Working Beyond Borders: GIS for Geospatial Collaboration
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In today's world, organizations face a multitude of problems that require an unprecedented need for tools to share information and work better together. In Working Beyond Borders: GIS for Geospatial Collaboration, see how government, industries, and others, are using location intelligence and GIS to interconnect people across jurisdictions and sectors, to respond to some of our most critical issues, such as climate change, sustainable development, racial equity, emergency management, conservation, and public health and safety. Readers will also see how organizations are integrating geospatial infrastructure to improve efficiency, drive innovation, and empower every day decision-making in communities around the world. Edited by Jill Saligoe-Simmel and Maria Jordan Applying GIS The Applying GIS series explains how to become a spatial thinker with ideas and strategies for building location intelligence into your profession, industry, or discipline. Each book is divided into relevant topic areas that include real-life case studies that will inspire new ways to solve complex problems.
Geographies of Food: Global Visions of Healthy and Unhealthy Food
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The book offers a multi-scale, epistemically diverse, and sense-making perspectives on the food system. The book argues that sustainable food system transformation is a complex proposition that can better thrive upon the inclusion of consumer perspectives. The book brings together scholarly works of critical scholars and practitioners who bring to bear the uniqueness of places, cultures, histories and interactions in the milieu of food.
Fieldwork Handbook a Practical Guide on the Go
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Make your work in the field more efficient and productive with the how-to of location intelligence. A biologist in a rain forest making observations on indigenous frogs, an engineer maintaining utility equipment, or a citizen scientist taking water samples from a creek are all doing fieldwork. Their work is anchored by location. No matter what electronic tools they take into the field, they all take a notebook or a guidebook. As you head into the field along with all your equipment, be sure to include this practical fieldwork guide. Fieldwork Handbook gives you tips, best practices, and activities that make your work in the field more productive and successful. No matter how you use location intelligence in the field, you can up your game with this book and improve your experience. Covering preparation, equipment, workflows, and data, this book will teach you how to Organize and reconcile field data Effectively coordinate and dispatch field resources Refine fieldwork workflows Sync the office with the field Author and Esri product engineer Marika Vertzonis learned about geospatial technology in the field, and she knows what you need to know. This handbook is your friend in the field.
GNSS Monitoring of the Terrestrial Environment: Earthquakes, Volcanoes and Climate Change
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GNSS Monitoring of the Terrestrial Environment: Earthquakes, Volcanoes, and Climate Change presents the application of GNSS technologies to natural hazards on Earth. The book details the background theory of the GNSS techniques discussed and takes the reader through applications and implementation. Tables comparing GNSS with other geodetic techniques, such as SAR, VLBI, SLR, and conventional geodetic methods such as strainmeters, tiltmeters, and leveling surveys are also included. The book concludes with a chapter bridging both parts, discussing the relationship between earthquakes, volcanism, and climate change. The book is aimed at academics, researchers, and advanced students working in the fields of remote sensing technologies or natural hazards. It is divided into two parts, with the first covering the monitoring of earthquakes, volcanoes, and applications of GNSS signals to better understand earthquakes and volcanism, while the second part covers monitoring climate change with GNSS. Provides a detailed focus on the utility of GNSS technologies for dealing with natural hazards Details theory and applications of GNSS to natural hazards, allowing readers to develop a thorough understanding on the theoretical background as well as practical applications Covers the latest developments in the field, along with future perspectives as GNSS technologies are expected to evolve
Advances in Geospatial Technologies for Natural Resource Management
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Timely and reliable information on natural resources, regarding their potential and limitations, is a prerequisite for sustainable development. Geospatial technologies offer immense potential in providing such information in a timely and cost-effective manner. Using orbital sensors data in conjunction with airborne and proximal sensors data to generate information on soils and agricultural resources, forests, mineral resources, fossil fuel, wetlands, water resources, and marine resources, this book focuses on the advancements in technologies applicable to managing these resources. It addresses global issues like climate change and land degradation neutrality and introduces spatial data infrastructure (SDI) as a mechanism for sharing geospatial data. This book also provides an in-depth discussion on drones, crowdsourcing, cloud computing, Internet of Things, machine learning, and their applications. FEATURES Contains a comprehensive resource on the latest developments in geospatial technologies and their use in monitoring natural resources, productivity mapping, and modeling Explains the geo-computation methods and online algorithm developments Includes clear guidance on how best to use geospatial data for various applications Discusses case studies from a variety of fields and current trends in the management of natural resources Provides future scenarios concerning platforms, sensors, data analysis, and interpretation techniques This book is written for remote sensing and GIS professionals in environmental institutions and government who are involved in natural resource management projects. Senior undergraduate and graduate-level students in Earth sciences, geography, or environmental management can also use this text for supplementary reading.
Remote Sensing and GIS in Peri-Urban Research: Perspectives on Global Change, Sustainability and Resilience
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Remote Sensing and GIS in Peri-Urban Research: Perspectives on Global Change, Sustainability and Resilience, Eleventh Edition provides the most recent methods and techniques, incorporating geoinformatics-based practices to map, evaluate, and model urban landscape attributes and changes. The book provides theory, methodology, and future perspectives of remote sensing and GIS techniques applied to peri-urban modelling, analysis and sustainability through the use of spatio-temporal geospatial datasets. It also includes case studies of real-world data sets, with applicable algorithms, techniques and methods for study. This will be a useful reference for researchers and academics in remote sensing, GIS, and spatial analysis, and environmental or urban scientists wanting to implement remote sensing technologies in their research.- Outlines applications of geospatial technologies for visualization of land use dynamics including spatial information about population distributions, built-up areas and degree of urbanization based on global and local datasets- Provides methodology for identification of peri-urban interfaces using techniques to identify peri-urban space and dynamics using remote sensing and GIS techniques- Includes worldwide case studies by experts from different countries increasing the understanding of the nature of global peri-urbanization and growth
QGIS for Ecologists: An Introduction to Mapping for Ecological Surveys
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This book teaches the basic stages of mapping for ecological projects. It uses QGIS, an open source system, as this is the most accessible platform to produce maps for reports. The book guides the beginner mapmaker through production of maps for the day-to-day projects of ecologists working in consultancy. If you don't know where to start or how to use QGIS, this is the practical guide for you. There is no jargon, just everything you require to create the desired maps and to extract from them all the information that you'll need for reporting. You will learn how to create several different sorts of maps frequently employed in ecological reports: - basic survey map - aerial imagery survey map - designated sites map - desk-study map - protected species map - habitats map As a part of this you will also discover how to download third-party maps and datasets, create your own data, geo-reference images and import GPX files into QGIS. Weblinks allow access to downloadable data for use in producing the maps described. The book also includes workflows that you can emulate for your own projects, ensuring that it will remain a helpful tool long after you have completed all the exercises. Ideal for those working in ecological consultancy and conservation, as well as students with an understanding of ecology and surveying but no background or training in QGIS, this handy book will also be a great help to those needing to refresh their GIS skills and/or looking for workflows to follow.
Spatial Intelligence for a Greener Planet: AI Applications in Environmental Pollution Mapping, Analysis, and Mitigation
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With rapid advancements in AI, this book reveals how AI can be a powerful tool in reducing pollution and fostering sustainability. It highlights the integration of geospatial techniques with AI for enhancing capabilities in mapping, analysis, and mitigation of environmental pollution. Starting with foundational concepts in AI, geospatial technology, and pollution, the book addresses air, water, soil and thermal pollution, emphasizing their harmful impacts. Through real-world case studies and advanced research, it showcases AI and geospatial technology's revolutionary role in pollution mitigation, exploring AI-driven sensors, satellite imagery, and associated networks for precise and efficient pollution monitoring and management.
Ubiquitous Point Cloud: Theory, Model, and Applications
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Point clouds from LiDAR and photogrammetry are vital and vast sources of geospatial information besides remote sensing imagery. This book provides the latest theory and methodology for point cloud processing with AI to better serve earth observation, 3D vision, autonomous driving, smart city, and geospatial information applications. It covers various aspects of 3D geospatial information, including data capturing, fusing, geocomputing, modeling, and vast downstream applications. With the inclusion of numerous illustrations, diagrams, and practical applications, readers will better understand the point cloud, and its technical challenges, and learn how to utilize point cloud in different fields. Features Provides in-depth point cloud processing pipeline, cutting-edge theory, and technology with AI. Includes many specific applications of point cloud in the geospatial field. Offers a comprehensive step-by-step guide from theory to application in point cloud processing. Includes ample supplementary materials including datasets, tools, and other online resources. Helps readers across many disciplines, from geospatial to engineering, to understand the vast application of point clouds and how to further generate new ideas and innovative thoughts. This book is an excellent resource for researchers, academics, students, and professionals in a variety of fields including Geomatics, Remote Sensing, Cartography and Geographic Information Systems, Data Science, Geography, Earth Science, and more.
The Anthropocene : New Trajectories in Law
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This book introduces the concept of the Anthropocene and examines its importance for environmental legal thinking, research, and practice. Two main arguments are explored. The first is that much of the scholarship in environmental law that addresses the Anthropocene does not respond to Earth systems science or the difference in scale as we move from local to global systems. Key examples include a focus on anthropocentrism, attempts to constitutionalise environmental protections, the prevalence of legal rights and the idea of ecological integrity. The second argument is that these points of focus derive from the prevalence of idealism in environmental legal scholarship. Idealism in this context does not refer to naivety or the presentation of unrealistic goals. Rather, this book is concerned with idealism as a philosophical commitment to the power of ideas to determine reality and drive future change. As expressed in legal scholarship, this book also argues that idealism involves an abstraction from material reality and a refusal to directly engage those forces that have given rise to the Anthropocene. In response, this book uses a method of critique to uncover the presumptions and presuppositions that underlie environmental scholarship. As a counter to idealism, it also sketches out a framework for materialism in the Anthropocene. This book's engagement with these questions will appeal to undergraduate and postgraduate students in law, politics, philosophy, or the ecological humanities. It will also be of interest to academics in these disciplines and libraries around the world
The Routledge Handbook of Law and the Anthropocene
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The Routledge Handbook of Law and the Anthropocene provides a critical survey into the function of law and governance during a time when humans have the power to impact the Earth system. The Anthropocene is a crisis of the earth system. This book addresses its implications for law and legal thinking in the twenty-first century. Unpacking the challenges of the Anthropocene for advocates of ecological law and politics, this handbook pursues a range of approaches to the scientific fact of anthropocentrism, with contributions from lawyers, philosophers, geographers, and environmental and political scientists. Rather than adopting a hubristic normativity, the contributors engage methods, concepts, and legal instruments in a way that underscores the importance of humility and an expansive ethical worldview. Contributors to this volume are leading scholars and future leaders in the field. Rather than upholding orthodoxy, the handbook also problematizes received wisdom and is grounded in the conviction that the ideas we have inherited from the Holocene must all be open to question. Engaging such issues as the Capitalocene, Gaia theory, the rights of nature, posthumanism, the commons, geoengineering, and civil disobedience, this handbook will be of enormous interest to academics, students, and others with interests in ecological law and the current environmental crisis.
Preserving Our Planet: GIS for Conservation
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Discover the geographic approach to conservation land management and landscape conservation. Geographic information system (GIS) technology offers a comprehensive tool for conservation professionals. A modern GIS gives users a real-time look at their data, locations, and their relationships. When applied to conservation, it reveals dependencies and challenges across multiple environments. Through maps and apps, conservation professionals can observe the field, analyze and organize their data, and collaborate with other organizations and the public on addressing threats and opportunities found. Preserving Our Planet: GIS for Conservation explores a collection of real-life stories about conservation organizations successfully using GIS to meet challenges to biodiversity preservation in our rapidly changing world. The book also includes a section on next steps that provides ideas, strategies, tools, and actions to help you jump-start your own use of GIS for conservation. A collection of online resources, including additional stories, videos, new ideas and concepts, and downloadable tools and content, complements this book. Edited by David Gadsden, director of conservation solutions at Esri, and Matt Artz, an Esri content strategist.
The Routledge Companion to the American Landscape
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The Routledge Companion to the American Landscape provides a comprehensive overview of the American landscape in a way fit for the twenty-first century, not only in its topical and regional scope but also in its methodological and disciplinary diversity. Critically surveying the contemporary scholarship on the American landscape, this companion brings together scholars from the social sciences and humanities who focus their work on understanding the polyphonic evolution of the United States' landscape. It simultaneously assesses the development of the U.S. landscape as well as the scholarly thought that has driven innovation and continued research about that landscape. Four broad sections focus on key areas of scholarship: environmental landscapes, social, cultural, and popular identities in the landscape, political landscapes, and urban/economic landscapes. A special essay, "American Landscapes Under Siege" and accompanying short case studies call attention to the legacies and realities of race in the American landscape, bridging the discussion of social and political landscapes. An invaluable and up-to-date guide for scholars and graduate students to current thinking across the range of disciplines which converge in the study of place, including Geography, Cultural Studies, History as well as the interdisciplinary fields of American Studies, Environmental Studies, and Planning.
GIS: An Introduction to Mapping Technologies
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The second edition of this introductory GIS textbook is thoroughly rewritten and updated to respond to the demand for critical engagement with technologies that address relevant issues across several disciplines preparing students for higher-level work in geotechnologies.
Geographic Data Science with R: Visualizing and Analyzing Environmental Change
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The burgeoning field of data science has provided a wealth of techniques for analysing large and complex geospatial datasets, including descriptive, explanatory, and predictive analytics. However, applying these methods is just one part of the overall process of geographic data science. Other critical steps include screening for suspect data values, handling missing data, harmonizing data from multiple sources, summarizing the data, and visualizing data and analysis results. Although there are many books available on statistical and machine learning methods, few encompass the broader topic of scientific workflows for geospatial data processing and analysis. The purpose of Geographic Data Science with R is to fill this gap by providing a series of tutorials aimed at teaching good practices for using geospatial data to address problems in environmental geography. It is based on the R language and environment, which currently provides the best option for working with diverse spatial and non-spatial data in a single platform. Fundamental techniques for processing and visualizing tabular, vector, and raster data are introduced through a series of practical examples followed by case studies that combine multiple types of data to address more complex problems. The book will have a broad audience. Both students and professionals can use it as a workbook to learn high-level techniques for geospatial data processing and analysis with R. It is also suitable as a textbook. Although not intended to provide a comprehensive introduction to R, it is designed to be accessible to readers who have at least some knowledge of coding but little to no experience with R. Key Features: Focus on developing practical workflows for processing and integrating multiple sources of geospatial data in R Example-based approach that teaches R programming and data science concepts through real-world applications related to climate, land cover and land use, and natural hazards. Consistent use of tidyverse packages for tabular data manipulation and visualization. Strong focus on analysing continuous and categorical raster datasets using the new terra package Organized so that each chapter builds on the topics and techniques covered in the preceding chapters Can be used for self-study or as the textbook for a geospatial science course.
Managing Our World: GIS for Natural Resources
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Discover The Geographic Approach to managing natural resources for efficiency and sustainability. Managing Our World: GIS for Natural Resources explores a collection of real-life stories about agriculture, forestry, mining, energy, pipeline, and renewable energy organizations successfully using GIS to streamline workflows, gain competitive insight, improve sustainability efforts, and more. Learn how natural resource organizations are finding an equitable and sustainable balance between meeting the demand for Earth's natural resources and preserving those resources for future generations. The examples in this book will provide a guide for how to increase profitability, improve environmental protections, and expand societal benefits while improving the efficiency of your organization. This book also includes a section on next steps that provides ideas, strategies, tools, and actions to help jump-start your own use of GIS for natural resources. A collection of online resources, including additional stories, videos, new ideas and concepts, and downloadable tools and content, complements this book. Use this book to identify where maps, spatial analysis, and GIS apps can benefit your work, and how to apply these geospatial capabilities to drive improved results.
Routledge Handbook of Global Land and Resource Grabbing
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This handbook provides a cutting-edge, comprehensive overview of global land and resource grabbing. Global land and resource grabbing has become an increasingly prominent topic in academic circles, among development practitioners, human rights advocates, and in policy arenas. The Routledge Handbook of Global Land and Resource Grabbing sustains this intellectual momentum by advancing methodological, theoretical and empirical insights. It presents and discusses resource grabbing research in a holistic manner by addressing how the rush for land and other natural resources, including water, forests and minerals, is intertwined with agriculture, mining, tourism, energy, biodiversity conservation, climate change, carbon markets, and conflict. The handbook is truly global and interdisciplinary, with case studies from the Global South and Global North, and chapter contributions from practitioners, activists and academics, with emerging and Indigenous authors featuring strongly across the chapters. The handbook will be essential reading for students and scholars interested in land and resource grabbing, agrarian studies, development studies, critical human geography, global studies and natural resource governance. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.
