Land Use Change

Methodologies for end use analysis have been developed by different researchers in the energy and water fields and in different areas in the world over the last 20 years. While there are core features associated with the methodologies and models used, the differences can provide insight into the ways that they might be improved, as well as the differences that may be required in different regions and when models are used for different purposes.

We evaluate the effects of land-use change since c.1890 on Little Lake Jackson in south-central Florida, USA. The lake currently is alkaline despite the prevalence of acidic lakes in the region. Watershed soils are acidic and poorly drained, but are underlain by limestone bedrock. Limnetic pH inferences, based on weighted-averaging tolerance regression of sedimented diatoms, indicate that Little Lake Jackson became significantly alkalized during the 1900s. Two driving forces that appear to be responsible for waterquality change are increased ionic loading and increased nutrient loading. Golf courses and residential lawns in the watershed receive substantial applications of lime, fertilizer, and irrigation with alkaline waters from deep wells, some of which reaches the lake in channelized runoff. Stormwater runoff and septic leachate also contribute to nutrient and solute loading. Sedimentary total P accumulation increased 5-fold and total N accumulation increased 3-fold since c. 1890. d 15 N values suggest agricultural and septic sources for N loading. Sedimented pigments, inferred limnetic chlorophyll a values, and d 13 C values of organic matter indicate that increased primary productivity occurred. Surface and subsurface inflow is nutrient-rich but low in hardness. Increased cation deposition in sediments indicates that ionic input might have reduced the lake's natural resistance to alkalization. Lake waters remain low in ionic content, which suggests that the addition of base from carbonate sources is not responsible for all of the observed alkalization. Acid neutralization might have been facilitated by phosphate loading that led to increased base generation through greater nitrate assimilation. Inadvertent alkalization might occur commonly in regions where poorly buffered lakes are subject to significant ionic and nutrient loading from agriculture, turfgrass, and septic sources in their watersheds.

Land-use change models are important tools for integrated environmental management. Through scenario analysis they can help to identify near-future critical locations in the face of environmental change. A dynamic, spatially explicit, land-use change model is presented for the regional scale: CLUE-S. The model is specifically developed for the analysis of land use in small regions (e.g., a watershed or province) at a fine spatial resolution. The model structure is based on systems theory to allow the integrated analysis of land-use change in relation to socio-economic and biophysical driving factors. The model explicitly addresses the hierarchical organization of land use systems, spatial connectivity between locations and stability. Stability is incorporated by a set of variables that define the relative elasticity of the actual land-use type to conversion. The user can specify these settings based on expert knowledge or survey data. Two applications of the model in the Philippines and Malaysia are used to illustrate the functioning of the model and its validation.

Scientists need a better and larger set of tools to validate land-use change models, because it is essential to know a model's prediction accuracy. This paper describes how to use the relative operating characteristic (ROC) as a quantitative measurement to validate a land-cover change model. Typically, a crucial component of a spatially explicit simulation model of land-cover change is a map of suitability for land-cover change, for example a map of probability of deforestation. The model usually selects locations for new land-cover change at locations that have relatively high suitability. The ROC can compare a map of actual change to maps of modeled suitability for land-cover change. ROC is a summary statistic derived from several two-by-two contingency tables, where each contingency table corresponds to a different simulated scenario of future land-cover change. The categories in each contingency table are actual change and actual non-change versus simulated change and simulated non-change. This paper applies the theoretical concepts to a model of deforestation in the Ipswich watershed, USA.

In this paper, we review some critical issues regarding carbon cycling in Amazonia, as revealed by several studies conducted in the Large Scale Biosphere Atmosphere Experiment in Amazonia (LBA). We evaluate both the contribution of this magnificent biome for the global net primary productivity/net ecosystem exchange (NPP/NEE) and the feedbacks of climate change on the dynamics of Amazonia. In order to place Amazonia in a global perspective and make the carbon flux obtained through the LBA project comparable with global carbon budgets, we extrapolated NPP/NEE values found by LBA studies to the entire area of the Brazilian Amazon covered by rainforest. The carbon emissions due to land use changes for the tropical regions of the world produced values from 0.96 to 2.4 Pg C year À1 , while atmospheric CO 2 inversion models have recently indicated that tropical lands in the Americas could be exchanging a net 0.62±1.15 Pg C year À1 with the atmosphere. The dif-ference calculated from these two methods would imply a local sink of approximately 1.6-1.7 Pg C year À1 , or a source of 0.85 ton C ha À1 year À1 . Using our crude extrapolation of LBA values for the Amazon forests (5 million km 2 ) we estimate a range for the C flux in the region of À3.0 to 0.75 Pg C year À1 . The exercise here does not account for environmental variability across the region, but it is an important driver for present and future studies linking local process (i.e. nutrient availability, photosynthetic capacity, and so forth) to global and regional dynamic approaches. entini R, von Jouanne J, Waterloo M (2002) Biogeochemical cycling of carbon, water, energy, trace gases and aerosols in Amazonia: the LBA-EUSTACH experiments. J Geophys Res 107(D20):8066-8091.

