103 research outputs found
Carbon Incentive Mechanisms and Land-Use Implications for Canadian Agriculture
This research examines effects of various factors on participation in agricultural tree plantations for economic, environmental, social and carbon-uptake purposes. Using survey data from 2000 mail surveys of Canadian farmers, a discrete choice random utility analysis is used to determine probability of farmers' participation and the corresponding mean willingness to accept a tree-planting program. Estimation results show that the required compensation for accepting a tree-planting program is higher than the compensation suggested by a normative approachEnvironmental Economics and Policy, Land Economics/Use,
Learning from the machine: interpreting machine learning algorithms for point- and extended- source classification
We investigate star-galaxy classification for astronomical surveys in the
context of four methods enabling the interpretation of black-box machine
learning systems. The first is outputting and exploring the decision boundaries
as given by decision tree based methods, which enables the visualization of the
classification categories. Secondly, we investigate how the Mutual Information
based Transductive Feature Selection (MINT) algorithm can be used to perform
feature pre-selection. If one would like to provide only a small number of
input features to a machine learning classification algorithm, feature
pre-selection provides a method to determine which of the many possible input
properties should be selected. Third is the use of the tree-interpreter package
to enable popular decision tree based ensemble methods to be opened,
visualized, and understood. This is done by additional analysis of the tree
based model, determining not only which features are important to the model,
but how important a feature is for a particular classification given its value.
Lastly, we use decision boundaries from the model to revise an already existing
method of classification, essentially asking the tree based method where
decision boundaries are best placed and defining a new classification method.
We showcase these techniques by applying them to the problem of star-galaxy
separation using data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (hereafter SDSS). We
use the output of MINT and the ensemble methods to demonstrate how more complex
decision boundaries improve star-galaxy classification accuracy over the
standard SDSS frames approach (reducing misclassifications by up to
). We then show how tree-interpreter can be used to explore how
relevant each photometric feature is when making a classification on an object
by object basis.Comment: 12 pages, 8 figures, 8 table
Does Inclusion of Landownersâ Non-Market Values Lower Costs of Creating Carbon Forest Sinks?
This research examines effects of various factors on farmer participation in agricultural tree plantations for economic, environmental, social and carbon-uptake purposes. Using data from a survey of Canadian agricultural landowners, a discrete choice random utility model is used to determine the probability of farmersâ participation and corresponding mean willingness to accept (WTA) compensation for a tree-planting program. WTA includes positive and negative nonmarket benefits to landowners from planting trees. Estimates of WTA are less than foregone agricultural rents, but average costs of creating carbon credits still exceed their projected value under a CO2-emissions trading scheme.Willingness to accept compensation for tree planting, afforestation, climate change
Are Agricultural Values a Reliable Guide in Determining Landownersâ Decisions to Create Carbon Forest Sinks?
This research examines the effects of various factors on farmer participation in agricultural tree plantations for economic, environmental, social and carbon-uptake purposes, and potential costs of sequestering carbon through afforestation in western Canada. Using data from a survey of landowners, a discrete choice random utility model is used to determine the probability of landownersâ participation and corresponding mean willingness to accept (WTA) compensation for a tree-planting program. WTA includes positive and negative benefits to landowners from planting trees, benefits not captured by foregone returns from agricultural activities on marginal land. Estimates of WTA are less than foregone returns, but even so average costs of creating carbon credits still exceed their projected value under a CO2-emissions trading scheme.Willingness to accept compensation for tree planting, afforestation, climate change
On Machine-Learned Classification of Variable Stars with Sparse and Noisy Time-Series Data
With the coming data deluge from synoptic surveys, there is a growing need
for frameworks that can quickly and automatically produce calibrated
classification probabilities for newly-observed variables based on a small
number of time-series measurements. In this paper, we introduce a methodology
for variable-star classification, drawing from modern machine-learning
techniques. We describe how to homogenize the information gleaned from light
curves by selection and computation of real-numbered metrics ("feature"),
detail methods to robustly estimate periodic light-curve features, introduce
tree-ensemble methods for accurate variable star classification, and show how
to rigorously evaluate the classification results using cross validation. On a
25-class data set of 1542 well-studied variable stars, we achieve a 22.8%
overall classification error using the random forest classifier; this
represents a 24% improvement over the best previous classifier on these data.
This methodology is effective for identifying samples of specific science
classes: for pulsational variables used in Milky Way tomography we obtain a
discovery efficiency of 98.2% and for eclipsing systems we find an efficiency
of 99.1%, both at 95% purity. We show that the random forest (RF) classifier is
superior to other machine-learned methods in terms of accuracy, speed, and
relative immunity to features with no useful class information; the RF
classifier can also be used to estimate the importance of each feature in
classification. Additionally, we present the first astronomical use of
hierarchical classification methods to incorporate a known class taxonomy in
the classifier, which further reduces the catastrophic error rate to 7.8%.
Excluding low-amplitude sources, our overall error rate improves to 14%, with a
catastrophic error rate of 3.5%.Comment: 23 pages, 9 figure
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