Deforestation dynamics in an endemic-rich mountain system: Conservation successes and challenges in West Java 1990–2015

While much has been published on recent rates of forest loss in the Sundaic lowlands, deforestation rates and patterns on Java’s endemic-rich mountains have been rather neglected. We used nearly 1000 Landsat images to examine spatio-altitudinal and temporal patterns of forest loss in montane West Java over the last 28 years, and the effectiveness of protected areas in halting deforestation over that period. Around 40% of forest has been lost since 1988, the bulk occurring pre-2000 (2.5% per annum), falling to 1% per annum post-2007. Most deforestation has occurred at lower altitudes (<1000 m above sea level), both as attrition of the edges of forested mountain blocks as well as the near-total clearance of lower-altitude forested areas. Deforestation within protected areas was rife pre-2000, but greatly decreased thereafter, almost ceasing post-2007 in protected areas of high International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) status. While this trend is welcome, it must be stressed that the area of remaining forest is only 5234 km2, that most accessible lower-altitude forest has already disappeared, and that the extant montane forest is largely fragmented and isolated. The biological value of these forests is huge and without strong intervention we anticipate imminent loss of populations of taxa such as the Javan Slow Loris Nycticebus javanicus and Javan Green Magpie Cissa thalassina

(In)Animate Semiotics:Virtuality and Deleuzian Illusion(s) of Life

It is well known that, despite his close engagement with cinema, Gilles Deleuze was less concerned with animated film, being somewhat dismissive of its capabilities. In recent years, however, a number of attempts have been made – most notably by William Schaffer, Thomas Lamarre and Dan Torre – to construct Deleuzian positions in animation theory. This article outlines some of these approaches, whilst engaging critically with Torre’s writings. In particular, it foregrounds Torre’s neglect of the post-structural, political dimension of Deleuzian thought through an examination of the concepts of faciality, the close-up, and relation as they occur in Deleuzian and Deleuzo-Guattarian philosophy. This is in part facilitated through a comparison of Stuart Blackton’s Humorous Phases of Funny Faces (1906) – a work directly addressed by Torre, and Emile Cohl’s Fantasmagorie (1908) – a work which he largely passes by. It is claimed here that, despite a number of apparent similarities, the animations of Cohl and Blackton express a radically divergent series of ontological commitments. Cohl offers the audience an experience of chaotic, mutable, relational complexity that revels in its incoherence, whilst Blackton presents a series of more straightforward set pieces, dwelling for the most part upon object-centric representational form. The tension between representation and becoming that occurs between these works is employed to facilitate a critical engagement with Torre’s process-cognitivism. It is suggested that Torre’s work, though exceptional in its pedagogic value, is likewise expressive of this tension, and that in its effort firstly to combine a series of process-philosophical and cognitivist ideas, and secondly to unpack the radical ideas of Deleuze through the more conservative philosophy of Nicholas Rescher, it runs the risk of falling back into a quasi-Kantian philosophy of generality and representation.</p

Facial creation: using compositing to conceal identity

This study focused on the creation of new faces by compositing features from donor face photographs together that provide a way to generate new face identities. However, does the act of compositing conceal the identity of the donor faces? Two applications of these created faces require donor face identities to remain concealed: Covert social media profiles provide a way for investigating authorities to survey online criminal activity and, as such, a false online identity, including face image, is required. Compositing features/face parts from various donor face photographs could be used to generate new face identities. Face donor photographs are also used for the ‘texturing’ of facial depictions to reconstruct an image of how a person might appear. This study investigated whether compositing unknown face features onto known familiar faces (celebrities and lecturers) was sufficient to conceal identity in a face recognition task paradigm. A first experiment manipulated individual features to establish a feature saliency hierarchy. The results of this informed the order of feature replacement for the second experiment, where features were replaced in a compound manner to establish how much of a face needs to be replaced to conceal identity. In line with previous literature, the eyes and hair were found to be highly salient, with the eyebrows and nose the least. As expected, the more features that are replaced, the less likely the face was to be recognised. A theoretical criterion point from old to new identity was found for the combined data (celebrity and lecturer) where replacing at least two features resulted in a significant decrease in recognition. Which feature was being replaced was found to have more of an effect during the middle part of feature replacement, around the criterion point, where the eyes were more important to be replaced than the mouth. Celebrities represented a higher level of familiarity and, therefore, may be a more stringent set of results for practical use, but with less power than the combined data to detect changes. This would suggest that at least three features (half the face) need to be replaced before recognition significantly decreases, especially if this includes the more salient features in the upper half of the face. However, once all six features were replaced, identity was not concealed 100% of the time, signifying that feature replacement alone was not sufficient to conceal identity. It is completely possible that residual configural and contrast information was facilitating recognition, and, therefore, it is likely that manipulations, such as these, are also needed in order to conceal identity

A near real-time water surface detection method based on HSV transformation of MODIS multi-Spectral time series data

