Researchers from the U.S. Geological Survey, University of Nebraska– Lincoln and the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre, Ispra, Italy produced a 1 km resolution global land cover characteristics database for use in a wide range of continentalto global-scale environmental studies. This database provides a unique view of the broad patterns of the biogeographical and ecoclimatic diversity...

Long-term MODIS vegetation index records were used to extract regularly-repeating seasonal and interannual greenness cycles in Hawaiian ecosystems using harmonic analysis. With two vegetation indices, NDVI and EVI, the MODIS system provided an opportunity to combine the two measures and create a hybrid approach to the leaf phenology study in a diversity of Hawaiian ecosystems. Despite data nois...

Geographic information systems and satellite remote sensing information are emerging technologies in land-cover change assessment. They now provide an opportunity to gain insights into land-cover change properties through the spatio-temporal data capture over several decades. The time series of Landsat images covering the 1985–2009 period is used here to explore the impacts of surface mining an...

Spatial relationship between vegetation and rainfall in Central Kazakhstan has been modelled using Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and rainfall data from weather stations. The modelling based on application of two statistical approaches: conventional ordinary least squares (OLS) regression, and geographically weighted regression (GWR). The results support the assumption that the a...

The aim of the present study was to determine the role of specific environmental and climatic factors affecting the distribution and density of Phlebotomus ariasi and P. perniciosus , the proven vectors for Leishmania infantum in Spain. An entomological study was carried out in July 2006 in the province of Lleida with sticky traps set in their diurnal resting places at altitudes ranging from 86...

Aim We evaluate environmental and historical determinants of modern species composition for upland vegetation types across Cape Cod, Massachusetts, a region that supports numerous uncommon species assemblages that are conservation priorities. Location The study area encompasses the entire peninsula of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, USA. Methods Historical changes in land-use and land-cover across the...

This paper investigates the contribution of Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI) data to the improvement of object-based image analysis using multi-spectral Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectral-radiometer (MODIS) imagery. Object-based image analysis classifies objects instead of single pixels. The idea to classify objects stems from the fact that most often the important information to process an im...

North Hebei province lies in the ecotone from agriculture to animal husbandry and forest and is eco-fragile transitional region. Serous land degradation, especially grassland degradation occurs in this area, because of overgrazing and over-reclamation. There are also many disasters, such as drought, dust storm, forest fire, and so on. This area has characteristics of ecological degradation and ...

Remote sensing satellite data offer the unique possibility to map land use land cover transformations by providing spatially explicit information. However, detection of short-term processes and land use patterns of high spatial-temporal variability is a challenging task. We present a novel framework using multi-temporal TerraSAR-X data and machine learning techniques, namely Discriminative Mark...