Avian diversity is under increasing pressures. It is thus critical to understand the ecological variables that contribute to large scale spatial distribution of avian species diversity. Traditionally, studies have relied primarily on two-dimensional habitat structure to model broad scale species richness. Vegetation vertical structure is increasingly used at local scales. However, the spatial a...

Article history: Received 23 July 2015 Received in revised form 15 April 2016 Accepted 28 April 2016 Available online xxxx There is awell-established needwithin the remote sensing community for improved estimation and understanding of canopy structure and its influence on the retrieval of leaf biochemical properties. The main goal of this research was to assess the potential of optical spectral...

In a perspective to develop an inversion approach for estimating surface soil moisture of crop fields from Sentinel-1/2 data (radar and optical sensors), the Water Cloud Model (WCM) was calibrated from C-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data and Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) values collected over crops fields and grasslands. The soil contribution that depends on soil moisture...

the study of flow in compound channels with vegetated floodplains is essential to assessing the development of the stage-discharge relationship and sediment and pollutant transport. the present study experimentally investigated mean flow and turbulence characteristics in a prismatic compound channel. the experimental program consisted of vegetated and non-vegetated floodplains with different re...

Soil moisture plays a key role in vegetation restoration and ecosystem stability in arid and semiarid regions. The response of soil moisture to rainfall pulses is an important hydrological process, which is strongly influenced by land use during the implementation of vegetation restoration. In this study, vertical soil moisture variations of woodland (Pinus tabulaeformis), native grassland (Sti...

Forest height is one of the most important vegetation vertical structure for many forest management activities. It is closely related with forest biomass and absorption of carbon. PolInSAR is a promising remote sensing technique that has been frequently used for extracting forest height. Recently, there have been plenty of research on the retrieval of vegetation parameters by single frequency s...

Incorporating vertical vegetation structure into models of animal distributions can improve understanding of the patterns and processes governing habitat selection. LiDAR can provide such structural information, but these data are typically collected via aircraft and thus are limited in spatial extent. Our objective was to explore the utility of satellite-based LiDAR data from the Geoscience La...

Our main aim was to determine the contribution of the seed bank to vegetation regeneration following a disturbance consisting in a deep ploughing and a thorough homogenisation of a perennial grassland. In the seed bank prior to disturbance, seed distribution through the vertical soil profile was evaluated to determine the initial seed species structure. Then, several characteristics of the shal...

In a previous paper this author demonstrated how a macroecological plant model could be used to parameterize a backscatter model with the aim of predicting trends in backscatter and height as a function of vegetation biomass. The macroecological model used is of interest because it gives a simple description of the plant structure but remains within realistic biophysical limits. The aim of this...