Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Social and Behavioral Sciences
Powers of 10: cross-scale optimization of social agencies for rapid climate and sustainability action
Published: 2018-08-27
Subjects: Education, Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Geography, International and Area Studies, Library and Information Science, Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Sustainability
Achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement and related sustainability initiatives will require halving of greenhouse gas emissions each decade from now on through to 2050, when net zero emissions should be achieved. To reach such significant reductions requires a rapid and strategic scaling of existing and emerging technologies and practices, coupled with economic and social transformation and [...]
Micromorphological report of Hof ter Coign
Published: 2018-06-28
Subjects: Agriculture, Earth Sciences, Education, Engineering, Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Geography, Geology, Life Sciences, Physical and Environmental Geography, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Sedimentology, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Soil Science
Micromorphological report of the Hof ter Coign site (Belgium)
What Even Is Climate?
Published: 2018-06-26
Subjects: Climate, Geography, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Other Geography, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Although the concept of climate is easy to understand, there is not any uncontroversial definition of it. Most definitions fall back to the simple formulation that `climate is the statistics of weather. Recent attempts at a definition called versions of this saying vague. Climate is policy-relevant, and discussions on climate and climate change benefit from clarity on the topic. Beyond the policy [...]
Spatial association between regionalizations using the information-theoretical V-measure
Published: 2018-04-19
Subjects: Categorical Data Analysis, Computer Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Geographic Information Sciences, Geography, Numerical Analysis and Scientific Computing, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Statistics and Probability, Theory and Algorithms
There is a keen interest in inferring spatial associations between different variables spanning the same study area. We present a method for quantitative assessment of such associations in the case where spatial variables are either in the form of regionalizations or in the form of thematic maps. The proposed index of spatial association – called the V-measure – is adapted from a measure [...]
Knowledge in the Dark: Scientific Challenges and Ways Forward
Published: 2018-03-26
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Education, Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Higher Education, Language and Literacy Education, Liberal Studies, Library and Information Science, Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Public Health, Science and Mathematics Education, Social and Behavioral Sciences
We propose the concept of knowledge in the dark – or short: dark knowledge – and outline how it can help clarify why in our current era of Big Data, the knowledge (i.e. evidence-based understanding) of people does not seem to be substantially increasing despite a rapid increase in produced data and information. Key reasons underlying dark knowledge are: (1) the production of biased, erroneous or [...]
Global assessment and mapping of changes in mesoscale landscapes: 1992–2015
Published: 2018-02-15
Subjects: Categorical Data Analysis, Computer Sciences, Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Geographic Information Sciences, Geography, Longitudinal Data Analysis and Time Series, Numerical Analysis and Scientific Computing, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Spatial Science, Statistics and Probability
Monitoring global land cover changes is important because of concerns about their impact on environment and climate. The release by the European Space Agency (ESA) of a set of worldwide annual land cover maps covering the 1992–2015 period makes possible a quantitative assessment of land change on the global scale. While ESA land cover mapping effort was motivated by the need to better [...]
Towards machine ecoregionalization of Earth’s landmass using pattern segmentation method
Published: 2018-02-15
Subjects: Categorical Data Analysis, Computer Sciences, Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Geographic Information Sciences, Geography, Numerical Analysis and Scientific Computing, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Spatial Science, Statistics and Probability
We present and evaluate a quantitative method for delineation of ecophysigraphic regions throughout the entire terrestrial landmass. The method uses the new pattern-based segmentation technique which attempts to emulate the qualitative, weight-of-evidence approach to a delineation of ecoregions in a computer code. An ecophysiographic region is characterized by homogeneous physiography defined by [...]
Global inventory of landscape patterns and latent variables of landscape spatial configuration
Published: 2018-02-15
Subjects: Biodiversity, Earth Sciences, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Sciences, Geographic Information Sciences, Geography, Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Spatial Science
We present a regionalization of the entire Earth’s landmass into land units of homogeneous landscape patterns. The input to the regionalization is a high resolution Global Land Cover (GLC) dataset. The GLC is first divided into local landscapes – small non-overlapping square blocks of GLC cells. These blocks are agglomerated into much larger land units using a pattern-based segmentation [...]
Multi-scale segmentation algorithm for pattern-based partitioning of large categorical rasters
Published: 2018-01-28
Subjects: Computer Sciences, Earth Sciences, Geography, Numerical Analysis and Scientific Computing, Other Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Spatial Science
Analyzing large Earth Observation (EO) data on the broad spatial scales frequently involves regionalization of patterns. To automate this process we present a segmentation algorithm designed specifically to delineate segments containing quasi-stationary patterns. The algorithm is designed to work with patterns of a categorical variable. This makes it possible to analyze very large spatial [...]
Impacts of land-use and land-cover change on stream hydrochemistry in the Cerrado and Amazon biomes
Published: 2018-01-28
Subjects: Chemistry, Computer Sciences, Earth Sciences, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Fresh Water Studies, Geography, Hydrology, Natural Resources and Conservation, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical and Environmental Geography, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Physics, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Soil Science
Studies on the impacts of land-use and land-cover change on stream hydrochemistry in active deforestation zones of the Amazon agricultural frontier are limited and have often used low-temporal-resolution datasets. Moreover, these impacts are not concurrently assessed in well-established agricultural areas and new deforestations hotspots. We aimed to identify these impacts using an experimental [...]
Protected Places: A Survey of Laws on Archaeological Site and Cave Location Confidentiality and Their Potential Impact on Library Reference Policies and Services
Published: 2018-01-09
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Library and Information Science, Other Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Librarians who work with maps and other forms of spatial information are often asked for information about the location of a place. These questions can range from the location of a village or farm where an ancestor lived to more cryptic questions, such as the location of the Garden of Eden based on its Biblical description. Most librarians will attempt to answer locational questions by directing [...]
Communicating Unnatural Disasters
Published: 2018-01-02
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Engineering, Environmental Studies, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Risk Analysis, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Off the back of the 2017 hurricanes we extend the notion of human-influenced meteo-hydro hazards to include deeper geophysical events. We question where to place Human responsibility in a changing world, and we outline ways to bridge the gaps between scientist’s technical knowledge and ‘meaning’ as it is understood by people at risk. This short Op-ed has been rejected by Science after two rounds [...]
The crisis of a paradigm. A methodological interpretation of Tohoku and Fukushima catastrophe
Published: 2017-12-04
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Studies, Geophysics and Seismology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Tectonics and Structure
The 2011 Japanese disaster often presented as a ‘new Chernobyl’ accumulated the effects of earthquake, tsunami and of the subsequent nuclear accident at Fukushima. In the light of this disaster, we review methodological rea- sons both from geophysical and philosophical perspectives that lead the scientific and technological communities to flawed conclusions, prime cause of the disaster. The [...]
Ratcheting up ambition in climate policy
Published: 2017-11-10
Subjects: Climate, Environmental Studies, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Social and Behavioral Sciences
The historic Paris Agreement aims to constrain the peak increase in global mean temperature to 1.5 °C, or at least well below 2 °C. Every country has committed to device their own “nationally determined contributions” towards this target. These contributions are only proscribed for the coming 10-15 years with a regular reassessment of them against the global target. Here we use a global [...]
Pastoralism may have delayed the end of the green Sahara
Published: 2017-11-06
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Studies, Geology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Social and Behavioral Sciences
The benefits of pastoralism for marginal, arid environments are often not appreciated. One notable past example of the human response to encroaching desertification comes from the regional climate deterioration after the most recent African Humid Period, which ended around 5,500 years ago. Recent evidence points to a population expansion in northern Africa prior to this, associated with the [...]