Seasonally dry forests in the neotropics are heavily threatened by a combination of human disturbances and climate change; however, the severity of these threats is seldom contrasted. This study aims to quantify and compare the effects of deforestation and climate change on the natural spatial ranges of 17 characteristic tree species of southern Ecuador dry deciduous forests, which are heavily ...

Easter Island (Rapa Nui) has become widely known as a case of ‘‘ecocide,’’ where the ancient Polynesians recklessly destroyed their environment and, as a consequence, suffered collapse. In recent publications, both popular and academic, scholars have promoted this perspective, drawing upon archaeological evidence and offering Rapa Nui as a parable for our current global crisis. In this paper we...

The Protocol specifically mentions emissions from sources and removals by sinks resulting from direct human-induced land-use change and forest related activities – deforestation, reforestation and afforestation – undertaken since 1990. However, the Protocol is silent on the role of other sinks in meeting national emission inventories. Agricultural land, for example, is mentioned as a possible c...

Humans have transformed Europe’s landscapes since the establishment of the first agricultural societies in the mid-Holocene. The most important anthropogenic alteration of the natural environment was the clearing of forests to establish cropland and pasture, and the exploitation of forests for fuel wood and construction materials. While the archaeological and paleoecological record documents th...

The preservation of the world’s rain forests is one of the major environmental challenges of our generation. Rain forests are home to a large portion of the world’s biodiversity, and play a major role in climate regulation and in the hydrological cycle of the Earth. Despite their biological richness and ecological importance, most of the world’s rain forests are under increasing pressure of def...

Generalist microorganisms are the agents of many emerging infectious diseases (EIDs), but their natural life cycles are difficult to predict due to the multiplicity of potential hosts and environmental reservoirs. Among 250 known human EIDs, many have been traced to tropical rain forests and specifically freshwater aquatic systems, which act as an interface between microbe-rich sediments or sub...

This study aims to predict the spatial distribution of tropical deforestation. Landsat images dated 1974, 1986 and 1991 were classified in order to generate digital deforestation maps which locate deforestation and forest persistence areas. The deforestation maps were overlaid with various spatial variables such as the proximity to roads and to settlements, forest fragmentation, elevation, slop...

Sampling designs are commonly used to estimate deforestation over large areas, but comparisons between different sampling strategies are required. Using PRODES deforestation data as a reference, deforestation in the state of Mato Grosso in Brazil from 2005 to 2006 is evaluated using Landsat imagery and a nearly synchronous MODIS dataset. The MODIS-derived deforestation is used to assist in samp...

This paper describes a contextual classification approach to classify complex forest change classes. Multi temporal forest change classifications are performed comparing the 1989 baseline for the Kyoto definition of ARD (Afforestation, Reforestation and Deforestation) with the status in 2000 for test territories in Siberia with extensive ground truth information from forest inventory. The diffe...