There is an increasing demand amongst resource managers for cost-effective watershed-scale inventories of riparian buffer condition and function. Recent developments in image processing software and decreasing satellite imagery costs enable a new methodology that can help meet this demand. ASTER satellite imagery, which has 15 metre pixel size, is processed with image segmentation software to i...

Seasonal and spatial variation in soil nematode communities was investigated in a field study conducted on a loessial plain in the northern Negev Desert, Israel. Soil samples from 0- to 50-cm depths were collected seasonally during 2001 under the canopy of Atriplex halimus and Hammada scoparia, and between shrubs (control). Total population abundance ranged from 8 to 887 individuals per 100 g s...

16 This paper describes the results of research designed to explore reporting of three indices 17 (Corruption Perception Index, CPI, Human Development Index, HDI and the Ecological 18 Footprint, EF) in the UK national press between January 1990 and December 2009. 19 Reporting of the indices was assessed by: 20 (a) the number of articles published each year mentioning the index at least once 21 ...

This paper discusses the construction of an ecosystem services index (ESI) and the respective roles of ecology and economics in that effort. It extends the concept of an ESI, analogous to Gross Domestic Product, to other analogous indices, including an ecosystem price or value index, and a net ESI that accounts for interactions between ecosystem stocks and service flows. A central aim of this p...

Aquatic ecosystem biomonitoring tools are largely lacking for many developing countries, resulting in adoption of tools developed from other countries/regions. In many instances, however, the applicability of adopted tools to the new system has not been explicitly evaluated. The objective of this study was to test the applicability of foreign diatom-based water quality assessment indices to urb...

Measurement uncertainties are inherent to assessment of biological indices of water bodies. The effect of these uncertainties on the probability of misclassification of ecological status is the subject of this paper. Four Monte-Carlo (M-C) models were applied to simulate the occurrence of random errors in the measurements of metrics corresponding to four biological elements of surface waters: m...

Samples of agricultural soils were collected across North Carolina in 1992 and Nebraska in 1993 to determine which indices of nematode communities could be applied to distinguish ecological pattern at regional geographic scales. Sampling density was proportional to the area of agriculture in each region of each state. Maturity indices (based on life-history characteristics) were calculated to d...

The aim of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of the ‘lure and kill’ technique, commonly called Mass Trapping (MT), compared with the larvicidal technique in olive fruit fly control. Data from different agro-ecological and management conditions were collected in several mass trapping areas in the regions of Tuscany and Liguria during 1999, 2000 and 2001. Data were organized and stored ...

Diversity indices provide simple and powerful metrics for assessing biological communities. Based on entropy measures, the approach considers statistical and thermodynamic inferences to deduce ecological patterns. However, concerns exist regarding the accuracy of diversity indices. Because relative quantities depend on the sorting of organisms (e.g., guilds and species) and their interactions, ...