Mangroves play an important role in coastal zones in many aspects e.g. extremely essential habitats for many species, coastlines protection from natural hazards, and so on. However, in Vietnam, like in other developing countries, these mangrove areas have been destroyed and encroached as a consequence of a poorly planned economic development.

Several studies have highlighted an increase in DOC concentration in streams and lakes of UK upland catchments though the causal mechanisms controlling the increase have yet to be fully explained. This study, compiles a comprehensive data set of DOC concentration records for UK catchments to evaluate trends and test whether observed increases are ubiquitous over time and space. The study analysed monthly DOC time series from 198 sites, including 29 lakes, 8 water supply reservoirs and 161 rivers. The records vary in length from 8 to 42 years going back as far as 1961. Of the 198 sites, 153 (77%) show an upward trend in DOC concentration significant at the 95% level, the remaining 45 (23%) show no significant trend and no sites show a significant decrease in DOC concentration. The average annual increase in DOC concentration was 0.17 mg C/l/year. The dataset shows: (i) a spatial consistent upward trend in the DOC concentration independent of regional effects of rainfall, acid and nitrogen deposition, and local effects of land-use change; (ii) a temporally consistent increase in DOC concentration for period back as far as the 1960s; (iii) the increase in DOC concentration means an estimated DOC flux from the UK as 0.86 Mt C for the year 2002 and is increasing at 0.02 Mt C/year. Possible reasons for the increasing DOC concentration are discussed.

On the basis of multitemporal analysis, this research project carried out an assessment of the transformations in land use over the last 15 years in Pasquilla. During this period Pasquilla, an agricultural zone, changed to livestock raising activities, without adopting the measures necessary to mitigate impacts such as deforestation. The expansion of the agricultural frontier in zones that used to be forests or páramos has brought about the almost complete disappearance of buffer zones and triggered the deterioration of the ecosystem and water resources in Pasquilla. The study concludes that territorial planning and management should involve technical, administrative, and participatory processes that include local communities and reflect the territory’s economic, social, and environmental characteristics

This paper investigates the determining land use changes in the Eastern Black Sea region of Turkey. Changes in land cover were analyzed using aerial photography from 1955-2002 within a Geographic Information System. As for method, digital photogrammetric techniques with high accuracy could be used to monitor land use/cover changes by comparing old and new aerial images. To implement the method successfully and display the results, three case study areas were selected and evaluated regarding the historical changes and land use capabilities of the land converted to forest areas

Since around 2010, contract farming for bananas in northern Laos based on investment by Chinese companies has seen rapid expansion in northern Laos. Much of this has been implemented using the “1+4” model, where the farmers provide land and the companies take on the responsibility for labour, capital, technique and market access, but local governments have become concerned about environmental impacts and contract problems. In this paper, environmental and social impacts resulting from the introduction of banana contract farming, especially the changes brought about in the land use and working patterns of local residents have been studied through field work carried out in Oudomxay Province, northern Laos.

Combined heat and power Corn ethanol Corn stover Greenhouse gas emissions Life cycle assessment Zea mays a b s t r a c t A life-cycle assessment (LCA) of corn ethanol was conducted to determine the reduction in the life-cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for corn ethanol compared to gasoline by integrating biomass fuels to replace fossil fuels (natural gas and grid electricity) in a U.S. Midwest dry-grind corn ethanol plant producing 0.19 hm 3 y À1 of denatured ethanol. The biomass fuels studied are corn stover and ethanol co-products [dried distillers grains with solubles (DDGS), and syrup (solubles portion of DDGS)]. The biomass conversion technologies/systems considered are process heat (PH) only systems, combined heat and power (CHP) systems, and biomass integrated gasification combined cycle (BIGCC)

This paper is concerned with the consequences of population growth and its increasing density on land use pattern and its changes. For this purpose, the empirical evidences are drawn from FAO statistics with reference to Southeast Asian Countries. The paper attempted to provide both a regional and comparative perspective in understanding the relationship between population growth and land use changes. The study observed a steady growth in the human population during the last three decades, though the growth rate has declined during the nineties. The unequal distribution of population in terms of its size and growth was observed among the Southeast Asian Countries. The analysis indicated changes in land use pattern towards ‘arable and permanent cropland’ and ‘land not available for cultivation’. However, such a trend varied across Southeast Asian Countries significantly. The effect of population pressure on land use changes are examined both in a broad and narrow sense, which indicat...

