Heavy metals in the surface soils from lands of six different use types in one of the world's most densely populated regions, which is also a major global manufacturing base, were analyzed to assess the impact of urbanization and industrialization on soil pollution. A total of 227 surface soil samples were collected and analyzed for major heavy metals (As, Cd, Co, Cr, Cu, Fe, Hg, Mn, Ni, Pb, an...

Logging has been a much maligned feature of frontier development in the Amazon. Most discussions ignore the fact that logging can be part of a renewable, environmentally benign, and broadly equitable economic activity in these remote places. We estimate there to be some 4.5 +/- 1.35 billion m(3) of commercial timber volume in the Brazilian Amazon today, of which 1.2 billion m(3) is currently pr...

Much of the biodiversity-related climate change impacts research has focused on the direct effects to species and ecosystems. Far less attention has been paid to the potential ecological consequences of human efforts to address the effects of climate change, which may equal or exceed the direct effects of climate change on biodiversity. One of the most significant human responses is likely to b...

Protected areas (PAs) are often considered the most important biodiversity conservation areas in national plans, but PAs often do not represent national-scale biodiversity. We evaluate the current conservation status of plant biodiversity within current existing PAs, and identify potential additional PAs for South Korea. We modeled species ranges for 2,297 plant species using Multivariate Adapt...

Compared to surface water, groundwater resources are the primary source of water supply in arid and semi-arid regions of Iran, hence the importance of the management of these resources .  In this regard, we assessed the effects of landuse changes on the qualitative and quantitative status of groundwater resources in Eshtehard region, Iran. Through processing and analyzing the satellite images, ...

In the present study, in order to calculate the movement of sand dunes in the period between 2001 and 2010, the ASTER (Advanced Space-borne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer) images were used. The training samples were obtained from the field, and the images of the years 2001 and 2010 were classified using maximum likelihood algorithm and decision making tree. The study area was classi...

Oregon's land-use planning program is often cited as an exemplary approach to forest and farmland conservation, but analyses of its effectiveness are limited. This article examines Oregon's land-use planning program using detailed spatial data describing building densities in western Oregon. An empirical model describes changes in building densities on forest and agricultural lands from 1974 to...

road network (rn) can affect patterns and distribution of land uses and covers. road network expansion has both direct and indirect impacts on land uses and covers changes. agricultural land conversions (alcs) are especially known as one of the main important types of land use changes. the purpose of this paper, in addition to estimation of the direct impact of rn expansion on alcs, is to evalu...

This paper proposes a technique to extract urban built-up land features from Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) and Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM ) imagery taking two cities in southeastern China as examples. The study selected three indices, Normalized Difference Built-up Index (NDBI), Modified Normalized Difference Water Index (MNDWI), and Soil Adjusted Vegetation Index (SAVI) to represent thr...

Urban sprawl (US), propelled by rapid population growth leads to the shrinkage of productive agricultural lands and pristine forests in the suburban areas and, in turn, adversely affects the provision of ecosystem services. The quantification of US is thus crucial for effective urban planning and environmental management. Like many megacities in fast growing developing countries, Chennai, the c...