Housing of pigs in barren, stimulus-poor housing conditions may influence their immune status, including antibody responses to (auto-)antigens, and thus affect immune protection, which will influence the onset and outcome of infection. In the present study, we investigated the effects of environmental enrichment versus barren housing on the level of natural (auto-)antibodies (NA(A)b) and their ...

This study illustrates how remotely-sensed data and GIS can be utilized to evaluate the impacts of urbanization and land use on timberland availability. GIS coverages were developed for land use, population density, public or reserved lands, site productivity, and timber volume. Econometric models then were developed to estimate changes in land use and the resulting impacts on timber availabili...

Accurate land cover classification information is a critical variable for many applications. This study presents a method to classify land cover using the fusion data of airborne discrete return LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) and CASI (Compact Airborne Spectrographic Imager) hyperspectral data. Four LiDAR-derived images (DTM, DSM, nDSM, and intensity) and CASI data (48 bands) with 1 m spat...

Ethiopia is a largely agrarian country with nearly 85% of its employment coming from agriculture. Nevertheless, it is not known how much land is under cultivation. Mapping land cover at finer resolution and global scales has been particularly difficult in Ethiopia. The study area falls in a region of high mapping complexity with environmental challenges which require higher quality maps. Here, ...

We studied changes in area and species composition of six indigenous forest fragments in the Taita Hills, Kenya using 1955 and 1995 aerial photography with 2004 airborne digital camera mosaics. The study area is part of Eastern Arc Mountains, a global biodiversity hot spot that boasts an outstanding diversity of flora and fauna and a high level of endemism.While a total of 260 ha (50%) of indig...

This study highlights the land use/land cover change, and its implications on long-term changes in various hydrometeorological parameters India during 2001–2018. The exhibited a decrease grassland (15.1%), barren (10.2%), shrubland (9.5%) contrast to an increase deciduous broadleaf forest (27.4%) croplands (25.2%) India. 31.7% of geographical area observed low warming (<0.8 °C), 52.1% cooling (...

Spatially extensive analysis of satellite, climate, and census data reveals humanenvironment interactions of regional or continental concern i n the United States. A grid-based principal components analysis of Bureau of Census variables revealed two independent demographic phenomena, a-settlement reflecting traditional human settlement patterns and p-settlement describing relative population gr...

New vegetation in barren areas offers possibilities for sequestering carbon in the soil. Arid and semi-arid areas (ASAs) are candidates for new vegetation. The possibility of agriculture in ASAs is reviewed, revealing the potential for cultivation by covering the surface with a layer of organic fibres. This layer collects more water from humidity in the air than does the uncovered mineral surfa...

Phytoremediation, the use of plants to remediate sites contaminated with organic and inorganic pollutants, and phytomining, the technology involved in extracting the pollutants removed for commercial purposes, are rapidly-growing industries with multi-million dollar markets. This solar-driven, green technology is often favored over more conventional methods of clean-up due to its low cost, low ...