A Global Atlas of Atolls
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"Developed from satellite data only recently available, A Global Atlas of Atolls presents high-quality details of the 473 atolls across the globe, characterizing details of the atoll rim, the lagoon and their coral reef communities in unprecedented detail. After an introduction that includes a glossary of terms, each atoll is documented in the form of an atlas written for scientists, but accessible to any diver or reader interested in these spectacular reef-island habitats. There is currently no comparable work documenting the atolls of the world, with their turquoise lagoons and colorful reefs teaming with marine life"--
Cloud-Based Remote Sensing with Google Earth Engine: Fundamentals and Applications
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This book guides its audience--which can range from novice users to experts-- though a 55-chapter tour of Google Earth Engine. A sequenced and diverse set of lab materials, this is the product of more than a year of effort from more than a hundred individuals, collecting new exercises from professors, undergraduates, master's students, PhD students, postdocs, and independent consultants. Cloud Based Remote Sensing with Google Earth Engine is broadly organized into two halves. The first half, Fundamentals, is a set of 31 labs designed to take the reader from being a complete Earth Engine novice to being a quite advanced user. The second half, Applications, presents a tour of the world of Earth Engine across 24 chapters, showing how it is used in a very wide variety of settings that rely on remote-sensing data This is an open access book.
3S Technology Applications in Meteorology: Observations, Methods, and Modelling
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Rapid developments of spatial information technology and the integration of Remote Sensing, Geographic Information Systems (GIS), and Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS), known as 3S technology, have been extensively utilized in managing and monitoring natural disasters. This book illustrates the 3S integrated applications in the field of Meteorology and promotes the role of 3S in developing a precise and intelligent Meteorology. It discusses the principles of 3S technology, and the methods for estimating different meteorological disasters and hazards monitoring as well as their application progress. The case studies from USA, Japan, China, and Europe can be used to help all countries understand the 3S technology functions in handling and monitoring severe drought and flood hazards. Features Presents integral observations from GNSS, GIS, and Remote Sensing in estimating and understanding meteorological changes Explains how to monitor and retrieve atmospheric parameters changes using GNSS and Remote Sensing Shows 3D modelling and evaluations of meteorological variation processing from GIS Helps meteorologists develop and use space-air-ground observations for meteorological applications Features case studies that illustrate the best practices in monitoring metrological hazards and utilizes space information techniques This book is intended for university academics, researchers, and postgraduate students who specialize in Geomatics, Atmospheric Science and Meteorology, as well as scientists who work in remote sensing and professionals who deal with meteorological hazards.
3D Imaging of the Environment: Advances in Environmental Mapping and Monitoring
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This is a comprehensive, overarching, interdisciplinary book and a valuable contribution to a unified view of visualisation, imaging, and mapping. It covers a variety of modern techniques, across an array of spatial scales, with examples of how to map, monitor, and visualise the world in which we live. The authors give detailed explanations of the techniques used to map and monitor the built and natural environment and how that data, collected from a wide range of scales and cost options, is translated into an image or visual experience. It is written in a way that successfully reaches technical, professional, and academic readers alike, particularly geographers, architects, geologists, and planners. FEATURES Includes in-depth discussion on 3D image processing and modeling Focuses on the 3D application of remote sensing, including LiDAR and digital photography acquired by UAS and terrestrial techniques Introduces a broad range of data collection techniques and visualisation methods Includes contributions from outstanding experts and interdisciplinary teams involved in earth sciences Presents an open access chapter about the EU-funded CHERISH Project, detailing the development of a toolkit for the 3D documentation and analysis of the combined coastline shared between Ireland and Wales Intended for those with a background in the technology involved with imaging and mapping, the contributions shared in this book introduce readers to new and emerging 3D imaging tools and programs.
Earth Observation in Urban Monitoring: Techniques and Challanges
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Earth Observation in Urban Monitoring: Techniques and Challenges presents the latest techniques of remote sensing in urban monitoring, along with methods for quantitative and qualitative assessment using state-of-the-art Earth observation technologies. The book details the advances of remote sensing technologies in urban environmental monitoring for a range of practical and research applications, Earth observation datasets, remote sensing of environmental considerations, geostatistical techniques and resilience perspectives. Chapters cover sensor applications, urban growth modelling, SAR applications, surveying techniques, satellite time series analysis and a variety of other remote sensing technologies for urban monitoring. Each chapter includes detailed case studies at a variety of scales and from a variety of geographies, offering up-to-date, global, urban monitoring methodologies for researchers, scientists and academics in remote sensing, geospatial research, environmental science and sustainability. Focuses on a variety of interdisciplinary applications using Earth observation data, GIS and soft computing techniques to address various challenges in urban monitoring Provides numerous case studies at a variety of scales, from local to global, to aid readers in implementing urban monitoring techniques at any level Includes theoretical and applied research contributions along with background information on the use of concurrent technologies in the disciplines of urban studies
Addressing Earth's Challenges: GIS for Earth Sciences
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Discover The Geographic Approach to enabling science for a more exceptional planet. Place matters to governments and citizens, and location intelligence and data science have never been more critical for smarter national decision-making. Addressing Earth's Challenges: GIS for Earth Sciences explores a collection of real-life stories about how earth science organizations successfully use geographic information systems (GIS) to visualize and analyze data to streamline workflows, gain competitive insight, drive decision-making, design efficient operations, and foster civic inclusion. Find out how multiple organizations implement GIS in six scientific fields: geoscience, sustainable energy, environmental monitoring, climate science, weather, and marine science. The book also includes a section on next steps that provides helpful ideas, strategies, tools, and actions to help jump-start your use of GIS for earth sciences. A collection of online resources, including additional stories, videos, new ideas and concepts, and downloadable tools and content, complements this book.
Landscapes of the Anthropocene with Google Earth
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This book considers the meaning of the term, considers the value and characteristics of Google Earth, and discusses the main driving forces of landscape change. Google Earth provides a means whereby one can identify changes in the landscapes of Earth over recent decades. This has been a time of great human activity, and landscapes have been transformed as a result of such factors as land use and land-cover change, climate change, the intensive harnessing of new energy sources, population pressures, and globalization. Many geologists now believe that the whole Earth System is being changed and that there is thus a need to introduce the concept of the Anthropocene. It then looks at specific landscape types, including rivers, coasts, lakes, deserts, tundra, and glaciers.
Land Degradation Assessment with Earth Observation
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This Special Issue (SI) on “Land Degradation Assessment with Earth Observation” comprises 17 original research papers with a focus on land degradation in arid, semiarid and dry-subhumid areas (i.e., desertification) in addition to temperate rangelands, grasslands, woodlands and the humid tropics. The studies cover different spatial, spectral and temporal scales and employ a wealth of different optical and radar sensors. Some studies incorporate time-series analysis techniques that assess the general trend of vegetation or the timing and duration of the reduction in biological productivity caused by land degradation. As anticipated from the latest trend in Earth Observation (EO) literature, some studies utilize the cloud-computing infrastructure of Google Earth Engine to cope with the unprecedented volume of data involved in current methodological approaches. This SI clearly demonstrates the ever-increasing relevance of EO technologies when it comes to assessing and monitoring land degradation. With the recently published IPCC Reports informing us of the severe impacts and risks to terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems and the ecosystem services they provide, the EO scientific community has a clear obligation to increase its efforts to address any remaining gaps—some of which have been identified in this SI—and produce highly accurate and relevant land-degradation assessment and monitoring tools.
Land Surface Monitoring Based on Satellite Imagery
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This book focuses attention on significant novel approaches developed to monitor land surface by exploiting satellite data in the infrared and visible ranges. Unlike in situ measurements, satellite data provide global coverage and higher temporal resolution, with very accurate retrievals of land parameters. This is fundamental in the study of climate change and global warming. The authors offer an overview of different methodologies to retrieve land surface parameters— evapotranspiration, emissivity contrast and water deficit indices, land subsidence, leaf area index, vegetation height, and crop coefficient—all of which play a significant role in the study of land cover, land use, monitoring of vegetation and soil water stress, as well as early warning and detection of forest fires and drought.
Land Use and Land Cover Mapping in a Changing World
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It is increasingly being recognized that land use and land cover changes driven by anthropogenic pressures are impacting terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems and their services, human society, and human livelihoods and well-being. This Special Issue contains 12 original papers covering various issues related to land use and land use changes in various parts of the world (see references), with the purpose of providing a forum to exchange ideas and progress in related areas. Research topics include land use targets, dynamic modelling and mapping using satellite images, pressures from energy production, deforestation, impacts on ecosystem services, aboveground biomass evaluation, and investigations on libraries of legends and classification systems.
Collaborative Cities: Mapping Solutions to Wicked Problems
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Dynamic problems require dynamic collaboration and technology. Our communities today face difficult issues--such as climate change, access to health care, and homelessness--which are tangled, complicated, and constantly evolving. Coined "wicked problems" more than 40 years ago by the University of California's professors Horst Rittel and C. West Churchman, these issues exceed the capacity of any one sector, instead demanding the kind of creative thinking, democratized engagement, and integrated action that come from government, nonprofits, businesses, and citizens working in concert. These different stakeholders, however, don't always agree on the best approach, strategy, or goals. But their commonality in driving social outcomes relies on place: where problems are happening, where people need assistance and help defining the issues. Maps combine complex and relational information that can be visualized and analyzed to deal with these issues. When used with technological developments in data analytics, visualization, connectivity, and the Internet of Things (IoT), mapping can promote effective cross-sector collaboration. Written for citizens and city leaders, Collaborative Cities: Mapping Solutions to Wicked Problems guides readers into using location intelligence to derive public value from action. Co-authors Stephen Goldsmith (former mayor of Indianapolis and deputy mayor of New York) and Kate Markin Coleman (former executive vice president for branding and strategy at the YMCA) use their combined years of experience to analyze the best civic examples of geospatial technology working across cross-sector networks. Divided into eight chapters, Collaborative Cities addresses the formation, operation, and adaptation of cross-sector collaborations, including five chapters dedicated to specific wicked problems such as public safety, homelessness, and sustainability. Starting with Collaborative Cities, government officials, nonprofit leaders, and citizens alike who are acting for social value can learn how to use a geospatial approach to improve insight, trust, and the efficacy of their combined efforts to solve wicked problems.
Valuing Place and Purpose: GIS for Land Administration
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Modern land administration applies geospatial thinking to better understand and plan the proper use, conservation, and equitable use of land and property. Location intelligence is changing the way land administration works to protect and maintain appropriate land use and achieve better economic, environmental, and social benefits. The real-life stories in Valuing Place and Purpose: GIS for Land Administration show how communities, government agencies, nonprofits, and other organizations implement geographic information systems (GIS) in four key areas: · Visualizing parcels and property · Managing land use · Strengthening climate and conservation efforts · Addressing land rights, equity, and social justice The book also includes a special section to help readers get started using web apps, online maps, dashboards, and other GIS solutions to represent and understand the value of land and property and efficiently manage, edit, and share land parcel data more accurately.
Designing Our Future: GIS for Architecture, Engineering, and Construction
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Learn how architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) firms work to improve sustainability objectives and advance new ideas about creating more livable cities, workplaces, and campuses as they create greater operational efficiency. Location intelligence is changing how land development and large infrastructure projects take shape. From new residential construction to planning a modern urban experience to building a high-speed rail system, a geographic approach helps pave the way to better, more sustainable designs. In Designing Our Future: GIS for Architecture, Engineering & Construction, see how the AEC industry is implementing geographic information systems (GIS) to improve workflows, bring context to large undertakings, and increase collaboration between governments, contractors, partners, and the public. With GIS, architects, engineers, and construction professionals are discovering new efficiencies, gaining deeper insights about complex projects, and transforming the way they plan, design, build, and operate in the built and natural environments. In this collection of case studies and "how to" guidance, gain an overview of how GIS was used to: Reduce the carbon footprint and mitigate future climate-related damage from a cross-country, high-speed rail project in the US Document all above and below ground assets such as utility services, electric, gas, surface water and sewer drainage for a local transportation agency Plan maintenance for and respond to hazards from aging structures and vulnerable hillsides using drones in Japan Designing Our Future: GIS for Architecture, Engineering & Construction also includes a "next steps" section that provides ideas, strategies, tools, and actions to help jump-start your own use of GIS. A collection of online resources, including additional stories, videos, new ideas and concepts, and downloadable tools and content, complements this book.
Geographic Information System Skills for Foresters and Natural Resource Managers
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Geographic Information System Skills for Foresters and Natural Resource Managers provides a resource for developing knowledge and skills concerning GIS as it applies to forestry and natural resource management. This book helps readers understand how GIS can effectively be used by professional foresters and land managers to conduct spatial analyses or address management decisions. Through topics presented, readers will improve their ability to understand GIS data sources, identify GIS data types and quality, perform common spatial analysis processes, create GIS data, produce maps, and ultimately develop the skills necessary to use GIS analysis to answer real-world questions. This book will be of great benefit to GIS users looking to directly apply techniques to real-world data or foresters and natural resource scientists who use GIS in their research. Presents unique reflections, diversions, inspections and translations within the text to encourage readers' critical thinking skills Includes a companion website to enhance the reflections, diversions, inspections and translations with additional resources Designed with examples, discussions and case studies from seasoned natural resource professionals with decades of combined professional experience
Geospatial Information Handbook for Water Resources and Watershed Management, Volume I, Fundamentals and Analyses
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Volume I of Geospatial Information Handbook for Water Resources and Watershed Management discusses fundamental characteristics, measurements and analyses of water features and watersheds including lakes and reservoirs, rivers and streams, and coasts and estuaries. It presents contemporary knowledge on Geospatial Technology (GT) supported functional analyses of water runoff, storage and balance, flooding and floodplains, water quality, soils and moisture, climate vulnerabilities and ecosystem services. Captures advanced Geospatial Technologies (GT) addressing a wide range of water issues. Provides real world applications and Case Studies using advanced spectral and spatial sensors combined with geospatially facilitated water process models. Details applications of ArcInfo/ArcGIS, Google Earth Engine and other systems using advanced remote sensors including hyperspectral ER2 AVIRIS, Sentinel-1 and -2, MODIS, Landsat 7 ETM+, Landsat 8 OLI and TIPS, SAR radar and thermal imaging. Global in coverage with applications contributed by more than 170 authors with lifelong expertise in water sciences and engineering. This handbook is a wide ranging and contemporary reference of advanced geospatial techniques used in numerous practical applications at local and regional scale, and an in-depth resource for professionals and the water research community worldwide.
The Anthropocene: 101 Questions and Answers for Understanding the Human Impact on the Global Environment
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The Anthropocene is an authoritative desk-top reference work for students of geography, the environment and sustainability. Through a series of 101 interconnected questions and answers spanning ten thematic sections, the book provides a comprehensive survey of humankind's impact on the global environment from the Late Stone Age to the present day. Unrivalled in scope, the book distills the latest research findings and scholarship across a remarkable range of topics concerning the evolving human-environment relationship. These include the broad history of human-induced changes in the environmental conditions of the planet; the major human impacts on the Earth and their consequences; and the different causes and rationales applied to understanding these environmental changes. All questions are answered succinctly and rigorously and draw on a wealth of contemporary evidence and scientific theories. The book is colour illustrated throughout, answers are fully cross-referenced and further readings are suggested for those wishing to delve deeper. For anyone seeking to understand the human-induced changes to our planet and the challenges these pose for sustainability, this book is an invaluable resource. It provides a masterly presentation of the human footprint on the Earth system.
Resilient Communities Across Geographies
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What makes a community resilient? How do we ensure its sustainable future? Resilience--the unique ability to positively adapt to changing physical and social environments--is essential for populations of all sizes and locales in today's world of unexpected changes and increasing instances of environmental change. Communities around the globe possess unique combinations of culture, skills, and abilities in context of unique built and natural environments. Identifying and mapping community strengths and resources facilitates effective planning for where and how to focus and manage their unique cultures and characteristics. Resilient Communities across Geographies is a collection of case studies examining the application of geographic information systems (GIS) to environmental and socioeconomic challenges for analysis, planning, and, ultimately, more resilient communities. Each chapter discusses a spatially driven approach to challenges in geography, social sciences, landscape architecture, urban planning, environmental studies, sociology, economics, migration, community development, meteorology, oceanography, and other fields. Examples explore both the natural and cultural contexts of climate adaptation in built environments and cultural impacts in a diversity of communities. These include the Martu people of Australia, First Nation youth in Canada, and cultural diversity of indigenous Los Angeles to California farmworkers facing exposure to agricultural chemicals in their communities. Each example applies powerful GIS tools and analysis to document, support, and assess resilience across these unique geographies while recognizing the value and strength which lies in the diversity of the people who live there. The stories shared within Resilient Communities across Geographies help readers develop an expanded sense of the power of spatial thinking, local knowledge, and engagement to address the difficult problems we collectively face in various locales. Edited by the authors of GIS Research Methods with a foreword by Esri Chief Medical Officer Este Geraghty.
