Evaluating the Potential of the Original Texas Land Survey for Mapping Historical Land and Vegetation Cover

© 2016 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons by Attribution (CC-BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).This paper reports on research to evaluate the potential of Original Texas Land Survey (OTLS) to generate information that can be used to quantitatively map historical vegetation cover and analyse pertinent aspects of vegetation ecology. Research was conducted in Brazos County in east-central Texas. OTLS data are easy to acquire and convert to geo-referenced autecological information. Reconstructing and mapping vegetation and land cover, conducting vegetation- and species-site analyses with to soil-ecological maps, reconstructing vegetation assemblages and forest structure can be easily accomplished. Due to the irregular surveying framework used by OTLS, mapping gradational grassland-savannah ecotone boundaries is impracticable. View Full-Tex

Quantifying the economic value of ecosystem services in oil palm dominated landscapes in Riau Province in Sumatra, Indonesia

Ecosystem services in oil palm plantations owned by smallholders in four villages in the Riau Province, Indonesia were identified and valued. Nine provisioning, three regulating and maintenance, one cultural ecosystem service, and a single ecosystem dis-service, were identified from interviews with 62 farming households. Direct and indirect market valuation methods were used to estimate the total economic value (TEV) of these services, which averaged USD 6520 ha-1 year-1 (range = USD 2970-7729 ha-1 year-1). The values of provisioning services were USD 4331 ha-1 year-1 (range = USD 2263-5489 ha-1 year-1), regulating and maintenance services were valued at USD 1880 ha-1 year-1 (range of USD 707-3110 ha-1 year-1), and cultural services were USD 309 ha-1 year-1. We conclude that identifying and valuing ecosystem services offers an opportunity to improve the environmental and economic sustainability of smallholders in oil palm landscapes in Indonesia. © 2020 by the authors

Monitoring sediment transfer processes on the desert margin

LANDSAT Thematic Mapper and Multispectral Scanner data have been used to construct change detection images for three playas in south-central Tunisia. Change detection images have been used to analyze changes in surface reflectance and absorption between wet and dry season (intra-annual change) and between different years (inter-annual change). Change detection imagery has been used to examine geomorphological changes on the playas. Changes in geomorphological phenomena are interpreted from changes in soil and foliar moisture levels, differences in reflectances between different salt and sediments and the spatial expression of geomorphological features. Intra-annual change phenomena that can be detected from multidate imagery are changes in surface moisture, texture and chemical composition, vegetation cover and the extent of aeolian activity. Inter-annual change phenomena are divisible into those restricted to marginal playa facies (sedimentation from sheetwash and alluvial fans, erosion from surface runoff and cliff retreat) and these are found in central playa facies which are related to the internal redistribution of water, salt and sediment

Quantitative stereophotogrammetric & MRI evaluation of ankle articular cartilage and ankle joint contact characteristics

Osteoarthritis and degenerative cartilage diseases affect millions of people. Therefore, there is huge interest in developing new therapies to repair, replace and/or regenerate cartilage. This necessitates advances in techniques which make earlier non-invasive diagnosis and objective quantitative evaluations of new therapies possible. Most previous research has focused on the knee and neglected the ankle joint. Hence, the aims of this thesis are to describe and quantify the geometric properties of ankle cartilage, to evaluate joint contact characteristics and develop techniques which allow quantitative measurements to be made in vivo. Chapters 3 and 6 describe the application of a high resolution stereophotography system for making highly accurate 3-D geometric models from which quantitative measurements of cartilage parameters and joint area contact can be made. Chapters 4 and 5 report the testing of image analysis algorithms designed to segment cartilage sensitive MR images. Work focused on initially on a semi-automated 2-D segmentation approach and subsequently on a pilot study of 3-D automated segmentation algorithm. The stereophotographic studies were highly accurately and demonstrated that ankle cartilage thickness is greater than previously reported with the thickest cartilage occurring where cartilage injuries are most commonly seen. Furthermore, joint contact area is larger than previously believed and corresponds to the regions of the thickest cartilage over the talar shoulders. The image analysis studies show that it is possible to accurately and reproducibly segment the thin cartilage layers of the ankle joint using a semi-automated approach. The feasibility of a fully automated 3D method for future clinical use is also shown. In conclusion this thesis presents novel methods for examining ankle articular cartilage in vitro and in vivo, showing that the thickest cartilage occurs in highly curved regions over the shoulders of the talus which correspond to regions of greatest contact. Importantly, the image analysis techniques may be used for future clinical monitoring of patients sustaining cartilage injuries or undergoing cartilage repair therapies