With respect to carbon sequestration in soil, attempts have been made to identify soil organic matter (SOM) fractions that respond more rapidly to changes in land-use than bulk SOM, which could thus serve as early indicators for the overall stock change. We used a combination of physical fractionation (size and density separation) and chemical characterisation (C-to-N ratios, CuO lignin signature, 13 C NMR spectroscopy) to identify sensitive SOM fractions in an agricultural system with sandy dystric cambisols in Bavaria, Germany, 7 years after a land-use change. Land-use types included long-term arable land and grassland, and conversion from one system to the other. Soil carbon and nitrogen contents in 0 -3 cm increased from 14 to 39 mg organic carbon g À 1 soil, and from 1.7 to 3.9 mg nitrogen g À 1 soil in the following order: permanent arable, conversion grassland to arable, conversion arable to grassland, and permanent grassland. Wet sieving and ultrasonic dispersion with 22 J ml À 1 released < 5% and 60% to 80%, respectively, of the amount of particles >20 Am relative to complete dispersion. The most sensitive fraction, with respect to land-use, was SOM in the fraction >20 Am not released after sequential wet sieving and ultrasonic dispersion. In contrast, the proportion of free light (wet sieving, density < 1.8 g cm À 3 ) and occluded light (ultrasonic dispersion with 22 J ml À 1 , < 1.8 g cm À 3 ) particulate organic matter (POM) showed no clear response to land-use. The structural composition of POM indicated its vegetation origin with a selective enrichment of lignin and a loss of O-alkyl C relative to its plant precursors. Decomposition of the occluded light POM was only slightly advanced relative to the free light POM. In mineral fractions < 20 Am, SOM was significantly more transformed than in the coarse fractions, as shown by NMR spectroscopy; however, it revealed no specific land-use pattern. An exception to this was the proportion of O-alkyl C in the clay fraction, which increased with SOC content. Ratios of alkyl to O-alkyl C in mineral fractions < 20 Am differentiated samples gave a better differentiation of samples than the C-to-N ratios. We conclude that neither free nor occluded light POM are appropriate early indicators for changes in land-use at the investigated sites; however, total SOM, its distribution with depth, and SOM allocated in stable aggregates >20 Am were more sensitive. D

Uncultivated foods have received little attention in the scientific literature and nutrition programs of Mexico because they are usually seen as complementary to agricultural activities, i.e., corn planting and harvesting. Using an ecosystem approach to human health, this article examines the availability, nutritional contribution, and consumption patterns by gender and age of such foods in Ixhuapan and Ocozotepec, two native communities of southern Veracruz, Mexico. The research shows important differences between both communities. Ixhuapan has a more uniform environment and its people have opted for commercial activities and land parceling. Land use changes have led to a decrease in the number of people engaged in subsistence agriculture, environmental degradation, lower corn yields, and the loss of traditional, uncultivated foods. These changes have had a negative impact on the nutritional status of Ixhuapan children and adults, particularly women. Within each community, however, there are also important differences in terms of access to resources based on gender and age. Men catch game and large fish while women catch shrimp. Men gather seasonal plants in the forest while women gather wild weeds in the cornfields and spices in their backyards. Boys, more often than girls, obtain fruits from trees located in their backyard or the town's public spaces. The article shows that women's food resources are frequently consumed and constitute good sources of micronutrients.