Mapping America's national parks : preserving our natural and cultural treasures
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Get an insider look at the US National Park Service to see how they use maps and geospatial technology to protect and manage America's national parks. Maps easily cap your first greeting upon arrival at a national park, allowing you to visualize its vastness, plan your trip, and keep a compact souvenir of your visit. But for the US National Park Service (NPS), maps do more than provide guidance and navigation. Maps help the NPS protect visitors and natural resources. They help manage fires, both unplanned and prescribed. They provide a basis for preserving cultural resources, such as archaeological sites and historic buildings, and for establishing needed facilities, infrastructure, and transportation. The maps in Mapping America's National Parks: Preserving Our Natural and Cultural Treasures are not only beautiful representations of special places. Within the maps are layers of geographic information--a bevy of research and science--that the NPS uses to perform these myriad essential services and to ultimately fulfill their mission. With over 240 full-color maps and photographs of national parks, monuments, battlefields, historic sites, lakeshores, seashores, scenic rivers and trails, and more, Mapping America's National Parks takes you on a journey through our most treasured locations and shows how geographic information system (GIS) software helps the NPS keep the balance between park enjoyment and preservation. Through stories told by their own staff, discover how GIS helps the NPS: provide security for individual wildlife species, members of a crowd at a peaceful demonstration, and entire ecosystems; analyze where people most likely are stranded, where they are least likely stranded, and distribute assets in search and rescue operations; develop strategic plans, budgets, and protection for fire management; and share intelligence on wildlife trafficking, zoonotic diseases, field medicine protocols, and more. Go behind the scenes to see how mapping and geospatial analysis support the full range of NPS natural resource stewardship and science activities. With NPS planning aided by geospatial technology, future generations of park visitors--your children and their children--will be able to enjoy our national parks for years to come.
Remote Sensing Applications in Environmental and Earth System Sciences
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Remote Sensing Applications in Environmental and Earth System Sciences is a contemporary, multi-disciplinary, multi-scaling, updated, and upgraded approach of applied remote sensing in the environment. The book begins with an overview of remote sensing technology, and then explains the types of data that can be used as well as the image processing and analysis methods that can be applied to each type of application through the use of case studies throughout. Includes a wide spectrum of environmental applications and issues Explains methodological image analysis and interpretation procedures for conducting a variety of environmental analyses Discusses the development of early warning systems Covers monitoring of the environment as a whole - atmosphere, land, and water Explores the latest remote sensing systems in environmental applications This book is an excellent resource for anyone who is interested in remote sensing technologies and their use in Earth systems, natural resources, and environmental science.
Women and GIS, Volume 3, Champions of a sustainable world
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Impressive stories of women using geospatial technology to create sustainable solutions for problems the world faces. The third volume in the Women and GIS series shows how 31 diverse women in various STEAM fields discovered their passion, broke down barriers, and used maps, analysis, imagery, and geographic information systems (GIS) to advance their fields and improve the world. Sharing their experiences from childhood and throughout their careers, each woman reveals her journey in an inspiring recollection of the obstacles she has overcome, the knowledge she has gained along the way, and how tenacity and determination have helped her succeed. Each woman shares tips and words of wisdom that she's gained along the way, including: Priscilla Mbama Abasi: "Think big! Think about going to space, think about building things no one has seen before." Arianna Armelli: "If you are like me and crave the freedom to explore a path of the unknown, aka entrepreneurship, a career in STEM will foster the technical foundation to achieve those goals." Gabi Fleury: "The best advice I was given starting out was 'forge your own path.' Conservation isn't a structured, straight-line career, you can get into it in many ways. This is exciting, but it also can be really challenging, because you have to be flexible, innovative, and always on the lookout for the next opportunity." Healy Hamilton: "Success, to me, is a daily feeling that you are living true to your values, that you are meaningfully contributing to the world you want to create." Katharine Hayhoe: "While it's important to have people you respect and trust give you feedback at key points in your career, when it all comes down to it, you have to make the decisions that feel right for you, not the ones that necessarily look best on paper. You're the one who has to live with them." Featuring strong, persevering women from around the globe, the stories found in Women and GIS, Volume 3: Champions of a Sustainable World will inspire readers who are developing their own life stories to strive for success and achieve amazing accomplishments.
Mapping, monitoring, and modeling land and water resources : advanced techniques using open source software
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The wide range of challenges in studying Earth system dynamics due to uncertainties in climate change and complex interference from human activities is creating difficulties in managing land and water resources and ensuring their sustainable use. Mapping, Monitoring, and Modeling Land and Water Resources brings together real-world case studies accurately surveyed and assessed through spatial modeling. The book focuses on the effectiveness of combining remote sensing, geographic information systems, and R. The use of open source software for different spatial modeling cases in various fields, along with the use of remote sensing and geographic information systems, will aid researchers, students, and practitioners to understand better the phenomena and the predictions by future analyses for problem-solving and decision-making.
Protecting the places we love : conservation strategies for entrusted lands and parks
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Protecting special places in danger of being changed forever requires urgent action. It's time for bold conservation strategies to boost land protection around the world. Bold conservation goals require strategic action. In Protecting the Places We Love: Conservation Strategies for Entrusted Lands and Parks, conservationist and geospatial designer Breece Robertson applies her conservation experience, real-world examples, and myriad resources to deliver a vision for success and clear guidance for conservation groups large and small to achieve their goals. The goals of these strategies are familiar: support species, habitats, and natural resources and healthy, livable communities that are climate resilient and socially cohesive, all without high costs. Robertson's tools, many of them free, feel quickly accessible, effective, and adaptable to a new or existing conservation strategy. Readers finish this book feeling confident about integrating existing practices with geospatial data and modern applications. With the smart analysis and targeted action explained in Protecting the Places We Love, readers will better identify places needing protection and better understand how to maximize partnerships, inspire, educate, and engage communities and donors, and produce better results. See the vision and learn to: create maps that tell compelling stories to stakeholders and the public analyze park system equity and access and show the economic benefits map, model, and analyze land characteristics to enhance biodiversity, connectivity, and climate resilience use maps and data to gain insights for fundraising, program initiatives, policy, advocacy, finances, and marketing. Protecting the Places We Love is perfect for citizens, and for conservation advocates and professionals at small to medium-sized land trusts, conservation organizations, and park agencies. Examples from land protection organizations all over the globe provide field-tested approaches to improve strategic effectiveness. Robertson provides a vision, strategies, and resources that can take your conservation efforts to the next level.
The Routledge Handbook of Critical Resource Geography
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This Handbook provides an essential guide to the study of resources and their role in socio-environmental change. With original contributions from more than 60 authors with expertise in a wide range of resource types and world regions, it offers a toolkit of conceptual and methodological approaches for documenting, analyzing, and reimagining resources and the worlds with which they are entangled. The volume has an introduction and four thematic sections. The introductory chapter outlines key trajectories for thinking critically with and about resources. Chapters in Section I, "(Un)knowing resources," offer distinct epistemological entry points and approaches for studying resources. Chapters in Section II, "(Un)knowing resource systems," examine the components and logics of the capitalist systems through which resources are made, circulated, consumed, and disposed of, while chapters in Section III, "Doing critical resource geography: Methods, advocacy, and teaching," focus on the practices of critical resource scholarship, exploring the opportunities and challenges of carrying out engaged forms of research and pedagogy. Chapters in Section IV, "Resource-making/world-making," use case studies to illustrate how things are made into resources and how these processes of resource-making transform socio-environmental life. This vibrant and diverse critical resource scholarship provides an indispensable reference point for researchers, students, and practitioners interested in understanding how resources matter to the world and to the systems, conflicts, and debates that make and remake it.
The atlas of disappearing places : our coasts and oceans in the climate crisis
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A beautiful and engaging guide to global warming's impacts around the world Our planet is in peril. Seas are rising, oceans are acidifying, ice is melting, coasts are flooding, species are dying, and communities are faltering. Despite these dire circumstances, most of us don't have a clear sense of how the interconnected crises in our ocean are affecting the climate system, food webs, coastal cities, and biodiversity, and which solutions can help us co-create a better future. Through a rich combination of place-based storytelling, clear explanations of climate science and policy, and beautifully rendered maps that use a unique ink-on-dried-seaweed technique, The Atlas of Disappearing Places depicts twenty locations across the globe, from Shanghai and Antarctica to Houston and the Cook Islands. The authors describe four climate change impacts--changing chemistry, warming waters, strengthening storms, and rising seas--using the metaphor of the ocean as a body to draw parallels between natural systems and human systems. Each chapter paints a portrait of an existential threat in a particular place, detailing what will be lost if we do not take bold action now. Weaving together contemporary stories and speculative "future histories" for each place, this work considers both the serious consequences if we continue to pursue business as usual, and what we can do--from government policies to grassroots activism--to write a different, more hopeful story. A beautiful work of art and an indispensable resource to learn more about the devastating consequences of the climate crisis--as well as possibilities for individual and collective action--The Atlas of Disappearing Places will engage and inspire readers on the most pressing issue of our time.
Fundamentals of Capturing and Processing Drone Imagery and Data
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Unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) are rapidly emerging as flexible platforms for capturing imagery and other data across the sciences. Many colleges and universities are developing courses on UAS-based data acquisition. Fundamentals of Capturing and Processing Drone Imagery and Data is a comprehensive, introductory text on how to use unmanned aircraft systems for data capture and analysis. It provides best practices for planning data capture missions and hands-on learning modules geared toward UAS data collection, processing, and applications. FEATURES Lays out a step-by-step approach to identify relevant tools and methods for UAS data/image acquisition and processing. Provides practical hands-on knowledge with visual interpretation, well-organized and designed for a typical 16-week UAS course offered on college and university campuses. Suitable for all levels of readers and does not require prior knowledge of UAS, remote sensing, digital image processing, or geospatial analytics. Includes real-world environmental applications along with data interpretations and software used; exercises in chapters 8 through 19 have support materials for free download. Combines the expertise of a wide range of UAS researchers and practitioners across the geospatial sciences. This book provides a general introduction to drones along with a series of hands-on exercises that students and researchers can engage with to learn to integrate drone data into real-world applications. No prior background in remote sensing, GIS, or drone knowledge is needed to use this book. Readers will learn to process different types of UAS imagery for applications (such as precision agriculture, forestry, urban landscapes) and apply this knowledge in environmental monitoring and land-use studies.
Geographic Information Science for Land Resource Management
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Geographic Information Science for Land Resource Management is a comprehensive book focusing on managing land resources using innovative techniques of spatial information sciences and satellite remote sensing. The enormous stress on the land resources over the years due to anthropogenic activities for commercialization and livelihood needs has increased manifold. The only solution to this problem lies in stakeholder awareness, which can only be attained through scientific means. The awareness is the basis of the sustainable development concept, which involves optimal management of natural resources, subject to the availability of reliable, accurate, and timely information from the global to local scales. GIScience consists of satellite remote sensing (RS), Geographical Information System (GIS), and Global Positioning System (GPS) technology that is nowadays a backbone of environmental protection, natural resource management, and sustainable development and planning. Being a powerful and proficient tool for mapping, monitoring, modeling, and managing natural resources can help understand the earth surface and its dynamics at different observational scales. Through the spatial understanding of land resources, policymakers can make prudent decisions to restore and conserve critically endangered resources, such as water bodies, lakes, rivers, air, forests, wildlife, biodiversity, etc. This innovative new volume contains chapters from eminent researchers and experts. The primary focus of this book is to replenish the gap in the available literature on the subject by bringing the concepts, theories, and experiences of the specialists and professionals in this field jointly. The editors have worked hard to get the best literature in this field in a book form to help the students, researchers, and policymakers develop a complete understanding of the land system vulnerabilities and solutions.
Global Navigation Satellite System Monitoring of the Atmosphere
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Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) monitoring of the atmosphere is an interdisciplinary topic: a collaboration between geodetic and atmospheric communities. As such, this topic requires sufficient basic knowledge about both GNSS and the atmosphere. Global Navigation Satellite System Monitoring of the Atmosphere begins by introducing GNSS, its components, and signals. It then explains the basics of the atmosphere, starting from the ionosphere to the troposphere. The GNSS tropospheric monitoring is separated for application in numerical weather prediction and nowcasting. Further chapters focus on the application of GNSS for monitoring the climate as well as soil moisture. Finally, the book concludes by discussing GNSS processing along with introducing the latest developments and applications for using atmospheric data to provide precise real-time GNSS products. Explains the basics of GNSS positioning and signals Includes the state of the art in GNSS observations of the atmosphere and hydrosphere Presents the basics of numerical weather prediction and analysis
Mapping Nature Across the Americas
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Maps are inherently unnatural. Projecting three-dimensional realities onto two-dimensional surfaces, maps are abstractions that capture someone's idea of what matters within a particular place; they require selections and omissions. It is these very characteristics, however, that give maps their importance in understanding how humans have interacted with the natural world and that give historical maps especially the power to provide rich insights into the relationship between humans and nature over time. That is just what is achieved in Mapping Nature across the Americas. Illustrated throughout, the essays in this book argue for the greater analysis of historical maps in the field of environmental history and for greater attention within the field of the history of cartography to the cultural constructions of nature contained within maps. This volume thus provides the first in-depth and interdisciplinary investigation of the relationship between maps and environmental knowledge in the Americas, from sixteenth-century indigenous cartography in Mexico to the mapping of American forests in the United States during the early conservation years of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
GIS for science : maps for saving the planet.
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GIS for Science: Maps for Saving the Planet, Volume 3, highlights real-world examples of scientists creating maps about saving life on Earth and preserving biodiversity. With Earth and the natural world at risk from various forces, geographic information system (GIS) mapping is essential for driving scientifically conscious decision-making about how to protect life on Earth. In volume 3 of GIS for Science, explore a collection of maps from scientists working to save the planet through documenting and protecting its biodiversity. In this volume, learn how GIS and data mapping are used in tandem with global satellite observation forestry marine policy artificial intelligence conservation biology, and environmental education to help preserve and chronicle life on Earth. This volume also spotlights important global action initiatives incorporating conservation, including Half-Earth, 30 x 30, AI for Earth, the Blue Nature Alliance, and the Sustainable Development Solutions Network. The stories presented in this third volume are ideal for the professional scientist and conservationist and anyone interested in the intersection of technology and the conservation of nature. The book's contributors include scientists who are applying geographic data gathered from the full spectrum of remote sensing and on-site technologies. The maps and data are brought to life using ArcGIS® software and other spatial data science tools that support research, collaboration, spatial analysis, and science communication across many locations and within diverse communities. The stories shared in this book and its companion website present inspirational ideas so that GIS users and scientists can work toward preserving biodiversity and saving planet Earth before time runs out.
Mapping for a sustainable world
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The book comprises four sections. Section 1 introduces the SDGs and their relation to geospatial data, describing SDG indicators and data transformations for mapping. Section 2 describes foundational design decisions in the cartographic workflow, including projections, scale, generalization, symbolization, typography, and visual hierarchy, among others. Section 3 introduces the common map types (e.g., choropleths, proportional symbols, dasymetric maps, bivariate maps, cartograms) and diagrams (e.g., bar graphs, scatterplots, timelines) for representing the SDG indicators. Finally, Section 4 discusses considerations for map use environments, such as audiences, user interfaces and interaction operators, mobile and web media, storytelling versus exploration, and open access. The book has an editorial team comprising writers from the International Cartographic Association (ICA) and the Geospatial Information Section of the United Nations (UN). The book is published as an open access document according to the CC-BY-NC license. When drawing from or reusing text or figures from this book, attribute/cite as follows Kraak MJ, RE Roth, B Ricker, A Kagawa, and G Le Sourd. 2020. Mapping for a Sustainable World. The United Nations: New York, NY (USA). The institutes of the editors (University of Twente / ITC, University of Wisconsin-Madison), and the UW Cartography Laboratory (design and layout), and the United Nations Geospatial Information Section have made the necessary resources available to realize the book.ortunities and mitigate risks, in order to ensure that the Secretary-General and the UN system provide relevant, timely and effective support to Member States to turn the tide of financing to invest in sustainable, inclusive development for all.
Front matter -- Acroynms -- Mapping for a sustainable world -- Foreword -- Contributions to the book -- Introduction -- Section 1 -- SDGs & geospatial data -- Section 2 -- Map design considerations Section 3 -- Maps & diagrams -- Section 4 -- Map use environments -- Back matter.
