Satellite image classification is one of the most significant applications in remote sensing. Remote sensing data obtained from different optical sensors have been commonly used to characterize and quantity land information. However, conventional optical remote sensing is limited by weather conditions. Synthetic aperture radar (SAR), with the allweather and all-time advantages, is important in ...

Planning and construction are well-known practical topics; however, eco-city developments and their sustainable effects on the city are less known. Xi’an is a typical city that has a target to become an eco-city. This city is selected in this case study with the aims of (1) framing eco-practices to enhance the understanding of an eco-city development and (2) evaluating the effect of eco-practic...

Land degradation is one of the most serious problems facing resource-poor tropical hillside farmers. Studies examining determinants of farmers’ decisions to invest in land improvement technologies have focused on economic and financial factors, neglecting individuals’ perceptions and awareness of the problems and how they affect land use and behavioral change that enhance environmental sustaina...

Institutional mapping is a technique that builds on the logic of Geographic Information Systems (GIS). In GIS, coverages placed over a base map show spatial relations. Social institutions are more difficult to ‘‘map’’ physically. Institutional mapping uses three social coverages—scale, power, and capital. Four sets of institutions affecting watershed management—salmon restoration, water quality...

Conservation priority-setting schemes have not yet combined geographic priorities with a framework that can guide the allocation of funds among alternate conservation actions that address specific threats. We develop such a framework, and apply it to 17 of the world's 39 Mediterranean ecoregions. This framework offers an improvement over approaches that only focus on land purchase or species ri...

Land-cover characteristics have been considered in many ecological studies. Methods to identify these characteristics by using remotely sensed time series data have previously been proposed. However, these methods often have a mathematical basis, and more effort is required to better illustrate the ecological meanings of land-cover characteristics. In this study, a method for identifying these ...

Biological diversity in areas of land use (called ‘agrodiversity’ in the People, Land Management and Environmental Change – PLEC project) is not simply a function of the diversity of species and varieties of biota. Naturally, it does concern standard ecological biodiversity aspects (often termed ‘agro-biodiversity’ or ‘agricultural biodiversity’). Usually it is used to tell the tale of how mode...

in this study an attempt has been made to empirically examine the relationship between biodiversity and economic growth using indicators of species diversity and income per capita as proxies for biodiversity and economic growth, respectively.also the effects of agricultural value added as a percentage of gdp, trade freedom index, exchange rate, population, percantage of land developed for agric...

Geosimulation models are used in various domains to make projections for a set of scenarios, characterizing different future story lines. An impact assessment is applied on the results hereof to compare scenario outcomes with respect to given indicators. The impact assessment, however, does not represent the complete solution space of indicator values, meaning that it is unclear how optimal the...