L'attitude

Project: John Tyrrell has researched, drawn, designed and managed three completed models, made by University of Sunderland students. Three key projects of C19 architectural engineer Isambard Brunel's greatest acheivements for a touring exhibition, celebrating his work, 'Isambard Kingdom Brunel: Recent Works'. The Design Museum, London, U.K. 2000-2002. Recognised as the worlds first industrial designer. Brunel's work included the Royal Albert Bridge at Saltash, which connects Devon and Cornwall over the river Tamar. Commissioned by the Design Museum, Tyrrell designed abstract models using various media, that could be touched, including a 25 foot long version of the Royal Albert Bridge as well as a full scale section through. There is also a structural model of Brunel's prefabricated Renkio Hospital. Brunel's consultant in the design was Florence Nightingale, OM, RRC, celebrated English social reformer and statistician, and the founder of modern nursing

Agricultural Land Fragmentation at Urban Fringes: An Application of Urban-To-Rural Gradient Analysis in Adelaide

This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. (CC BY 4.0).One of the major consequences of expansive urban growth is the degradation and loss of productive agricultural land and agroecosystem functions. Four landscape metrics—Percentage of Land (PLAND), Mean Parcel Size (MPS), Parcel Density (PD), and Modified Simpson’s Diversity Index (MSDI)—were calculated for 1 km × 1 km cells along three 50 km-long transects that extend out from the Adelaide CBD, in order to analyze variations in landscape structures. Each transect has different land uses beyond the built-up area, and they differ in topography, soils, and rates of urban expansion. Our new findings are that zones of agricultural land fragmentation can be identified by the relationships between MPS and PD, that these occur in areas where PD ranges from 7 and 35, and that these occur regardless of distance along the transect, land use, topography, soils, or rates of urban growth. This suggests a geometry of fragmentation that may be consistent, and indicates that quantification of both land use and land-use change in zones of fragmentation is potentially important in planning

Quantitative stereophotogrammetric & MRI evaluation of ankle articular cartilage and ankle joint contact characteristics

Osteoarthritis and degenerative cartilage diseases affect millions of people. Therefore, there is huge interest in developing new therapies to repair, replace and/or regenerate cartilage. This necessitates advances in techniques which make earlier non-invasive diagnosis and objective quantitative evaluations of new therapies possible. Most previous research has focused on the knee and neglected the ankle joint. Hence, the aims of this thesis are to describe and quantify the geometric properties of ankle cartilage, to evaluate joint contact characteristics and develop techniques which allow quantitative measurements to be made in vivo. Chapters 3 and 6 describe the application of a high resolution stereophotography system for making highly accurate 3-D geometric models from which quantitative measurements of cartilage parameters and joint area contact can be made. Chapters 4 and 5 report the testing of image analysis algorithms designed to segment cartilage sensitive MR images. Work focused on initially on a semi-automated 2-D segmentation approach and subsequently on a pilot study of 3-D automated segmentation algorithm. The stereophotographic studies were highly accurately and demonstrated that ankle cartilage thickness is greater than previously reported with the thickest cartilage occurring where cartilage injuries are most commonly seen. Furthermore, joint contact area is larger than previously believed and corresponds to the regions of the thickest cartilage over the talar shoulders. The image analysis studies show that it is possible to accurately and reproducibly segment the thin cartilage layers of the ankle joint using a semi-automated approach. The feasibility of a fully automated 3D method for future clinical use is also shown. In conclusion this thesis presents novel methods for examining ankle articular cartilage in vitro and in vivo, showing that the thickest cartilage occurs in highly curved regions over the shoulders of the talus which correspond to regions of greatest contact. Importantly, the image analysis techniques may be used for future clinical monitoring of patients sustaining cartilage injuries or undergoing cartilage repair therapies

