The preparation of vegetation cover maps by used the land inventory and a traditional method has a lot of cost and time. But today, remote sensing is one of the main sources of data collection and information production for study and monitoring land resources, and was efficient tools for providing quickly and timely data and information needs for program planning in the natural resource filed. ...

Spectral vegetation indices have been the primary resources for characterizing grassland vegetation based on remotely sensed data. However, the use of spectral indices for vegetation characterization in grasslands has been challenged by the confounding effects from external factors, such as soil properties, dead materials, and shadowing of vegetation canopies. Dead materials refer to the dead c...

The hypothesized presence of large regions of grass and forb-dominated "steppe tundra" across Alaska and Siberia during the Pleistocene glacial epochs has led to a search for modern analogs. Evidence is presented for the presence of steppe vegetation on south-facing slopes and summits of pingos within the central Arctic Coastal Plain of Alaska. Vegetation, floristics, soils, and climatic factor...

We installed a field experiment to support the development of protocols to restore longleaf pine (Pinus palustris Mill.) to existing mature loblolly pine (P. taeda L.) stands at Camp Lejeune, NC. Seven canopy treatments included four uniform and three gap treatments. The four uniform treatments were defined by target residual basal area (BA) [control (uncut), BA9, BA4.5, and BA0 (clearcut) m2/h...

In the Kruger National Park (KNP), South Africa, ecosystem managers use a series of monitoring endpoints, known as thresholds of potential concern (TPCs), to define the upper and the lower levels of accepted variation in ecosystems. For woody vegetation, the current TPC suggests that woody cover should not drop by more than 80% of its 'highest ever' value. In this paper, we explore the utility ...

Phenological changes within a growth season were investigated in two grazed, seminatural grasslands in southern Sweden. On four occasions during the growth season, two independent observers recorded plant frequency and percentage cover. The vegetation data sets were analysed with ordination methods. The temporal changes were highly significant, but accounted for only a small part of the total v...

Background: Monitoring terrestrial vegetation cover condition is important to evaluate its current condition and to identify potential vulnerabilities. Due to simplicity and low cost, point intercept method has been widely used in evaluating grassland surface and quantifying cover conditions. Field-based digital photography method is gaining popularity for the purpose of cover estimate, as it c...

Negative impacts of gully erosion in marly areas are severe due to improper landuse practices such as irrigation, tillage, overgrazing and degradation of vegetation cover. The objective of this research was to evaluate gully thresholds related to plant vegetation cover and landuse change in the Agriculture (AG), Fair Rangeland (FR) and Weak Rangeland (WR) areas of Ghaasr-e-Shirin, Kermanshah, I...