Reptiles and frogs use most land cover types as habitat in a fine-grained agricultural landscape

2018 ◽  
Vol 43 (5) ◽  
pp. 502-513 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephanie A. Pulsford ◽  
Philip S. Barton ◽  
Don A. Driscoll ◽  
Geoffrey M. Kay ◽  
David B. Lindenmayer
2019 ◽  
Vol 46 (03) ◽  
pp. 193-200
Author(s):  
Amanda M Bailey ◽  
Holly K Ober ◽  
Brian E Reichert ◽  
Robert A McCleery

SummaryHuman alteration of the planet’s terrestrial landscapes for agriculture, habitation and commerce is reshaping wildlife communities. The threat of land cover change to wildlife is pronounced in regions with rapidly growing human populations. We investigated how species richness and species-specific occurrence of bats changed as a function of land cover and canopy (tree) cover across a rapidly changing region of Florida, USA. Contrary to our predictions, we found negligible effects of agriculture and urban development on the occurrence of all species. In contrast, we found that a remotely sensed metric of canopy cover on a broad scale (25 km2) was a good predictor of the occurrence of eight out of ten species. The occurrence of all smaller bats (vespertilionids) in our study increased with 0–50% increases in canopy cover, while larger bats showed different patterns. Occurrence of Brazilian free-tailed bats (Tadarida brasiliensis) decreased with increasing canopy cover, and Florida bonneted bats (Eumops floridanus) were not influenced by canopy cover. We conclude that remotely sensed measures of canopy cover can provide a more reliable predictor of bat species richness than land-cover types, and efforts to prevent the loss of bat diversity should consider maintaining canopy cover across mosaic landscapes with diverse land-cover types.


2009 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 256-260 ◽  
Author(s):  
Feng WANG ◽  
Shu-Qi WANG ◽  
Xiao-Zeng HAN ◽  
Feng-Xian WANG ◽  
Ke-Qiang ZHANG

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
pp. 194008292199541
Author(s):  
Xavier Haro-Carrión ◽  
Bette Loiselle ◽  
Francis E. Putz

Tropical dry forests (TDF) are highly threatened ecosystems that are often fragmented due to land-cover change. Using plot inventories, we analyzed tree species diversity, community composition and aboveground biomass patterns across mature (MF) and secondary forests of about 25 years since cattle ranching ceased (SF), 10–20-year-old plantations (PL), and pastures in a TDF landscape in Ecuador. Tree diversity was highest in MF followed by SF, pastures and PL, but many endemic and endangered species occurred in both MF and SF, which demonstrates the importance of SF for species conservation. Stem density was higher in PL, followed by SF, MF and pastures. Community composition differed between MF and SF due to the presence of different specialist species. Some SF specialists also occurred in pastures, and all species found in pastures were also recorded in SF indicating a resemblance between these two land-cover types even after 25 years of succession. Aboveground biomass was highest in MF, but SF and Tectona grandis PL exhibited similar numbers followed by Schizolobium parahyba PL, Ochroma pyramidale PL and pastures. These findings indicate that although species-poor, some PL equal or surpass SF in aboveground biomass, which highlights the critical importance of incorporating biodiversity, among other ecosystem services, to carbon sequestration initiatives. This research contributes to understanding biodiversity conservation across a mosaic of land-cover types in a TDF landscape.


Land ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 182
Author(s):  
Maksym Łaszewski ◽  
Michał Fedorczyk ◽  
Sylwia Gołaszewska ◽  
Zuzanna Kieliszek ◽  
Paulina Maciejewska ◽  
...  

The influence of landscape on nutrient dynamics in rivers constitutes an important research issue because of its significance with regard to water and land management. In the current study spatial and temporal variability of N-NO3 and P-PO4 concentrations and their landscape dependence was documented in the Świder River catchment in central Poland. From April 2019 to March 2020, water samples were collected from fourteen streams in the monthly timescale and the concentrations of N-NO3 and P-PO4 were correlated with land cover metrics based on the Corine Land Cover 2018 and Sentinel 2 Global Land Cover datasets. It was documented that agricultural lands and forests have a clear seasonal impact on N-NO3 concentrations, whereas the effect of meadows was weak and its direction was dependent on the dataset. The application of buffer zones metrics increased the correlation performance, whereas Euclidean distance scaling improved correlation mainly for forest datasets. The concentration of P-PO4 was not significantly related with land cover metrics, as their dynamics were driven mainly by hydrological conditions. The obtained results provided a new insight into landscape–water quality relationships in lowland agricultural landscape, with a special focus on evaluating the predictive performance of different land cover metrics and datasets.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 1099
Author(s):  
Yuhe Ma ◽  
Mudan Zhao ◽  
Jianbo Li ◽  
Jian Wang ◽  
Lifa Hu

