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Towards an automated estimation of vegetation cover fractions on multiple scales: Examples of Eastern and Southern Africa

Vegetation cover is one of the key parameters for monitoring the state and dynamics of ecosystems. African semi-arid landscapes are especially prone to degradation due to climate change and increased anthropogenic impact on different spatial and temporal scales. In this study, a multiscale method is applied to monitor vegetation cover by deriving sub-pixel percentages of woody vegetation, herbaceous vegetation and soil. The approach is comparatively applied to two semi-arid savannas, one in Namibia and one in Kenya. The results in eastern and southern Africa demonstrate the applicability of the method to different semiarid ecosystems and to different types of remote sensing data. The presented analysis could show that continuous cover mapping is a highly suitable concept for semi-arid ecosystems, as these show gradual transitions rather than distinct borders between land cover types. Different spatial patterns of vegetation cover depending on land use practices and intensities could be revealed

Semantics and Ideology During the Renaissance: Confessional Translations of the Greek Word ἐπίσκοπος

During the sixteenth century the disputes between Catholics and Protestants became the battleground to determine and shape authentic Christianity and the Church. Humanism played a key role in this process conditioned by cultural and theological diversity, justifying doctrinal positions and legitimizing the existence of respective institutions with an appeal to history. Translations from church historical sources illustrate how they often derived from theological preconceptions. Starting with the ‘episcopacy issue’ opened initially by Luther and Calvin inter al., this article analyzes the translations of the Greek word episkopos in the Magdeburg Centuries, Cesare Baronio’s Ecclesiastical Annals, in contemporary vernacular versions of Eusebius’s Ecclesiastical History, in J. C. Dietrich’s Lexicon and in some English Bibles. The material gathered and also compared with the position of the Council of Trent shows how these confessionally conditioned translations impacted on the scholarly world, and how they influenced church law with religio-political consequences, thereby having a striking significance

Estimating the fractional cover of growth forms and bare surface in savannas. A multi-resolution approach based on regression tree ensembles

Evaluations of existing land cover maps have revealed that high landscape heterogeneity and small patch sizes are a major reason for misclassification. These problems globally occur in biomes of mixed vegetation structure and are particularly relevant for African savannas. This paper presents a multi-resolution approach to derive fractional cover of vegetation growth forms at sub-pixel level, aiming at an improved mapping of land cover in the African grassland, savanna and shrubland biome. Fractional cover is delineated for woody growth forms (trees and shrubs), herbaceous growth forms, and bare surface. The approach incorporates very high resolution (QuickBird/IKONOS, 0.6–1 m), high resolution (Landsat TM/ETM+, 30 m), and medium resolution data (MODIS, 250 m). While QuickBird/IKONOS data are classified into discrete classes, at Landsat and MODIS resolutions, sub-pixel cover is delineated using non-parametric ensemble regression trees from the random forest family. The propagation of errors in the hierarchical multi-resolution approach is assessed with Monte Carlos simulations. The multi-resolution approach allows the adequate description of the heterogeneous vegetation structure in selected study regions of Southern Africa. The RMSE of the delineated fractional cover values range between 3.1% and 8.2% when compared with higher resolution data and between 4.4% and 9.9% when compared with field surveys. Errors at the Landsat resolution show minor influence on the accuracy of the MODIS results. Regarding the inter-resolution error propagation, for 90% of the Monte Carlo simulations, errors at the Landsat resolution resulted in RMSEs for MODIS increased by less than 4% (woody vegetation), 3.5% (herbaceous vegetation) and 2% (bare surface)

A multi-scale approach for retrieving proportional cover of life forms

This study presents a multi-scale procedure to derive continuous proportional cover of woody vegetation in savanna ecosystems. QuickBird data was classified to define a continuous training and validation data set of woody cover proportions. Using a regression tree algorithm based on Landsat TM data, this woody cover information was extrapolated to an area of approximately 185 km x 185 km. The resulting 30 m map of the Namibian North-eastern Kalahari Woodland was aggregated to 250 m and 500 m resolutions. Comparisons of the global MODIS VCF product with the regionally adjusted multi-scale fractional cover map indicate that VCF tree cover is generally underestimated in the study area and confusions between tree and dense shrub cover occur

P. Ovidii Nasonis Halieuticon : hoc est, De piscibus libellus, multo quam antehac emendatior & scholiis illustratus : emendantur & Plinii aliquot loca ; accedit Aquatilium animantium enumeratio iuxta Plinium

(Wortlaut des Titelblattes des 2. enthaltenen Werkes) : Aquatilium animantium nomina Germanica et Anglica, serie literarum digesta / authore Conrado Gesneroemendata & explicata per Conradum Gesnerum, ordine alphabetico. Earundem nomina Germanica, eodem ordineDruckjahr gemäss VischerText überwiegend lateinisch, teilweise deutsch oder griechisch; deutscher Text in FrakturBogensignaturen: A-S⁸Inhaltlich identisch mit Gessners "De piscibus et aquatilibus omnibus libelli III novi" (Vischer K 6). Bogen A anders gesetzt

Conradi Gesneri de rerum fossilium, lapidum et gemmarum maxime, figuris & similitudinibus liber : non solum medicis, sed omnibus rerum naturae ac philologiae studiosis, utilis & iucundus futurus. ...

2 DruckermarkenBogensignaturen: Aa-Yy

Epistolarum medicinalium Conradi Gesneri philosophi et medici Tigurini libri III : his accesserunt eiusdem Aconiti primi Dioscoridis asseveratio ; & De oxymelitis elleborati utriusque descriptione & usu libellus

Wortlaut des Titelblattes des Beidruckes : Conradi Gesneri philosophi et medici Tigurini de aconito primo Dioscoridis asseveratio ; et eiusdem de oxymelitis elleborati utriusque descriptione & usu libellus. ...omnia nunc primum per Casparum Wolphium medicum Tigurinum in lucem data"De aconito" und "De oxymelitis" sind Auszüge aus "De materia medica" / Dioscorides Pedanius2 Druckermarke