Gestural Interaction with Spatiotemporal Linked Open Data

Exploring complex spatiotemporal data can be very challenging for non-experts. Recently, gestural interaction has emerged as a promising option, which has been successfully applied to various domains, including simple map control. In this paper, we investigate whether gestures can be used to enable non-experts to explore and understand complex spatiotemporal phenomena. In this case study we made use of large amounts of Linked Open Data about the deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon Rainforest and related ecological, economical and social factors. The results of our study indicate that people of all ages can easily learn gestures and successfully use them to explore the visualized and aggregated spatiotemporal data about the Brazilian Amazon Rainforest

Modelling sustainable international tourism demand to the Brazilian Amazon

The Amazon rainforest is one of the world’s greatest natural wonders and holds great importance and significance for the world’s environmental balance. Around 60% of the Amazon rainforest is located in the Brazilian territory. The two biggest states of the Amazon region are Amazonas (the upper Amazon) and Pará (the lower Amazon), which together account for around 73% of the Brazilian Legal Amazon, and are the only states that are serviced by international airports in Brazil’s North region. The purpose of this paper is to model and forecast sustainable international tourism demand for the states of Amazonas, Pará, and the aggregate of the two states. Economic progress of the region has been achieved at a cost of destroying large areas of the Amazon rain forest. In this scenario, the tourism industry would seem to have the potential to contribute to sustainable economic development in the North region of Brazil. The paper presents unit root tests for monthly and annual data, estimates alternative time series models and conditional volatility models of the shocks to international tourist arrivals, and provides forecasts for 2006 and 2007.forecasting;conditional volatility models;Brazilian Amazon;international tourism demand;time series modelling

"Modelling Sustainable International Tourism Demand to the Brazilian Amazon"

The Amazon rainforest is one of the world's greatest natural wonders and holds great importance and significance for the world's environmental balance. Around 60% of the Amazon rainforest is located in the Brazilian territory. The two biggest states of the Amazon region are Amazonas (the upper Amazon) and Para (the lower Amazon), which together account for around 73% of the Brazilian Legal Amazon, and are the only states that are serviced by international airports in Brazil's North region. The purpose of this paper is to model and forecast sustainable international tourism demand for the states of Amazonas, Para, and the aggregate of the two states. By sustainable tourism is meant a distinctive type of tourism that has relatively low environmental and cultural impacts. Economic progress brought about by illegal wood extraction and commercial agriculture has destroyed large areas of the Amazon rainforest. The sustainable tourism industry has the potential to contribute to the economic development of the Amazon region without destroying the rainforest. The paper presents unit root tests for monthly and annual data, estimates alternative time series models and conditional volatility models of the shocks to international tourist arrivals, and provides forecasts for 2006 and 2007.

Modelling Sustainable International Tourism Demand to the Brazilian Amazon

The Amazon rainforest is one of the world’s greatest natural wonders and holds great importance and significance for the world’s environmental balance. Around 60% of the Amazon rainforest is located in the Brazilian territory. The two biggest states of the Amazon region are Amazonas (the upper Amazon) and Pará (the lower Amazon), which together account for around 73% of the Brazilian Legal Amazon, and are the only states that are serviced by international airports in Brazil’s North region. The purpose of this paper is to model and forecast sustainable international tourism demand for the states of Amazonas, Pará, and the aggregate of the two states. By sustainable tourism is meant a distinctive type of tourism that has relatively low environmental and cultural impacts. Economic progress brought about by illegal wood extraction and commercial agriculture has destroyed large areas of the Amazon rainforest. The sustainable tourism industry has the potential to contribute to the economic development of the Amazon region without destroying the rainforest. The paper presents unit root tests for monthly and annual data, estimates alternative time series models and conditional volatility models of the shocks to international tourist arrivals, and provides forecasts for 2006 and 2007.Brazilian Amazon; International Tourism Demand; Time Series Modelling; Conditional Volatility Models; Forecasting.

Climate Mitigation, Deforestation and Human Development in Brazil

human development, climate change

Consumer Goods and Deforestation: An Analysis of the Extent and Nature of Illegality in Forest Conversion for Agriculture and Timber Plantations

