Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Social and Behavioral Sciences
Report for the Puding Government on the China-UK Karst Knowledge Exchange Project
Published: 2018-12-14
Subjects: Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Geography, Nature and Society Relations, Physical and Environmental Geography, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Water Resource Management
The report summaries the first stage output from the Knowledge Exchange (KE) research carried out in one of China’s rural areas in the karst landscape, aiming to understand the local knowledge sharing dynamic and learning preference of stakeholders. A social science survey was carried out in November 2016 in 7 villages of Puding County to 15 county leaders, 8 town leaders and 24 village leaders [...]
Summary Report of China-UK Knowledge Exchange Project for Their Critical Zone Programme
Published: 2018-12-12
Subjects: Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Geography, Nature and Society Relations, Physical and Environmental Geography, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Water Resource Management
Global to local environmental policy-making is increasingly evidenced-based. Knowledge exchange (KE) is increasingly used by environmental scientists and policymakers, to deliver evidence-based policy and practice. This study presents the output from the KE research project within the China-UK Critical Zone (CZ) programme in China from 2016 to 2018, focussing on understanding: (i) the key issues [...]
Mangrove pollen of Indonesia and its suitability as a sea-level indicator
Published: 2018-10-27
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Geography, Physical and Environmental Geography, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Social and Behavioral Sciences
We investigated the mangroves of Southeast Sulawesi, Indonesia, to assess their potential as proxies for reconstructing sea level during the Holocene. Initial investigations confirmed that the mangrove species demonstrate zonations parallel to the shoreline and are dominated by the family Rhizophoraceae with Avicennia, Heritiera and Sonneratia also important constituents of the mangroves. We [...]
Creating a Model to Optimize and Evaluate the Heat-Reducing Capacity of Green Infrastructure
Published: 2018-09-11
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Public Health, Environmental Studies, Medicine and Health Sciences, Public Health, Social and Behavioral Sciences
As global warming increases temperatures worldwide, cities are experiencing even greater temperatures due to the urban heat island effect, which is the trapping of heat in “gray” urban infrastructure. Cities are combatting this with green infrastructure (GI) initiatives, such as the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) GI initiative in New York City. However, these programs are often [...]
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: 2018-04-20
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: 2018-03-27
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: 2018-02-16
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: 2018-02-16
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: 2018-02-16
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: 2018-01-29
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: 2018-01-29
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: 2018-01-10
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 [...]