Earth’s land cover has been extensively transformed over time due to both human activities and natural causes. Previous global studies have focused on developing spatial and temporal patterns of dominant human land-use activities (e.g., cropland, pastureland, urban land, wood harvest). Process-based modeling studies adopt different strategies to estimate the changes in land cover by using these...

The distribution of sheep was monitored for three years on part of an unimproved high-country summer range composed of several land units with different phases of degraded tall tussock and short tussock grassland. Sheep distribution was found to be non-random and to vary seasonally. Available dry matter and water content of inter-tussock vegetation were monitored on well vegetated land units fo...

This paper presents modifications to the linear kernel bidirectional reflectance distribution function (BRDF) models from Roujean et al. and from Wanner et al. that extend the spectral range into the thermal infrared (TIR). Our application is to synthesize the TIR optical properties of a scene pixel from laboratory component measurements. The angular reflectance and emissivity are needed to con...

In this paper we evaluate data obtained during the VALEM (Validation of Land Surface Emissivity Models) experiment, which took place in September 1998 near Ludwigslust in north-eastern Germany. The emphasis of the Ž eld campaign was to generate datasets to validate land surface emissivity models in the microwave spectral range. We describe the approach to derive land surface emissivities from t...

The Southern Africa Millennium Ecosystem Assessment developed an index for quantifying the state of biodiversity. The Biodiversity Intactness Index (BII) operates at the species level, and is based on changes in species abundance, rather than changes in richness brought about by extinction. The BII uses spatial data on species richness and land use activities per ecosystem type to weight estima...