Terrestrial Ecoregions of the World: A New Map of Life on Earth

Olson, David M.; Dinerstein, Eric; Wikramanayake, Eric; Burgess, Neil D.; Powell, George; Underwood, Emma C.; D'amico, Jennifer A.; Itoua, Illanga; Strand, Holly; Morrison, John C.; Loucks, Colby; Allnutt, Thomas F.; Ricketts, Taylor H.; Kura, Yumiko; Lamoreux, John F.; Wettengel, Wesley W.; Hedao, Prashant; Kassem, Kenneth R.

doi:10.1641/0006-3568(2001)051[0933:teotwa]2.0.co;2

Cited by 6,535 publications

(4,770 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…Climate, vegetation, and ecosystem characteristics all exert controls on land cover and the structure of human settlements, making biome designations particularly useful for data processing. Using Olson's biome classification (Olson et al, 2001), the study region was delineated into nine biomes covering temperate, tropical and arid regions (Figure 1b). These designations were used for classification, change detection, and accuracy assessment.…”

Section: Delineat Ing T He St Udy Area Ext Entmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Second, we sample across biomes, selecting sites in proportion to the distribution of urban land across nine biomes (Olson et al, 2001). Once the sample distribution was established (Table 7), we selected sites at random from within a tightly buffered region of the city points using the 250 m MODIS raster grid to ensure that the sample included urban expansion sites.…”

Section: Tier T Wo Accuracy Assessme Ntmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Detecting change in urban areas at continental scales with MODIS data

Mertes

Schneider

Sulla‐Menashe

et al. 2015

Remote Sensing of Environment

149

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Abstract. Urbanization is one of the most important components of global environmentalchange, yet most of what we know about urban areas is at the local scale. Remote sensing of urban expansion across large areas provides information on the spatial and temporal patterns of growth that are essential for understanding differences in socioeconomic and political factors that spur different forms of development, as well the social, environmental, and climatic impacts that result. However, mapping urban expansion globally is challenging: urban areas have a small footprint compared to other land cover types, their features are small, they are heterogeneous in both material composition and configuration, and the form and rates of new development are often highly variable across locations. Here we demonstrate a new methodology for monitoring urban land expansion at continental to global scales using Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) data. The new method focuses on resolving the spectral and temporal ambiguities between urban/non-urban land and stable/changed areas by: (1) spatially constraining the study extent to known locations of urban land; (2) integrating multi-temporal data from multiple satellite data sources to classify ca 2010 urban extent; and (3) mapping newly built areas (2000)(2001)(2002)(2003)(2004)(2005)(2006)(2007)(2008)(2009)(2010) within the 2010 urban land extent using a multi-temporal composite change detection approach based on MODIS 250 m annual maximum enhanced vegetation index (EVI). We test the method in 15 countries in East-Southeast Asia experiencing different rates and manifestations of urban expansion. A two-tiered accuracy assessment shows that the approach characterizes urban change across a variety of socicoeconomic/political and ecological/climatic conditions with good accuracy (70-91% overall accuracy by country, 69-89% by biome). The 250 m EVI data not only improve the classification results, but are capable of distinguishing between change and no-change areas in urban areas. Over 80% of ii the error in the change detection is related to human decision making or error propagation, rather than algorithm error. As such, these methods hold great potential for routine monitoring of urban change, as well as provide a consistent and up-to-date dataset on urban extent and expansion for a rapidly evolving region.

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Section: Delineat Ing T He St Udy Area Ext Entmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Tier T Wo Accuracy Assessme Ntmentioning

confidence: 99%

Detecting change in urban areas at continental scales with MODIS data

Mertes

Schneider

Sulla‐Menashe

et al. 2015

Remote Sensing of Environment

149

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“…Based on the widely used Terrestrial Ecoregions of the World (TEOW) (Olson et al 2001), we created a layer of biorealms as a biogeographic framework for our analysis (Sanderson et al 2002). The biorealms (n=62) represent all existing combinations of the world's 14 vegetated biomes and seven biogeographic realms (excluding Antarctica): e.g.…”

Section: Biogeographic Classification Of the Terrestrial Environmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The biorealms (n=62) represent all existing combinations of the world's 14 vegetated biomes and seven biogeographic realms (excluding Antarctica): e.g. boreal forests exist in both the Palearctic and Nearctic realms (Olson et al 2001). These biorealms have previously been used to identify broad gaps in the biogeographic coverage of natural and mixed World Heritage sites , and are also of appropriate scale for identifying broad gaps in terrestrial wilderness coverage globally.…”

Section: Biogeographic Classification Of the Terrestrial Environmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

World heritage, wilderness and large landscapes and seascapes

Kormos¹,

Badman²,

Jaeger³

et al. 2017

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“…Due to the climate and soil patterns, Africa has approximately 114 ecosystems gathered into 9 biomes. The tropical and subtropical grasslands, savannas, and shrublands as well as the deserts and xeric shrublands are the dominant vegetation types covering 79% of Africa (Olson et al, 2001). The continent has enormous wetlands of international significance, including Lake Victoria, the world′s second largest lake.…”

Section: Study Areamentioning

confidence: 99%

Building African Ecosystem Research Network for sustaining local ecosystem goods and services

Yevide

et al. 2015

Chin. Geogr. Sci.

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Abstract:A new form of producing and sharing knowledge has emerged as an international (United States of America, Asia, and Europe) research collaboration, known as the Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) Network. Although Africa boasts rich biodiversity, including endemic species, it lacks the long-term initiatives to underpin sustainable biodiversity managements. At present, climate change may exacerbate hunger and poverty concerns in addition to resulting in ecosystem degradation, land use change, and other threats in Africa. Therefore, ecosystem monitoring was suggested to understanding the effects of climate change and setting strategies to mitigate these changes. This paper aimed to investigate ecosystem monitoring ground sites and address their coverage gaps in Africa to provide a foundation for optimizing the African Ecosystem Research Network (AERN) ground sites. The geographic coordinates and characteristics of ground sites-based ecosystem monitoring were collected from various networks aligned with the LTER implementation in Africa. Additionally, climatic data and biodiversity distribution maps were retrieved from various sources. These data were used to assess the size of existing ground sites and the gaps in description, ecosystems and biomes. The results reveal that there were 1089 sites established by various networks. Among these sites, 30.5%, 27.5%, and 28.8% had no information of area, year of establishment, current status, respectively. However, 68.0% of them had an area equal to or greater than 1 km 2 . Sites were created progressively over the course of the years, with 68.9% being created from 2000 to 2005. To date, only 41.5% of the sites were operational. The sites were scattered across Africa, but they were concentrated in Eastern and Southern Africa. The unbalanced distribution pattern of the sites left Central and Northern Africa hardly covered, and many unique ecosystems in Central Africa were not included. To sustain these sites, the AERN should be based on operational sites, seeking secure funding by establishing multiple partnerships.

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Terrestrial Ecoregions of the World: A New Map of Life on Earth

Cited by 6,535 publications

References 21 publications

Detecting change in urban areas at continental scales with MODIS data

Detecting change in urban areas at continental scales with MODIS data

World heritage, wilderness and large landscapes and seascapes

Building African Ecosystem Research Network for sustaining local ecosystem goods and services

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