Pan-European backcasting exercise, enriched with regional perspective, and including a list of short-term policy options

This deliverable reports on the results of the third and final pan-European stakeholder meeting and secondly, on the enrichment with a Pilot Area and regional perspective. The main emphasis is on backcasting as a means to arrive at long-term strategies and short-term (policy) actions

The visual preferences for forest regeneration and field afforestation : four case studies in Finland

The overall aim of this dissertation was to study the public's preferences for forest regeneration fellings and field afforestations, as well as to find out the relations of these preferences to landscape management instructions, to ecological healthiness, and to the contemporary theories for predicting landscape preferences. This dissertation includes four case studies in Finland, each based on the visualization of management options and surveys. Guidelines for improving the visual quality of forest regeneration and field afforestation are given based on the case studies. The results show that forest regeneration can be connected to positive images and memories when the regeneration area is small and some time has passed since the felling. Preferences may not depend only on the management alternative itself but also on the viewing distance, viewing point, and the scene in which the management options are implemented. The current Finnish forest landscape management guidelines as well as the ecological healthiness of the studied options are to a large extent compatible with the public's preferences. However, there are some discrepancies. For example, the landscape management instructions as well as ecological hypotheses suggest that the retention trees need to be left in groups, whereas people usually prefer individually located retention trees to those trees in groups. Information and psycho-evolutionary theories provide some possible explanations for people's preferences for forest regeneration and field afforestation, but the results cannot be consistently explained by these theories. The preferences of the different stakeholder groups were very similar. However, the preference ratings of the groups that make their living from forest - forest owners and forest professionals - slightly differed from those of the others. These results provide support for the assumptions that preferences are largely consistent at least within one nation, but that knowledge and a reference group may also influence preferences.Väitöskirjassa tutkittiin ihmisten maisemapreferenssejä (maisemallisia arvostuksia) metsänuudistamishakkuiden ja pellonmetsitysten suhteen sekä analysoitiin näiden preferenssien yhteyksiä maisemanhoito-ohjeisiin, vaihtoehtojen ekologiseen terveyteen ja preferenssejä ennustaviin teorioihin. Väitöskirja sisältää neljä tapaustutkimusta, jotka perustuvat hoitovaihtoehtojen visualisointiin ja kyselytutkimuksiin. Tapaustutkimusten pohjalta annetaan ohjeita siitä, kuinka uudistushakkuiden ja pellonmetsitysten visuaalista laatua voidaan parantaa. Väitöskirjan tulokset osoittavat, että uudistamishakkuut voivat herättää myös myönteisiä mielikuvia ja muistoja, jos uudistusala on pieni ja hakkuun välittömät jäljet ovat jo peittyneet. Preferensseihin vaikuttaa hoitovaihtoehdon lisäksi mm. katseluetäisyys, katselupiste ja ympäristö, jossa vaihtoehto on toteutettu. Eri viiteryhmien (metsäammattilaiset, pääkaupunkiseudun asukkaat, ympäristönsuojelijat, tutkimusalueiden matkailijat, paikalliset asukkaat sekä metsänomistajat) maisemapreferenssit olivat hyvin samankaltaisia. Kuitenkin ne ryhmät, jotka saavat ainakin osan elannostaan metsästä - metsänomistajat ja metsäammattilaiset - pitivät metsänhakkuita esittävistä kuvista hieman enemmän kuin muut ryhmät. Nämä tulokset tukevat oletusta, että maisemapreferenssit ovat laajalti yhteneväisiä ainakin yhden kansan tai kulttuurin keskuudessa, vaikka myös viiteryhmä saattaa vaikuttaa preferensseihin jonkin verran. Nykyiset metsämaisemanhoito-ohjeet ovat pitkälti samankaltaisia tässä väitöskirjassa havaittujen maisemapreferenssien kanssa. Myöskään tutkittujen vaihtoehtoisten hoitotapojen ekologisen paremmuuden ja niihin kohdistuvien maisemallisten arvostusten välillä ei ollut suurta ristiriitaa. Kuitenkin joitakin eroavaisuuksia oli; esimerkiksi sekä maisemanhoito-ohjeiden että ekologisten hypoteesien mukaan säästöpuut tulisi jättää ryhmiin, kun taas ihmiset pitivät eniten yksittäin jätetyistä puista. Informaatiomalli ja psyko-evolutionaarinen teoria tarjoavat mahdollisia selityksiä uudistushakkuisiin ja pellonmetsitykseen kohdistuville preferensseille, vaikkakaan tutkimuksen tuloksia ei voida täysin selittää näillä teorioilla

2014 Presentation Abstracts

https://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/acf_abstracts/1006/thumbnail.jp

NASA Earth Resources Survey Symposium. Volume 3: Summary reports

This document contains the proceedings and summaries of the earth resources survey symposium, sponsored by the NASA Headquarters Office of Applications and held in Houston, Texas, June 9 to 12, 1975. Topics include the use of remote sensing techniques in agriculture, in geology, for environmental monitoring, for land use planning, and for management of water resources and coastal zones. Details are provided about services available to various users. Significant applications, conclusions, and future needs are also discussed

Third ERTS Symposium: Abstracts

Abstracts are provided for the 112 papers presented at the Earth Resources Program Symposium held at Washington, D.C., 10-14 December, 1973

