Land use/land cover monitoring and mapping is crucial to efficient management of the land and its resources. Since the late 1980s increased attention has been paid to the use of coarse resolution optical data. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) has features, which make it particularly suitable to earth characterization purposes. MODIS has 10 products dedicated mainly to land cover characterization and provides three kinds of data: angular, spectral and temporal. MODIS data also includes information about the data quality through the ‘Quality Assessment’ product.

CONTEXT: Century-long interaction between societies and their environment has shaped the cultural landscapes across Europe. Specific farming systems have persisted for long periods, and their abandonment has led to far-reaching and rapid changes in patterns of land use and land cover. OBJECTIVE: Taking the example of the municipality of Limpach, located in the Swiss lowlands, we studied the dynamics of cultural landscape and related driving forces in a long-term perspective.

In course of the research there was studied the theoretical bases of organizational and economic mechanism of land use regulation, which include the notions, principles, requirements, factors and criteria. The conceptual scheme and the model of functioning of the organizational-economic mechanism were developed. Study was realized in the conditions of the Republic of Belarus.

In course of the research there was studied the system of measures of liberalization of conditions for business activity actualization in the conditions of the Republic of Belarus. The liberalization management of conditions of realization of economic activities (which include the use, estimation of conditions and protection of land resources of Belarus) is expedient to consider in two directions which are inseparably interlinked.

This paper extends the debate on corridor effectiveness at regional planning scale, by exploring the contribution to landscape connectivity of a proposed ecological network and the remaining non-urbanized matrix in the Barcelona Metropolitan Region (BMR). Using the Ecological Connectivity Index, we evaluated the expected connectivity loss after the development of the approved urban plans in the region. Thus, we compared the baseline (present-day) and the projected (after planned urban development) connectivity scenarios for total, forest and agricultural habitats.

Market mechanisms for forest environmental services are increasingly used for promoting environmental conservation, and their impacts on development are of considerable interest. In Costa Rica a national scheme of Payment for Environmental Services (PSA) rewards landowners for the services provided by different forest land-uses. We evaluated the impacts of reforestation under the PSA on local development in the North of the country.

Land use and land cover change (LUCC) have a significant influence on regional ecosystems and on the carbon cycle. The Sanjiang Plain is one of the largest grain production bases in China, and has experienced rapid land cover change, making it a critical area in which to assess the environmental impact of LUCC and propose strategies for minimizing its impact on net primary productivity (NPP). In this study, land cover was estimated from remote sensing images to quantify LUCC on the Sanjiang Plain from 2000 to 2010.

The spatial and temporal dynamics of tropical forest functioning are poorly understood, partly attributed to a weak seasonality and high tree species diversity at the landscape scale. Recent neotropical rainforest studies with local tower flux measurements have revealed strong seasonal carbon fluxes that follow the availability of sunlight in intact forests, while in areas of forest disturbance, carbon fluxes more closely tracked seasonal water availability.

A methodology is developed to relate urban growth studies to distributed hydrological modeling using an integrated approach of remote sensing and GIS. This linkage is possible because both studies share land-use and land-cover data. Landsat Thematic Mapper data are utilized to detect urban land-cover changes. GIS analyses are then conducted to examine the changing spatial patterns of urban growth. The integration of remote sensing and GIS is applied to automate the estimation of surface runoff based on the Soil Conservation Service model.