The international geodesign collaboration : changing geography by design
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The world faces challenges that supersede and ignore national and regional boundaries and cannot be solved by a single individual, nation, science, or profession. Preparing for the outcomes of population growth and rising global temperatures requires multidisciplinary approaches and collaboration amoung all the stakeholders. Global social and environmental issues will increasingly become multiregional and multinational, and we therefore will need to plan in what should become one language. The language of geodesign. In The International Geodesign Collaboration: Changing Geography by Design, editors Thomas Fisher, Brian Orland, and Carl Steinitz introduce you to a geodesign approach that allows multiple disciplinary teams to collaborate and design at geographic scale using geographic information systems (GIS) and design tools to explore alternative future scenarios. Learn The International Geodesign Collaboration workflow for addressing the complex global challenges when working on widely diverse, multidisciplinary projects. Explore the potential futures of 51 university project areas around the world. The International Geodesign Collaboration: Changing Geography by Design shows how researchers, scientists, designers, and students, can use geodesign principles to work together through analysis, technology, and collaboration.
Women and GIS, Vol. 2, Stars of spatial science
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Foreword by Jane Goodall Thirty inspiring stories of diverse women using geospatial technology to advance science and help resolve important issues facing the world. Like the first volume, Women and GIS, Volume 2: Stars of Spatial Science tells how 30 women in many different STEM fields applied themselves, overcame obstacles, and used maps, analysis, imagery, and geographic information systems (GIS) to contribute to their professions and the world. Sharing the experiences of their childhoods, the misstarts and challenges they faced, and the lessons they learned, each story is a celebration of a woman's unique life path and of the perseverance, dedication, and hard work it takes to achieve success. This book includes multicultural women at various points in their careers such as: Barbara Ryan -- Dedicated to open spatial data for everyone Cecille Blake -- Growing GIS capacity in Jamaica and for North and South American countries Rhiannan Price -- Advocating to make a difference for vulnerable populations Verónica Vélez -- Fighting for social and racial justice in education Tanya Harrison -- Bringing Mars to the masses From planetary scientists to civil engineers, entrepreneurs to urban planners, the strong, passionate women in Women and GIS, Volume 2: Stars of Spatial Science serve as guiding stars to motivate readers who are developing their own life stories and to inspire their potential to meaningful achievements.
Remote Sensing of Plant Biodiversity
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This Open Access volume aims to methodologically improve our understanding of biodiversity by linking disciplines that incorporate remote sensing, and uniting data and perspectives in the fields of biology, landscape ecology, and geography. The book provides a framework for how biodiversity can be detected and evaluated--focusing particularly on plants--using proximal and remotely sensed hyperspectral data and other tools such as LiDAR. The volume, whose chapters bring together a large cross-section of the biodiversity community engaged in these methods, attempts to establish a common language across disciplines for understanding and implementing remote sensing of biodiversity across scales. The first part of the book offers a potential basis for remote detection of biodiversity. An overview of the nature of biodiversity is described, along with ways for determining traits of plant biodiversity through spectral analyses across spatial scales and linking spectral data to the tree of life. The second part details what can be detected spectrally and remotely. Specific instrumentation and technologies are described, as well as the technical challenges of detection and data synthesis, collection and processing. The third part discusses spatial resolution and integration across scales and ends with a vision for developing a global biodiversity monitoring system. Topics include spectral and functional variation across habitats and biomes, biodiversity variables for global scale assessment, and the prospects and pitfalls in remote sensing of biodiversity at the global scale.
Unmanned aerial remote sensing : UAS for environmental applications
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Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) are a rapidly evolving technology with an expanding array of diverse applications. In response to the continuing evolution of this technology, this book discusses unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and similar systems, platforms and sensors, as well as exploring some of their environmental applications. It explains how they can be used for mapping, monitoring, and modeling a wide variety of different environmental aspects, and at the same time addresses some of the current constraints placed on realizing the potential use of the technology such as s flight duration and distance, safety, and the invasion of privacy etc. Features of the book: Provides necessary theoretical foundations for pertinent subject matter areas Introduces the role and value of UAVs for geographical data acquisition, and the ways to acquire and process the data Provides a synthesis of ongoing research and a focus on the use of technology for small-scale image and spatial data acquisition in an environmental context Written by experts of the technology who bring together UAS tools and resources for the environmental specialist Unmanned Aerial Remote Sensing: UAS for Environmental Applications is an excellent resource for any practitioner utilizing remote sensing and other geospatial technologies for environmental applications, such as conservation, research, and planning. Students and academics in information science, environment and natural resources, geosciences, and geography, will likewise find this comprehensive book a useful and informative resource.
Hidden nature : wild southern caves
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Reed Environmental Writing Award Finalist, Southern Environmental Law Center, 2021 More than ten thousand known caves lie beneath the state of Tennessee according to the Tennessee Cave Survey, a nonprofit organization that catalogs and maps them. Thousands more riddle surrounding states. In Hidden Nature, Michael Ray Taylor tells the story of this vast underground wilderness. In addition to describing the sheer physical majesty of the region's wild caverns and the concurrent joys and dangers of exploring them, he examines their rich natural history and scientific import, their relationship to clean water and a healthy surface environment, and their uncertain future. As a longtime caver and the author of three popular books related to caving--Cave Passages, Dark Life, and Caves--Taylor enjoys (for a journalist) unusual access to this secretive world. He is personally acquainted with many of the region's most accomplished cave explorers and scientists, and they in turn are familiar with his popular writing on caves in books; in magazines such as Audubon, Outside, and Sports Illustrated; and on websites such as those of the Discovery Channel and the PBS science series Nova. Hidden Nature is structured as a comprehensive work of well-researched fact that reads like a personal narrative of the author's long attraction to these caves and the people who dare enter their hidden chambers.
Introduction to spatial data analysis : remote sensing and GIS with open source software
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This is a book about how ecologists can integrate remote sensing and GIS in their research. It will allow readers to get started with the application of remote sensing and to understand its potential and limitations. Using practical examples, the book covers all necessary steps from planning field campaigns to deriving ecologically relevant information through remote sensing and modelling of species distributions. An Introduction to Spatial Data Analysis introduces spatial data handling using the open source software Quantum GIS (QGIS). In addition, readers will be guided through their first steps in the R programming language. The authors explain the fundamentals of spatial data handling and analysis, empowering the reader to turn data acquired in the field into actual spatial data. Readers will learn to process and analyse spatial data of different types and interpret the data and results. After finishing this book, readers will be able to address questions such as "What is the distance to the border of the protected area?", "Which points are located close to a road?", "Which fraction of land cover types exist in my study area?" using different software and techniques. This book is for novice spatial data users and does not assume any prior knowledge of spatial data itself or practical experience working with such data sets. Readers will likely include student and professional ecologists, geographers and any environmental scientists or practitioners who need to collect, visualize and analyse spatial data. The software used is the widely applied open source scientific programs QGIS and R. All scripts and data sets used in the book will be provided online at book.ecosens.org. This book covers specific methods including: what to consider before collecting in situ data how to work with spatial data collected in situ the difference between raster and vector data how to acquire further vector and raster data how to create relevant environmental information how to combine and analyse in situ and remote sensing data how to create useful maps for field work and presentations how to use QGIS and R for spatial analysis how to develop analysis scripts
Deep Time Reckoning: How Future Thinking Can Help Earth Now
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A guide to long-term thinking- how to envision the far future of Earth. We live on a planet careening toward environmental collapse that will be largely brought about by our own actions. And yet we struggle to grasp the scale of the crisis, barely able to imagine the effects of climate change just ten years from now, let alone the multi-millennial timescales of Earth's past and future life span. In this book, Vincent Ialenti offers a guide for envisioning the planet's far future-to become, as he terms it, more skilled deep time reckoners. The challenge, he says, is to learn to inhabit a longer now. Ialenti takes on two overlapping crises- the Anthropocene, our current moment of human-caused environmental transformation; and the deflation of expertise-today's popular mockery and institutional erosion of expert authority. The second crisis, he argues, is worsening the effects of the first. Hearing out scientific experts who study a wider time span than a Facebook timeline is key to tackling our planet's emergency. Astrophysicists, geologists, historians, evolutionary biologists, climatologists, archaeologists, and others can teach us the art of long-termism. For a case study in long-term thinking, Ialenti turns to Finland's nuclear waste repository "Safety Case" experts. These scientists forecast far future glaciations, climate changes, earthquakes, and more, over the coming tens of thousands-or even hundreds of thousands or millions-of years. They are not pop culture "futurists" but data-driven, disciplined technical experts, using the power of patterns to construct detailed scenarios and quantitative models of the far future. This is the kind of time literacy we need if we are to survive the Anthropocene.
Big Data in Small Slices: Data Visualization for Communicators
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This book offers an engaging and accessible introduction to data visualization for communicators, covering everything from data collection and analysis to the creation of effective data visuals. 　 Straying from the typical "how to visualize data" genre often written for technical audiences, Big Data in Small Slices offers those new to data gathering and visualization the opportunity to better understand data itself. Using the concept of the "data backstory," each chapter features discussions with experts, from marine scientists to pediatricians and city government officials, who produce datasets in their daily work. The reader is guided through the process of designing effective visualizations based on their data, delving into how datasets are produced and vetted, and how to assess their weaknesses and strengths, ultimately offering readers the knowledge needed to produce their own effective data visuals. 　 This book is an invaluable resource for anyone interested in data visualization and storytelling, from journalism and communications students to public relations professionals. A detailed accompanying website features additional material for readers, including links to all the original datasets used in the text, at www.bigdatainsmallslices.com
GIS for science : applying mapping and spatial analytics. Volume 2
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Merging the rigor of the scientific method with the technologies of GIS GIS for Science: Applying Mapping and Spatial Analytics, Volume 2 brings to life a continuing collection of current, real-world examples of scientists using geographic information systems (GIS) and spatial data science to expand our understand of the world. Co-edited by Esri Chief Scientist Dawn Wright and Esri Technology Writer and Information Designer Christian Harder and with a foreword by Pulitzer Prize winner Jared Diamond, these case studies are part of a global effort to find ways to sustain a livable environment for all life on this planet. The contributors of GIS for Science: Applying Mapping and Spatial Analytics, Volume 2 represent a cross section of scientists who employ data gathered from satellites, aircraft, ships, drones, and myriad other remote-sensing and on-site technologies. This collected data is brought to life with GIS and the broader realm of spatial data science to study a range of issues relevant to our understanding of planet Earth--including epidemiology in light of the COVID-19 pandemic; sustainable precision agriculture; predicting geological processes below the surface of the earth; leveraging GIS near-realtime disaster response, recovery, resilience and reporting; the latest innovations in monitoring air quality; and more. Their stories also show in very practical terms how ArcGIS software and the ArcGIS Online cloud-based system work as a comprehensive geospatial platform to support research, collaboration, spatial analysis, and science communication across many settings and communities. A rich supplementary web site--gisforscience.com--includes actual data along with additional maps, videos, web apps, story maps, workflows and snippets of computer code, including Python notebooks, for readers curious to learn more. Written for professional scientists, the swelling ranks of citizen scientists, and anyone interested in science and geography, GIS for Science: Applying Mapping and Spatial Analytics, Volume 2 offers wonderful examples of our impulse to dream, discover, and understand, as coupled with the rigor and discipline of the scientific method and the foundation of geography. See how scientists from a variety of disciplines are solving some of the world's most pressing problems using geographic information systems--GIS.
Maritime Spatial Planning past, present, future
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This open access book is the first comprehensive overview of maritime or marine spatial planning. Countries across the globe are beginning to implement maritime spatial plans; however the authors of this collection have identified several key questions that are emerging from this growing body of MSP experience. How can maritime spatial planning deal with a complex and dynamic environment such as the sea? How can MSP be embedded in multiple levels of governance across regional and national borders - and how far does the environment benefit from this new approach? This book actively engages with the problems encapsulated in these questions, and explores possible solutions. Situated at the intersection between theory and practice, the volume draws together several strands of interdisciplinary research, reflecting on the history of MSP as well as examining current practice and looking towards the future. The authors and contributors examine MSP from disciplines as diverse as geography, urban planning, political science, natural science, sociology and education; reflecting the growing critical engagement with MSP in many academic fields. This innovative and pioneering volume will be of interest and value to students and scholars of maritime spatial planning, as well as planners and practitioners.
Google Earth Engine Applications
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In a rapidly changing world, there is an ever-increasing need to monitor the Earth's resources and manage it sustainably for future generations. Earth observation from satellites is critical to provide information required for informed and timely decision making in this regard. Satellite-based earth observation has advanced rapidly over the last 50 years, and there is a plethora of satellite sensors imaging the Earth at finer spatial and spectral resolutions as well as high temporal resolutions. The amount of data available for any single location on the Earth is now at the petabyte-scale. An ever-increasing capacity and computing power is needed to handle such large datasets. The Google Earth Engine (GEE) is a cloud-based computing platform that was established by Google to support such data processing. This facility allows for the storage, processing and analysis of spatial data using centralized high-power computing resources, allowing scientists, researchers, hobbyists and anyone else interested in such fields to mine this data and understand the changes occurring on the Earth's surface. This book presents research that applies the Google Earth Engine in mining, storing, retrieving and processing spatial data for a variety of applications that include vegetation monitoring, cropland mapping, ecosystem assessment, and gross primary productivity, among others. Datasets used range from coarse spatial resolution data, such as MODIS, to medium resolution datasets (Worldview -2), and the studies cover the entire globe at varying spatial and temporal scales.
Women and GIS : mapping their stories
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Twenty-three stories about how ordinary girls with very different passions have become extraordinary women and made significant contributions to our world Women look to other women as role models and for inspiration. Seeing confidence, leadership and accomplishments in other women helps a young woman envision herself with those qualities. Women and GIS: Mapping Their Stories tells the tales of how 23 women applied themselves and overcame obstacles, using maps, analysis, and geographic information systems (GIS) to contribute to their professions and the world. Sharing the experiences of their childhoods, the misstarts and challenges they faced, and the lessons they learned, each story is a celebration of a woman's unique path and of the perseverance and hard work it takes to achieve success. From oceanographers to activists, archaeologists to entrepreneurs, the women in Women and GIS: Mapping Their Stories can serve as mentors to motivate readers who are developing their own life stories and inspire their potential in a new way.
Spatial thinking in environmental contexts : maps, archives, and timelines
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Spatial Thinking in Environmental Contexts: Maps, Archives, and Timelines cultivates the spatial thinking "habit of mind" as a critical geographical view of how the world works, including how environmental systems function, and how we can approach and solve environmental problems using maps, archives, and timelines. The work explains why spatial thinking matters as it helps readers to integrate a variety of methods to describe and analyze spatial/temporal events and phenomena in disparate environmental contexts. It weaves together maps, GIS, timelines, and storytelling as important strategies in examining concepts and procedures in analyzing real-world data and relationships. The work thus adds significant value to qualitative and quantitative research in environmental (and related) sciences. Features Written by internationally renowned experts known for taking complex ideas and finding accessible ways to more broadly understand and communicate them. Includes real-world studies explaining the merging of disparate data in a sensible manner, understandable across several disciplines. Unique approach to spatial thinking involving animated maps, 3D maps, GEOMATs, and story maps to integrate maps, archives, and timelines--first across a single environmental example and then through varied examples. Merges spatial and temporal views on a broad range of environmental issues from traditional environmental topics to more unusual ones involving urban studies, medicine, municipal/governmental application, and citizen-scientist topics. Provides easy to follow step-by-step instructions to complete tasks; no prior experience in data processing is needed.
GIS for Science, Volume 1, Applying Mapping and Spatial Analytics
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GIS for Science presents a collection of real-world stories about modern science and a cadre of scientists who use mapping and spatial analytics to expand their understanding of the world. The accounts in this book are written for a broad audience including professional scientists, the swelling ranks of citizen scientists, and people generally interested in science and geography. Scientific data are brought to life with GIS technology to study a range of issues relevant to the functioning of planet Earth in a natural sense as well as the impacts of human activity. In a race against the clock, the scientists profiled in this volume are using remote sensing, web maps within a geospatial cloud, Esri StoryMaps, and spatial analysis to document and solve an array of issues with a geographic dimension, ranging from climate change, natural disasters, and loss of biodiversity, to homelessness, loss of green infrastructure, and resource shortages. These stories present geospatial ideas and inspiration that readers can apply across many disciplines, making this volume relevant to a diverse scientific audience. See how scientists working on the world's most pressing problems apply geographic information systems--GIS.
Manual of Digital Earth
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This open access book offers a summary of the development of Digital Earth over the past twenty years. By reviewing the initial vision of Digital Earth, the evolution of that vision, the relevant key technologies, and the role of Digital Earth in helping people respond to global challenges, this publication reveals how and why Digital Earth is becoming vital for acquiring, processing, analysing and mining the rapidly growing volume of global data sets about the Earth. The main aspects of Digital Earth covered here include: Digital Earth platforms, remote sensing and navigation satellites, processing and visualizing geospatial information, geospatial information infrastructures, big data and cloud computing, transformation and zooming, artificial intelligence, Internet of Things, and social media. Moreover, the book covers in detail the multi-layered/multi-faceted roles of Digital Earth in response to sustainable development goals, climate changes, and mitigating disasters, the applications of Digital Earth (such as digital city and digital heritage), the citizen science in support of Digital Earth, the economic value of Digital Earth, and so on. This book also reviews the regional and national development of Digital Earth around the world, and discusses the role and effect of education and ethics. Lastly, it concludes with a summary of the challenges and forecasts the future trends of Digital Earth. By sharing case studies and a broad range of general and scientific insights into the science and technology of Digital Earth, this book offers an essential introduction for an ever-growing international audience.
