The relationship between vegetation and soil moisture deserves attention due to its scientific importance and practical applications. However, the effects of soil moisture on vegetation development and succession are poorly documented. Here we study soil water storage in Yanhe watershed at northern Shaanxi on five different land uses, namely shrubland, farmland, natural grassland, woodland, and...

Groundwater resources are becoming the primary factor for maintaining life in arid areas. Understanding land use/cover change and its effect on groundwater depth would enhance land use and groundwater management for typical desert-oasis transition zones. Reduction of groundwater recharge and increase of groundwater exploitation during 1985 and 2010 led to the decrease of groundwater depth in Li...

Transportation activities can contribute to accumulation of heavy metals in roadside soil and grass, which could potentially compromise public health and the environment if the roadways cross farmland areas. Particularly, heavy metals may enter the food chain as a result of their uptake by roadside edible grasses. This research was conducted to investigate heavy metal (Cu, Zn, Cd, and Pb) conce...

Evapotranspiration (ET) is an important component of the surface energy balance and hydrological cycle. In this study, the eddy covariance technique was used to measure ET of the semi-arid farmland ecosystem in the Loess Plateau during 2010 growing season (April to September). The characteristics and environmental regulations of ET and crop coefficient (Kc) were investigated. The results showed...

Reclamation of abandoned farmland is crucial to a sustainable agriculture in arid regions. This study aims to evaluate the impact of different reclamation treatments on abandoned salinized farmland. We investigated four artificial reclamation treatments, continuous cotton (CC), continuous alfalfa (CA), tree-wheat intercropping (TW) and trees (TS), which were conducted in 2011–2012 in the Manasi...

Farmland birds have declined throughout Europe over recent decades. Many farmland songbirds are associated with linear woody features on field boundaries, such as hedgerows and tree lines. Previous studies assessed songbird associations specific hedgerow characteristics, their landscape context, but large-scale assessments been limited by difficulties in mapping networks large extents, particul...

The research presented here consists of two essays that describe applications of nonmarket valuation techniques to current land use issues. The individual studies were designed to address important methodological and policy issues, respectively. In the first essay, Geographic Infornlation System (GIs) data are used to develop variables representing the physical extent and visibility of surround...

By Larry Libby and Elena G. Irwin Introduction Farmland value reflects the economic returns from the various products and services available from that land. Buyers and sellers agree on a price that captures expected income from the relevant outputs. Among the farmland services are certain amenities, some of which the landowner may withhold from non-payers and others for which exclusion costs ar...

In this paper, we propose a new method of estimating pure spectra and the mixture ratio by applying the Independent Component Analysis (ICA) to the agricultural remote sensing images for recognizing fine structure vegetation change on farmland, where the covering plant is unknown. This technique enables to separate the change of vegetation into qualitative one due to ecological characteristics ...