We used correlative models with species occurrence points, Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) vegetation indices, and topo-climatic predictors to map the current distribution and potential habitat of invasive Prosopis juliflora in Afar, Ethiopia. Time-series of MODIS Enhanced Vegetation Indices (EVI) and Normalized Difference Vegetation Indices (NDVI) with 250 m2 spatial reso...

A physically based, analytical model of the bidirectional reflectance of porous media was derived in a companion paper (Verstraete et al., this issue). This model is validated against laboratory and ground-based measurements taken over two vegetation covers, both in the visible and near-infrared spectral regions. An inversion procedure, based on a nonlinear optimization technique, is used to in...

OBJECTIVE Rift Valley fever (RVF) is a mosquito-borne infection with great impact on animal and human health. The objectives of this study were to identify ecological factors that explain the risk of RVF outbreaks in eastern and central Kenya and to produce a spatially explicit risk map. METHODS The sensitivity of seven selected ecological variables to RVF occurrence was assessed by generaliz...

The quantification of spatial heterogeneity can be used to examine the structure of ecological systems. The 2008 Wenchuan earthquake caused severe vegetation damage. In addition to simply detecting change, the magnitude of changes must also be examined. Remote sensing and geographic information system techniques were used to produce landscape maps before and after the earthquake and analyze the...

The British Petroleum Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill in the Gulf of Mexico was the biggest oil spill in US history. To assess the impact of the oil spill on the saltmarsh plant community, we examined Advanced Visible Infrared Imaging Spectrometer (AVIRIS) data flown over Barataria Bay, Louisiana in September 2010 and August 2011. Oil contamination was mapped using oil absorption features in pixel ...

Principal component analysis (PCA) is one of the most commonly adopted feature reduction techniques in remote sensing image analysis. However, it may overlook subtle but useful information if directly applied to the analysis of hyperspectral data, especially for the discrimination among different vegetation types. In order to accurately map an invasive plant species (horse tamarind, Leucaena le...

The paper describes and discusses the experience in mapping pasture types on the Tibetan Plateau. After pasture data recording in the fi eld campaign of 2004 the application of remote sensing and GIS to refi ne the vegetation mapping became viable. The vegetation types that resulted from the analysis of the fi eld data were aggregated into four main categories ( ́Kobresia pasture`, ́Miscellaneou...

abstract the objective of current research is to investigate distribution patterns of vegetation types and its relation with environmental factors in southern margin of haj aligholi kavir of damghan. three vegetation types including halecnemum strobilaceum, sedlitzia rosmarinus and artemisia sieberi were studied in marginal arid regions and uplands of the study area. firstly, geographic locatio...