Oil palm tree is an important cash crop in Thailand. To maximize the productivity from planting, oil palm plantation managers need to know the number of oil palm trees in the plantation area. In order to obtain this information, an approach for palm tree detection using high resolution satellite images is proposed. This approach makes it possible to count the number of oil palm trees in a plant...

Life history, aggregation and dormancy of rubber plantation litter beetle Luprops tristis Fabricius, (Tenebrionidae: Coleoptera) is described from rubber plantation belts in the western slopes of Western Ghats from the south Indian state of Kerala. The life cycle lasted 12 months, including the 5 larval instars lasting 1 month, the 3 day pupal stage, and the adult stage that can last 11 months....

Understanding foraging strategies of birds is essential to understanding mechanisms of their community assembly. To provide such information on a key Southeast Asian rainforest family, the babblers (Timaliidae), we evaluated foraging behavior and abundance in 7 morphologically and behaviorally similar sympatric species (Cyanoderma erythropterum, C. rufifrons, Stachyris maculata, S. nigricollis,...

The Australian hardwood plantation industry is challenged to identify profitable markets for the sale of its wood fibre. The majority of the hardwood plantations already established in Australia have been managed for the production of pulpwood; however, interest exists to identify more profitable and value-added markets. As a consequence of a predominately pulpwood-focused management regime, th...

The control of whitefly Bemisia tabaci (Gennadius) biotype B (Hemiptera: Aleyrodidae) on okra (Abelmoschus esculentus L.) consists primarily in the use of insecticides, due to the lack of information on other mortality factors. The objective of this study was to evaluate the spatial and temporal population dynamics of the whitefly B. tabaci biotype B on two successive A. esculentus var. “Santa ...

I examined the effects of two farm management variables, shade-tree species and crop structure, on the winter (dry season) arthropod and bird communities in a Jamaican shade coffee plantation. Birds and canopy arthropods were more abundant in areas of the plantation shaded by the tree Inga vera than by Pseudalbizia berteroana. The abundance of arthropods (potential pests) on the coffee crop, ho...

Plantation mapping is critical for understanding and addressing deforestation, a key driver of climate change and ecosystem degradation. Unfortunately, most plantation maps are limited to small areas for specific years because they rely on visual inspection of imagery. Here we propose an automated approach for annual mapping of plantations using remote sensing data. Due to the heterogeneity of ...

The Historical Archaeology of the Built Environment Historical archaeology is an inherently interdisciplinary endeavor, which combines excavated materials with documents and often extant landscapes to interpret the more recent past (Yamin and Metheny 1996). Archaeological studies of the built environment are plentiful, and have been used to understand complex dimensions of social life in the pa...

Little is known about how restoration strategies affect aspects like leaf litter's quantity, depth and humidity. I analyzed leaf litter's quantity, depth and humidity yearly patterns in a primary tropical lower montane wet forest and two restored areas: a 15 year old secondary forest (unassisted restoration) and a 40 year old Cupressus lusitanica plantation (natural understory). The three habit...

Ecological studies of orangutans have almost exclusively focused on populations living in primary or selectively logged rainforest. The response of orangutans to severe habitat degradation remains therefore poorly understood. Most experts assume that viable populations cannot survive outside undisturbed or slightly disturbed forests. This is a concern because nearly 75% of all orangutans live o...