Originally from Asia, Rubus niveus has become one of the most widespread invasive plant species in the Galapagos Islands. It has invaded open vegetation, shrubland and forest alike. It forms dense thickets up to 4 m high, appearing to displace native vegetation, and threaten the integrity of several native communities. This study used correlation analysis between a R. niveus cover gradient and ...

the degradation rate of mediterranean steppes, especially in north africa is 1% per year, and this considered as high a rate of degradation. this study conducted in 2014 in the south slope of the al-jabal al-akhdar, northeast libya to quantify the vegetation recovery rate and assess selected vegetation indices (vis) for mapping rangelands degradation status using remote sensing technology. thro...

risk assessment of soil erosion, one of the most important land degradation problems worldwide, is very essential for land and water resources management, and development of soil conservation methods. in the present study, the temporal changes of soil erosion risk were assessed from 1987 to 2010, based on the revised universal soil loss equation (rusle) using remote sensing (rs) and geographic ...

1. Throughout arid regions of the world, groundwater is extracted for human population centres. In the Great Basin and Range region of the USA, we lack basic information regarding some plant communities detailing the extent to which vegetation is threatened by groundwater extraction. This is particularly true for alkali meadow vegetation, which is restricted to zones of shallow groundwater yet ...

The evaluation of vegetation covers using conventional methods is difficult over arid areas due to several reasons such as lack of the suitable roads to these regions. Moreover, this task is time-consuming. For these reasons, remote sensing has been considered as an economic alternative for conventional field work. In this study, the feasibility of using IRS images in vegetation cover evaluatio...

metric (mapping evapotranspiration at high resolution with internalized calibration) is known as an appropriate surface energy balance model for the estimation of the spatial distribution of evapotranspiration (et) in semi-arid regions. based on lysimeter measurements, metric has shown et estimates of 10% on a sub-field scale on a daily basis. there is a need to identify how the model is sensit...

In order to promote an increased ability to compare results from different studies, a standard protocol for controlled trampling experiments is suggested. The procedure will provide information on both damage to vegetation in response to short-duration trampling and subsequent recovery over a one-year period. Changes in vegetation cover, vegetation height, bare ground cover, and the cover of in...

Recent theoretical studies have shown that spatial redistribution of surface water may explain the occurrence of patterns of alternating vegetated and degraded patches in semiarid grasslands. These results implied, however, that spatial redistribution processes cannot explain the collapse of production on coarser scales observed in these systems. We present a spatially explicit vegetation model...