Preprints

Filtering by Subject: Geography

Optimizing Crop Cut Collection for Determining Field-Scale Yields in an Insurance Context

Ritvik Sahajpal, Inbal Becker-Reshef, Sylvain Coutu

Published: 2020-11-10
Subjects: Geographic Information Sciences, Geography, Other Engineering, Remote Sensing, Spatial Science

Accurately determining crop yields at field-scale can help farmers estimate their net profit, enable insurance companies to ascertain payouts, and when aggregated at regional and national scales, crop yield estimates are critical in ensuring food security. Over the last few decades, crop cuts have been widely used to estimate field-scale crop yields. Crop cuts, while cost prohibitive, are the [...]

Mapping Research Topics at Multiple Levels of Detail

Sara K Lafia, Werner Kuhn, Kelly Caylor

Published: 2020-07-12
Subjects: Geography, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Spatial Science

Institutional reviews typically rely on scientometrics, like the h-index and impact factors of their participants, to assess research productivity. Productivity is not the only review criterion however, and scientometrics can be difficult to generate and compare in multidisciplinary settings. “Distant reading” methods from the Digital Humanities can complement the current quantitative evaluation [...]

Finding karstic caves and rockshelters in the Inner Asian mountain corridor using predictive modelling and field survey

Patrick Cuthbertson, Tobias Ullman, Christian Büdel, et al.

Published: 2020-07-10
Subjects: Geographic Information Sciences, Geography, Physical and Environmental Geography, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Spatial Science

The area of the Inner Asian Mountain Corridor (IAMC) follows the foothills and piedmont zones around the northern limits of Asia’s interior mountains, connecting two important areas for human evolution: the Fergana valley and the Siberian Altai. Prior research has suggested the IAMC may have provided an area of connected refugia from harsh climates during the Pleistocene. To date, this region [...]

Climate has contrasting direct and indirect effects on armed conflicts

David Helman, Ben Zaitchik, Chris Funk

Published: 2020-07-08
Subjects: Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Geography, Human Geography, International and Area Studies, Library and Information Science, Life Sciences, Nature and Society Relations, Physical and Environmental Geography, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Remote Sensing, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Statistics and Probability

There is an active debate regarding the influence that climate has on the risk of armed conflict, which stems from challenges in assembling unbiased datasets, competing hypotheses on the mechanisms of climate influence, and the difficulty of disentangling direct and indirect climate effects. We use gridded historical non-state conflict records, satellite data, and land surface models in a [...]

Two Pixel Reference Algorithm

Ziheng Sun, Liping Di, Hui Fang

Published: 2020-06-18
Subjects: Engineering, Geography, Remote Sensing, Social and Behavioral Sciences

Object based image analysis (OBIA) has a unique process requirement: relate all the pixels in the segmented images to the vectorized polygons (pixel in polygon). The existing solutions are very slow in finding the pixels in a polygon. This paper proposes a novel algorithm called Two-Pixel-Reference to speed up the process. The algorithm is initially designed for segmented remote sensing images. [...]

A framework to quantify the human footprint in Africa using supply and demand of net primary production

Abdulhakim M Abdi

Published: 2020-05-29
Subjects: Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Sciences, Geography, Nature and Society Relations, Physical and Environmental Geography, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Remote Sensing, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Spatial Science, Sustainability

The human-environment connection in the mostly rural drylands of Africa forms a complex, interlinked system that provides ecosystem services. This system is susceptible to climatic variability that impacts the supply of its products, and high population growth, which impacts the demand for these products. When plants remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through the process of photosynthesis, [...]

Machine Learning on Greenest Pixels for Crop Mapping

Ziheng Sun, Liping Di, Hui Fang

Published: 2020-04-14
Subjects: Geography, Remote Sensing, Social and Behavioral Sciences

Remotely sensed signals from crop fields are full of variabilities due to the complex interactions among the environment, seeds, climate, market, and farmers. It is a common phenomenon that the crops in neighbouring fields are in different growing stages, e.g., the corns are in the V5 leaf stage in one field and V10 stage in another neighbouring field. The phenomenon results in remote sensing [...]

Concepts of space, time and scale

Mikko Vastaranta, Ninni Saarinen, Tuomas Yrttimaa, et al.

Published: 2020-04-11
Subjects: Forest Sciences, Geographic Information Sciences, Geography, Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences

Concepts of space, time and scale as well as their underpinning theories are crucial for understanding geospatial data. Space can be defined as a boundless, three-dimensional (3D) extent in which objects and events occur and have relative position and direction. Space has been considered to be absolute, meaning that it exists permanently and independently regardless of any matter in space. [...]

