Landscape ecology starts from the assumption that diversity and spatial arrangement of ecosystem mosaics have ecological implications and tries to understand the interactions between diversity and structure of large spatially heterogeneous areas and their ecological functions. These assumptions imply effective use of earth observation techniques and geographic information systems, enabling a gl...

Quadrats are standard sampling units of relatively small, uniformly defined areas that divide a habitat of interest into subregions of equal size. They are used in ecography for 2-dimensional sampling of plants, slowmoving animals, and (more recently) microorganisms to (i) estimate population sizes when it is not feasible to measure their abundance in entirety, (ii) define the patterns of their...

The understanding of landscape controls on the natural variability of hydrologic processes is an important research question of the PUB (Predictions in Ungauged Basins) initiative. Quantitative landscape ecology, which aims at understanding the relationships of patterns and processes in dynamic heterogeneous landscapes, may greatly 5 contribute to this research effort by assisting the coupling ...

This article presents the outcome of an experimental process with the students of a Landscape Architecture university. We propose a multimedia geotagging system to help landscape architects during the analysis stage of a Landscape Architecture project. Our solution is specifically adapted to landscape architects requirements. Multimedia; geotagging; GIS; landscape visualization; Internet servic...

Although a number of digital terrain analysis techniques were developed since the early 90ies terrain information is not utilized enough in landscape research even if topography is a key variable in a wide range of environmental processes. One explanation of this situation is the two-dimensionality of the main paradigm in landscape ecology, namely the patch-corridor-matrix model. Calculations o...

With the acceleration of urbanization and industrialization, regional development is becoming increasingly disordered. Thus, how to balance economic development and ecological protection is a key question. To comprehensively evaluate land development suitability, an evaluation index system for construction land and farmland suitability was established in this study based on natural and social-e...

The Khabour River, southernmost tributary to the Euphrates, is a case study in the complexity of managing riparian resources. The river is located entirely within Syria but the watershed includes portions of Turkey and Iraq. Indeed, on account of the steep southward precipitation gradient in the region, the spring-fed Khabour is recharged almost exclusively by precipitation that falls on Turkis...

T paper describes the use of multiple-objective decision analysis to qualitatively and quantitatively assess the quality of an endangered watershed and guide future efforts to improve the quality of the watershed. The Upham Brook Watershed is an urban watershed that lies at the interface of declining inner-city Richmond, Virginia, and growth-oriented Henrico County. A section of stream within t...

Spatial heterogeneity, in the wide sense of pattern complexity and variability, appears to be one of the dominant causes of ecological functions and processes. The most widely used quantification of heterogeneity in environmental studies is based on 10 derived Shannon information theory indices. Yet, such heterogeneity index is not able to quantify the surface patterns of a landscape with a ful...

The aim of this paper is to provide a survey on results and future perspectives of the project “Development an validation of a sea surface fractal model” approved by ESA in the framework of the “Opportunity of exploiting ENVISAT data”. The goal is to validate a sea surface fractal model, developed by the University of Pisa, trough the use of sea SAR images. New image fractal analysis techniques...