SAR Image Interpretation for Various Land Covers: a Practical Guide
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This full color book is a comprehensive visual reference for the interpretation of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images with examples of how technological specifications may affect interpretation solutions. It contains a summary review of image acquisition parameters of consequence on the visual representation of objects, introduces traditional interpretation keys under different light and applies them for considering regional landscape components and identifying large-scale geographical ensembles. Through elements of interpretation such as the construct of tone, texture, pattern, size, and shape, the book explains the rich unique context of many terrains. It provides also several SAR X- and C-band image examples of regional and large-scale land use and land cover (LULC) ensembles, includes important explanations for each illustration, and highlights selected SAR image applications. Ancillary information includes acquisition specifications, a geographic scale, and the image-center latitude and longitude. Features: Provides ready access to any type of information for an image interpretation problem related to current LULC classification schemes. Presents scalable geographic information interpreted at a regional scale and land cover ensembles that can also be interpreted locally. Provides comparative examples of images acquired from X- and C-band, opposed look directions, near- and far-range incidence angles, like- and cross-polarization modes. Includes practical explanations easily transferred to individual's research projects. Designed as "visual dictionary," SAR Image Interpretation for Various Land Covers: A Practical Guide, is an excellent introduction to the visual interpretation of SAR images for numerous types of LULC. Both practitioners and students will familiarize themselves with and expand their knowledge of geographic information conveyed from radar images while government agencies and businesses that use LULC-related data for emergency response cases of for urban and regional planning, will find this book invaluable.
Assessing potential climate change pressures across the conterminous United States : mapping plant hardiness zones, heat zones, growing degree days, and cumulative drought severity throughout this century
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The maps and tables presented here represent potential variability of projected climate change across the
conterminous United States during three 30-year periods in this century and emphasizes the importance
of evaluating multiple signals of change across large spatial domains. Maps of growing degree days, plant
hardiness zones, heat zones, and cumulative drought severity depict the potential for markedly shifting
conditions and highlight regions where changes may be multifaceted across these metrics. In addition to
the maps, the potential change in these climate variables are summarized in tables according to the seven
regions of the fourth National Climate Assessment to provide additional regional context. Viewing these
data collectively further emphasizes the potential for novel climatic space under future projections of climate
change and signals the wide disparity in these conditions based on relatively near-term human decisions of
curtailing (or not) greenhouse gas emissions.
The Birth of the Anthropocene
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The world faces an environmental crisis unprecedented in human history. Carbon dioxide levels have reached heights not seen for three million years, and the greatest mass extinction since the time of the dinosaurs appears to be underway. Such far-reaching changes suggest something remarkable: the beginning of a new geological epoch. It has been called the Anthropocene. The Birth of the Anthropocene shows how this epochal transformation puts the deep history of the planet at the heart of contemporary environmental politics. By opening a window onto geological time, the idea of the Anthropocene changes our understanding of present-day environmental destruction and injustice. Linking new developments in earth science to the insights of world historians, Jeremy Davies shows that as the Anthropocene epoch begins, politics and geology have become inextricably entwined.
The Oxford encyclopedia of climate change communication
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Through a comprehensive collection of articles, The Oxford Encyclopedia of Climate Change Communication explores the origin and evolution of our understanding of climate change as it is presented in communication and media. Taking a multifaceted approach, the encyclopedia offers a scholarlyexamination of the effects of climate change communication on public opinion and policy decisions; journalistic coverage and media portrayals of climate change; communication strategies and campaigns; and the implications for effective communication, including those of outreach and advocacy efforts.Additionally, the encyclopedia reviews climate change communication research methods and approaches. Global in breadth and deeply resourced, The Oxford Encyclopedia of Climate Change Communication serves as an essential source of perspective on all aspects of this important area of scholarship. Itis led by Editor in Chief Dr. Matthew C. Nisbet, along with Associate Editors Dr. Shirley S. Ho, Dr. Ezra Markowitz, Dr. Saffron O'Neill, Dr. Mike S. Schafer, and Dr. Jagadish Thaker.
Geospatial Applications for Natural Resources Management
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Shelving Guide: This book will present new research regarding the interdisciplinary applications of spatial information sciences for identification, assessment, monitoring, and modeling issues related to natural resources and environmental management. It will focus on the creation, collection, storage, processing, modeling, interpretation, display and dissemination of spatio-temporal data, which could greatly aid with environmental management issues including ecosystem change, resource utilization, land use management, and environmental pollution. The positive environmental impacts of information technology advancements with regard to global environmental and climate change will also be discussed. Features Explains how geospatial information can best serve environmental management needs, including ecosystem change, resource utilization, land use management, and environmental pollution. Examines the environmental impacts of information technology advancements with regard to global environmental and climate change. Focuses on the creation, collection, storage, processing, modeling, interpretation, display and dissemination of environmental spatio-temporal data. Presents examples of applications for spatial information sciences regarding the assessment, monitoring, and modeling of natural resources. Includes practical case studies in every chapter.
GIS - an Overview of Applications
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GIS - An Overview of Applications is a compilation of reviews that give an overview of the latest advances in Geographic Information System (GIS) technology. The multidisciplinary nature of the book gives readers perspectives in research fields as diverse as forest management, land use and cover, tourism, environment impact assessment, climate change studies, biodiversity and health care and mobility studies.The book is a suitable reference for graduates involved in data engineering and GIS courses as well as working professionals in the field of data engineering, analysis and management.
GIS for surface water : using the national hydrography dataset
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GIS for Surface Water: Using the National Hydrography Dataset enables scientists, managers, and students to understand the complexities of the vital surface waters of the United States. It triggers exploration and analysis by combining the ready-to-use powers of a comprehensive database of the nation's waters and the ArcGIS® platform for geographic data analysis and mapping. This book explains how the water that exists on the landscape has been translated into a computer database, and how data about the water, such as chemistry and fish habitat, is linked to this database. Elevation data is also incorporated to produce watersheds at the micro and macro levels. This information, along with climatic data, leads to the creation of water flow and velocity estimates for every segment in the 7.5-million-mile drainage network in the United States. With the development of this complete water information system, the reader is poised to generate new knowledge of the behavior of surface water systems. Application of the ArcGIS suite of geographic and network analysis tools makes the science of surface water come to life. GIS for Surface Water vividly demonstrates how the vast capabilities of ArcGIS can be easily applied to the National Hydrography Dataset and companion Watershed Boundary Dataset to reveal the intricate properties of complex water networks. A variety of GIS operations are made simpler through the use of ArcGIS. You will be able to input the National Hydrography Dataset in your GIS and trace the path of water within minutes. With just a little more effort, you will be able to create enlightening flow-volume maps showing how much water flows through any given river system. By following basic principles outlined in the book, you will discover that these methods also apply to the science of surface-water systems for any nation. User stories by experienced water analysts arte also included to help buoy your knowledge of GIS for surface water.
High Spatial Resolution Remote Sensing
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High spatial resolution remote sensing is an area of considerable current interest and builds on developments in object-based image analysis, commercial high-resolution satellite sensors, and UAVs. It captures more details through high and very high resolution images (10 to 100 cm/pixel). This unprecedented level of detail offers the potential extraction of a range of multi-resource management information, such as precision farming, invasive and endangered vegetative species delineation, forest gap sizes and distribution, locations of highly valued habitats, or sub-canopy topographic information. Information extracted in high spatial remote sensing data right after a devastating earthquake can help assess the damage to roads and buildings and aid in emergency planning for contact and evacuation. To effectively utilize information contained in high spatial resolution imagery, High Spatial Resolution Remote Sensing: Data, Analysis, and Applications addresses some key questions: What are the challenges of using new sensors and new platforms? What are the cutting-edge methods for fine-level information extraction from high spatial resolution images? How can high spatial resolution data improve the quantification and characterization of physical-environmental or human patterns and processes? The answers are built in three separate parts: (1) data acquisition and preprocessing, (2) algorithms and techniques, and (3) case studies and applications. They discuss the opportunities and challenges of using new sensors and platforms and high spatial resolution remote sensing data and recent developments with a focus on UAVs. This work addresses the issues related to high spatial image processing and introduces cutting-edge methods, summarizes state-of-the-art high spatial resolution applications, and demonstrates how high spatial resolution remote sensing can support the extraction of detailed information needed in different systems. Using various high spatial resolution data, the third part of this book covers a range of unique applications, from grasslands to wetlands, karst areas, and cherry orchard trees.
Satellite remote sensing for conservation action : case studies from aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems
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Satellite remote sensing presents an amazing opportunity to inform biodiversity conservation by inexpensively gathering repeated monitoring information for vast areas of the Earth. However, these observations first need processing and interpretation if they are to inform conservation action. Through a series of case studies, this book presents detailed examples of the application of satellite remote sensing, covering both aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems, to conservation. The authors describe how collaboration between the remote sensing and conservation communities makes satellite data functional for operational conservation, and provide concrete examples of the lessons learned in addition to the scientific details. The editors, one at NASA and the other at a conservation NGO, have brought together leading researchers in conservation remote sensing to share their experiences from project development through to application, and emphasise the human side of these projects.
Geospatial Technologies for Land Degradation Assessment and Management
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The constant growth of the world¿s population and the decline of the availability of land and soil resources are global concerns for food security. Other concerns are the decrease in productivity and delivery of essential ecosystems services because of the decline of soil quality and health by a range of degradation processes. Key soil properties like soil bulk density, organic carbon concentration, plant available water capacity, infiltration rate, air porosity at field moisture capacity, and nutrient reserves, are crucial properties for soil functionality which refers to the capacity of soil to perform numerous functions. These functions are difficult to measure directly and are estimated through indices of soil quality and soil health. Soil degradation, its extent and severity, can also be estimated by assessing indices of soil quality and health. "Geospatial Technology for Land Degradation Assessment and Management" uses satellite imagery and remote sensing technologies to measure landscape parameters and terrain attributes. Remote sensing and geospatial technologies are important tools in assessing the extent and the severity of land and soil degradation, their temporal changes, and geospatial distribution in a timely and cost-effective manner. The knowledge presented in the book by Dr. R.S. Dwivedi shows how remote sensing data can be utilized for inventorying, assessing, and monitoring affected ecosystems and how this information can be integrated in the models of different local settings. Through many land degradations studies, land managers, researchers, and policymakers will find practical applications of geospatial technologies and future challenges. The information presented is also relevant to advancing the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations towards global food security.
Geospatial Applications for Climate Adaptation Planning
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Climate adaptation is a timely yet complex topic that does not fit squarely into any one disciplinary realm. Geospatial Applications for Climate Adaptation Planning presents an overview of the range of strategies, tools, and techniques that must be used to assess myriad overlapping vulnerabilities and to formulate appropriate climate-relevant solutions at multiple scales and in varying contexts. Organized into four sections, the book includes 15 chapters. Each chapter is grounded in the literature and presents case studies designed by the authors, as well as many examples from a diverse international group of scholars and entities in the public and private sectors. Areas covered include: Climate Change and Climate Adaptation Planning: Context and Concepts Geospatial Technologies: Fundamentals and Terminology GIS and Climate Vulnerability Assessments Technical Approaches to Formulating Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies Geospatial Applications for Climate Adaptation Planning is aimed at advanced students, researchers, and entities in the public and private sectors. It also provides supplementary reading for courses in planning, public administration, policy studies, and disaster management.
Spatial Data Analysis in Ecology and Agriculture Using R
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Key features: Unique in its combination of serving as an introduction to spatial statistics and to modeling agricultural and ecological data using R Provides exercises in each chapter to facilitate the book's use as a course textbook or for self-study Adds new material on generalized additive models, point pattern analysis, and new methods of Bayesian analysis of spatial data. Includes a completely revised chapter on the analysis of spatiotemporal data featuring recently introduced software and methods Updates its coverage of R software including newly introduced packages Spatial Data Analysis in Ecology and Agriculture Using R, 2ndEditionprovides practical instruction on the use of the R programming language to analyze spatial data arising from research in ecology, agriculture, and environmental science. Readers have praised the book's practical coverage of spatial statistics, real-world examples, and user-friendly approach in presenting and explaining R code, aspects maintained in this update. Using data sets from cultivated and uncultivated ecosystems, the book guides the reader through the analysis of each data set, including setting research objectives, designing the sampling plan, data quality control, exploratory and confirmatory data analysis, and drawing scientific conclusions. Additional material to accompany the book, on both analyzing satellite data and on multivariate analysis, can be accessed at https://www.plantsciences.ucdavis.edu/plant/additionaltopics.htm. 　
Making Sense of Weather and Climate : The Science Behind the Forecasts
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How do meteorologists design forecasts for the next day's, the next week's, or the next month's weather? Are some forecasts more likely to be accurate than others, and why? Making Sense of Weather and Climate takes readers through key topics in atmospheric physics and presents a cogent view of how weather relates to climate, particularly climate-change science.
Remote Sensing for Landscape Ecology: New Metric Indicators
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This book provides the practical basis for the use of remote sensing to accomplish landscape ecological projects, through the merging of theory and practice, with examples. This is a specialized application and both these topics have evolved rapidly in the past decade. This evolution is not in the previous edition, and indeed this update provides much new information and valuable ideas for the professional and assist in directing the training of new personnel. The new edition will feature a combination of landscape ecology metrics, quantitative field measurements, and geospatial analyses.
Fundamentals of Soil Ecology
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Fundamentals of Soil Ecology, 3rd Edition,　offers a holistic approach to soil biology and ecosystem function, providing students and ecosystem researchers with a greater understanding of the central roles that soils play in ecosystem development and function. The text emphasizes the increasing importance of soils as the organizing center for all terrestrial ecosystems and provides an overview of theory and practice in soil ecology, both from an ecosystem and evolutionary biology point of view. This new edition is fully updated, including an expanded treatment of microbial ecology and new sections on advances in molecular techniques and climate change research. These updates make this edition an essential resource for researchers and students in soil ecology and microbiology. Includes extensive tables and diagrams in full color to enhance concepts Combines theoretical and practical approaches to understanding and applying soil ecology Outlines suggested laboratory and field methods
Open space : the global effort for open access to environmental satellite data
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An examination of environmental satellite data sharing policies, offering a model of data-sharing policy development, case and practical recommendations for increasing global data sharing. Key to understanding and addressing climate change is continuous and precise monitoring of environmental conditions. Satellites play an important role in collecting climate data, offering comprehensive global coverage that can't be matched by in situ observation. And yet, as Mariel Borowitz shows in this book, much satellite data is not freely available but restricted; this remains true despite the data-sharing advocacy of international organizations and a global open data movement. Borowitz examines policies governing the sharing of environmental satellite data, offering a model of data-sharing policy development and applying it in case studies from the United States, Europe, and Japan--countries responsible for nearly half of the unclassified government Earth observation satellites. Borowitz develops a model that centers on the government agency as the primary actor while taking into account the roles of such outside actors as other government officials and non-governmental actors, as well as the economic, security, and normative attributes of the data itself. The case studies include the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the U.S. National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA), and the United States Geological Survey (USGS); the European Space Agency (ESA) and the European Organization for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT); and the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and the Japanese Meteorological Agency (JMA). Finally, she considers the policy implications of her findings for the future and provides recommendations on how to increase global sharing of satellite data.
America’s Most Sustainable Cities and Regions : Surviving the 21st Century Megatrends
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This book takes you on a unique journey through American history, taking time to consider the forces that shaped the development of various cities and regions, and arrives at an unexpected conclusion regarding sustainability. From the American Dream to globalization to the digital and information revolutions, we assume that humans have taken control of our collective destinies in spite of potholes in the road such as the Great Recession of 2007-2009. However, these attitudes were formed during a unique 100-year period of human history in which a large but finite supply of fossil fuels was tapped to feed our economic and innovation engine. Today, at the peak of the Oil Age, the horizon looks different. Cities such as Los Angeles, Phoenix and Las Vegas are situated where water and other vital ecological services are scarce, and the enormous flows of resources and energy that were needed to create the megalopolises of the 20th century will prove unsustainable. Climate change is a reality, and regional impacts will become increasingly severe. Economies such as Las Vegas, which are dependent on discretionary income and buffeted by climate change, are already suffering the fate of the proverbial canary in the coal mine. Finite resources will mean profound changes for society in general and the energy-intensive lifestyles of the US and Canada in particular. But not all regions are equally vulnerable to these 21st-century megatrends. Are you ready to look beyond "America's Most Livable Cities" to the critical factors that will determine the sustainability of your municipality and region? Find out where your city or region ranks according to the forces that will impact our lives in the next years and decades. Find out how: ·resource availability and ecological services shaped the modern landscape ·emerging megatrends will make cities and regions more or less livable in the new century ·your city or region ranks on a "sustainability" map of the United States ·urban metabolism puts large cities at particular risk ·sustainability factors will favor economic solutions at a local, rather than global, level ·these principles apply to industrial economies and countries globally. This book should be cited as follows: J. Day, C. Hall, E. Roy, M. Moersbaecher, C. D'Elia, D. Pimentel, and A. Yanez. 2016. America's most sustainable cities and regions: Surviving the 21st century megatrends. Springer, New York. 348 p.
