Soil erosion associated with non-point source pollution is viewed as a process of land degradation in many terrestrial environments. Careful monitoring and assessment of land use variations with different temporal and spatial scales would reveal a fluctuating interface, punctuated by changes in rainfall and runoff, movement of people, perturbation from environmental disasters, and shifts in agr...

L use has an enormous impact on the coastal aquatic system of the Chesapeake Bay, Maryland, USA.The problems associated with land use and land management practices on the Chesapeake Bay are amplified by the high ratio of land to water. Thus, widespread land use changes significantly impact the bay’s hydrology, water quality and ecology.These impacts promoted a sequence of management initiatives...

Developtlicnt pressures in rural mountainous areas o f the United States hold crucial implications for water quality. Especially important arc changes in the extent and pattern o f various land uses. W e cxamille how position along an urban-rural gradient affects landscape pattcrns in a southern Appalachian watershed, first by testing for the effect o f distance from an urban center on land-cov...

Land use regression (LUR) models have been globally used to estimate long-term air pollution exposures. The present study aimed to analyze the association of different land use types and traffic measures with air pollutants in Tehran, Iran, as part of the future development of LUR models. Data of the particulate matter (PM10), sulfur dioxide (SO2), and nitrogen dioxide (NO2) were extracted from...

Interest in the quality and health of soil has been stimulated by recent awareness that soil is vital to both production of food and fiber and global ecosystems function. Soil health, or quality, can be broadly defined as the capacity of a living soil to function, within natural or managed ecosystem boundaries, to sustain plant and animal productivity, maintain or enhance water and air quality,...

This paper discusses the implications of poor or non-existent information on soil quality, at the proper scale, during the planning and implementation of settlement projects in the Brazilian Amazon. Based on data from the Machadinho settlement project, Rondônia, we show that most settlers had no knowledge about the agricultural capability of the area, did not receive technical information, coul...

Modeling groundwater vulnerability to pollution is critical for implementing programs to protect groundwater quality. Most groundwater vulnerability modeling has been based on current hydrogeology and land use conditions. However, groundwater vulnerability is strongly dependent on factors such as depth-to-water, recharge and land use conditions that may change in response to future changes in c...

Title of Document: A BALANCING ACT? —AN EMPRICIAL EXAMINATION OF WHETHER THE DYNAMIC BALANCE POLICY HAS HELPED CHINA RECUDE CULTIVATED LAND LOSS AMID RAPID URBAN LAND EXPANSION Juan Feng Doctor of Philosophy 2011 Directed By: Professor Erik Lichtenberg Agricultural and Resource Economics Associate Professor Chengri Ding Urban Studies and Planning For decades, the Chinese government has been con...

Introducing concerns about land fertility for landlords in a Principal –Agent model of sharecropping with moral hazard, we show that the optimal contract under limited commitment reflects a trade-off between production and land quality maintenance. Using data from the Philippines, a model where the leasing out and contract choices are simultaneous is estimated and avoids the selectivity bias of...

Volunteered Geographic Information has become exponentially available over the Web in the last years. This availability can hide a vast geographical richness and provides us with both a great opportunity to explore new ways to use it and also big challenges related with its unstructured nature. This paper conducts a preliminary analysis of the adequacy of photos from the Flickr and Panoramio in...