 927,000 ha in four la...

Land degradation impacts on several critical environmental issues such as food security, diminishing quality and quantity of fresh water resources, preservation of natural resources, loss of biodiversity, and global climate change. Land degradation is responsible for soil erosion and can eventually lead to desertification. The International Convention to Combat Desertification (CCD) defines des...

Land cover/land use (LCLU) maps are essential inputs for environmental analysis. Remote sensing provides an opportunity to construct LCLU maps of large geographic areas in a timely fashion. Knowing the most accurate classification method to produce LCLU maps based on site characteristics is necessary for the environment managers. The aim of this research is to examine the performance of various...

The "dry gets drier, wet gets wetter" (DGDWGW) paradigm is widely accepted in global moisture change. However, Greve et al. have declared that this paradigm has been overestimated. This controversy leaves a large gap in the understanding of the evolution of water-related processes. Here, we examine the global moisture trends using satellite soil moisture for the past 35 years (1979-2013). Our r...

Tropical montane cloud forests (TMCFs) depend on predictable, frequent, and prolonged immersion in cloud. Clearing upwind lowland forest alters surface energy budgets in ways that influence dry season cloud fields and thus the TMCF environment. Landsat and Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite imagery show that deforested areas of Costa Rica's Caribbean lowlands remain relatively cl...

the growing population and increasing socio-economic necessities creates a pressure on land use/land cover. nowadays, land use change detection using remote sensing data provides quantitative and timely information for management and evaluation of natural resources. this study investigates the land use changes in part of hableh rood watershed of iran using landsat 7 and 8 (sensor etm+ and oli) ...

According to the fundamental goal of remote sensing technology, the image classification of desired sensors can be introduced as the most important part of satellite image interpretation. There exist various algorithms in relation to the supervised land use classification that the most pertinent one should be determined. Therefore, this study has been conducted to determine the best and most su...