Protection and maintenance of permanent pastures

peer reviewedAll farmers receiving direct payments are subject to compulsory cross-compliance which includes standards related to the maintenance and protection of permanent pastures. Questionnaire techniques and spatio-temporal analyses demonstrated that the ratio of permanent pasture area to agricultural land provides a simple tool for monitoring and controlling the protection of permanent pastures at the regional to Member State level. Huge variations in the ratio across Europe were related to the importance of permanent pastures, the interpretation of definitions, sources of information used, differences in calculation, and the presence of protective and/or sensitive zones. Precautionary or complementary measures are in place in most Member States in order to prevent decreases in the ratio. The implementation of GAEC standards related to permanent pastures overlaps with the standard management requirements, national legislation and current agri-environmental programmes. The study advocates the establishment of a comprehensive geo-information platform consisting of a topologically correct inventory of all permanent pasture parcels in a 1:1 geo-referenced relation between IACS and LPIS; ancillary spatially explicit data such as orthophotos, remote sensing images and other thematic geo-databases; and, geodatabases with parcel information compiled for other monitoring purposes such as those within the framework of the Nitrates Directive or 2nd pillar support

The Development of Web3D-based Open-pit Mine Monitoring System

Large-scale open-pit mines are critical infrastructure for acquiring natural resources. However, this type of mine can experience environmental and safety problems during operations and thus requires continuous monitoring. In this study, a web three-dimensional(3D)-based monitoring system is constructed using geospatial information open platform and open-source geospatial information software which targets open-pit mines in Gangwon-do, Korea. The purpose is to develop a monitoring system of open-pit mines that enables any person to monitor the topographic and environmental changes caused by mine operations and to develop and restore the area’s ecology. Open-pit mines were classified into active or inactive mines and monitoring items and methodologies were established for each type of mine. Cesium which is a WebGL-based open-source platform was chosen as it supports dynamic data visualization and hardware-accelerated graphics related to elapsed time which is the essential factor in the monitoring. The open-pit mine monitoring system was developed based on the geospatial database which contains information required for mine monitoring as time elapses, and by developing the open-source-based system software. The geospatial information database for monitoring consists of digital imagery and terrain data and also includes vector data and the restoration plan datas. The basic geospatial information used in the monitoring includes high resolution ortho image(GSD 0.5 m or above) for all areas of the mines. This is acquired by periodically using an airborne laser scanning system and a LiDAR DEM (grid size 1m × 1 m). In addition, geospatial information data were acquired by using an UAV and terrestrial LiDAR for small-scale areas; these tools are frequently used for rapid and irregular data acquisition. The geospatial information acquired for the monitoring of the open-pit mines represents various spatial resolutions and different terrain data. The database was constructed by converging this geospatial information with the Cesium-based geospatial information open platform of the ESRI World Imagery map and with SDK World Terrain meshes. The problems that resulted from the process of fusing aerial imagery and terrain data were solved in the Cesium-based open source environment. The prototype menu for the monitoring system was designed according to the monitoring item which was determined by the type of mine. The scene of the mine and changes in terrain were controlled and analyzed using the raster function of PostGIS according to the elapsed time. Using the GeoServer, the aerial imagery, terrain and restoration information for each period were serviced using the web standard interface, and the monitoring system was completed by visualizing these elements in Cesium in 3D format according to the elapsed time. This study has established a monitoring methodology for open-pit mines according to the type of mine and proposes a method for upgrading the imagery and terrain data required for monitoring. The study also showed the possibility of developing a Web3D-based open-pit mine monitoring system that is applicable to a wide range of mashup service developments

LANDMAP: Serving Satellite imagery to the UK academic Community

The LANDMAP Project has created the first IfSAR DEM covering the entire British Isles. That DEM and associated orthorectified ERS images were used to produce a set of orthorectified images of the British Isles from LANDSAT and SPOT. Additional merged and mosaiced images were also created with the three different satellite products. The dataset includes images stored as files in Geo-TIFF format. This paper discusses the data creation process and presents the methods of serving these data to the user community

MusA: Using Indoor Positioning and Navigation to Enhance Cultural Experiences in a museum