Mapping Wilderness : Concepts, Techniques and Applications
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This volume gives a comprehensive overview of wilderness mapping, and in doing so covers the conceptual and philosophical foundations, techniques and methodological approaches, and applications at a variety of spatial scales. The Editors have brought together a range of contributors who are both experts in their field and cutting-edge thinkers in the wilderness and spatial mapping domain. Spatial information technology and mapping science is a rapidly expanding and a developing field and so it is expected to be able to add to this volume in the future. This book provides a record of the "state of the art" and will enable the reader to follow this lead and map his/her own wilderness.
Human Impact on the Environment : An Illustrated World Atlas
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This atlas presents a collection of geographical maps showing human impact on the environment. A wide variety of human impacts are discussed, ranging from the energy, mining, transport and agricultural industries as well as less visible impacts such as those of space exploration. This book is a highly illustrated atlas with 300 photos from 70 countries. Each map is accompanied by a short description of each human impact and its effect on the specific natural environment.
Satellite soil moisture retrieval : techniques and applications
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Satellite Soil Moisture Retrieval: Techniques and Applications offers readers a better understanding of the scientific underpinnings, development, and application of soil moisture retrieval techniques and their applications for environmental modeling and management, bringing together a collection of recent developments and rigorous applications of soil moisture retrieval techniques from optical and infrared datasets, such as the universal triangle method, vegetation indices based approaches, empirical models, and microwave techniques, particularly by utilizing earth observation datasets such as IRS III, MODIS, Landsat7, Landsat8, SMOS, AMSR-e, AMSR2 and the upcoming SMAP. Through its coverage of a wide variety of soil moisture retrieval applications, including drought, flood, irrigation scheduling, weather forecasting, climate change, precipitation forecasting, and several others, this is the first book to promote synergistic and multidisciplinary activities among scientists and users working in the hydrometeorological sciences. Demystifies soil moisture retrieval and prediction Links soil moisture retrieval techniques with new satellite missions for earth and environmental science oriented problems Written to be accessible to a wider range of professionals with a common interest in geo-spatial techniques, remote sensing, sustainable water resource development, and earth and environmental issues
The atlas of climate change : mapping the world's greatest challenge
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This highly acclaimed atlas distills the vast science of climate change, providing a reliable and insightful guide to this rapidly growing field. Since the 2006 publication of the first edition, climate change has climbed even higher up the global agenda. This new edition reflects the latest developments in research and the impact of climate change, and in current efforts to mitigate and adapt to changes in the world's weather. The atlas covers a wide range of topics, including warning signs, vulnerable populations, health impacts, renewable energy, emissions reduction, personal and public action. The third edition includes new or additional coverage of a number of topics, including agreements reached in Copenhagen and Cancun, ocean warming and increased acidity, the economic impact of climate change, and advantages gained by communities and business from adapting to climate change. The extensive maps and graphics have been updated with new data, making this edition once again an essential resource for everyone concerned with this pressing subject.
The Atlas of Global Inequalities
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Drawing on research from around the world, this atlas gives shape and meaning to statistics, making it an indispensable resource for understanding global inequalities and an inspiration for social and political action. Inequality underlies many of the challenges facing the world today, and The Atlas of Global Inequalities considers the issue in all its dimensions. Organized in thematic parts, it maps not only the global distribution of income and wealth, but also inequalities in social and political rights and freedoms. It describes how inadequate health services, unsafe water, and barriers to education hinder people's ability to live their lives to the full; assesses poor transport, energy, and digital communication infrastructures and their effect on economic development; and highlights the dangers of unclean and unhealthy indoor and outdoor environments. Through world, regional, and country maps, and innovative and intriguing graphics, the authors unravel the complexity of inequality, revealing differences between countries as well as illustrating inequalities within them. Topics include: the discrimination suffered by children with a disability; the impact of inefficient and dangerous household fuels on the daily lives and long-term health of those who rely on them; the unequal opportunities available to women; and the reasons for families' descent into, and reemergence from, poverty.
Remote Sensing and Water Resources
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This book is a collection of overview articles showing how space-based observations, combined with hydrological modeling, have considerably improved our knowledge of the continental water cycle and its sensitivity to climate change. Two main issues are highlighted: (1) the use in combination of space observations for monitoring water storage changes in river basins worldwide, and (2) the use of space data in hydrological modeling either through data assimilation or as external constraints. The water resources aspect is also addressed, as well as the impacts of direct anthropogenic forcing on land hydrology (e.g. ground water depletion, dam building on rivers, crop irrigation, changes in land use and agricultural practices, etc.). Remote sensing observations offer important new information on this important topic as well, which is highly useful for achieving water management objectives. Over the past 15 years, remote sensing techniques have increasingly demonstrated their capability to monitor components of the water balance of large river basins on time scales ranging from months to decades: satellite altimetry routinely monitors water level changes in large rivers, lakes and floodplains. When combined with satellite imagery, this technique can also measure surface water volume variations. Passive and active microwave sensors offer important information on soil moisture (e.g. the SMOS mission) as well as wetlands and snowpack. The GRACE space gravity mission offers, for the first time, the possibility of directly measuring spatio-temporal variations in the total vertically integrated terrestrial water storage. When combined with other space observations (e.g. from satellite altimetry and SMOS) or model estimates of surface waters and soil moisture, space gravity data can effectively measure groundwater storage variations. New satellite missions, planned for the coming years, will complement the constellation of satellites monitoring waters on land. This is particularly the case for the SWOT mission, which is expected to revolutionize land surface hydrology. Previously published in Surveys in Geophysics, Volume 37, No. 2, 2016
Experimenting on a Small Planet : A History of Scientific Discoveries, a Future of Climate Change and Global Warming
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This book is a thorough introduction to climate science and global change. The author is a geologist who has spent much of his life investigating the climate of Earth from a time when it was warm and dinosaurs roamed the land, to today's changing climate. Bill Hay takes you on a journey to understand how the climate system works. He explores how humans are unintentionally conducting a grand uncontrolled experiment which is leading to unanticipated changes. We follow the twisting path of seemingly unrelated discoveries in physics, chemistry, biology, geology, and even mathematics to learn how they led to our present knowledge of how our planet works. He explains why the weather is becoming increasingly chaotic as our planet warms at a rate far faster than at any time in its geologic past. He speculates on possible future outcomes, and suggests that nature itself may make some unexpected course corrections. Although the book is written for the layman with little knowledge of science or mathematics, it includes information from many diverse fields to provide even those actively working in the field of climatology with a broader view of this developing drama. Experimenting on a Small Planet is a must read for anyone having more than a casual interest in global warming and climate change - one of the most important and challenging issues of our time. This new edition includes actual data from climate science into 2014. Numerous powerpoint slides allow lecturers and teachers to more effectively use the book as a basis for climate change education.
Lakes of the World with Google Earth : Understanding our Environment
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Featuring satellite imagery from Google Earth, this guide provides a unique, highly visual tour of lakes across the globe, from the simple to the complex, the nearby to the remote. Clear text accompanies each image and identifies important aspects of each lake along with such information as its coordinates, scale, and altitudes, if relevant. From the many aspects of lake science including water budgets, temperature regimes, mixing types, biology/ecology, and chemistry, the book concentrates on the genesis of lakes and other closed forms containing water, moisture/swamps or minerals. Its organisation follows different forms of lake origin (often connected to the question of age) such as extra-terrestrial meteor impacts, structural depressions by tectonic activity, patterning of joints or faults, volcanic origin, or the forming influence of glacier ice, subterranean permafrost, littoral processes, running water, wind, and solution of rocks (karst forms). Coverage also deals with temporal variations in lake existence within the context of climate change in the past and the future. In addition, special chapters are devoted to saline (or salt) lakes, and -- in their evaporated forms -- to saltpans. Providing essential information at a glance, this guide will be help both specialists and general readers better understand the world's lakes as well as see them in a new perspective.
The atlas of water : mapping the world's most critical resource
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Climate change, population increase, and the demands made by the growing number of people adopting urban lifestyles and western diets threaten the world's supply of freshwater, edging us closer to a global water crisis, with dire implications for agriculture, the economy, the environment, and human health. Completely revised and updated, The Atlas of Water is a compelling visual guide to the state of this life-sustaining resource. Using vivid graphics, maps, and charts, it explores the complex human interaction with water around the world. This vibrant atlas addresses all the pressing issues concerning water, from water shortages and excessive demand, to dams, pollution, and privatization, all considered in terms of the growing threat of an increasingly unpredictable climate. It also outlines critical tools for managing water, providing safe access to water, and preserving the future of the world's water supply.
GIS Technology Applications in Environmental and Earth Sciences
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This book starts with an overview of GIS technology, what GIS technology is, what it can do, what software products are available, etc. Then, throughout the book, the author explains with many case studies, programs, maps, graphics, and 3D models how GIS and other related technologies can be used to automate mapping processes, collect, process, edit, store, manage, and share datasets, statistically analyze data, model, and visualize large datasets to understand patterns, trends, and relationships to make educated decisions. This book is an excellent resource for anyone who is interested in GIS and related technologies, geology, natural resource, and environmental science.
Geoinformatics for Marine and Coastal Management
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Geoinformatics for Marine and Coastal Management provides a timely and valuable assessment of the current state of the art geoinformatics tools and methods for the management of marine systems. This book focuses on the cutting-edge coverage of a wide spectrum of activities and topics such as GIS-based application of drainage basin analysis, contribution of ontology to marine management, geoinformatics in relation to fisheries management, hydrography, indigenous knowledge systems, and marine law enforcement. The authors present a comprehensive overview of the field of Geoinformatic Applications in Marine Management covering key issues and debates with specific case studies illustrating real-world applications of the GIS technology. This "box of tools" serves as a long-term resource for coastal zone managers, professionals, practitioners, and students alike on the management of oceans and the coastal fringe, promoting the approach of allowing sustainable and integrated use of oceans to maximize opportunities while keeping risks and hazards to a minimum.
Mapping and modeling weather and climate with GIS
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Mapping and Modeling Weather and Climate with GIS is a contributed volume of 23 chapters from leading climatologists, meteorologists, and other experts about how geospatial cartography and analysis helps to advance atmospheric science research. Coverage includes data and software resources, data representation, observations, modeling, data-model integration, web services, and the areas of current and potential cross-fertilization of atmospheric and geospatial sciences. Providing both the concepts and practices of mapping and modeling projects, the book is useful to novices using GIS on weather and climate projects. Practitioners and managers will gain a clear picture of the advances in GIS for atmospheric sciences and appreciate the helpful lists of available geospatial resources.
GIS applications in agriculture. Volume 4, Conservation planning
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Conservation planning involves targeted management practices and land use decision-making based on careful analysis of landscape limitations in order to protect soil and water resources. Developing solutions to conservation planning is of worldwide interest due to anticipated population growth, growing demand of feedstocks for biofuels, decreasing
Landforms of the World with Google Earth
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This book of phenomenal illustrations provides a wealth of visual information on the wide variety of landform processes over all latitudes, climates and geological time-scales. It invites you to observe the surface of planet Earth, to appreciate its astonishing beauty and to explore scientific explanations for the form of our landscapes. 250 full-colour images from Google Earth enable all types of terrestrial environments and landforms to be appreciated at a glance. Images are explained with scales, coordinates, explanatory text and references, making the landform processes active on our globe easy for the reader to comprehend. See the effects of both sudden and slow forming agents such as the impact of a comet or meteorite, and erosion and deposition processes through wind, flowing water, creeping glacier ice, or frost in the ground. Appreciate how landscapes are shaped by processes such as weathering, transport and erosion and how that erosion enables us to look into endogenic processes (those within the Earth´s crust), called tectonics. These images and the processes that they document show that continents are shifting, mountains are uplifting, and ocean bottoms may sink deeper. This collection will appeal to everyone: researchers, students and non-experts alike can take inspiration from these images, which bring the landforms of the world to life. The scientific discipline of geomorphology becomes accessible through the fascinating insights that these clear, well explained images allow.
Ocean Solutions, Earth Solutions
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This book showcases the latest and best oceanography research using spatial analyses and geographic information systems.This is the leading, most up-to-date book on the subject.
GIS and Geocomputation for Water Resource Science and Engineering
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GIS and Geocomputation for Water Resource Science and Engineering not only provides a comprehensive introduction to the fundamentals of geographic information systems but also demonstrates how GIS and mathematical models can be integrated to develop spatial decision support systems to support water resources planning, management and engineering. The book uses a hands-on active learning approach to introduce fundamental concepts and numerous case-studies are provided to reinforce learning and demonstrate practical aspects. The benefits and challenges of using GIS in environmental and water resources fields are clearly tackled in this book, demonstrating how these technologies can be used to harness increasingly available digital data to develop spatially-oriented sustainable solutions. In addition to providing a strong grounding on fundamentals, the book also demonstrates how GIS can be combined with traditional physics-based and statistical models as well as information-theoretic tools like neural networks and fuzzy set theory.
The Atlas of Endangered Species
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Up to 20 percent of species may be extinct by 2030. Vividly presented through full-colour maps and graphics, this fully revised and updated atlas profiles species lost, threatened and surviving today. It examines different ecosystems, the major threats to their inhabitants and steps being taken towards conservation. Fully revised and updated, containing new maps covering environmental impacts of human development including climate change and damage caused by deep-sea trawling and mining Updated maps and data on birds, reptiles, amphibians, invertebrates and fish and of the increasing area of wetlands covered by the Ramsar Conventionnbsp; The latest information on endangered mammal species such as the panda, the Arabian oryx and the bonobo
Remote Sensing Applications in Environmental Research
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Remote Sensing Applications in Environmental Research is the basis for advanced Earth Observation (EO) datasets used in environmental monitoring and research. Now that there are a number of satellites in orbit, EO has become imperative in today's sciences, weather and natural disaster prediction. This highly interdisciplinary reference work brings together diverse studies on remote sensing and GIS, from a theoretical background to its applications, represented through various case studies and the findings of new models. The book offers a comprehensive range of contributions by well-known scientists from around the world and opens a new window for students in presenting interdisciplinary and methodological resources on the latest research. It explores various key aspects and offers state-of-the-art research in a simplified form, describing remote sensing and GIS studies for those who are new to the field, as well as for established researchers.
Improving GIS-Based Wildlife-Habitat Analysis
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Geographic Information Systems (GIS) provide a powerful tool for the investigation of species-habitat relationships and the development of wildlife management and conservation programs. However, the relative ease of data manipulation and analysis using GIS, associated landscape metrics packages, and sophisticated statistical tests may sometimes cause investigators to overlook important species-habitat functional relationships. Additionally, underlying assumptions of the study design or technology may have unrecognized consequences. This volume examines how initial researcher choices of image resolution, scale(s) of analysis, response and explanatory variables, and location and area of samples can influence analysis results, interpretation, predictive capability, and study-derived management prescriptions. Overall, most studies in this realm employ relatively low resolution imagery that allows neither identification nor accurate classification of habitat components. Additionally, the landscape metrics typically employed do not adequately quantify component spatial arrangement associated with species occupation. To address this latter issue, the authors introduce two novel landscape metrics that measure the functional size and location in the landscape of taxon-specific 'solid' and 'edge' habitat types. Keller and Smith conclude that investigators conducting GIS-based analyses of species-habitat relationships should more carefully 1) match the resolution of remotely sensed imagery to the scale of habitat functional relationships of the focal taxon, 2) identify attributes (explanatory variables) of habitat architecture, size, configuration, quality, and context that reflect the way the focal taxon uses the subset of the landscape it occupies, and 3) match the location and scale of habitat samples, whether GIS- or ground-based, to corresponding species' detection locations and scales of habitat use.
The Handbook of Meteorology
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The Handbook of Meteorology gives specialists and non-specialists alike a clear understanding of the way our weather functions. It provides scientific answers to questions that arise when looking at the world around us. It starts with the basics of weather--temperature, pressure, humidity, and wind--before moving on to cover highs, lows, fronts, and storms, and finally ending with a look at weather forecasts, cloud watching, weather tools, and much more. The Handbook of Meteorology provides a condensed but all-inclusive broad sweep of meteorology, employing several illustrations to translate detailed technical information into terms that everyone can follow and readily refer to. It is a comprehensive reference for any budding meteorologist or environmental professional in the field, laboratory, or classroom.
