Previous studies at the scale of a city have shown that surface soil nutrients, pH, and soil organic matter (SOM) can vary by land cover, land use, and management. This study was conducted in Baltimore County, Maryland, to quantify the differences in characteristics of soil in a residential neighborhood and adjacent forest patch sampling at a fine scale. The first objective was to compare soil characteristics in a residential neighborhood among ecotope types of forest, lawn, and planting beds that were underlain by the same parent material and thus only differed in plant cover.

This study uses a combination of Landsat series data (Multispectral Scanner or MSS, Thematic Mapper or TM and Enhanced Thematic Mapper or ETM+) to map land-use and land-cover change (LULCC) from 1975 to 2001. It extends the land change record to 2008 using Chinese–Brazil Earth Resources Satellite (CBERS)-2 and CBERS-2B data on a multi-scene level. It also establishes a methodology to correct for systematic distortion inherent in CBERS imagery without the loss of information present in Landsat 7 ETM+ imagery post-2003.

Vulnerability to climate change impacts is defined by three dimensions of human–environmental systems, such as exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity. Climate change affects various aspects of human–environmental interactions, such as water stress, food security, human health, and well-being at multiple spatial and temporal scales. However, the existing protocols of vulnerability assessment fail to incorporate the multitude of scales associated with climate change processes.

Agriculture and animal husbandry are important contributors to global emissions of greenhouse (GHG) and acidifying gases. Moreover, they contribute to water pollution and to consumption of non-renewable natural resources such as land and energy. The Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology allows evaluation of the environmental impact of a process from the production of inputs to the final product and to assess simultaneously several environmental impact categories among which GHG emissions, acidification, eutrophication, land use and energy use.

Over the last 130 years, patterns of land use in central Australia have altered dramatically, and so too have fire regimes and fire management objectives. Although Aboriginal people still have tenure over large parts of the landscape, their lifestyles have changed. Most Aboriginal people now live in towns and settlements and, although fire management is still culturally important, the opportunities for getting out on country to burn are constrained. Large parts of the landscape are now used for pastoral production.

Land use reflects the needs, demands and values of human society. We can see two antagonistic trends of land use change in Slovakia over the past few decades. Land use change towards more intensive in some areas (vicinity of cities, highways, lowlands), but others (uplands and mountains with traditionally agricultural used) are abandoned and left to their own spontaneous dynamic. The abandonment of agriculture is a pattern common to all industrialized countries, especially in hilly and mountain ranges (Farina, A., 2007).

Little is known about the structure of riparian communities within the central Gulf coast of Texas. We present a phytosociological description of the riparian corridor within two contiguous sites along the Mission River in Refugio County, Texas, that differ in respect to tidal influence along the river, and compare this woody riparian community to others in Texas. In summer 2009 and 2010, we established 33 transects perpendicular to the river after reviewing digital data from ArcMap 9.3.1 on elevation, edaphic characteristics, uses of land, and cover of land and wetland.

Landscapes intensively farmed over a long time period represent a threat for natural habitats and high levels of biodiversity. Information on the historical land use and spatial changes of natural habitats can help to explain the causes of a number of contemporary phenomena, which are important for the development of effective conservation and ecosystem management.

This paper presents a GIS framework for multi-criteria evaluation of land suitability for the expansion or retirement of irrigated cropland at a catchment scale in Australia. This framework is based on the fuzzy linguistic ordered weighted averaging (FLOWA) approach which integrates the analytical hierarchy procedure (AHP) and quantifier-guided OWA operators in an ArcGIS 9.2 environment. The FLOWA module proved to be highly flexible and efficient in generating and visualising a wide range of different multi-criteria decision strategies.

Non-Urbanised Areas (NUAs) are part of agricultural and green infrastructures that provide ecosystem services. Their role is fundamental for the minimization of urban pollution and adaptation to climate change. Like all natural ecosystems, NUAs are endangered by urban sprawl. The regulation of sprawl is a key issue for land-use planning. We propose a land use suitability strategy model to orient Land Uses of NUAs, based on integration of Land Cover Analysis (LCA) and Fragmentation Analysis (FA). With LCA the percentage of evapotranspiring surface is defined for each land use.

This study examines the causes and consequences of gully erosion, as perceived by the local people of Dangara area, Nigeria. The study particularly seeks to explore the local people’s perceptions of gully erosion and how it affects crop, settlement development, crop yields, land ownership and values, rural economics and private conservation investments in Dangara area of Nigeria’s Federal Capital Territory. It is based on analysis of data collected using questionnaires administered to 346 respondents in the area.