A comprehensive new analysis released earlier this month says that nearly half (49%) of all recent tropical deforestation is the result of illegal clearing for commercial agriculture. The study also finds that around half of this illegal destruction was driven by overseas demand for agricultural commodities including palm oil, beef, soy, and wood products. In addition to devastating impacts on forest-dependent people and biodiversity, the illegal conversion of tropical forests for commercial agriculture is estimated to produce 1.47 gigatonnes of carbon each year -- equivalent to 25% of the EU's annual fossil fuel-based emissions. The world must wake up to the scale of how much of this agricultural production is taking place on land that has been illegally cleared. According to the study 90% of the deforestation in Brazil from 2000 to 2012 was illegal, primarily due to the failure to conserve a percentage of natural forests in large-scale cattle and soy plantations, as required by Brazilian law. (Much of this occurred prior to 2004, when the Brazilian government took steps to successfully reduce deforestation.) And in the forests of Indonesia, 80% of deforestation was illegal -- mostly for large-scale plantations producing palm oil and timber, 75% of which is exported. While other countries also experience high levels of illegal deforestation, Brazil and Indonesia produce the highest level of agricultural commodities destined for global markets, many of which wind up in cosmetics or household goods (palm oil), animal feed (soy), and packaging (wood products)

Rarity of monodominance in hyperdiverse Amazonian forests.

Tropical forests are known for their high diversity. Yet, forest patches do occur in the tropics where a single tree species is dominant. Such "monodominant" forests are known from all of the main tropical regions. For Amazonia, we sampled the occurrence of monodominance in a massive, basin-wide database of forest-inventory plots from the Amazon Tree Diversity Network (ATDN). Utilizing a simple defining metric of at least half of the trees ≥ 10 cm diameter belonging to one species, we found only a few occurrences of monodominance in Amazonia, and the phenomenon was not significantly linked to previously hypothesized life history traits such wood density, seed mass, ectomycorrhizal associations, or Rhizobium nodulation. In our analysis, coppicing (the formation of sprouts at the base of the tree or on roots) was the only trait significantly linked to monodominance. While at specific locales coppicing or ectomycorrhizal associations may confer a considerable advantage to a tree species and lead to its monodominance, very few species have these traits. Mining of the ATDN dataset suggests that monodominance is quite rare in Amazonia, and may be linked primarily to edaphic factors

Visualizing and animating large-scale spatiotemporal data with ELBAR explorer

Visual exploration of data enables users and analysts observe interesting patterns that can trigger new research for further investigation. With the increasing availability of Linked Data, facilitating support for making sense of the data via visual exploration tools for hypothesis generation is critical. Time and space play important roles in this because of their ability to illustrate dynamicity, from a spatial context. Yet, Linked Data visualization approaches typically have not made efficient use of time and space together, apart from typical rather static multivisualization approaches and mashups. In this paper we demonstrate ELBAR explorer that visualizes a vast amount of scientific observational data about the Brazilian Amazon Rainforest. Our core contribution is a novel mechanism for animating between the di↵erent observed values, thus illustrating the observed changes themselves

Effects of forest fragmentation on the vertical stratification of neotropical bats

Vertical stratification is a key component of the biological complexity of rainforests. Understanding community- and species-level responses to disturbance across forest strata is paramount for evidence-based conservation and management. However, even for bats, known to extensively explore multiple layers of the complex three-dimensional forest space, studies are biased towards understory-based surveys and only few assessments of vertical stratification were done in fragmented landscapes. Using both ground and canopy mist-nets, we investigated how the vertical structure of bat assemblages is influenced by forest fragmentation in the experimentally fragmented landscape of the Biological Dynamics of Forest Fragments Project, Central Amazon, Brazil. Over a three year-period, we captured 3077 individuals of 46 species in continuous forest (CF) and in 1, 10 and 100 ha forest fragments. In both CF and forest fragments, the upper forest strata sustained more diverse bat assemblages than the equivalent understory layer, and the midstory layers had significantly higher bat abundance in fragments than in CF. Artibeus lituratus and Rhinophylla pumilio exhibited significant shifts in their vertical stratification patterns between CF and fragments (e.g. R. pumilio was more associated with the upper strata in fragments than in CF). Altogether, our study suggests that fragmentation modulates the vertical stratification of bat assemblages

What drives deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon? Evidence from satellite and socioeconomic data

This paper analyzes the determinants of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. From a model of optimal use, it derives and then estimates a deforestation equation on county-level data for the period 1978 to 1988. The data include a deforestation measure from satellite images, which is a great advance in that it allows improved within-county analysis. Evidence exists that: increased road density in a county leads to more deforestation in that county and in neighboring counties; development projects were associated with deforestation in the 1970s but not in the 1980s; greater distance from markets south of the Amazon leads to less deforestation; and better soil quality leads to more deforestation. The results for government provision of credit are mixed across specifications. The population density, although the primary explanatory variable in most previous empirical work, does not have a significant effect when all the variables motivated within the model are included. However, a quadratic specification yields a more robust population result: the first few people entering an empty county have significantly more impact than the same number of people added to a densely populated county. This result suggests the importance of the spatial distribution of population.Environmental Economics&Policies,Wetlands,Climate Change,Banks&Banking Reform,Water Conservation,Environmental Economics&Policies,Climate Change,Energy and Environment,Forestry,Banks&Banking Reform