Electronic Dance Music in Narrative Film

As a growing number of filmmakers are moving away from the traditional model of orchestral underscoring in favor of a more contemporary approach to film sound, electronic dance music (EDM) is playing an increasingly important role in current soundtrack practice. With a focus on two specific examples, Tom Tykwer’s Run Lola Run (1998) and Darren Aronofsky’s Pi (1998), this essay discusses the possibilities that such a distinctive aesthetics brings to filmmaking, especially with regard to audiovisual rhythm and sonic integration

Assessing Building Vulnerability to Tsunami Hazard Using Integrative Remote Sensing and GIS Approaches

Risk and vulnerability assessment for natural hazards is of high interest. Various methods focusing on building vulnerability assessment have been developed ranging from simple approaches to sophisticated ones depending on the objectives of the study, the availability of data and technology. In-situ assessment methods have been widely used to measure building vulnerability to various types of hazards while remote sensing methods, specifically developed for assessing building vulnerability to tsunami hazard, are still very limited. The combination of remote sensing approaches with in-situ methods offers unique opportunities to overcome limitations of in-situ assessments. The main objective of this research is to develop remote sensing techniques in assessing building vulnerability to tsunami hazard as one of the key elements of risk assessment. The research work has been performed in the framework of the GITEWS (German-Indonesian Tsunami Early Warning System) project. This research contributes to two major components of tsunami risk assessment: (1) the provision of infrastructure vulnerability information as an important element in the exposure assessment; (2) tsunami evacuation modelling which is a critical element for assessing immediate response and capability to evacuate as part of the coping capacity analysis. The newly developed methodology is based on the combination of in-situ measurements and remote sensing techniques in a so-called “bottom-up remote sensing approach”. Within this approach, basic information was acquired by in-situ data collection (bottom level), which was then used as input for further analysis in the remote sensing approach (upper level). The results of this research show that a combined in-situ measurement and remote sensing approach can be successfully employed to assess and classify buildings into 4 classes based on their level of vulnerability to tsunami hazard with an accuracy of more than 80 percent. Statistical analysis successfully revealed key spatial parameters which were regarded to link parameters between in-situ and remote sensing approach such as size, height, shape, regularity, orientation, and accessibility. The key spatial parameters and their specified threshold values were implemented in a decision tree algorithm for developing a remote sensing rule-set of building vulnerability classification. A big number of buildings in the study area (Cilacap city, Indonesia) were successfully classified into the building vulnerability classes. The categorization ranges from high to low vulnerable buildings (A to C) and includes also a category of buildings which are potentially suitable for tsunami vertical evacuation (VE). A multi-criteria analysis was developed that incorporates three main components for vulnerability assessment: stability, tsunami resistance and accessibility. All the defined components were configured in a decision tree algorithm by applying weighting, scoring and threshold definition based on the building sample data. Stability components consist of structure parameters, which are closely related to the building stability against earthquake energy. Building stability needs to be analyzed because most of tsunami events in Indonesia are preceded by major earthquakes. Stability components analysis was applied in the first step of the newly developed decision tree algorithm to evaluate the building stability when earthquake strikes. Buildings with total scores below the defined threshold of stability were classified as the most vulnerable class A. Such the buildings have a high probability of being damaged after earthquake events. The remaining buildings with total scores above the defined threshold of stability were further analyzed using tsunami components and accessibility components to classify them into the vulnerability classes B, C and VE respectively. This research is based on very high spatial resolution satellite images (QuickBird) and object-based image analysis. Object-based image analysis is was chosen, because it allows the formulation of rule-sets based on image objects instead of pixels, which has significant advantages especially for the analysis of very high resolution satellite images. In the pre-processing stage, three image processing steps were performed: geometric correction, pan-sharpening and filtering. Adaptive Local Sigma and Morphological Opening filter techniques were applied as basis for the subsequent building edge detection. The data pre-processing significantly increased the accuracy of the following steps of image classification. In the next step image segmentation was developed to extract adequate image objects to be used for further classification. Image classification was carried out by grouping resulting objects into desired classes based on the derived object features. A single object was assigned by its feature characteristics calculated in the segmentation process. The characteristic features of an object - which were grouped into spectral signature, shape, size, texture, and neighbouring relations - were analysed, selected and semantically modelled to classify objects into object classes. Fuzzy logic algorithm and object feature separation analysis was performed to set the member¬ship values of objects that were grouped into particular classes. Finally this approach successfully detected and mapped building objects in the study area with their spatial attributes which provide base information for building vulnerability classification. A building vulnerability classification rule-set has been developed in this research and successfully applied to categorize building vulnerability classes. The developed approach was applied for Cilacap city, Indonesia. In order to analyze the transferability of this newly developed approach, the algorithm was also applied to Padang City, Indonesia. The results showed that the developed methodology is in general transferable. However, it requires some adaptations (e.g. thresholds) to provide accurate results. The results of this research show that Cilacap City is very vulnerable to tsunami hazard. Class A (very vulnerable) buildings cover the biggest portion of area in Cilacap City (63%), followed by class C (28%), class VE (6%) and class B (3%). Preventive measures should be carried out for the purpose of disaster risk reduction, especially for people living in such the most vulnerable buildings. Finally, the results were applied for tsunami evacuation modeling. The buildings, which were categorized as potential candidates for vertical evacuation, were selected and a GIS approach was applied to model evacuation time and evacuation routes. The results of this analysis provide important inputs to the disaster management authorities for future evacuation planning and disaster mitigation