In this paper, we discuss some key aspects for the maintenance of biological diversity in grassland–forest mosaics in southern Brazil (Campos Sulinos) not explored yet. Campos Sulinos are grasslands distributed throughout the Pampa and the Atlantic Forest biomes. Since these grasslands remain from past dryer and colder climatic conditions, they are acknowledged as native rather than anthropogen...

Remotely sensing recent growth, herbivory, or disturbance of herbaceous and woody vegetation in dryland ecosystems requires high spatial resolution and multi-temporal depth. Three dimensional (3D) remote sensing technologies like lidar, and techniques like structure from motion (SfM) photogrammetry, each have strengths and weaknesses at detecting vegetation volume and extent, given the instrume...

The goals of this paper are to assess feasibility of using total concentration (TPC) of phytoliths in modern soils and morphotypes in soil assemblages to infer paleovegetation cover and composition. We sampled from undisturbed grassland sites with different values of shrub and grass cover in the Columbia Basin, interior Pacific Northwest, USA. Phytolith concentration in soils were measured and ...

We investigate the response of a climate system model to two different methods for estimating snow cover fraction. In the control case, snow cover fraction changes gradually with snow depth; in the alternative scenarios (one with prescribed vegetation and one with dynamic vegetation), snow cover fraction initially increases with snow depth almost twice as fast as the control method. In cases wh...

A biogeochemical model of vegetation using observed climate data predicts the high northern latitude greening trend over the past two decades observed by satellites and a marked setback in this trend after the Mount Pinatubo volcano eruption in 1991. The observed trend toward earlier spring budburst and increased maximum leaf area is produced by the model as a consequence of biogeochemical vege...

Improving biodiversity conservation in fragmented agricultural landscapes has become an important global issue. Vegetation at the patch and landscape-scale is important for species occupancy and diversity, yet few previous studies have explored multi-scale associations between vegetation and community assemblages. Here, we investigated how patch and landscape-scale vegetation cover structure wo...

Recently, it is required to investigate the spatial distribution of vegetation in urban areas on a regional scale for not only the improvement of urban environment but also the conservation of ecosystem. In addition, the seasonal fluctuation of vegetation should be also analyzed because the vegetation distribution can be used for urban landscape management. The purpose of this study is to analy...

Semantic labeling is an active field in remote sensing applications. Although handling high detailed objects in Very High Resolution (VHR) optical image and VHR Digital Surface Model (DSM) is a challenging task, it can improve the accuracy of semantic labeling methods. In this paper, a semantic labeling method is proposed by fusion of optical and normalized DSM data. Spectral and spatial featur...

Climate change significantly impacts the vegetation growth and terrestrial ecosystems. Using satellite remote sensing observations, here we focus on investigating vegetation dynamics and the likelihood of vegetation-related drought under varying climate conditions across China. We first compare temporal trends of Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and climatic variables over China. W...

Based on unmixing model and using the Thematic Mapper (TM) image as well as obtaining end-members by ground spectral measurements, quantitative retrieval of information on sparse vegetation coverage in oasis-desert transitional area in Minqin, Gansu was done. The results showed that a wide band of TM images can be used in extracting sparse vegetation coverage of arid regions. Three components w...