One of the climate problems caused by rapid urbanization is the urban heat island effect, which directly threatens the human survival environment. In general, some land cover types, such as vegetation and water, are generally considered to alleviate the urban heat island effect, because these landscapes can significantly reduce the temperature of the surrounding environment, known as the cold island effect. However, this phenomenon varies over different geographical locations, climates, and other environmental factors. Therefore, how to reasonably configure these land cover types with the cooling effect from the perspective of urban planning is a great challenge, and it is necessary to find the regularity of this effect by designing experiments in more cities. In this study, land cover (LC) classification and land surface temperature (LST) of Xi’an, Xianyang and its surrounding areas were obtained by Landsat-8 images. The land types with cooling effect were identified and their ideal configuration was discussed through grid analysis, distance analysis, landscape index analysis and correlation analysis. The results showed that an obvious cooling effect occurred in both woodland and water at different spatial scales. The cooling distance of woodland is 330 m, much more than that of water (180 m), but the land surface temperature around water decreased more than that around the woodland within the cooling distance. In the specific urban planning cases, woodland can be designed with a complex shape, high tree planting density and large planting areas while water bodies with large patch areas to cool the densely built-up areas. The results of this study have utility for researchers, urban planners and urban designers seeking how to efficiently and reasonably rearrange landscapes with cooling effect and in urban land design, which is of great significance to improve urban heat island problem.


2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 1-28
Author(s):  
Yuxiang Lin ◽  
Wei Dong ◽  
Yi Gao ◽  
Tao Gu

With the increasing relevance of the Internet of Things and large-scale location-based services, LoRa localization has been attractive due to its low-cost, low-power, and long-range properties. However, existing localization approaches based on received signal strength indicators are either easily affected by signal fading of different land-cover types or labor intensive. In this work, we propose SateLoc, a LoRa localization system that utilizes satellite images to generate virtual fingerprints. Specifically, SateLoc first uses high-resolution satellite images to identify land-cover types. With the path loss parameters of each land-cover type, SateLoc can automatically generate a virtual fingerprinting map for each gateway. We then propose a novel multi-gateway combination strategy, which is weighted by the environmental interference of each gateway, to produce a joint likelihood distribution for localization and tracking. We implement SateLoc with commercial LoRa devices without any hardware modification, and evaluate its performance in a 227,500-m urban area. Experimental results show that SateLoc achieves a median localization error of 43.5 m, improving more than 50% compared to state-of-the-art model-based approaches. Moreover, SateLoc can achieve a median tracking error of 37.9 m with the distance constraint of adjacent estimated locations. More importantly, compared to fingerprinting-based approaches, SateLoc does not require the labor-intensive fingerprint acquisition process.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (15) ◽  
pp. 2981
Author(s):  
Jeanné le Roux ◽  
Sundar Christopher ◽  
Manil Maskey

Planet, a commercial company, has achieved a key milestone by launching a large fleet of small satellites (smallsats) that provide high spatial resolution imagery of the entire Earth’s surface on a daily basis with its PlanetScope sensors. Given the potential utility of these data, this study explores the use for fine particulate matter (PM2.5) air quality applications. However, before these data can be utilized for air quality applications, key features of the data, including geolocation accuracy, calibration quality, and consistency in spectral signatures, need to be addressed. In this study, selected Dove-Classic PlanetScope data is screened for geolocation consistency. The spectral response of the Dove-Classic PlanetScope data is then compared to Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) data over different land cover types, and under varying PM2.5 and mid visible aerosol optical depth (AOD) conditions. The data selected for this study was found to fall within Planet’s reported geolocation accuracy of 10 m (between 3–4 pixels). In a comparison of top of atmosphere (TOA) reflectance over a sample of different land cover types, the difference in reflectance between PlanetScope and MODIS ranged from near-zero (0.0014) to 0.117, with a mean difference in reflectance of 0.046 ± 0.031 across all bands. The reflectance values from PlanetScope were higher than MODIS 78% of the time, although no significant relationship was found between surface PM2.5 or AOD and TOA reflectance for the cases that were studied. The results indicate that commercial satellite data have the potential to address Earth-environmental issues.


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