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The paper provides a systematic review of satellite-based regional and urban heat island (RHI and UHI) studies in cities and their challenges, from 2010 to the present based on visualizing scientific landscapes (VOS) viewer analysis and Scopus and science database search using a set of standard criteria. The review results show that 52.17% of the studies used Landsat images followed by MODIS (36.65%). Based on VOS viewer analysis author keywords, remote sensing was strongly linked to urban heat island, urban greenspace, and improvise surface, respectively. Regarding, Co-authorship network China, Canada and the United kingdom’s authors actively collaborated with different world researchers. The most frequently studied regions and periods of research are China and summer daytime, respectively. A total of 55% of the articles reported the use of a mono-window algorithm for retrieving LST from sensors. On the other hand, remotely sensed UHI studies have been facing a series of challenges, including differences between remote sensing satellite-derived LST and air temperature, impacts of clouds and other factors on LST data, methods to quantify UHI, accuracy assessment and attribution of RHI and UHI. Thus, consideration was given to the understudied cities, the methods to compute RHI and/or UHI intensity, inter-annual variability and modeling in the future.

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Despite the intense debates on the land acquisition effects of large-scale Ethiopian sugarcane plantations and the consequences for food security, the impact on biodiversity has received less attention. We compared remnant patches in the sugarcane zone to the adjacent woodlands to determine the impacts of sugarcane on the diversity, composition, and structure of woody species. We recorded individual woody specimens with diameter at breast height (DBH) ≥ 2.5 cm from 56 quadrats of 200 m 2 at each site in a systematic, random, and gradient-oriented transect design. In addition, we employed a trait-based risk assessment framework to examine the threat posed by agro-industrial sugarcane production on mammals, birds, and rodents. A total of 56 woody species, 38 in the woodlands and 30 in the sugarcane zone, were identified. The proportion of non-native woody species was higher (63%) in the sugarcane zone than in the adjacent woodlands (1%). The rodents and mammals were more abundant in the woodlands than in the sugarcane zone. Although we did not investigate all of the bird and mammal species, our results identified six rodent species, five mammal species, and one bird species as susceptible to sugarcane agriculture activities. The results suggest that large-scale agro-industrial sugarcane production impacts species diversity, composition and abundance of species, and species' resource requirements.