Wetland Landscape Characterization : Practical Tools, Methods, and Approaches for Landscape Ecology
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Wetlands are, by their very nature, ephemeral and transitional, which makes them challenging to characterize. Yet the need for characterizing wetlands continues to grow, particularly as we develop a better understanding of the wealth of ecosystem services that they provide. Wetland Landscape Characterization: Practical Tools, Methods, and Approaches for Landscape Ecology, Second Edition shows how wetland characterization tools, methods, and approaches can be integrated to more effectively address twenty-first-century wetland issues. A Practical Toolbox for Integrated Wetland Landscape Characterization The book explains how to locate, identify, and map the extent of wetlands to learn more about their importance to society and the larger landscape. It examines jurisdictional, regulatory, and practical applications from the scientific, engineering, and lay perspectives. Fully updated, the second edition reflects an emerging infrastructural, ecosystem goods-and-services perspective to better assist readers who may encounter these concepts and challenges as they assess and characterize wetlands. Examples and case studies illustrate a variety of situations and solutions, highlighting the use of current techniques to assess, inventory, and monitor natural resources under changing conditions. These examples offer lessons and ideas for the issues encountered every day by wetland landscape ecology practitioners. The book also refers readers to additional resources to help them solve specific challenges. New in This Edition Updates of practical geospatial methods More project-driven examples A description of the pitfalls of using ecological data at landscape scales, along with solutions Alternative techniques for a variety of practitioners Linkages between field and landscape ecological practices Online resources for practitioners New illustrations This book helps readers develop the concepts, skills, and understanding of how to best achieve project goals in the rapidly changing disciplines of landscape science and wetland ecology and management. A valuable resource, it provides practical tools, methods, and approaches for conceptualizing, designing, and implementing broad-scale wetland projects that take into account critical societal linkages.
The Legacy of American Copper Smelting: Industrial Heritage Versus Environmental Policy
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Throughout world history, copper has been a significant metal for a vast number of cultures, from the oldest civilizations on record to the Bronze Age and Greek and Roman antiquity. Though replaced by iron as the primary metal for tools and weapons in ancient civilizations, copper found new resurgence in the nineteenth century when it was discovered to have particularly high thermal and electrical conductivity. Copper mining quickly escalated into a large-scale industry, and because of its vast reserves and innovative mining techniques, the United States seized the reins of global production with the opening of significant copper mines in Tennessee and Michigan in the 1840s and Montana in the 1870s. Copper-mining prosperity and America's dominance of the industry came with a heavy environmental price, however. As rich copper deposits declined with increased mining efforts, large deposits of leaner ores--oftentimes less than one percent pure--had to be mined to keep pace with America's technological thirst for copper. Processing such ore left an inordinate amount of industrial waste, such as tailings and slag deposits from the refining process and toxic materials from the ores themselves, and copper mining regions around the United States began to see firsthand the landscape degradation wrought by the industry. In The Legacy of American Copper Smelting, Bode J. Morin examines America's three premier copper sites: Michigan's Keweenaw Peninsula, Tennessee's Copper Basin, and Butte- Anaconda, Montana. Morin focuses on what the copper industry meant to the townspeople working in and around these three major sites while also exploring the smelters' environmental effects. Each site dealt with pollution management differently, and each site had to balance an EPA-mandated cleanup effort alongside the preservation of a once-proud industry. Morin's work sheds new light on the EPA's efforts to utilize Superfund dollars and/or protocols to erase the environmental consequences of copper-smelting while locals and preservationists tried to keep memories of the copper industry alive in what were dying or declining post-industrial towns. This book will appeal to anyone interested in the American history of copper or heritage preservation studies, as well as historians of modern America, industrial technology, and the environment.
Coral Reef Remote Sensing : A Guide for Mapping, Monitoring and Management
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Remote sensing stands as the defining technology in our ability to monitor coral reefs, as well as their biophysical properties and associated processes, at regional to global scales. With overwhelming evidence that much of Earth's reefs are in decline, our need for large-scale, repeatable assessments of reefs has never been so great. Fortunately, the last two decades have seen a rapid expansion in the ability for remote sensing to map and monitor the coral reef ecosystem, its overlying water column, and surrounding environment. Remote sensing is now a fundamental tool for the mapping, monitoring and management of coral reef ecosystems. Remote sensing offers repeatable, quantitative assessments of habitat and environmental characteristics over spatially extensive areas. As the multi-disciplinary field of coral reef remote sensing continues to mature, results demonstrate that the techniques and capabilities continue to improve. New developments allow reef assessments and mapping to be performed with higher accuracy, across greater spatial areas, and with greater temporal frequency. The increased level of information that remote sensing now makes available also allows more complex scientific questions to be addressed. As defined for this book, remote sensing includes the vast array of geospatial data collected from land, water, ship, airborne and satellite platforms. The book is organized by technology, including: visible and infrared sensing using photographic, multispectral and hyperspectral instruments; active sensing using light detection and ranging (LiDAR); acoustic sensing using ship, autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) and in-water platforms; and thermal and radar instruments. Emphasis and Audience This book serves multiple roles. It offers an overview of the current state-of-the-art technologies for reef mapping, provides detailed technical information for coral reef remote sensing specialists, imparts insight on the scientific questions that can be tackled using this technology, and also includes a foundation for those new to reef remote sensing. The individual sections of the book include introductory overviews of four main types of remotely sensed data used to study coral reefs, followed by specific examples demonstrating practical applications of the different technologies being discussed. Guidelines for selecting the most appropriate sensor for particular applications are provided, including an overview of how to utilize remote sensing data as an effective tool in science and management. The text is richly illustrated with examples of each sensing technology applied to a range of scientific, monitoring and management questions in reefs around the world. As such, the book is broadly accessible to a general audience, as well as students, managers, remote sensing specialists and anyone else working with coral reef ecosystems.
The Earth As a Cradle for Life: the Origin, Evolution and Future of the Environment
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The Earth as a Cradle for Life aims to fill the gap between readers who have a strong and informed scientific interest in the environment (but no access to the journal literature), and their desire for a basic understanding of the environment. It provides a comprehensive account, and requires no advanced mathematical skills. It will also satisfy a need for a textbook on fundamental science for students in tertiary environmental science courses that may otherwise neglect the underlying basis of their subject.The Earth as a Cradle takes a step back from common perceptions of the environment, and presents a new fundamental perspective. It draws attention to observations that have been neglected or discounted for reasons the authors found invalid, and which allow a more coherent account of the environment than is possible without them.Misunderstandings about the environment are common, even in the scientific community. They arise in part from the multi-disciplinary nature of the subject and the difficulty in keeping all relevant observations in mind and assessing their validity. These misunderstandings are often consequences of the band-wagon effect: when an idea is reinforced by repeated quotation and becomes difficult to contradict even when it is in obvious conflict with observations. This is especially so in a subject with strong media interest and conflicting commercial interests -- and Cradle sweeps these considerations aside and presents a new environmental scenario.This book draws on several decades of research by the authors on fundamental Earth science, and presents probing insights on environmental questions that are not widely recognized -- even in the professional community. For this reason it will become a landmark in the environmental science and Earth science literature.
The West without water what past floods, droughts, and other climatic clues tell us about tomorrow
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The West without Water documents the tumultuous climate of the American West over twenty millennia, with tales of past droughts and deluges and predictions about the impacts of future climate change on water resources. Looking at the region's current water crisis from the perspective of its climate history, the authors ask the central question of what is "normal" climate for the West, and whether the relatively benign climate of the past century will continue into the future. The West without Water merges climate and paleoclimate research from a wide variety of sources as it introduces readers to key discoveries in cracking the secrets of the region's climatic past. It demonstrates that extended droughts and catastrophic floods have plagued the West with regularity over the past two millennia and recounts the most disastrous flood in the history of California and the West, which occurred in 1861-62. The authors show that, while the West may have temporarily buffered itself from such harsh climatic swings by creating artificial environments and human landscapes, our modern civilization may be ill-prepared for the future climate changes that are predicted to beset the region. They warn that it is time to face the realities of the past and prepare for a future in which fresh water may be less reliable.
Climate of the Southeast United States : Variability, Change, Impacts, and Vulnerability
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Prepared for the 2013 National Climate Assessment and a landmark study in terms of its breadth and depth of coverage, Climate of the Southeast United States is the result of a collaboration among three Regional Integrated Sciences and Assessments Centers: the Southeast Climate Consortium; the Carolinas Regional Sciences and Assessments; and the Southern Climate Impacts Planning Program; with contributions from numerous local, state, federal, and nongovernmental agencies to develop a comprehensive, state of the art look at the effects of climate change in the region. The book summarizes the scientific literature with respect to climate impacts on the Southeast United States, including 11 southern states to the east of the Mississippi River, Puerto Rico, and the US Virgin Islands; reviews the historic climate, current climate, and the projected future climate of the region; and describes interactions with important sectors of the Southeast and cross-sectoral issues, namely climate change mitigation, adaptation, and education and outreach. Rich in science and case studies, it examines the latest climate change impacts, scenarios, vulnerabilities, and adaptive capacity and offers decision makers and stakeholders a substantial basis from which to make informed choices that will affect the well-being of the region's inhabitants in the decades to come.
Encyclopedia of global warming and climate change
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Explores major topics related to global warming and climate change-ranging geographically from the North Pole to the South Pole, and thematically from social effects to scientific causes. Covers the science and history of climate change, the controversies over climate-change theories, the role of societies, the industrial and economic factors, and the sociological aspects of climate change.
Geospatial Techniques for Managing Environmental Resources
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"Geospatial Information" is spatial data concerning a place or, in space, collected in real time. Geospatial techniques together with remote sensing, geographic information science, Global Positioning System (GPS), cartography, geovisualization, and spatial statistics are being used to capture, store, manipulate and analyze to understand complex situations to solve mysteries of the universe. These techniques have been applied in various fields such as meteorology, forestry, environmental management, agriculture, health, homeland security etc. around the globe. This volume presents case studies and examples from various parts of the world and provides a broad overview of various approaches; data sets; data acquiring, monitoring and dissemination methods; satellites and sensors; tools and techniques used; integrating tools, techniques and application to various fields for the sustainable management of environmental resources in the context of global environmental change and natural hazards. The objective of this book is to provide state-of-the-art information to academics, researchers and industry practitioners who are involved or interested in the study, use, design and development of advanced and emerging geospatial technologies around the world with ultimate aim to empower individuals and organizations in building competencies for exploiting the opportunities of the knowledge society. All the chapters are peer-reviewes and evaluated and are an inter- and multi-disciplinary source of information, making an effort to link various geospatial techniques to make the earth an habitable place. The contributors have tried to focus their respective views on the current problems that need urgent attention. Consequently, we see this book as a comprehensive information base, which includes work of expertise in their specific fields of research.
The Coastlines of the World with Google Earth : Understanding our Environment
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Far away shores, exotic islands or adventurous sea voyages - coasts are the destination of dreams for millions of people around the globe. Large numbers of people also call coasts their home; in many countries a narrow coastal strip is densely populated making these places vulnerable to marine natural hazards such as storms or tsunamis. The book Coastlines of the World with Google Earth aims to draw people's attention (within and outside of the science community) towards coastal sciences and spark interest for the extraordinary diversity and beauty of coastal environments. The book illustrates the fascinating variety of coastal landscapes using images from Google Earth's virtual globe that allow us to explore the world and demonstrate knowledge and applications of coastal science in many different fields in an engaging visual tour. The book of Anja and Sander Scheffers and Dieter Kelletat is a true cornucopia for everyone, both scientists and laymen, interested in coastal geomorphology. On the one hand, it documents the enormous significance of Google Earth for coastal science issues and shows how powerful this tool is for visualizing coastal features and processes. On the other hand, the reader gets a vivid insight in the many varieties of coastal science and its applications. This is especially true with regard to coastal hazards such as extreme events and global sea level rise knowing that the vulnerability of coastal zones has dramatically increased during the past decades. The fact that the book is so attractive and inspiring to both beginners and experts is also due to the huge experience that the authors have gained during their manifold research activities. Andreas Vött, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, Germany This book will have great appeal to coastal researchers, at both beginning and advanced stages, because it integrates Google satellite imagery with coastal marine classification and in-depth studies by the authors from many parts of the world. The world's coastline is well represented in this book which has a truly global perspective of unique, dramatic and commonplace coastal landforms. The authors in collaboration with the publisher have prepared a very handsome volume that will no doubt become a classic in the fullness of time. This book represents one of the first efforts to utilize Google images in a scientific manner to illustrate the diversity of coastal morphologies on a worldwide basis. The plethora of color satellite images, block diagrams, and oblique photography makes this book a valuable resource for a wide array of specialists that will want to have handy access to this unique work. This coastal compendium is an illustrated tour de force that belongs on researchers' bookshelves as well as on coffee tables for casual enjoyment. Charles Finkl, Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, FL, USA
Remote sensing of land use and land cover : principles and applications
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Filling the need for a comprehensive book that covers both theory and application, Remote Sensing of Land Use and Land Cover: Principles and Applications provides a synopsis of how remote sensing can be used for land-cover characterization, mapping, and monitoring from the local to the global scale. With contributions by leading scientists from around the world, this well-structured volume offers an international perspective on the science, technologies, applications, and future needs of remote sensing of land cover and land use. After an overview of the key concepts and history of land-use and land-cover mapping, the book discusses the relationship between land cover and land use and addresses the land-cover classification system. It then presents state-of-the-art methods and techniques in data acquisition, preprocessing, image interpretation, and accuracy assessment for land-use and land-cover characterization and mapping. Case studies from around the world illustrate land-cover applications at global, continental, and national scales. These examples use multiple data sources and provide in-depth understanding of land cover and land-cover dynamics in multiple spatial, thematic, and temporal resolutions. Looking to the future, the book also identifies new frontiers in land-cover mapping and forecasting. The availability and accessibility of accurate and timely land-cover data sets play an important role in many global change studies, highlighting the need for better land-use and land-cover change information at multiple scales. A synthesis of current knowledge in remote sensing of land-use and land-cover science, this book promotes more effective use of Earth observation data and technology to assess, monitor, and manage land resources.
Encyclopedia of Lakes and Reservoirs
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Lakes and reservoirs hold about 90% of the world's surface fresh water, but overuse, water withdrawal and pollution of these bodies puts some one billion people at risk. The Encyclopedia of Lakes and Reservoirs reviews the physical, chemical and ecological characteristics of lakes and reservoirs, and describes their uses and environmental state trends in different parts of the world. Superbly illustrated throughout, it includes some 200 entries in a range of topics, including acidification, artificialisation, canals, climate change effects, dams, dew ponds, drainage, eutrofication, evaporation, fisheries, hydro-electric power, nutrients, organic pollution, paleolimnology, reservoir capacities and depths, sedimentation, water resources and more.
Plant and Vegetation Mapping
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The book is concerned principally with geobotanical mapping. Geobotany is a broad science that deals with the study of species and of vegetation communities in relation to the environment; it includes other, perhaps more familiar sciences, such as plant geography, plant ecology, and chorology, and phytosociology (plant sociology). Geobotanical cartography is a field of thematic cartography that deals with the interpretation and representation, in the form of maps, of those spatial and temporal phenomena that pertain to flora, vegetation, vegetated landscapes, vegetation zones, and phytogeographical units. The production of a geobotanical map represents the last stage in a cognitive process that begins with observations in the field and continues with the collection of sample data, interpretation of the phenomena observed, and their appropriate cartographic representation; geobotanical cartography is closely tied to the concepts and scope of geobotany in general
Earth Observation of Global Changes (EOGC)
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This book provides a collection of selected articles that have been submitted to the Earth Observation and Global Changes (EOGC2011) Conference. All articles have been carefully reviewed by an international board of top-level experts. The book covers a wide variety of topics including Physical Geodesy, Photogrammetry & Remote Sensing, High-Resolution and Fast-Revisiting Remote Sensing Satellite Systems, Global Change & Change Detection, Spatial Modelling, GIS & Geovisualization. The articles document concrete results of current studies related to Earth Sciences. The book is intended for researchers and experts working in the area of Spatial Data Analysis, Environmental Monitoring/Analysis, Global Change Monitoring and related fields.
Geospatial Technology for Coastal Environments
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From routinely performing work-related tasks to scienti
fi cally exploring the complexities of our world,
GIS gives people the geographic advantage to become more productive, more aware, and more
responsive citizens of planet Earth.
GIS for the Oceans
by
Making decisions based on geography is basic to human thinking. Where shall we go, what will it be
like, and what shall we do when we get there are applied to the simple event of going to the store or
to the major event of launching a bathysphere into the ocean's depths. By understanding geography
and people's relationship to location, we can make informed decisions about the way we live on our
planet. A geographic information system (GIS) is a technological tool for comprehending geography
and making intelligent decisions.