The article presents a problem of landscape planning of protected areas on the example of Ślężański
Landscape Park within Sobotka commune resulting from the socio - economic changes and spatial policy of the
municipal authority. Discussion of creating the space is particularly important in relation to areas with large
natural beauty (part of the municipality is located within Ślężański Landscape Park and buffer zone), where there
are strong processes of urbanization. The result of the study is to determine the level of landscape change and
synanthropisation. Comparing the results of the study with conditions and directions of spatial management
helped to identify the areas where the threat of degradation of landscape values is greatest. It is the effect of bad
planning decisions, resulting from too little awareness of the local community and local authorities of the effects
that cause changing spatial structure in a historical landscape

Land use change has significant impact on the hydrologic and ecological processes of a watershed. This study combines an empirical land use change model and an event scale, rainfall-runoff model to quantify the impacts of potential land use change on the storm-runoff generation in the Lai Nullah Basin. The HEC-HMS rainfall-runoff model was calibrated and validated for 5 storm events in the study area, and the results showed good consistency between the simulated and measured hydrographs at the outlet (Katarian Bridge) of the basin with Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency ranging from 76 to 98%. The future land use scenario was forecasted based on Islamabad Master Plan and growth pattern. The calibrated HEC-HMS model was applied for these future land use scenarios to assess the potential land use impacts on the storm-runoff generation. The results indicated that the future land use as envisaged in the master plan is projected to increase the total runoff between 51.6 and 100.0% as well as the peak discharge between 45.4 and 83.3%, and that the magnitude of peak discharge increment relates to the expansion rate of built-up area. The results provide useful information for land use planning and management and the methods applied can serve as a useful tool for future land use impact studies.

Efficient natural resources management, including continental water at watershed level, requires understanding the arrangement of landscape attributes in a region. The geographical analysis of landscape attributes is a useful approach to delineate relatively homogeneous watersheds or regions. This research was carried out in order to evaluate the effect of land cover through time on regionalisation modelling in the poorly-gauged Cuitzeo Lake Watershed, and to develop models to create two hydrogeographical regionalisations for the years 1975 and 2000. The inputs required by the regionalisation methodology were integrated in a GIS and validated before carrying out statistical regionalisation procedures (cluster analysis and PCA). GIS operations were done in Arc View 3.2 and statistical analyses in PC-ORD. Median Euclidean distances with mean distance linkage methods were used. A 75% of similarity was chosen as the threshold to generate regions. Importance rankings of regions were obtained using multicriteria evaluation methods. Based on the analysis, 38 of the 52 subwatersheds belonging to the Cuitzeo Lake Watershed were clustered; eight groups were defined in 1975 and nine in 2000. According to PCA, the strongest positive variables are associated to morphometric, geologic, land cover and soil attributes. Fourteen subwatersheds were never clustered. Four subwatersheds changed of cluster between 1975 and 2000. This change is explained because of rainfed agricultural parcel abandonment, and subsequent shrubland growth. This means that the hydrogeographical regionalisation is sensitive to land cover change processes. The methodological approach applied in this research is a low-cost and fast alternative for evaluating the impact of land cover and land use change on hydrogeographical regionalisation; in consequence, data and information generated during the analysis were made available to local authorities so that they can improve both water resources planning and their informational baseline for decision making and for development of environmental policies in the Cuitzeo Lake Watershed.

Over the 20th century, reduced land cultivation has caused an extension of fallow land in several European countries, which has led to a decrease in biodiversity. Knowledge of dynamic vegetation processes and of the impact of human activities on biodiversity provides the basis for land management recommendations, as well as for wildlife management programs. We analysed land-use changes on a small protected island (Ushant, Bretagne, France) using historical documentation (1844) and aerial photographs taken in 1952 and 1992. Over this period, especially during the last 40 yr, Ushant underwent a complete transformation from rural landscape to extensive shrubland. No cultivated area remains, grazed areas were moved from the coastal fringe to the core of the island, while over 40% of the island is fallow land. The relationship between current sheep grazing and vegetation suggests that grazed meadows used to be close to inhabited areas, i.e. 150 m outside the villages. These results allowed us to analyse landcover potential related to changes in the intensity of sheep grazing. The scenarios highlighted by our method provide an objective framework for further assessment of fallow land management.

A methodology for evaluating public wetlands conservation investments that considers climate change is developed and applied to Virginia&#x27;s Elizabeth River watershed. A revised cellular automaton (CA) model is applied to project future land use change. Discrete stochastic sequential programming (DSSP) is used to model a parcel-based discrete-time decision process.

