During the last three decades, Morocco has experienced several stern and extended episodes of drought that severely affected pasture production. To cope with this phenomenon, the policy makers have put emphasis on a reactive short term management approach rather than on pro-active risk-based management measures. The purpose of this study is the assessment of drought by remote sensing, which is ...

abstract desertification could cause reduction of the ecological and biological potential of land which may occur both naturally and artificially. identifying and evaluating the effective factors in development of desertification is very important for better management of land. the aim of this research is to evaluate the sensitive input parameters in the desertification condition by using of ar...

Amazonia holds the largest continuous area of tropical forests with intense land use change dynamics inducing water, carbon, and energy feedbacks with regional and global impacts. Much of our knowledge of land use change in Amazonia comes from studies of the Brazilian Amazon, which accounts for two thirds of the region. Amazonia outside of Brazil has received less attention because of the diffi...

Fecal contamination of surface waters is a critical water quality concern with serious human health implications. Many states use Escherichia coli as an indicator organism for fecal contamination and apply watershed models to develop and support bacterial Total Maximum Daily Loads (TMDLs); however, model applicability is greatly restricted due to the sparse availability of E. coli data for vali...

This paper examines potential differences in land use between Q’eqchí Maya and Ladino (Spanish speakers of mixed ancestry) farmers in a remote agricultural frontier in northern Petén, Guatemala. The research site, the Sierra de Lacandón National Park (SLNP), is a core conservation zone of Guatemala’s Maya Biosphere Reserve (MBR). In recent years, much has been written about the dramatic process...

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...

While tropical montane cloud forests (TMCF) provide critical hydrological services to downstream regions throughout much of the humid tropics, catchment hydrology and impacts associated with forest conversion in these ecosystems remain poorly understood. Here, we compare the annual, seasonal and event-scale streamflow patterns and runoff generation processes of three neighbouring headwater catc...

Brazil has the largest commercial beef cattle herd in the world, with cattle ranching being particularly prominent in the 200-million ha, Brazilian neotropical moist savanna biome, known as Cerrado, one of the world’s hotspots for biodiversity conservation. As decreasing productivity is a major concern affecting the Cerrado pasturelands, evaluation of pasture conditions through the determinatio...

Increasing demand for biofuel has intensified land-use change (LUC) for sugarcane (Saccharum officinarum) expansion in Brazil. Assessments of soil quality (SQ) response to this LUC are essential for quantifying and monitoring sustainability of sugarcane production over time. Since there is not a universal methodology for assessing SQ, we conducted a field-study at three sites within the largest...

The aim of this study was to test the effect of agricultural and forestry land use on the structure of mayfly assemblages in low-order streams. Twenty-nine headwater streams were investigated in the state of São Paulo. We analyzed 15 streams in pristine areas (mixed tropical rainforest, semideciduous forest and dense tropical rainforest), and 14 streams covered with sugarcane, eucalyptus and pa...