From routinely performing work-related tasks to scientifically exploring the complexities of our world,
GIS gives people the geographic advantage to become more productive, more aware, and more
responsive citizens of planet Earth.
Geospatial Analysis of Environmental Health
by
This book focuses on a range of geospatial applications for environmental health research, including environmental justice issues, environmental health disparities, air and water contamination, and infectious diseases. Environmental health research is at an exciting point in its use of geotechnologies, and many researchers are working on innovative approaches.nbsp;This book isnbsp;anbsp;timely scholarly contribution in updating the key concepts and applications of using GIS and other geospatial methods for environmental health research. Each chapter contains original research which utilizes a geotechnical tool (Geographic Information Systems (GIS), remote sensing, GPS, etc.) to address an environmental health problem. The book is divided into three sections organized around the following themes: issues in GIS and environmental health research; using GIS to assess environmental health impacts; and geospatial methods for environmental health.nbsp;Representing diverse case studies and geospatial methods, the book is likely to be of interest to researchers, practitioners and students across the geographic and environmental health sciences. The authors are leading researchers and practitioners in the field of GIS and environmental health.
Ducktown Smoke: the Fight over One of the South's Greatest Environmental Disasters
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It is hard to make a desert in a place that receives sixty inches of rain each year. But after decades of copper mining, all that remained of the old hardwood forests in the Ducktown Mining District of the Southern Appalachian Mountains was a fifty-square mile barren expanse of heavily gullied red hills--a landscape created by sulfur dioxide smoke from copper smelting and destructive logging practices. In Ducktown Smoke, Duncan Maysilles examines this environmental disaster, one of the worst the South has experienced, and its impact on environmental law and Appalachian conservation. Beginning in 1896, the widening destruction wrought in Tennessee, Georgia, and North Carolina by Ducktown copper mining spawned hundreds of private lawsuits, culminating in Georgia v. Tennessee Copper Co., the U.S. Supreme Court's first air pollution case. In its 1907 decision, the Court recognized for the first time the sovereign right of individual states to protect their natural resources from transborder pollution, a foundational opinion in the formation of American environmental law. Maysilles reveals how the Supreme Court case brought together the disparate forces of agrarian populism, industrial logging, and the forest conservation movement to set a legal precedent that remains relevant in environmental law today.
Geo-information : Technologies, Applications and the Environment
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Geomatics, the handling and processing of information and data about the Earth, is one geoscience discipline that has seen major changes in the last decade, as mapping and observation systems become ever more sensitive and sophisticated. This book is a unique and in-depth survey of the field, which has a central role to play in tackling a host of environmental issues faced by society. Covering all three strands of geomatics - applications, information technology and surveying - the chapters cover the history and background of the subject, the technology employed both to collect and disseminate data, and the varied applications to which geomatics can be put, including urban planning, assessment of biodiversity, disaster management and land administration. Relevant professionals, as well as students in a variety of disciplines such as geography and surveying, will find this book required reading. This rapidly developing field uses increasingly complex and accurate systems. Today, technology enables us to capture geo-data in full 3D as well as to disseminate it via the Web at the speed of light. We are able to continuously image the world from space at resolutions of up to 50 cm. Airborne LiDAR (laser surveying) sensors can be combined with digital camera technology to produce geometrically correct images of the Earth's surface, while integrating these with large-scale topographic maps and terrestrial as well as aerial images to produce 3D cityscapes that computer users can explore from their desktops.
Environmental Sensing : Analytical Techniques for Earth Observation
by
Remote sensing has witnessed a renaissance as new sensor systems, data collection capabilities and image processing methodologies have expanded the technological capabilities of this science into new and important applications areas. Perhaps nowhere has this trend been more evident than in the study of earth environments. Within this broad application area remote sensing has proven to be an invaluable asset supporting timely data gathering at a range of synoptic scales, facilitating the mapping of complex landscapes and promoting the analysis of environmental process. Yet remote sensing's contribution to the study of human/environmental interaction is scattered throughout a rich and diverse literature spanning the social and physical sciences, which frustrates access to, and the sharing of the knowledge gained through, these recent advances, and inhibits the operational use of these methods and techniques in day to day environmental practice, a recognized gap that reduces the effectiveness of environmental management programs. The objective of this book is to address this gap and provide the synthesis of method and application that is currently missing in the environmental science, re-introducing remote sensing as an important decision-support technology.
Encyclopedia of Geography Terms, Themes, and Concepts
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This text provides an essential reference handbook for students of geography and related social sciences. * Contains more than 30 illustrations, comprising images, maps, charts and graphs * Features sidebars that highlight and explain specific topics or provide biographical sketches of key figures in the history of geographic thought * Detailed entries cover the most essential concepts of geography as an academic discipline
Remote Sensing of Protected Lands
by
National parks, wildlife refuges and sanctuaries, natural reserves, conservation areas, frontier lands, and marine-protected areas are increasingly recognized as essential providers of ecosystem services and biological resources. As debates about climate change and sustainability intensify, protected areas become more important as indicators of ecosystem conditions in particular environments or in comparison with adjacent environments. The first book of its kind, Remote Sensing of Protected Lands showcases state-of-the-art remote sensing applications for the inventory and monitoring of protected areas. Contributions from renowned scholars and experts from around the world are organized into four sections covering the use of remote sensing in: Changing landscapes and change detection Inventory, mapping, and conservation Inventory and monitoring of frontier lands Decision support for the management of protected lands A View of Both the Forest and the Trees Combining reviews of theories and methods with analysis of case studies, the book gives readers both a systematic view of the field and detailed knowledge of specific topics. Case studies explore key topics in the context of a wide range of protected areas, including national parks in the United States and Canada, the Albertine Rift in eastern Africa, the Amazon forests, the Changbai Mountain region in Northeast Asia, the frontier lands in Siberia and the Tibetan Plateau, and marine protected areas along the tropical and temperate Pacific and Atlantic coasts. Alongside each case study, the book examines advanced remote sensing technologies such as airborne and spaceborne high spatial resolution imageries, multispectral and multitemporal time series data, satellite interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR), and the integration of remote sensing and field measurements for information extraction and modeling. Discussing challenges, lessons learned, and recommendations, this book provides a snapshot of how remote sensing techniques can be used to gather extensive spatial, spectral, temporal, and thematic information on protected lands and waters.
Climate Change is a Geographic Problem
by
The key to understanding our dynamic climate is creating a framework to take many different pieces of past and future data from a variety of sources and merge them into a single system. Information technology brings together data from these many different sources into a common computer database. GIS is a sophisticated technology tool already widely used Impact of Climate Changes on Gray Whales: Migrating gray whales stop to feed in areas rich with chlorophyll-fed shrimp. Using GIS, researchers analyzed relationships of water temperatures, base food chain elements, and whale behavior patterns. View the case study.
JUNE 2010J99218CLIMATE CHANGE ISA GEOGRAPHIC PROBLEMJUNE 2010by planners, engineers, and scientists to display and analyze all forms of location-referenced data, from meteorological information to patterns of human settlement. GIS creates a new framework for studying global climate change by allowing users to inventory and display large, complex spatial datasets. GIS can also be used to analyze the potential interplay between various factors, getting us closer to a true understanding of how our dynamic climate may change in the coming decades and centuries.
GIS for Environmental Management
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Understanding relationships within the environment is essential for creating environmental impact
reports, designing sustainable management plans, prioritizing project areas and funding, and
informing government and the public about environmental concerns. In the following case studies,
you will learn how environmental management professionals around the world have successfully
implemented GIS to analyze ecological footprints; improve watershed resource management; and
respond to climate change, pollution, and more.
North American environmental atlas : mapping our shared environment = Atlas environnemental de l'Amérique du Nord :cartographie d'un environnement nord-américain commun = Atlas ambiental de América del Norte : cartografía de un medio ambiente compartido
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Created through the cooperation of three national agency partners, the North American Environmental Atlas combines harmonized data from Canada, Mexico and the United States to allow for a continental and regional perspective on environmental issues that cross boundaries. The Atlas continues to grow in breadth and depth as more thematic maps are created through the work of the Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC) and its partners. Scientists and map makers from Natural Resources Canada, United States Geological Survey and Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía and other agencies in each country produced the information contained in the Atlas.
Geospatial Technologies in Environmental Management
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Geotechnologies and the Environment: Environmental Applications and Mana- ment presents an engaging and diverse array of physically-oriented GIScience applications that have been organized using four broad themes. While the book's themes are by no means mutually exclusive, Hoalst-Pullen and Patterson provide an elegant overview of the eld that frames the collection's subsequent thematic str- ture - Wilderness and Wildlife Response; Glaciers; Wetlands and Watersheds; and Human Health and the Environment. Over the course of the volume, the contrib- ing authors move beyond basic (and in some respects clichéd) landscape ecology of land use change to explore human-environment dynamics heretofore not emp- sized in the applied literature. In doing so, the collection presents a compelling case for the importance of developing new physically-oriented GIScience applications that reside at the nexus of social and natural systems with the explicit intent of informing public policy and/or the decision making practices of resource managers. Individually, the chapters themselves are intentionally diverse. The diversity of the approaches, their spatial context, and emphases on management applications demonstrate the many ways in which geotechnologies can be used to address small and big problems in both developed and developing regions. The collection's int- nal coherence is derived - like the book series - from its explicit appeal to a wide variety of human-environment interactions with potential policy linkages.
Land Remote Sensing and Global Environmental Change : NASA's Earth Observing System and the Science of ASTER and MODIS
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Land Remote Sensing and Global Environmental Change: The Science of ASTER and MODIS is an edited compendium of contributions dealing with ASTER and MODIS satellite sensors aboard NASA's Terra and Aqua platforms launched as part of the Earth Observing System fleet in 1999 and 2002 respectively. This volume is divided into six sections. The first three sections provide insights into the history, philosophy, and evolution of the EOS, ASTER and MODIS instrument designs and calibration mechanisms, and the data systems components used to manage and provide the science data and derived products. The latter three sections exclusively deal with ASTER and MODIS data products and their applications, and the future of these two classes of remotely sensed observations.
Forest Carbon Management
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Allowing earth's forests to thrive and do their job of carbon sequestration is essential to reducing
the threat of climate change. Technology offers hope to the greenhouse phenomenon caused by
industrial society. One such technology is ESRI's ArcGIS, which offers scientists, decision makers,
and policy implementers a critical tool for obtaining information they need to heal our planet. GIS
allows temporal climate data to be visualized, contrasted, and forecasted. Use ArcGIS to study
current land use, land-use change, and what-if scenarios for responsible planning.
GIS is a Green Technology
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With the growing unease and awareness among large segments of the population that remedial action must be taken to resolve the many environmental crises we now face, GIS solutions are currently being implemented around the world that provide the technological and scientifi c support necessary to create programs and processes designed to return our planet to a more sustainable and balanced level of use.Whether increasing the effi ciency of fl eet vehicles by optimizing standard routes and subsequently reducing fuel consumption or determining the optimum location for a wind farm to produce energy with minimal pollution, GIS provides the quantifi ed information and analytical capabilities necessary to make decisions that can both support growth and reduce consumption.The visualization capabilities of GIS afford a unique way of examining things that promotes creative out-of-the-box thinking, providing insight and solutions that are not so apparent in written reports and tabular data. Often, an existing GIS implementation stimulates the need to modify existing business practices or apply new ones that lead to savings in both costs and resources.
Coast lines : how mapmakers frame the world and chart environmental change
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In the next century, sea levels are predicted to rise at unprecedented rates, causing flooding around the world, from the islands of Malaysia and the canals of Venice to the coasts of Florida and California. These rising water levels pose serious challenges to all aspects of coastal existence--chiefly economic, residential, and environmental--as well as to the cartographic definition and mapping of coasts. It is this facet of coastal life that Mark Monmonier tackles in Coast Lines. Setting sail on a journey across shifting landscapes, cartographic technology, and climate change, Monmonier reveals that coastlines are as much a set of ideas, assumptions, and societal beliefs as they are solid black lines on maps. Whether for sailing charts or property maps, Monmonier shows, coastlines challenge mapmakers to capture on paper a highly irregular land-water boundary perturbed by tides and storms and complicated by rocks, wrecks, and shoals. Coast Lines is peppered with captivating anecdotes about the frustrating effort to expunge fictitious islands from nautical charts, the tricky measurement of a coastline's length, and the contentious notions of beachfront property and public access. Combing maritime history and the history of technology, Coast Lines charts the historical progression from offshore sketches to satellite images and explores the societal impact of coastal cartography on everything from global warming to homeland security. Returning to the form of his celebrated Air Apparent, Monmonier ably renders the topic of coastal cartography accessible to both general readers and historians of science, technology, and maritime studies. In the post-Katrina era, when the map of entire regions can be redrawn by a single natural event, the issues he raises are more important than ever.
GIS for Ocean conservation
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Marine habitats and the life they contain are threatened by global warming, extreme weather,
natural and man-made pollution, overharvesting, and additional human disturbances. GIS
technology is a tool that helps conservationists acquire, manage, analyze, and visualize spatial
and thematic oceanic data through map generation. It is used around the world to map marine
habitats; water quality; species distribution, population, and behavior; pollution; fi shing grounds;
and other factors that impact marine life. ESRI’s ArcGIS software suite is a tool that can show
at-risk areas in danger of biodiversity loss, habitat degradation, and resource depletion. It also
acts as an aid in monitoring and examining the effectiveness of conservation practices and
protected areas to ensure the preservation of the earth’s oceans.
GIS for the Conservation of Woodlands and Wetlands
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GIS is an indispensable tool that can be used to prevent damage to the valuable resources
and habitats of our woodlands and wetlands. Deforestation, loss of biodiversity, and resource
depletion due to global climate change, CO2 emissions, logging, forest fi res, and other human
disruptions are threats to the earth's forested and marshy areas. GIS allows the user to manage
geospatial information for monitoring change in woodland and wetland areas. Modeling change
with GIS permits conservationists to make well-informed decisions about protection, policies
and future land-use practices that will most benefi t the conservation of forests, biodiversity,
wildlife, and resources.
The temporal and spatial aspects of GIS technology enable users to make maps that help
people easily see critical environmental concerns. This visual aspect of GIS technology makes
it a key ingredient in raising public awareness about conservation issues. The ability to manage,
analyze, and delineate a variety of geospatial data makes GIS essential for targeting areas in
need and communicating ways for resources, biodiversity, and animal habitats to be sustained,
protected, and conserved.
GIS for Wildlife Conservation
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Habitat loss, global climate change, and human disruptions, such as pollution and deforestation,
are threats to wildlife biodiversity and can cause fragmentation and extinction. GIS technology
is an effective tool for managing, analyzing, and visualizing wildlife data in order to target areas
where conservation practices are needed.
Habitat geospatial analysis is an important key to understanding the health of a species in the
wild. Monitoring change in wildlife habitats is feasible with ESRI's suite of ArcGIS software, a
tool for managing, analyzing, and depicting statistical and geographic data. GIS helps to monitor
and visualize
A Dictionary of Environment and Conservation
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This informative dictionary contains over 8,500 entries on all aspects of the environment and conservation. International in scope, it embraces a broad spectrum of environmental areas including sustainable development, biodiversity, conservation, environmental ethics, philosophy, and history,resource management, sociology, and policy on the environment. In addition to its wide-ranging, concise definitions, it includes longer key entries on topics such as Antarctica, Gaia hypothesis, genetic engineering, the Kyoto Protocol, and the United Nations Conference on Environmental Development.The dictionary is uniquely comprehensive in that it addresses the social, legal, political and economic aspects of the environment and conservation as well as the scientific terms. Coverage includes international treaties, movements, trusts and organisations, as well as biographies of key figures inenvironmental science. It also boasts wide coverage of terms relating to rural/community development and participation, an area with an increasingly key role in managing the environment and biodiversity. This places the subject of the environment firmly in a human as well as a scientific context.The dictionary is supplemented with an invaluable selection of 10 appendices, including international hazard assessment scales (including the Beaufort scale, the Richter scale, and the Fujita tornado scale), the geologic timescale, and an appendix of useful websites for further study.Concise and wide-ranging, this is an essential work of reference for students and professionals, and anyone with an interest in the environment and conservation.
A Dictionary of Weather
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A new authoritative and comprehensive dictionary of weather, forecasting, and climate terms with illustrative examples of specific events and extremes. Find out where and when the world's largest hailstone fell or where the highest temperature was recorded using the list of weather records,and check climate data for different weather types from around the world. Key terms from the related fields of oceanography, hydrology, and climatology are also covered as well as biographical information on important people in the development of meteorology. This is an essential reference sourcefor meteorology and geography students, whether at school or university, and amateur meteorologists.