In the face of global population growth and the uneven distribution of water supply, a better knowledge of the spatial and temporal distribution of surface water resources is critical. Remote sensing provides a synoptic view of ongoing processes, which addresses the intricate nature of water surfaces and allows an assessment of the pressures placed on aquatic ecosystems. However, the main challenge in identifying water surfaces from remotely sensed data is the high variability of spectral signatures, both in space and time. In the last 10 years only a few operational methods have been proposed to map or monitor surface water at continental or global scale, and each of them show limitations. The objective of this study is to develop and demonstrate the adequacy of a generic multi-temporal and multi-spectral image analysis method to detect water surfaces automatically, and to monitor them in near-real-time. The proposed approach, based on a transformation of the RGB color space into HSV, provides dynamic information at the continental scale. The validation of the algorithm showed very few omission errors and no commission errors. It demonstrates the ability of the proposed algorithm to perform as effectively as human interpretation of the images. The validation of the permanent water surface product with an independent dataset derived from high resolution imagery, showed an accuracy of 91.5% and few commission errors. Potential applications of the proposed method have been identified and discussed. The methodology that has been developed 27 is generic: it can be applied to sensors with similar bands with good reliability, and minimal effort. Moreover, this experiment at continental scale showed that the methodology is efficient for a large range of environmental conditions. Additional preliminary tests over other continents indicate that the proposed methodology could also be applied at the global scale without too many difficultie

Parallel Rendering and Large Data Visualization

We are living in the big data age: An ever increasing amount of data is being produced through data acquisition and computer simulations. While large scale analysis and simulations have received significant attention for cloud and high-performance computing, software to efficiently visualise large data sets is struggling to keep up. Visualization has proven to be an efficient tool for understanding data, in particular visual analysis is a powerful tool to gain intuitive insight into the spatial structure and relations of 3D data sets. Large-scale visualization setups are becoming ever more affordable, and high-resolution tiled display walls are in reach even for small institutions. Virtual reality has arrived in the consumer space, making it accessible to a large audience. This thesis addresses these developments by advancing the field of parallel rendering. We formalise the design of system software for large data visualization through parallel rendering, provide a reference implementation of a parallel rendering framework, introduce novel algorithms to accelerate the rendering of large amounts of data, and validate this research and development with new applications for large data visualization. Applications built using our framework enable domain scientists and large data engineers to better extract meaning from their data, making it feasible to explore more data and enabling the use of high-fidelity visualization installations to see more detail of the data.Comment: PhD thesi

Sampling soil organic carbon to detect change over time

This research describes a generic monitoring design that could be widely applied to detect temporal changes in soil organic carbon stocks (SOC) across a carbon estimation area (CEA) with no prior knowledge of the spatial or temporal variance of SOC within the CEA. The report includes information on: Bases for designing SOC stock sampling for detecting change Monitoring SOC change to verify the effects of land use or management practicesStatistical rationale for monitoring SOC changeQuality measure and constraints for monitoring SOC changeDesign-based optimisation of sample sizesModel-based optimisation of sample sizesHypothesis testingStatistical model for monitoring SOC changeUsing available data and its variability to guide initial sampling designUncertainty in outcomes of monitoring designsSummary and conclusions

Seismotectonic, structural, volcanologic, and geomorphic study of New Zealand; indigenous forest assessment in New Zealand; mapping, land use, and environmental studies in New Zealand, volume 1

The author has identified the following significant results. Results of the atmospheric extinction measurements show clearly the greater opacity of the atmosphere in MSS band 4 which is due to Rayleigh scattering. Atmospheric water vapor absorbs strongly in a wide region between 900 nm and 1000 nm, and this results in a consistently higher extinction coefficient than would otherwise be expected in MSS band 7. The short term fluctuations tend to be greater in band 7 than in the other bands, and this effect is probably due to variations of water vapor concentration in the instrument line of sight. These high extinction coefficients and short term fluctuations in band 7 were observed at Menindee which is in a semi-desert region in western New South Wales

Designing for the dichotomy of immersion in location based games

The interaction design of mixed reality location based games typically focuses upon the digital content of the mobile screen, as this is characteristically the primary navigational tool players use to traverse the game space. This emphasis on the digital over the physical means the opportunity for player immersion in mixed reality games is often limited to the single (digital) dimension. This research seeks to redress this imbalance, which is caused, in part, by the requirement for the player?s attention to be systematically switched between the two worlds, defined in this research as the ?Dichotomy of Immersion?. Using different design strategies we propose minimising the reliance of the player upon the mobile screen by encouraging greater observation of their physical surroundings. Using a ?research through design? approach for the mixed reality game PAC-LAN: Zombie Apocalypse, we illustrate design strategies for increasing immersion in location based games, which we believe will aid designers in enabling players to more readily engage with the physical context of the game and thus facilitate richer game experiences