The study examined the factors influencing spatial agricultural land use change and modeled the factors for detecting change in agricultural land use in the Southern part of Nigeria. This was with a view to assessing the dynamics of agricultural land use using multispectral imageries in the study area. The study integrated fieldwork and satellites imageries from Land sat Thematic Mapper (TM) 1987, Landsat Enhance Mapper (ETM+) 2002 and NigeriaSat-1 2007 coupled with socioeconomic survey. Digital image processing was carried out for satellite imageries. Spatial analysis was achieved using the Arc View (3.2), ArcGIS (9.2) and ILWIS 3.3 software packages. Spatial change in agricultural land use from 1987 to 2007 was tracked from the classified imageries by digitization, overlay operations (by subtraction) and graphical displays. The trend of the change of each identified agricultural land use type between the study periods was determined using cross operation of the ILWIS 3.3 software. The population for the study consisted of farmers in the 28 settlements in the study area, out of which ten settlements were randomly selected using the table of random numbers. Data collected were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. The results showed the trend of changes in the study area, as arable farmland/shrub increased by 0.

Large-scale anthropogenic changes to the natural environment, including land-use change, climate change, and the deterioration of ecosystem services, are all accelerating. These changes are interacting to generate five major emerging public health threats that endanger the health and well-being of hundreds of millions of people. These threats include increasing exposure to infectious disease, water scarcity, food scarcity, natural disasters, and population displacement. Taken together, they may represent the greatest public health challenge humanity has faced. There is an urgent need to improve our understanding of the dynamics of each of these threats: the complex interplay of factors that generate them, the characteristics of populations that make them particularly vulnerable, and the identification of which populations are at greatest risk from each of these threats. Such improved understanding would be the basis for stepped-up efforts at modeling and mapping global vulnerability...

The supposition that agricultural intensification results in land sparing for conservation has become central to policy formulations across the tropics. However, underlying assumptions remain uncertain and have been little explored in the context of conservation incentive schemes such as policies for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation, conservation, sustainable management, and enhancement of carbon stocks (REDD+). Incipient REDD+ forest carbon policies in a number of countries propose agricultural intensification measures to replace extensive "slash-andburn" farming systems. These may result in conservation in some contexts, but will also increase future agricultural land rents as productivity increases, creating new incentives for agricultural expansion and deforestation. While robust governance can help to ensure land sparing, we propose that conservation incentives will also have to increase over time, tracking future agricultural land rents, which might lead to runaway conservation costs. We present a conceptual framework that depicts these relationships, supported by an illustrative model of the intensification of key crops in the Democratic Republic of Congo, a leading REDD+ country. A von Thünen land rent model is combined with geographic information systems mapping to demonstrate how agricultural intensification could influence future conservation costs. Once postintensification agricultural land rents are considered, the cost of reducing forest sector emissions could significantly exceed current and projected carbon credit prices. Our analysis highlights the importance of considering escalating conservation costs from agricultural intensification when designing conservation initiatives. swidden | slash and burn | land use change | payment for ecoysystem services | biodiversity

There is lack of information on the patterns, drivers and impacts of urban growth. Such information is essential for planning and managing sustainable cities. We therefore investigated past and prospective land use changes in Cairns, Queensland, Australia, using aerial photo mosaics from 1952 and 2008, and the proposed urban footprint for 2031. We then analysed and related these changes to their drivers and impacts. The results from analysing past changes revealed not only the loss of important coastal lowland habitats and agricultural land but also the loss of evolutionary landscape relicts such as Holocene beach ridges. Our prospective analysis shows that if the proposed urban footprint for 2031 is implemented, further agricultural land will be lost to urban development in Cairns. The loss of important habitats including areas of high ecological significance within the urban footprint is highly likely due to increased pressures to develop land for urban use within this designated area. These results emphasise the need to critically review and potentially give more weight to the protection and management of important habitats and landscape features within urban footprints, particularly in regions, whose economy is largely built on the amenities provided by the natural environment.

Contrary to the general trend in the tropics, forests have recovered in Puerto Rico from less than 10% of the landscape in the late 1940s to more than 40% in the present. The recent Puerto Rican history of forest recovery provides the opportunity to study the ecological consequences of economic globalization, reflected in a shift from agriculture to manufacturing and in human migration from rural to urban areas. Forest structure rapidly recovers through secondary succession, reaching mature forest levels of local biodiversity and biomass in approximately 40 years. Despite the rapid structural recovery, the legacy of pre-abandonment land use, including widespread abundance of exotic species and broadscale floristic homogenization, is likely to persist for centuries.

