this study aims to quantify the impacts of land use changes on ecosystem service value during large scale land development, and to provide key information for both economic development and policy makers for eco-environmental protection. the study area locates in manas river watershed which is a typical land development region in northwest china. landsat mss/tm/etm+ images in 1976, 1989, 1999 a...

Fresh water is an essential element for human survival and land-based life forms. Right quantity and quality of fresh water is a fundamental element for human continued existence and land-based life forms. About 97% of earth water is salt water and from remaining 3% only 0.4% fresh water is available for human use. Many countries of the world are facing problem of inadequate drinking water supp...

Evapotranspiration (ET) plays a key role in water resource management. It is important to understand the ET spatio-temporal pattern of South Asia for understanding and anticipating serious water resource shortages. In this study, daily ET in 2008 was estimated over South Asia by using MODerate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) products combined with field observations and Global Land...

Soil salinity is a major abiotic stress adversely affecting plant growth and crop production worldwide. Increased salinization of arable land is expected to have destructive universal effects, resulting in 30 % land loss within the next 25 years and up to 50 % by the middle of twenty-first century (Porcel et al. 2012; Kapoor et al. 2013; Abdel Latef and Chaoxing 2014). The term ‘‘salinity’’ ref...

Antelope bitterbrush (Purshia tridentata Pursh DC; Rosaceae) is an arid-land shrub that occupies an important ecological niche in various fire-dominated communities across much of the western United States. Because of its importance as a browse for large mammals and a food source for granivores, P. tridentata is frequently planted by Federal agencies in arid-land revegetation. We are currently ...

The "dry gets drier, wet gets wetter" (DGDWGW) paradigm is widely accepted in global moisture change. However, Greve et al. have declared that this paradigm has been overestimated. This controversy leaves a large gap in the understanding of the evolution of water-related processes. Here, we examine the global moisture trends using satellite soil moisture for the past 35 years (1979-2013). Our r...

Previous studies have found that urbanization often decreases net primary production (NPP), an important integrative measure of ecosystem functioning. In arid environments, however, urbanization may boost productivity by introducing highly productive plant communities and weakening the coupling of plant growth to naturally occurring cycles of water and nutrients. We tested these ideas by compar...

Detailed remote sensing of urban environments has been limited due to the poor spatial resolution of most satellite-based instruments and low demand from city officials and scientists. As many of the world’s arid region urban centers continue to expand, the need to monitor urban land cover change and its impact on the surrounding environment becomes critical. The growth of urban ecology as an i...

A new disturbance automated reference toolset (DART) was developed to monitor human land surface impacts using soil-type and ecological context. DART identifies reference areas with similar soils, topography, and geology; and compares the disturbance condition to the reference area condition using a quantile-based approach based on a satellite vegetation index. DART was able to represent 26-55%...