1,241 research outputs found
Urban sprawl and its impact on sustainable urban development: a combination of remote sensing and social media data
Urbanization is one of the most impactful human activities across the world today affecting the quality of urban life and its sustainable development. Urbanization in Africa is occurring at an unprecedented rate and it threatens the attainment of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Urban sprawl has resulted in unsustainable urban development patterns from social, environmental, and economic perspectives. This study is among the first examples of research in Africa to combine remote sensing data with social media data to determine urban sprawl from 2011 to 2017 in Morogoro urban municipality, Tanzania. Random Forest (RF) method was applied to accomplish imagery classification and location-based social media (Twitter usage) data were obtained through a Twitter Application Programming Interface (API). Morogoro urban municipality was classified into built-up, vegetation, agriculture, and water land cover classes while the classification results were validated by the generation of 480 random points. Using the Kernel function, the study measured the location of Twitter users within a 1 km buffer from the center of the city. The results indicate that, expansion of the city (built-up land use), which is primarily driven by population expansion, has negative impacts on ecosystem services because pristine grasslands and forests which provide essential ecosystem services such as carbon sequestration and support for biodiversity have been replaced by built-up land cover. In addition, social media usage data suggest that there is the concentration of Twitter usage within the city center while Twitter usage declines away from the city center with significant spatial and numerical increase in Twitter usage in the study area. The outcome of the study suggests that the combination of remote sensing, social sensing, and population data were useful as a proxy/inference for interpreting urban sprawl and status of access to urban services and infrastructure in Morogoro, and Africa city where data for urban planning is often unavailable, inaccurate, or stale
Spatial Structure Relationship in a Forest Insect System: Simulation Models and Analysis
This paper analyses relationships among dispersal, spatial heterogeneity, and local ecological processes in the spruce budworm (Choristoneura fumiferana Clem.) - boreal forest system of eastern North America. A range of simulation and topological models are developed to reflect various hyotheses concerning those relationships. Model predictions are treated as guides to effective experimental design and efficient allocation of research priorities, rather than as ends in themselves. The analysis demonstrates the shortcomings of studies treating either dispersal or local processes alone, and argues instead for an integrated approach to spatial structure research in population ecology
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Incorporating Human Beliefs and Behaviors into Wildlife Ecology
Like much of the global biosphere, wildlife species have experienced rapid declines during the Anthropocene. Wildlife ecologists have responded to these crises by developing a range of technologies, techniques, and large datasets, which together have revolutionized the field, provided novel insights into the movements and behaviors of animals, and identified new risks and impacts to wildlife in a human-dominated world. While these advances have been vitally important, wildlife ecology has been slower to recognize and incorporate humans themselves into its new research domains. The chapters of this dissertation explore methods for better incorporating human behaviors, beliefs, actions, and infrastructure into the theories and approaches in wildlife ecology that have flourished in the last two decades. The research presented here demonstrates the importance of linking human beliefs and behaviors to wildlife ecology both by presenting novel findings and by showing the opportunities missed when narrow approaches are applied to complex socio-ecological problems.In Chapter 1, I provide a general introduction on the theories underlying this research, contextualize the research questions in light of the loss and recovery of large predators, and describe the research site where I collected much of the data for this dissertation. In Chapter 2, I apply the methods of movement ecology to some of the first fine-scale telemetry data collected on rifle hunters. I draw conclusions about their individual, site-level, and regional-level hunting behaviors and discuss the broad implications of these findings for hunting management. In Chapter 3, I examine livestock-predator conflict using approaches from both ecology and the social sciences. I describe a form of selection bias that is likely widespread but unreported due to the omission of social data from ecological models of conflict, and I offer guidelines for combining and translating ecological and social research on conflict. In Chapter 4, I explore the ecological impacts of one of the most globally widespread human constructions, the fence. I show for the first time the potential extent of fencing at large scales and discuss the wide variety of ecological effects of fences for both humans and ecosystems. I further highlight biases and gaps in fence research that have thus far limited a complete understanding of the environmental effects of these features. In Chapter 5, I conclude by making recommendations regarding how research might better incorporate human perceptions, decisions, and actions into ecology
Proceedings of the GIS Research UK 18th Annual Conference GISRUK 2010
This volume holds the papers from the 18th annual GIS Research UK (GISRUK). This year the conference, hosted at University College London (UCL), from Wednesday 14 to Friday 16 April 2010. The conference covered the areas of core geographic information science research as well as applications domains such as crime and health and technological developments in LBS and the geoweb.
