Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Geography
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: 2018-10-26
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Effects of spatial resolution on slope and aspect derivation for regional-scale analysis
Published: 2017-11-01
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geographic Information Sciences, Geography, Geomorphology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Remote Sensing, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Spatial Science
This paper investigates differences between morphometric parameters (slope and aspect) derived from a resampled DEM and resampled morphometric data derived from a medium resolution DEM, with examples for three study areas in South America selected to represent flatlands, hilly terrain, and mountain ranges. Using a low resolution DEM for regional scale morphometric analysis is not an optimal [...]
Geological applications of digital terrain analysis
Published: 2017-11-01
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geochemistry, Geographic Information Sciences, Geography, Geology, Geomorphology, Geophysics and Seismology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Remote Sensing, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Spatial Science, Tectonics and Structure, Volcanology
Editorial to the IJGIS Special Issue on "Geological applications of digital terrain analysis". In this volume, the modern advances in the field of geological terrain analysis are presented, while emphasis is given to the quantitative analysis of modern datasets.
Influence of cell size on volume calculation using digital terrain models: A case of coastal dune fields
Published: 2017-11-01
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geographic Information Sciences, Geography, Geomorphology, Other Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Remote Sensing, Sedimentology, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Spatial Science
In this work, we analyze how variation in cell size influences the volume calculated from Digital Terrain Models (DTMs) derived from a LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) survey in two coastal Late Holocene dune fields in southern Brazil. Cell size varied from 1 to 100 m. The RMSE (Root Mean Square Error) of the resampled DTMs from the original LiDAR (with 0.5 m resolution) increases linearly [...]
Multi-scale Analysis of Topographic Surface Roughness in the Midland Valley, Scotland
Published: 2017-10-31
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Geographic Information Sciences, Geography, Geomorphology, Other Earth Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Remote Sensing, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Spatial Science, Tectonics and Structure
Surface roughness is an important geomorphological variable which has been used in the earth and planetary sciences to infer material properties, current/past processes and the time elapsed since formation. No single definition exists, however within the context of geomorphometry we use surface roughness as a expression of the variability of a topographic surface at a given scale, where the scale [...]