Fundamental laws and principles in geoinformation science

Mikko Vastaranta, Ninni Saarinen, Tuomas Yrttimaa, et al.

Published: 2020-04-11
Subjects: Forest Sciences, Geographic Information Sciences, Geography, Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences

Scientific laws are empirical statements, based on repeated experiments or observations, that describe or predict a range of natural phenomena. There are scientific laws and law-like statements also in the field of geoinformation sciences. Based on the Tobler’s first law of geography, “everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than distant things”. This first law [...]

Individual tree detection and characterization using 3D remote sensing

Mikko Vastaranta, Ninni Saarinen, Tuomas Yrttimaa, et al.

Published: 2020-04-11
Subjects: Forest Sciences, Geographic Information Sciences, Geography, Life Sciences, Remote Sensing, Social and Behavioral Sciences

Here, we will cover individual tree detection and characterization using 3D remote sensing. Simply, it means that point clouds are collected over a forested area using airborne laser scanning (ALS) or created using photogrammetric image interpretation and further used to detect individual trees using different algorithms. After the tree detection, the attributes of interest are predicted for each [...]

Introduction to geoinformation science

Mikko Vastaranta, Ninni Saarinen, Tuomas Yrttimaa, et al.

Published: 2020-04-11
Subjects: Forest Sciences, Geographic Information Sciences, Geography, Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences

Here, we define a geoinformation system (GIS) as a system, which is designed to capture, store, manipulate, analyze, manage, and present geospatial data. In university education, we study geoinformation science that is the science underlying geographic concepts, applications, and systems. Geoinformation science is dedicated to advancing our understanding of geographic processes and spatial [...]

POSSIBILITIES OF CHANGE DETECTION OF TREE AND FOREST ATTRIBUTES BY COMBINING TERRESTRIAL LASER SCANNING BASED 3D POINT CLOUDS WITH UAV DATA

Ville Luoma, Tuomas Yrttimaa, Ville Kankare, et al.

Published: 2020-04-01
Subjects: Forest Management, Forest Sciences, Geography, Life Sciences, Remote Sensing, Social and Behavioral Sciences

Exact and up-to-date information about forest resources is needed for decision makers when planning the use of forests. Knowledge about changes in forest environment and tree growth is a key factor for example when predicting the effects of climate change and estimating the amount of biomass and sequestered carbon in forests. New technologies, such as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), allow one to [...]

Editorial: Geoscience in a time of pandemics

Jonathan Tennant, Sam Illingworth, Iain Simpson Stewart, et al.

Published: 2020-03-20
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geography, Medical Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Social and Behavioral Sciences

We, the Executive Editors at Geoscience Communication, sincerely hope that this message finds you and your loved ones in good health. We are in the midst of yet another global health crisis, the Coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19). This affects all of us, and we truly hope that you are remaining safe and taking all necessary precautions. We all are facing difficult times ahead, and we hope that we [...]

Integrating UAV photogrammetry with terrestrial laser scanning to characterize managed forest stands

Tuomas Yrttimaa, Ninni Saarinen, Ville Kankare, et al.

Published: 2020-03-04
Subjects: Forest Sciences, Geography, Life Sciences, Remote Sensing, Social and Behavioral Sciences

Terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) provides detailed three-dimensional representation of the surrounding forest structure. However, due to close-range hemispherical scanning geometry the ability of TLS technique to comprehensively characterize the upper parts of forest canopy is often limited. To overcome challenges in upper canopy characterization, TLS point cloud were complemented with a point [...]

‘Scallywag Bunkers’: Geophysical Investigations of WW2 Auxiliary Unit Operational Bases (OBs) in the UK

Jamie K Pringle, Peter Doyle, Kristopher D Wisniewski, et al.

Published: 2020-02-05
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Education, Geography, Other Earth Sciences, Other Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Social and Behavioral Sciences

In 1940, with the fall of France imminent, Britain prepared for invasion. After Dunkirk, with most armour and transport lost, a defence ‘stop line’ (GHQ Line) was prepared. Local Defence Volunteers (later Home Guard) were raised to buy time for the Home Army to deploy. Secret ‘Auxiliary Units’ were also formed, tasked with ‘Scallywagging’ – guerrilla activities ––in the invading army’s rear. 4-8 [...]

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