Land change science has demonstrated that rural livelihoods around the world both drive and reflect changing environmental regimes and political economic/structural transformations. This article explores the relationship between increasingly globalized rural livelihoods and in-place land change, assessing results from social surveys of smallholding households in the southern Yucatán region. We examine evidence for a transition in agricultural livelihood strategies as smallholders adjust to changing political economic and institutional conditions, and link these transitioning strategies to land use changes. Based on household surveys in 1997 and 2003, we comparatively assess both changes in the selection of livelihood strategies and in the land use and cover impacts of those strategies. Our results indicate that although impacts of given strategies have changed little over this period, there are increasing proportions of households pursuing two divergent adjustment paths—one of agricultural withdrawal and one of agricultural intensification and commercialization. We investigate what sociodemographic characteristics differentiate the groups of households following distinct livelihood strategies. Our findings point to the possibility of simultaneous and contradictory land change outcomes as smallholders adjust in different ways to their intensified incorporation into global economies.

s u m m a r y Through a systematic modelling analysis for focus catchments in Costa Rica (131 km 2 ), Ecuador (10 km 2 ), Chile (0.35 km 2 ) and Argentina (12.9 km 2 ), the hypothesis is tested that, as the size of the hydrological event increases, the effect of forest cover on the peak discharge becomes less important. For each focus catchment, a 1000-year synthetic rainfall time series was generated, representative of the current climate. This time series was used to run SHETRAN hydrological models for each catchment with two contrasting land use scenarios (generally with and without a forest cover). The corresponding maximum daily discharges for the contrasting scenarios were then compared to show the extent to which the two responses converged as the size of the peak discharge increased. For a given forest catchment discharge there could be a range of larger non-forest catchment discharges, depending on antecedent soil moisture content. The simulations show consistently for the rainfall dominated sites that the width of this range either remains constant or narrows as discharge increases, indicating either relative or absolute convergence of the responses. The pattern is more difficult to distinguish for a snowmelt regime but a relative convergence of response still appears possible. The results therefore support the test hypothesis. However, the pattern is complicated by factors such as catchment scale, soil depth, antecedent moisture content and land management. Forests may also still offer significant flood mitigation benefits for moderate (and more frequent) rainfall events and they protect against soil erosion and sediment transport for a wide range of events.

Climate variation and land transformations related to exploitative land uses are among the main drivers of vegetation productivity decline and ongoing land degradation in East Africa. We combined analysis of vegetation trends and cumulative rain use efficiency differences (CRD), calculated from 250-m MODIS NDVI time-series data, to map vegetation productivity loss over eastern Africa between 2001 and 2011. The CRD index values were furthermore used to discern areas of particular severe vegetation productivity loss over the observation period. Monthly 25-km Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) data metrics were used to mask areas of rainfall declines not related to human-induced land productivity loss. To provide insights on the productivity decline, we linked the MODIS-based vegetation productivity map to land transformation processes using very high resolution (VHR) imagery in Google Earth (GE) and a Landsat-based land-cover change map. In total, 3.8 million ha experienced significant vegetation loss over the monitoring period. An overall agreement of 68% was found between the rainfall-corrected MODIS productivity decline map and all reference pixels discernable from GE and the Landsat map. The CRD index showed a good potential to discern areas with 'severe' vegetation productivity losses under high land-use intensities.

Lakes are excellent repositories of air-borne and especially stream-borne materials. It has long been recognised that lake sediments contain a strong record of catchment soils via the inputs of minerogenic and chemical erosional products. To these may be added a variety of palaeoecological indicators including pollen, fungi, Sphagnum leaves and faunal remains. Pollen analysis, in particular, enables land use change to be assessed over many millennia and demonstrates the landscape impacts of woodland clearance, grazing and crop cultivation. Radiocarbon dating provides a chronology for environmental and agricultural change and acts as an indicator of erosion in its own right. The use of such indicators to reconstruct past instances and patterns of erosion is demonstrated with reference mainly to 50 British and Irish lake sites and especially those which have produced signals of erosion in the form of accelerated sediment accumulation and inversed or reversed sequences of radiocarbon dates during the mid and late Holocene.

Recently, Support Vector Machines (SVMs) have shown a practical relevance in various image processing applications. This paper investigates their applicability for land cover and land use change detection using multi-sensor images of remote sensing. Then, the most widely used approaches for multi-class SVMs, which are the One-Against-All and the One-Against-One with both Max-Win and DDAG decision rules are implemented to perform multi-class change detection. SVMs are evaluated in comparison with artificial neural networks using different accuracy indicators. The results obtained showed that SVMs are much more efficient than artificial neural networks and highlighted their suitability for land cover change detection.