UCLâs research mission as a global university is based around a series of Grand Challenges that affect us all, and these were accommodated in GISRUK 2010.
The overarching theme this year was âGlobal Challengesâ, with specific focus on the following themes:
* Crime and Place
* Environmental Change
* Intelligent Transport
* Public Health and Epidemiology
* Simulation and Modelling
* London as a global city
* The geoweb and neo-geography
* Open GIS and Volunteered Geographic Information
* Human-Computer Interaction and GIS
Traditionally, GISRUK has provided a platform for early career researchers as well as those with a significant track record of achievement in the area. As such, the conference provides a welcome blend of innovative thinking and mature reflection. GISRUK is the premier academic GIS conference in the UK and we are keen to maintain its outstanding record of achievement in developing GIS in the UK and beyond
Pattern to process: methodological investigations into the formation and interpretation of spatial patterns in archaeological landscapes
My research has shown that the type of regional archaeological data analysis required by landscape archaeological approaches is an area where both theory and method are still in their infancy.
High-level theories about the occurrence, scope, and effects of processes such as centralization, urbanization, and Hellenization/Romanization cannot yet be supported by middle range theory, which itself cannot be developed until the basic business of generating information of sufficient quality about the archaeological record has been tackled. Currently, archaeological data can be made to fit almost any interpretation generated, ultimately, on the basis of the ancient written sources. If we are to escape from this selfreinforcing cycle, research should perhaps no longer be focused on the classical themes generated by culture-historical approaches, but should seek its own proper field of operation.
In the area of methods and methodology, I have demonstrated the pervasive influence of systematic research and visibility biases on the patterns that are present in the archaeological data generated over the past 50 years or so. There are mechanisms at work, both in the traditional archaeological interpretation of limited numbers of excavated sites and historical sources, and in the landscape archaeological approach, that cause the systematic undervaluation of unobtrusive remains. The significance of systematic biases in both the coarse site-based data sets resulting from desktop and âtopographicâ studies and the more detailed site-based or âcontinuousâ data resulting from intensive field surveys has become much clearer as a result of the studies reported here. This should have practical consequences for the ways in which we study the existing archaeological record, plan future landscape archaeological research, and conduct field surveys. Site databases, the traditional starting point for regional archaeological studies, can no longer be taken at face value; rather, they require careful source criticism before being used to support specific arguments and hypotheses about settlement and land use dynamics. My studies have also shown that future data collection, whether through field survey, excavation or other methods, has to take place in a much more methodical manner if we are to produce data that are sufficiently standardized to be successfully exchanged, compared, and interpreted by others â guidelines for which should become embodied in an international standard defining âbest practice in landscape archaeologyâ.
Mobile Mapping
This book argues for a theory of mobile mapping, a situated and spatial approach towards researching how everyday digital mobile media practices are bound up in global systems of knowledge and power. Drawing from literature in media studies and geography - and the work of Michel Foucault and Doreen Massey - it examines how geographical and historical material, social, and cultural conditions are embedded in the way in which contemporary (digital) cartographies are read, deployed, and engaged. This is explored through seventeen walking interviews in Hong Kong and Sydney, as potent discourses like cartographic reason continue to transform and weave through the world in ways that haunt mobile mapping and bring old conflicts into new media. In doing so, Mobile Mapping offers an interdisciplinary rethinking about how multiple translations of spatial knowledges between rational digital epistemologies and tacit ways of understanding space and experience might be conceptualized and researched
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