Conservation and monitoring of tropical forests requires accurate information on their extent and change dynamics. Cloud cover, sensor errors and technical barriers associated with satellite remote sensing data continue to prevent many national and sub-national REDD+ initiatives from developing their reference deforestation and forest degradation emission levels. Here we present a framework for...

An approach based on the nearest neighbors techniques is presented for producing thematic maps of forest cover (forest/non-forest) and total stand volume for the Terai region in southern Nepal. To create the forest cover map, we used a combination of Landsat TM satellite data and visual interpretation data, i.e., a sample grid of visual interpretation plots for which we obtained the land use cl...

Establishment of protected areas (PA) has been one of the leading tools in biodiversity conservation. Globally, these kinds of conservation interventions have given rise to an increase in PAs as well as the need to empirically evaluate the impact of these PAs on forest cover. Few of these empirical evaluations have been geared towards comparison of pre and post policy intervention landscapes. T...

Introduction Cattle production on Brachiaria pastures is a primary use of cleared forestland in the western Brazilian Amazon. About 6.8 million hectares in the States of Acre and Rondônia have been deforested, where 75% of land is now grazed (IBGE, 1998). The principal pasture species are B. brizantha and B. decumbens with the latter in decline from spittlebug susceptibility (Deois incompleta; ...

The only National Inventory of red wood ants in Bulgaria was carried out about 50 years ago (1970–1973). Formica rufa Linnaeus, 1761, F. pratensis Retzius, 1783, lugubris Zetterstedt, 1838 and polyctena (as x hybrid) were found a current monitoring programme. This study presents data on their distribution nest density, provides more details the habitat requirements for conservation purposes. Fi...

Land use and cover changes (LUCC) in permafrost regions have significant consequences on ecology, engineered systems, the environment. Obtaining more details about LUCC is crucial for sustainable development, land conservation, environment management. The Hola Basin (957 km2) northernmost part of Northeast China, a boreal forest landscape underlain by discontinuous, sporadic, isolated permafros...

Can social inequality be seen imprinted in a forest landscape? We studied the relationship between land holding, land use, and inequality in a peasant community in the Peruvian Amazon where farmers practice swidden-fallow cultivation. Longitudinal data on land holding, land use, and land cover were gathered through field-level surveys (n = 316) and household interviews (n = 51) in 1994/1995 and...

Tropical moist forests contain the majority of terrestrial species. Human actions destroy between 1 and 2 million km(2) of such forests per decade, with concomitant carbon release into the atmosphere. Within these forests, protected areas are the principle defense against forest loss and species extinctions. Four regions-the Amazon, Congo, South American Atlantic Coast, and West Africa-once con...