The redistribution of land for commercial agriculture in the era of 'land grabbing': A multi-scalar exploration of the 'marginal lands' narrative with a focus on contemporary Ethiopia

Bringing more agricultural land into production for biofuels and food crops will be necessary if we are to both fulfill our collective climate initiative goals and feed an increasing global population. The direct competition between land for food and land for biofuels has resulted in increased interest in identifying 'marginal lands' such that biofuels can be grown on land that does not threaten the food security of poor, rural communities. The term `marginal land' is also used by developing state governments to describe large swaths of land being leased to private or state-affiliated investors in what has been referred to by the international research community as the 'global land grab'. 'Marginal land', however, is defined and operationalized differently across users and anecdotal evidence shows that some lands classified as marginal are actually used by local communities. Empirical studies investigating these contested lands have not incorporated spatial information. The main objective of this thesis is to conduct a multi-scalar, spatially-explicit exploration of the marginal lands narrative. The first chapter investigates the ontology of the marginal land label as it is applied on a global/regional scale using a meta-analysis of four recent studies. The second chapter triangulates national-level geospatial information with information from semi-structured interviews to examine marginal lands allocated to Ethiopia's federal land bank as contested spaces. The third chapter uses a statistical analysis to identify the socio-political and biophysical determinants of banked lands on a subnational scale in Benishangul-Gumuz, Ethiopia. Results show that methods using remotely sensed information to identify marginal lands on a global/regional scale are qualitatively and quantitatively divergent and are limited in their usefulness in identifying available land for biofuels. The Ethiopia case study finds that the federal government is banking 'marginal land' for future investment that is more appropriately understood as 'land unused for commercial agriculture' and that they are contested spaces where the federal government stands to incur multiple benefits through their transformation to large-scale agriculture. I also find both biophysical and socio-political factors (i.e. ethnicity, agricultural practices) guide the federal government's decision regarding which land to target in the subnational region of Benishangul-Gumuz

Real-Time Hand Shape Classification

The problem of hand shape classification is challenging since a hand is characterized by a large number of degrees of freedom. Numerous shape descriptors have been proposed and applied over the years to estimate and classify hand poses in reasonable time. In this paper we discuss our parallel framework for real-time hand shape classification applicable in real-time applications. We show how the number of gallery images influences the classification accuracy and execution time of the parallel algorithm. We present the speedup and efficiency analyses that prove the efficacy of the parallel implementation. Noteworthy, different methods can be used at each step of our parallel framework. Here, we combine the shape contexts with the appearance-based techniques to enhance the robustness of the algorithm and to increase the classification score. An extensive experimental study proves the superiority of the proposed approach over existing state-of-the-art methods.Comment: 11 page

New adult host records for three Buprestidae (Coleoptera) rarely encountered in the United States and significant extension of the known geographic range of \u3ci\u3eAgrilus pilosicollis\u3c/i\u3e Fisher

New adult host records of Agrilus langei Obenberger, A. pilosicollis Fisher, and Dicerca mutica LeConte (Coleoptera: Buprestidae) are reported. The known geographic range of A. pilosicollis is expanded from the type location in Kansas south to Texas and east to North Carolina. Images with key characters of each of the three species are included. Among the nearly 800 species of buprestids in North America (north of Mexico) are those known from very few specimens. Distribution and plant host information for such species is understandably limited and, in many cases, completely unknown (Nelson et al. 2008). A knowledge of host utilization is often the first step in under­standing the life history of such buprestid species. Adult host records of rarely encountered buprestids can be useful starting points to determine larval hosts, as adults of non-anthrophilous genera are frequently found feed­ing on larval plant hosts. Herein we report distribution and adult plant host records that may prove useful in future study of Agrilus langei Obenberger, A. pilosicollis Fisher and Dicerca mutica LeConte

ERIOPHYIDEN AUS JAVA

ABSTRACT NOT AVAILABL

Changes in Diet and Body Condition of Lake Whitefish in Southern Lake Michigan Associated with Changes in Benthos

We evaluated the long‐term trends of the benthic macroinvertebrate community (1980–1999) and biological attributes of lake whitefish Coregonus clupeaformis (1985–1999) in southeastern Lake Michigan. We also determined what food types were important to lake whitefish in an area where the amphipod Diporeia had not yet declined in 1998 and how the diet of lake whitefish changed as Diporeia declined during 1999–2000. Zebra mussels Dreissena polymorpha invaded the study area in 1992; Diporeia began to decline in 1993 and was nearly absent by 1999. The body condition of lake whitefish decreased after 1993 and remained low thereafter. The length at age and weight at age of lake whitefish was lower in 1992–1999 than in 1985–1991. After declines of Diporeia off the city of Muskegon, Michigan, between 1998 and 1999–2000, the proportion of Diporeia in the diet by weight fell from 70% to 25% and the percent occurrence decreased from 81% to 45%. In contrast, the proportion of lake whitefish that ate other prey, such as Mysis relicta (an opossum shrimp), ostracods, oligochaetes, and zooplankton, increased in the same period. At sites south of Muskegon, where the density of Diporeia has been low since 1998, chironomids, zebra mussels, and fingernail clams (Shaeriidae family) were the most important diet items of lake whitefish. Decreases in body condition and growth are associated with the loss of the high‐energy prey resource Diporeia, the consumption of prey with lower energy content, such as zebra mussels, and possible density‐dependence. Commercial harvests of lake whitefish will probably decrease because of low body condition and growth. Future management may require changes in harvest quotas, size restrictions, and depth restrictions as zebra mussel‐related impacts spread northward in Lake Michigan.Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/142050/1/nafm0876.pd

