Assessment of badland susceptibility and its governing factors using a random forest approach. Application to the Upper Llobregat River Basin and Catalonia (Spain).

Badlands are considered hotspots of sediment production, contributing to large fractions of the sediment budget of catchments and river basins. The erosion rates of these areas can exceed 100 t ha y, leading to significant environmental and economic impacts. This research aims to assess badland susceptibility and the relevance of its governing factors at different spatial scales using the well-known machine learning approach random forest (RF).

Drought conditions, aridity and forest structure control the responses of Iberian holm oak woodlands to extreme droughts: A large-scale remote-sensing exploration in eastern Spain.

Understanding how Mediterranean forests respond to the increasing frequency of extreme droughts and forest densification is crucial for effective land management in the present context of climate change and land abandonment. We study the responses of Iberian holm oak (Quercus ilex L.) woodlands to recent extreme droughts during 2000-2019 along broad gradients of climate aridity and forest structure.

Assessing vegetation recovery in reclaimed opencast mines of the Teruel coalfield (Spain) using Landsat time series and boosted regression trees.

Opencast mining is an activity that caters to many economic sectors; however, it has a large impact on society and the environment. After mining, the major concern is to restore the previous land cover, which was generally a natural vegetation cover. Establishing permanent vegetation cover can restore landscape connectivity and previous ecosystem functions, enhance aesthetic values and prevent off-side effects associated with post-mining landscapes.

Contributions of throughfall, forest and soil characteristics to near-surface soil water-content variability at the plot scale in a mountainous Mediterranean area.

Soil water-content (SWC) variability in forest ecosystems is affected by complex interactions between climate, topography, forest structure and soil factors. However, detailed studies taking into account the combined effects of these factors are scarce. This study's main aims were to examine the control that throughfall exerts on local spatial variation of near-surface soil water-content and to combine this information with forest structure and soil characteristics, in order to analyze all their effects together.