Landsat 8, the most recently launched satellite of the series, promises to maintain the continuity of Landsat 7. However, in addition to subtle differences in sensor characteristics and vegetation index (VI) generation algorithms, VIs respond differently to the seasonality of the various types of vegetation cover. The purpose of this study was to elucidate the effects of these variations on VIs...

The use of statistical tools to assess species richness in different biological groups has increased considerably in the recent years. In this context, during the wet and dry seasons of 2007 and 2008 (dry only), we evaluated the amphibian species richness (alpha and beta diversity) in four vegetation types: cloud forest (CF), pine-oak forest (POF), xeric scrub (XS), and tropical evergreen fores...

Pollen data from 30 sites in arid and semi-arid regions of China were reviewed to document regional patterns of Holocene vegetation and climate change and to understand the large-scale controls on these changes. Vegetation at most sites in eastern Inner Mongolia switched between forest, forest steppe, and typical steppe, showing maximum moisture conditions before 6 ka (1 ka 1⁄4 1000 cal yr BP) ...

Plant communities display a vertical structure based on the size and growth pattern of the dominant species. To a large extent, this pattern, called vertical stratification, depends on the climatic zone. Vertical structure analysis consists in detecting the number of layers and their limits within a forest stand. So far, there is a lack of robust approaches applied to airborne laser scanning (A...

This study attempts to find a new and better approach to estimate forest LAI in fully closed canopy condition. Although there have been many previous studies to estimate LAI using optical remote sensor data, there are not enough evidences whether the red and near-IR reflectance are still effective to estimate forest LAI in closed canopy situation. In this study, we have conducted a simple corre...

Describing vegetation types is critical for managing natural resources and assessing ecosystem risk. Vegetation maps are historically produced by “Western experts,” often ignoring local-level groups critical to resource management. Indigenous hunters, as resource managers, have strong connections to their landscapes and their descriptions of vegetation within their homelands can be useful in th...

Earth's land surface teems with life. Although the distribution of ecosystems is largely explained by temperature and precipitation, vegetation can vary markedly with little variation in climate. Here we explore the role of bedrock in governing the distribution of forest cover across the Sierra Nevada Batholith, California. Our sites span a narrow range of elevations and thus a narrow range in ...

Mountainous regions are especially vulnerable to climate and land use change. For a monitoring of subtle changes detailed and continuous land cover information is necessary. Therefore vegetation cover fractions are derived for the Naryn river catchment in Kyrgyzstan using a remote sensing multi-scale approach. First a very high resolution QuickBird image is classified into discrete classes usin...

Positive feedbacks between vegetation and fire disturbance may lead to nonlinear ecosystem responses to variation in fire regime. We used a cellular automaton model of fire|vegetation dynamics based on pine savanna communities to explore the potential for fire|vegetation feedbacks to lead to ecological thresholds and abrupt transitions between alternate ecosystem states. We show that (i) ecosys...

Aim and location The research investigated the long-term effects of human disturbance, namely nineteenth century agricultural land-use, on the modern species composition, structure and distribution of Rich Mesic Forests (RMF) in western Massachusetts, USA. RMF are a species-rich north-eastern variant of the Mixed Mesophytic Forest Type of eastern North America. Methods Land-use history patterns...