Greenhouse gas emissions and land use/land cover change (LUCC) are two human activities notably affecting climate change. Will temperature and precipitation increase significantly during global warming resulting in more pronounced LUCC climatic effects? Considering the interannual forcing of these two factors, the NCAR Community Atmosphere Model (CAM4.0) was used in this study to investigate the importance of climatological background to LUCC impacts.

We combine historical maps and satellite derived data to reconstruct the development of a Swedish boreal landscape over the past 300 years. The aim is to understand legacies from past use patterns in present-day forest composition and consequences for conservation objectives from a landscape perspective. We analyze landscape development in cross-tabulation matrixes, building change trajectories. These trajectories are tested in linear models to explain the distribution of present-day landscape composition of coniferous, mixed, and deciduous forests >110 years.

Groundwater plays a key role in arid regions as the majority of water is supplied by it. Groundwater pollution is a major issue, because it is susceptible to contamination from land use and other anthropogenic impacts. A study was carried out to build a vulnerability map for the Ordos Plateau using the DRASTIC model in a GIS environment. The map was designed to show the areas of the highest potential for groundwater pollution based on hydrogeological conditions.

Policy development can fail when organisations tasked with managing contentious species for different outcomes are at odds. Buffel grass (Cenchrus ciliaris L. syn. Pennisetum ciliare L. Link) has been planted worldwide and is a valuable pasture grass but it is contentious because of its environmental impacts. Due to this contention, government agencies in Australia have been reticent about developing policy for sustainable management of buffel grass.

Due to impacts of albedo on climate change, benefits of afforestation/reforestation regimes are under debate. In this paper we investigate how to incorporate albedo changes in a carbon accounting tool to show the net effect of land use change on the climate. Using a study area in southern Europe, albedo and carbon sequestration modelling results are linked to determine the combined radiative forcing balance.

The Himalayan watersheds are susceptible to various forms of degradation due to their sensitive and fragile ecological disposition coupled with increasing anthropogenic disturbances. Owing to the paucity of appropriate technology and financial resources, the prioritization of watersheds has become an inevitable process for effective planning and management of natural resources. Lidder catchment constitutes a segment of the western Himalayas with an area of 1,159.38 km².

This paper assesses the image differencing technique for the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), the second principal component (PC2), and the TM 4 band (TM 4), as well as the post-classification comparison (PCC) in order to analyze the land use/land cover changes in the South-East Transilvania, Romania. The analysis was performed using two frames from Landsat 5 TM satellite images acquired on August 5, 1993 and July 24, 2009. After applying the NDVI, PC2, and TM 4 image differencing techniques, the images obtained were transformed into change/no change maps.