The data on animal husbandry, environment, and factors including livestock density (sheep, goats, swine and cattle), average elevation, vegetation coverage (croplands, forests, and grassland), and climate variables were collected.
To extract the percent coverage by croplands, forests, grassland, and built-up lands for each county, data on Changchun land cover (1990 , 1995 2000, 2005, and 2010) were collected from Chinese data-sharing network of earth-system science (http://www.geodata.cn/) and the Northeast Institute of Geography and Agroecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences [ 17, 18].
For each county, potential risk factors for the two phases (e.g., livestock husbandry (average density of large animals, sheep, and deer), climate factors (average temperature, precipitation, and relative humidity) and land cover (average percent coverage by croplands, forests, grassland, and built-up lands)) were included as co-variables in the analysis.
Steppe birds occurred most often in cropland abandoned 20 50 years ago with good coverage of erect leafy plants while overall avian diversity tended to increase with reduced grazing pressure and with nearby presence of rural settlements.
Our results show that the simulated horizontal sediment mass fluxes are similar for cropland and rangeland models at large surface crust coverage and aerodynamic roughness.
Crop fractional coverage is presented as the ratio of cropland to pasture area (CPR), perennial to annual crops area (PAR), and C4 to C3 photosynthetic pathways for agricultural areas (C4C3R) not including pastures.
Woodland coverage in 2000 decreased by 5.3%, while croplands decreased by 0.24% of the 1986 level.
It covers thirteen upazilas of the four districts of Kushtia, Chuadanga, Jhenaidah, and Magura with a total coverage area of 1655 km and 488,032 acres of cropland.
The United States Department of Agriculture's Cropland Data Layer (CDL), an annual satellite imagery-derived land cover map, has been increasingly used for this application since complete coverage of the conterminous United States became available in 2008.
