Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Geography
Unified in diversity: Unravelling emerging knowledge on drought impact cascades via participatory modeling
Published: 2024-04-04
Subjects: Geography
Diverse groups exhibit enhanced capabilities in tackling complex problems compared to individuals. Also, involving diverse stakeholders has been shown to improve the understanding of complex social-ecological systems. Considering this, we investigated how pooling the knowledge of diverse stakeholder crowds can create new, emergent knowledge on cascading drought impacts. We define ‘emergent [...]
Climatic and geological insights on geochemical signatures left in ancient glass
Published: 2024-02-26
Subjects: Chemistry, Earth Sciences, Geography
Glass artifacts have been the subject of extensive trade as exquisite items of the social elite since ancient times. Vestiges of their production and migration are still visible around the globe. To comprehend the historical narrative of human life encapsulated within them, it is imperative to ascertain their inception, which directly correlates with the identification of raw materials used in [...]
Intertwining volcanoes and society in Chile through arts and interdisciplinary connections
Published: 2023-11-08
Subjects: Geography, Social and Behavioral Sciences
The separation between nature and society, of concern within social science and interdisciplinary discussions, has generated a division that often characterizes the way communities perceive their environment. The arts have played an important role in demonstrating the entanglement of Earth and society through their ability to frame and shape the dynamics of the Earth across sensations. This has [...]
Large-scale green grabbing for wind and solar PV development in Brazil
Published: 2023-08-22
Subjects: Geographic Information Sciences, Geography, Human Geography, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Large-scale wind and solar photovoltaic (PV) infrastructures are expanding rapidly in Brazil. These projects can exacerbate struggles for land rooted in weak land governance, with negative impacts for traditional populations due to loss of access to common lands. Here, we trace how green grabbing, i.e. the large-scale appropriation and control of (undesignated) public lands, both formally legal [...]
A Web-based Decision Support Framework for Optimizing Road Network Accessibility and Emergency Facility Allocation During Flooding
Published: 2023-08-03
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Engineering, Environmental Studies, Geographic Information Sciences, Geography, Risk Analysis
Transportation systems can be significantly affected by flooding, leading to physical damage and subsequent adverse impacts such as increased travel distance to essential services. Even though flooding is a frequently recurring phenomenon that can affect thousands of people per event, there are limited accessible online tools available for analyzing and visualizing flood risk for supporting [...]
The climate and environmental determinants of domestic water supply change at the Nasia catchment in Northern Ghana
Published: 2023-06-23
Subjects: Geography
The Nasia river serves as the primary source of domestic water supply for over 5000 households in the Nasia catchment. However, the river is currently experiencing water stress conditions, causing an imbalance between the demand for water and the available supply. In this study, we evaluated the impact of climate and environmental factors on changes in domestic water supply in the Nasia [...]
Towards Understanding the Geospatial Skills of ChatGPT: Taking a Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Exam
Published: 2023-06-20
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Education, Environmental Studies, Geographic Information Sciences, Geography, Higher Education, Other Geography, Science and Mathematics Education, Spatial Science
This paper examines the performance of ChatGPT, a large language model (LLM), in a geographic information systems (GIS) exam. As LLMs like ChatGPT become increasingly prevalent in various domains, including education, it is important to understand their capabilities and limitations in specialized subject areas such as GIS. Human learning of spatial concepts significantly differs from LLM training [...]
ChatGPT as a mapping assistant: A novel method to enrich maps with generative AI and content derived from street-level photographs
Published: 2023-06-06
Subjects: Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Computer Sciences, Geographic Information Sciences, Geography, Other Computer Sciences, Other Geography, Spatial Science
This paper explores the concept of leveraging generative AI as a mapping assistant for enhancing the efficiency of collaborative mapping. We present results of an experiment that combines multiple sources of volunteered geographic information (VGI) and large language models (LLMs). Three analysts described the content of crowdsourced Mapillary street-level photographs taken along roads in a small [...]
Extreme Rainfall Indices and its Effect on Meher Season Crop Calendar: An Agro-Climatic Zone Based Study
Published: 2023-03-15
Subjects: Geography
The study analyzed the daily extreme rainfall indices and its consequences on Meher (summer) season cereal crop calendar in the agro-climatic zones (ACZs) of a watershed. Long-term (1981-2019) rainfall data for 50 sample grid points with a spatial resolution of 5 5 km from Climate Hazards Group Infrared Precipitation (CHIRPS) was considered. Focus group discussions were employed to identifying [...]
The Earth4All model of human wellbeing on a finite planet towards 2100
Published: 2023-03-03
Subjects: Environmental Studies, Geography
In the following pages, we give a short introduction to a new integrated global assessment model: The Earth4All model of human wellbeing on a finite planet towards the year 2100. The Earth4All (E4A) model has evolved over a fifteen-year period and represents a summary of insights we have gained during all these years (See Appendix 1 for a list of the main publications that form the foundation for [...]
Did hydroclimate conditions contribute to the political dynamics of Majapahit? A preliminary analysis
Published: 2023-02-21
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Climate, Earth Sciences, Environmental Studies, Geography, Human Geography, Nature and Society Relations, Physical and Environmental Geography, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Majapahit was the largest Hindu-Buddhist empire that ruled the Indonesian archipelago from the late 13th to mid-16th centuries CE. Only now there is still a lot of history surrounding the Majapahit era that has yet to be revealed. One is about how environmental factors influenced the political dynamics at that time. This study tries to discuss the influence of hydroclimate regimes using the Paleo [...]
Towards robust interdisciplinary modeling of global human-environmental dynamics
Published: 2023-02-20
Subjects: Agriculture, Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Studies, Forest Sciences, Geography, Life Sciences, Nature and Society Relations
Real-world environmental problems are typically vast, urgent, and complex. Confronted with such problems, we are often tempted to act fast by pulling together little bits and pieces from different fields and simply adding these to pre-existing models and frameworks. Seldom, though, do we pause long enough to look whether and for how long those larger structures we build can support reliable [...]
Data mining by watching old documentary TV programs to learn about the relationships between people’s lives and the landscape in Sakha in the perestroika era at the end of the 1980s
Published: 2022-08-14
Subjects: Geography
To accurately evaluate the spatiotemporal variability of ecosystem functions and services, as well as biodiversity, under a rapidly changing climate and shifting anthropogenic activities, it is an important but challenging task to retrieve information about past relationships among society, people’s lives, and the landscape. We watched documentary TV programs broadcast by the Japanese public [...]
Developing seagrass index for long term monitoring of Zostera japonica seagrass bed: a case study in Yellow River Delta, China
Published: 2022-06-30
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Geographic Information Sciences, Geography, Physical and Environmental Geography, Remote Sensing
Seagrass beds offer unique and vital ecological services as an important blue carbon ecosystem in coastal wetlands. Zostera japonica is an intertidal seagrass species native to eastern Asia and is one of the most widely distributed seagrass species in China. However, little is known on the long-term variations of Z. japonica extents. Automatic mapping method for Z. japonica seagrass beds is in [...]
A mid-20th century estimate of global vegetation carbon stocks based on inventory statistics
Published: 2022-03-28
Subjects: Environmental Studies, Forest Sciences, Geography
Biomass carbon stocks (BCS) play a vital role in the climate system, but benchmarked estimates prior to the late 20th century remain scarce. Here, by making use of an early global forest resource assessment and harmonizing information on land use and carbon densities, we establish a global BCS account for the year 1950. Our best-guess BCS estimate is 450.7 PgC (median of all modulations: 518.3 [...]