soil erosion is the most important threat to the soil and water resources among the soil degradation processes in arid and semi-arid regions. this study was conducted in shirin-darreh basin, a semi-arid region in north-eastern iran, to evaluate the performance of erosion potential method (epm) and hydro-physical method (csy) in generating erosion potential and sediment load maps via geographic ...

Risk maps facilitate discussion among different stakeholders and provide a tool for spatial targeting of health interventions. We present maps documenting shrinking risk profiles after deworming with respect to soil-transmitted helminthiasis among schoolchildren from disadvantaged neighbourhoods in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. Children were examined for soil-transmitted helminth infections usi...

Land use change may influence many natural phenomena and ecological processes, including runoff, soil erosion, sedimentation and soil conditions. Decreasing of forest area in the North of Iran is one of the critical problems in recent years. The aims of this study are to detect land use changes between 1967 to 2002 using satellite images of Land Sat 7 ETM+ (2002), aerial photos and digital topo...

Compact characterization of soil moisture at a given scale using self-organizing feature maps is presented. We find that as few as 49 neurons capture the spatial structure of remotely sensed soil moisture images from the southern Great Plains. Average latent heat flux computed from the original image of 21 204 pixels and from 49 neurons are comparable.

In this study, the support vector machine (SVM) was applied and validated by using the geographic information system (GIS) in order to map landslide susceptibility. In order to test the usefulness and effectiveness of the SVM, two study areas were carefully selected: the PyeongChang and Inje areas of Gangwon Province, Korea. This is because, not only did many landslides (2098 in PyeongChang and...

A large-scale leaching assessment tool not only illustrates soil (or groundwater) vulnerability in unmonitored areas, but also can identify areas of potential concern for agrochemical contamination. This study describes the methodology of how the statewide leaching tool in Hawaii modified recently for use with pesticides and volatile organic compounds can be extended to the national assessment ...

Soil respiration is one of the largest carbon fluxes from terrestrial ecosystems. Estimating global soil respiration is difficult because of its high spatiotemporal variability and sensitivity to land-use change. Satellite monitoring provides useful data for estimating the global carbon budget, but few studies have estimated global soil respiration using satellite data. We provide preliminary i...

Digital mapping techniques are used increasingly in hydrology. One of the constraints on the application of those techniques is the digitizing process, which can be costly and time consuming. This paper describes the background and development of a low cost, easy-to-use system for digitizing maps, based on the use of a video camera as a scanner, and goes on to discuss the application of this sy...