Multitemporal and multispectral data fusion for super-resolution of Sentinel-2 images

Multispectral Sentinel-2 images are a valuable source of Earth observation data, however spatial resolution of their spectral bands limited to 10 m, 20 m, and 60 m ground sampling distance remains insufficient in many cases. This problem can be addressed with super-resolution, aimed at reconstructing a high-resolution image from a low-resolution observation. For Sentinel-2, spectral information fusion allows for enhancing the 20 m and 60 m bands to the 10 m resolution. Also, there were attempts to combine multitemporal stacks of individual Sentinel-2 bands, however these two approaches have not been combined so far. In this paper, we introduce DeepSent -- a new deep network for super-resolving multitemporal series of multispectral Sentinel-2 images. It is underpinned with information fusion performed simultaneously in the spectral and temporal dimensions to generate an enlarged multispectral image. In our extensive experimental study, we demonstrate that our solution outperforms other state-of-the-art techniques that realize either multitemporal or multispectral data fusion. Furthermore, we show that the advantage of DeepSent results from how these two fusion types are combined in a single architecture, which is superior to performing such fusion in a sequential manner. Importantly, we have applied our method to super-resolve real-world Sentinel-2 images, enhancing the spatial resolution of all the spectral bands to 3.3 m nominal ground sampling distance, and we compare the outcome with very high-resolution WorldView-2 images. We will publish our implementation upon paper acceptance, and we expect it will increase the possibilities of exploiting super-resolved Sentinel-2 images in real-life applications.Comment: Submitted to IEEE Transactions On Geoscience And Remote Sensin

Corrigendum to “Recent changes in primary production and phytoplankton in the offshore region of southeastern Lake Michigan” [J. Great Lakes Res. 36 (Supplement 3) (2010) 20–29]

The authors regret that there is an error on the labels of two figures that were published in the paper referenced above. For Figs. 5b, c, and d and 7b and c the y-axes have the wrong labels. The following are the correct y-axis labels: Fig. 5b — the y-axis should range from 0 to 5, Fig. 5c — the y-axis should range from 0 to 2, Fig. 5d — the y-axis label should range from 0 to 3, Fig. 7b — the y-axis should range from 0 to 40, and for Fig. 7c — the y-axis should range from 0 to 50

Corrigendum to “Recent changes in primary production and phytoplankton in the offshore region of southeastern Lake Michigan” [J. Great Lakes Res. 36 (Supplement 3) (2010) 20–29]

The authors regret that there is an error on the labels of two figures that were published in the paper referenced above. For Figs. 5b, c, and d and 7b and c the y-axes have the wrong labels. The following are the correct y-axis labels: Fig. 5b — the y-axis should range from 0 to 5, Fig. 5c — the y-axis should range from 0 to 2, Fig. 5d — the y-axis label should range from 0 to 3, Fig. 7b — the y-axis should range from 0 to 40, and for Fig. 7c — the y-axis should range from 0 to 50

Research of energy conversion efficiency of real cycles

У статті дано порівняльний аналіз окремих циклів: циклу, що складається із двох ізобар та двох ізохор; циклу чотирьохтактного двигуна внутрішнього згорання. Визначено для них коефіцієнт корисної дії при однакових умовах. Проаналізовано можливість досягнення максимального коефіцієнта корисної дії та проведено порівняння із циклом Карно у цих же умовах. Research of energy conversion efficiency of real cycles. The article deals with the comparative analysis of individual cycles: cycle which is consists of two isobars and two isochors, four-cycle internal combustion engine.The energy conversion efficiency under the same conditions was determined for them. The possibility of achieving the maximum of the energy conversion efficiency was analyzed and the comparison with the Carnot cycle in the same conditions was made.Головіна Ніна Анатоліївна, доцент, зав. кафедри загальної фізики та методики викладання фізики Налепа Наталія Василівна, вчитель фізики Луцької гімназії №21 імені Михайла Кравчука Савош Валентин Олексійович, завідувач відділу фізико-математичних дисциплін ВІПП