Description:    Drought-induced anomalies in vegetation condition over wide areas can be observed by using time-series satellite remote sensing data. Previous methods to assess the anomalies may include limitations in considering (1) the seasonality in terms of each vegetation-cover type, (2) cumulative damage during the drought event, and (3) the application to various types of land cover. This study proposed an improved methodology to assess drought impact from the annual vegetation responses, and discussed the result in terms of diverse landscape mosaics in the Mt. Kenya region (0.4° N 35.8° E ~ 1.6° S 38.4° E). From the 30-year annual rainfall records at the six meteorological stations in the study area, we identified 2000 as the drought year and 2001, 2004, and 2007 as the normal precipitation years. The time-series profiles of vegetation condition in the drought and normal precipitation years were obtained from the values of Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI; Huete et al. 2002 ), which were acquired from Terra MODIS remote sensing dataset (MOD13Q1) taken every 16 days at the scale of 250-m spatial resolution. The drought impact was determined by integrating the annual differences in EVI profiles between drought and normal conditions, per pixel based on nearly same day of year. As a result, we successfully described the distribution of landscape vulnerability to drought, considering the seasonality of each vegetation-cover type at every MODIS pixel. This result will contribute to the large-scale landscape management of Mt. Kenya region. Future study should improve this method by considering land-use change occurred during the long-term monitoring period. Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-8 DOI 10.1007/s10661-012-2854-z Authors Youngkeun Song, Graduate School of Global Environmental Studies, Kyoto University, Yoshida-Honmachi, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto, 606-8501 Japan John B. Njoroge, Faculty of Agriculture, Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology, Nairobi, Kenya Yukihiro Morimoto, Faculty of Bioenvironmental Science, Kyoto Gakuen University, Kameoka, Kyoto Prefecture, Japan Journal Environmental Monitoring and Assessment Online ISSN 1573-2959 Print ISSN 0167-6369

Description:    Wetland ecosystems are of global significance having productive, regulatory and informative function. These wetlands are crucial for the long-term protection of water sources, as well as the survival of its unique biodiversity. Most of the wetlands of Turkey are now facing serious threat from the anthropogenic sources and now near to the verge of extinction. This study has been carried out to monitor vegetation dynamics and ecological status of wetlands of Koyna basin at spatial and temporal scale. This study has involved MODerate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) images of the year 2000, 2004 and 2008 on daily basis with spatial resolution of 1 km. The MODIS 16 days composite NDVI time series products of 250-m spatial resolution from year 2000 to 2008 has been utilized to monitor the ecological status of the wetlands. The European Nature Information System habitat classification map, meteorological data (precipitation, temperature) coupled with field data has been utilized to validate NDVI values of nine habitats in the wetlands. The time series analyses of NDVI data values have been correlated with the groundwater level depth from 1996 to 2004. The overall analysis has shown a declining trend of NDVI over the year 2000 to 2008, indicated a degraded wetland condition in span of 9 years. Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-12 DOI 10.1007/s10113-011-0241-x Authors Jay Krishna Thakur, Department Hydrogeology and Environmental Geology, Institute of Geosciences, Martin Luther University, Von-Seckendorff-Platz 3, 06120 Halle (Saale), Germany P. K. Srivastava, Department of Civil Engineering, Water and Environment Management Research Center, University of Bristol, Bristol, BS8 1TR United Kingdom S. K. Singh, Centre of Atmospheric and Ocean Science, KBCAOS, IIDS, University of Allahabad, Allahabad, 211002 India Zoltán Vekerdy, Faculty of Geo-information Science and Earth Observation, Twente University, Hengelosestraat 99, 7514 AE Enschede, The Netherlands Journal Regional Environmental Change Online ISSN 1436-378X Print ISSN 1436-3798

Description:    A 108-year (1901–2008) downscaling of the twentieth-century reanalysis (20CR) using the Regional Spectral Model (RSM) has been conducted for the southeastern United States (SEUS) at a horizontal grid resolution of 10 km. This 108-year product, named as the Florida Climate Institute-Florida State University Land–Atmosphere Reanalysis for the southeastern United States at 10-km resolution version 1.0 [FLAReS1.0], has primarily been developed for anticipated application studies in hydrology, crop management, ecology, and other interdisciplinary fields in the SEUS. The analysis of this downscaled product reveals that it ameliorates the issue of artificial discontinuity in the precipitation time series of the 20CR from the variations inherent to RSM. This centennial scale product allows us to begin examining decadal scale variations of the regional features of the SEUS. The fidelity of the low-frequency variations of the winter rainfall associated with the Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation (AMO) and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation is reasonably well captured in FLAReS1.0. In fact, the modulation of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) teleconnection with the SEUS rainfall by AMO in the downscaled product is also validated with observations. The ENSO-associated variations of accumulated rainfall from landfalling hurricanes in the SEUS are also well simulated in the downscaled climate simulation. It is to be noted that the success of this dynamical downscaling is also because the global reanalysis of 20CR showed comparable fidelity in these low-frequency variations of the SEUS climate. This method of dynamic downscaling global reanalysis with inclusion of spectral nudging at large wavelengths (in this case ≥500 km) toward the driving global reanalysis (20CR) is sometimes referred as a form of regional reanalysis. Content Type Journal Article Category Original Article Pages 1-9 DOI 10.1007/s10113-012-0372-8 Authors V. Misra, Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Science, Florida State University, P.O. Box 3064520, Tallahassee, FL 32306-4520, USA S. M. DiNapoli, Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies, Florida State University, 2035 E. Paul Dirac Dr., 200 RM Johnson Bldg, Tallahassee, FL 32306-2840, USA S. Bastola, Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies, Florida State University, 2035 E. Paul Dirac Dr., 200 RM Johnson Bldg, Tallahassee, FL 32306-2840, USA Journal Regional Environmental Change Online ISSN 1436-378X Print ISSN 1436-3798