In recent years there has been a growing interest into the use of multimedia mobile guides in museum environments. Mobile devices have the capabilities to detect the user context and to provide pieces of information suitable to help visitors discovering and following the logical and emotional connections that develop during the visit. In this scenario, location based services (LBS) currently represent an asset, and the choice of the technology to determine users' position, combined with the definition of methods that can effectively convey information, become key issues in the design process. In this work, we present MusA (Museum Assistant), a general framework for the development of multimedia interactive guides for mobile devices. Its main feature is a vision-based indoor positioning system that allows the provision of several LBS, from way-finding to the contextualized communication of cultural contents, aimed at providing a meaningful exploration of exhibits according to visitors' personal interest and curiosity. Starting from the thorough description of the system architecture, the article presents the implementation of two mobile guides, developed to respectively address adults and children, and discusses the evaluation of the user experience and the visitors' appreciation of these application

High resolution satellite images for archeological applications: the Karima case study (Nubia region, Sudan)

This work presents an approach based on satellite remotely sensed images and Geomatics techniques aimed at supporting the Italian archeological missions that at the moment are active in the Karima Area (Sudan). It's well known that archaeologists often suffer from lack of updated maps useful to geographically manage the observations coming from the field and, possibly, to address or suggest where digging for new excavations. Specifically for this experience QuickBird and ASTER data were acquired and processed to generate a high scale multispectral orthoimage of the area. The spectral properties of the QB orthoimage were exploited with the purpose of obtaining suggestions about the possible existence of stil lhidden archaeological features

Trying to break new ground in aerial archaeology

Aerial reconnaissance continues to be a vital tool for landscape-oriented archaeological research. Although a variety of remote sensing platforms operate within the earth’s atmosphere, the majority of aerial archaeological information is still derived from oblique photographs collected during observer-directed reconnaissance flights, a prospection approach which has dominated archaeological aerial survey for the past century. The resulting highly biased imagery is generally catalogued in sub-optimal (spatial) databases, if at all, after which a small selection of images is orthorectified and interpreted. For decades, this has been the standard approach. Although many innovations, including digital cameras, inertial units, photogrammetry and computer vision algorithms, geographic(al) information systems and computing power have emerged, their potential has not yet been fully exploited in order to re-invent and highly optimise this crucial branch of landscape archaeology. The authors argue that a fundamental change is needed to transform the way aerial archaeologists approach data acquisition and image processing. By addressing the very core concepts of geographically biased aerial archaeological photographs and proposing new imaging technologies, data handling methods and processing procedures, this paper gives a personal opinion on how the methodological components of aerial archaeology, and specifically aerial archaeological photography, should evolve during the next decade if developing a more reliable record of our past is to be our central aim. In this paper, a possible practical solution is illustrated by outlining a turnkey aerial prospection system for total coverage survey together with a semi-automated back-end pipeline that takes care of photograph correction and image enhancement as well as the management and interpretative mapping of the resulting data products. In this way, the proposed system addresses one of many bias issues in archaeological research: the bias we impart to the visual record as a result of selective coverage. While the total coverage approach outlined here may not altogether eliminate survey bias, it can vastly increase the amount of useful information captured during a single reconnaissance flight while mitigating the discriminating effects of observer-based, on-the-fly target selection. Furthermore, the information contained in this paper should make it clear that with current technology it is feasible to do so. This can radically alter the basis for aerial prospection and move landscape archaeology forward, beyond the inherently biased patterns that are currently created by airborne archaeological prospection

A Sustainable Approach for upgrading geographic databases based on high resolution satellite imagery

The availability of high-resolution satellite images could be exploited for upgrading geographic databases at medium scales (1:5,000-1:25,000) as alternative to aerial photogrammetry. The paper presents a procedure to carry out this task which is based on an automatic image-to-image registration procedure of new satellite data to existing ortho-photomaps that have to be upgraded. In order to get a regularization of control points extracted in automatic way, a technique implementing a neural network algorithm is applied. Once an image has been georeferenced, this can be ortho-corrected thanks to a DTM (nowadays available in almost all developed countries). However, the product which is obtained so far is still a raster maps. To cope with the increasing need of vector data in geographic geographic databases, some tests performed on the extraction of features (buildings and roads) from real high-resolution satellite images have been performed and results are shown here. Finally, to complete the data acquisition process, the use of GPS-GIS data-logger receivers in differential mode is proposed