Evaluating explanations of land cover change using approximate Bayesian Computation

The ecology of the Mediterranean region today is the product of thousands of years of human intervention, combined with the effects of climatic change on its flora, and natural disturbance arising from its active fire regim e. Understanding the complex ways in which anthropogenic land- cover change, climate, and fire interact with each other could help guide public policy and land management decision- making, especially important to ensure sustainability in an uncertain future of climate change. A fruitful step in this endeavour will be to explain changes to landscape- scale vegetation ecology arising from the time when humans first began to compete with fire as a source of ecological disturbance 10,000 years ago – the agricultur al revolution. Paleoecological data provide a means to study ecosystem change in the distant past, and over timescales longer than a human lifetime. In particular, analysis of how the abundance of pollen produced by different plant functional types has changed over time can tell us much about the evolution of the composition of those functional types in the land- cover around a study site. Pollen time series can be viewed as fingerprints of the interacting processes of anthropogenic land- cover change, fire a nd ecological succession, against the backdrop of a changing climate. However, no amount of scrutiny of the data alone can elucidate the causal role each of the interacting factors had in creating them. We have developed a model which integrates theoretica l understanding of ecological and anthropogenic processes via an agent -based modelling framework. By simulating both natural and anthropogenic processes and allowing them to interact with each other in a spatially explicit virtual landscape, we can generat e dynamic pictures of landscapes evolving in time which are consistent with socio- ecological theory. However, as scientists we must be vigilant in our reporting of uncertainty about our models. Historical sciences provide a unique challenge in this regard, since theories cannot be tested by direct experimentation. In this talk, I will discuss the use of approximate Bayesian computation (ABC) as a means to unite acausal paleoecological data with a socio- ecological simulation model which encodes causal hypoth eses about Neolithic land -cover change, but whose likeness to reality is uncertain. ABC will be considered as a tool to support inference about which models best explain available empirical data, as well as indicating which aspects of those models are most uncertain

Urban Land Systems: An Ecosystems Perspective

© 2018 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).We live in an urbanizing world. Since 2008, more than half of humanity lives in cities, both large and small, and old and new. We also live in a world that is becoming even more urbanized, it is expected that by 2050, 66 per cent of the world’s population will live in cities [1]. The process of urbanization, accompanied by the rapid expansion of cities and the sprawling growth of metropolitan regions over the world, is one of the most important transformations of a natural landscape. In the context of land systems science, contemporary urbanisation is a set of land-use change processes and the various contemporary cityscapes are the resulting land systems. Population growth increases urban footprints with consequences on biodiversity and climate. Much of the explosive urban growth has been unplanned and conflicting land-use demands often arise as land is a limited resource. Increased requirements for living space and intensive landscape utilization constitute two of the principal reasons for the environmental change, with significant impacts on quality of life and ecosystems. This special issue of LAND explores urban land dynamics with particular regard to ecosystem structure, and discusses consequent environmental changes and their impacts. The studies cover a wide range of countries and contexts, and draw on a number of disciplinary methods and interdisciplinary approaches from the social and natural sciences. The papers have been authored by 41 researchers from 29 institutions in countries worldwide: from Australia, Bangladesh, China, India, Iraq, Italy, Japan, Nigeria, Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Slovakia, Spain, Thailand, the United Kingdom, and the USA