A simulated ‘sandbox’ for exploring the modifiable areal unit problem in aggregation and disaggregation

We present a spatial testbed of simulated boundary data based on a set of very high-resolution census-based areal units surrounding Guadalajara, Mexico. From these input areal units, we simulated 10 levels of spatial resolutions, ranging from levels with 5,515–52,388 units and 100 simulated zonal configurations for each level – totalling 1,000 simulated sets of areal units. These data facilitate interrogating various realizations of the data and the effects of the spatial coarseness and zonal configurations, the Modifiable Areal Unit Problem (MAUP), on applications such as model training, model prediction, disaggregation, and aggregation processes. Further, these data can facilitate the production of spatially explicit, non-parametric estimates of confidence intervals via bootstrapping. We provide a pre-processed version of these 1,000 simulated sets of areal units, meta- and summary data to assist in their use, and a code notebook with the means to alter and/or reproduce these data

Examining the correlates and drivers of human population distributions across low-and middle-income countries

Geographical factors have influenced the distributions and densities of global human population distributions for centuries. Climatic regimes have made some regions more habitable than others, harsh topography has discouraged human settlement, and transport links have encouraged population growth. A better understanding of these types of relationships enables both improved mapping of population distributions today and modelling of future scenarios. However, few comprehensive studies of the relationships between population spatial distributions and the range of drivers and correlates that exist have been undertaken at all, much less at high spatial resolutions, and particularly across the low-and middle-income countries. Here, we quantify the relative importance of multiple types of drivers and covariates in explaining observed population densities across 32 low-and middle-income countries over four continents using machine-learning approaches. We find that, while relationships between population densities and geographical factors show some variation between regions, theyare generally remarkably consistent,pointing to universal drivers of human population distribution. Here,we find that a set of geographical features relating to the built environment, ecology and topography consistently explain the majority of variability in population distributions at fine spatial scales across the low-and middle-income regions of the world.</p

An Assessment of the Microclimatic and Pedological Conditions of Rock Shelters Containing Solidgao albopilosa, Red River Gorge, Kentucky

Very little is known about the microclimatic and pedological conditions present in the rock shelters of Kentucky’s Red River Gorge in which the threatened species Solidago albopilosa is endemic. To address this issue we recorded and analyzed several microclimatic and pedological variables within the rock shelters to determine if any were significantly different from the surrounding environment. An estimation of the future viability of the shelters for sustaining S. albopilosa was also undertaken based on current plant distribution and recreational impacts at each site. Significant differences were found between the inside of the rock shelters and the surrounding environment with regards to relative humidity, air temperature, and luminance, suggesting that S. albopilosa prefers cooler, more humid environments which receive less sunlight. The distribution of the shelter aspects further suggest that S. albopilosa prefers Easterly or Northerly facing shelters that receive minimal direct sunlight. No significant differences were found among the surface soil pH and macronutrients that we tested, although evidence of recreational activity affecting site viability was present at most sites. However, a more complete analysis of the soil nutrients in the rock shelters and surrounding soils is suggested to build on this research

BSGMe Research Data and Code

Contains the output and derived datasets and code from the corresponding validation paper on the Built Settlement Growth Model - extrapolative</span

BSGMiv1a Research Data and Code

Contains the output datasets and code from the corresponding validation paper on the Built Settlement Growth Model - interpolative</span

Measuring the contribution of built-settlement data to global population mapping - Supplementary Materials

Supplementary materials corresponding to the identically named paper including R scripts, derived data sets, and the full statistical test results.</span

Worldpop - Fusion of earth and big data for intraurban population mapping

High resolution estimates of human population distributions are very useful for large-scale or national scale analyses in many fields including epidemiology, healthcare, resource distribution, and development. Population densities have long been estimated using remote sensing data, particularly at large spatial scales. However, the accuracy of population density predictions can be very poor in cities, and this is particularly relevant in urban areas in sub-Saharan Africa. Here we map intra-urban population densities for select African cities by disaggregating census data using random forest techniques with remotely-sensed and geospatial data, including bespoke time-series intra-urban built-up data. We produce maps with up to 83% explained variance and find including built-up density layers in urban population models allows for clear improvements in prediction.</p

Assessing the spatial sensitivity of a random forest model: Application in gridded population modeling

Gridded human population data provide a spatial denominator to identify populations at risk, quantify burdens, and inform our understanding of human-environment systems. When modeling gridded population, the information used for training the model may differ in spatial resolution than what is produced by the model prediction. This case arises when approaching population modeling from a top-down, dasymetric approach in which one redistributes coarse administrative unit level population data (i.e., source unit) to a finer scale (i.e., target unit). However, often overlooked are issues associated with the differing variance across the scale, spatial autocorrelation and bias in sampling techniques. In this study, we examine the effects of intentionally biasing our sampling from the source to target scale within the context of a weighted, dasymetric mapping approach. The weighted component is based on a Random Forest estimator, which is a non-parametric ensemble-based prediction model. We investigate issues of autocorrelation and heterogeneity in the training data using 18 different types of samples to show the variations in training, census-level (i.e., source) and output, grid-level (i.e., target) predictions. We compare results to simple random sampling and geographically stratified random sampling. Results indicate that the Random Forest model is sensitive to the spatial autocorrelation inherent in the training data, which leads to an increase in the variance of the residuals. Sample training datasets that are at a spatial scale representative of the true population produced the best fitting models. However, the true representative dataset varied in autocorrelation for both scales. More attention is needed with ensemble-based learning and spatially-heterogeneous data as underlying issues of spatial autocorrelation influence results for both the census-level and grid-level estimations.</p