Spatial Modeling

"Resumen: Con el presente trabajo pretendemos mostrar una de las distintas aplicaciones que el mundo de los SIG permite; en este caso al mundo medieval de al-Andalus, como ayuda a la hora de comprender y representar gráficamente el tipo de poblamiento, así como la explotación del espacio cercano a lo largo de los ríos Lozoya y Jarama.

SIG. Cauce del Jarama. Al-Andalus. Edad media. Sistema de atalayas.

Abstract: In this paper we intend to show a different world applications of GIS allows, in this case the world Medieval al-Andalus, as it helps in understanding and graphically represent the type of settlement, and the exploitation of near space along Lozoya and Jarama rivers.

SIG. Bed of Jarama. Al-Andalus. Middle Ages. System watchtowers."

Plants stand still and interact with their immediate neighbors. Theory has shown that the distances over which these interactions occur may have important consequences for population and community dynamics. In particular, if intraspecific competition occurs over longer distances than interspecific competition (heteromyopia), coexistence can be promoted. We examined how intraspecific and interspecific competition scales with neighbor distance in a target‐neighbor greenhouse competition experiment. Individuals from co‐occurring forbs from calcareous grasslands were grown in isolation and with single conspecific or heterospecific neighbors at distances of 5, 10, or 15 cm (Plantago lanceolata vs. Plantago media and Hieracium pilosella vs. Prunella grandiflora). Neighbor effects were strong and declined with distance. Interaction distances varied greatly within and between species, but we found no evidence for heteromyopia. Instead, neighbor identity effects were mostly explained by relative size differences between target and neighbor. We found a complex interaction between final neighbor size and identity such that neighbor identity may become important only as the neighbor becomes very large compared with the target individual. Our results suggest that species‐specific size differences between neighboring individuals determine both the strength of competitive interactions and the distance over which these interactions occur.

It is anticipated that climate change will have a major impact on High Arctic ecosystems. Peary caribou (Rangifer tarandus pearyi) is a caribou subspecies endemic to the Canadian High Arctic. In the past four decades, population dynamics of Peary caribou have been subject to several population die-offs due to unfavorable winter weather with ice coating on the ground or thicker-than-usual snow cover. There is general consensus that such disturbance years may increase in frequency and severity as a result of climate change. However, there is also evidence that available forage may increase due to a longer and warmer growing season. In this study we assess the net effects of climate change with a spatially explicit simulation model calibrated with data from the Bathurst Island complex (BIC) in the Canadian High Arctic. In particular, we ask under which climate change scenarios populations depart fromthe current conditions and either suffer or benefit fromchanges in the climate. Themodel incorporatesmovement of caribou groups and annual primary productivity over 100 years. Based on the model we suggest that Peary caribou may experience significantly lower population die-offs during disturbance years if biomass increases by 50% as projected within the next 100 years and if the currently estimated proportion of inaccessible caribou forage during such disturbance events does not change with climate change. However, if forage inaccessibility in poor winters increases by more than 30% over the next 100 years, caribou may experience negative net effects of climate change. This is the first comprehensive modeling study on this species and therefore of particular importance for wildlife management and local Inuit who rely on caribou as part of their culture, identity, and diet.

The scientific and political interest in Andean rock glaciers has strongly grown in recent years due to the increasing recognition of their hydrological importance and recent impacts of mining on rock glaciers. We present a review of the scientific knowledge and political and legal context of past and current impacts on rock glaciers in Chile and, in a preliminary form, in Argentina and Peru. In these countries, 26 mining projects have already affected rock glaciers or may possibly do so in the future. Until now, the affected rock glacier area in Chile is approximately 3.3 square kilometres. We recommend broadening the current discussion about interventions of rock glaciers, which is mainly based on hydrological arguments, to take into account both long-term environmenta hazards such as the possible instability of rock glaciers with waste rock dumps, and the broad set of environmental services provided by rock glaciers.

Key words: Rock glacier, mining, water resources, slope stability, environmental services.

[EN] This work uses ideas of Foucault, Clastes, and Lévi-Strauss to develop an approach to the conceptualization and symbolic use of space and time which legitimized and made possible the construction of megalithic and earlier Neolothic commnunities. While the Mesolithic/Neolithic pattern is seen as facilitating the social practice of foragers or shifting agriculturalist, the megalithic ideology would have been developed by settled peasant farmers. Specific types of megalithic monuments are seen as expressing different ideological representations of social power. [ES]Este trabajo que prolonga un artículo anterior sobre el tema (Criado Boado A), plantea que el megalitísmo supone un tipo especial de configuración del espacio social dentro de la cual surgen conceptos específicos de tiempo y espacio. En una primera parte se intenta contrastar esta situación con otra distinta que antecedería al megalitísmo y que, desde el punto de vista del autor, coincide con la situación que caracteriza a las poblaciones mesolíticas y del neolítico inicial. Se propone que cada una de esas dos situaciones coincide con contextos culturales, marcos sociales y prácticas de subsistencia específicas. En una segunda parte se particulariza dentro de soluciones megalíticas determinadas con el fin de observar si a través de ellas se expresan diferentes estrategias de ideología y poder funcionando dentro de las sociedades constructoras de los megalitos.

This study is an intellectual exercise aimed at filling the theoretical and practical lacuna of GIS applications for intra-site analysis. It has long been argued that this lacuna is principally the consequence of the inability of GIS to manipulate three-dimensional data, where three-dimensionality is the main characteristic of the excavated archaeological record. The thesis is therefore devoted to the study of the role and potential of three-dimensional GIS modelling for understanding excavation data in theory and in practice.
The premise of the research is that unless one attempts to critically engage with the nature of archaeological excavation and with contemporary archaeological practice (i.e. the operations of recording archaeological data and transforming them by creating the archaeological record), it becomes very difficult to assess the effectiveness of computerised analytical systems to represent and interpret archaeology.
For this reason, this research seeks to address the following questions.
1. To what extent do archaeological data and GIS structures parallel one another and how can GIS represent an archaeological excavation?
2. Can three-dimensional dynamic GIS improve our understanding of depositional and post-depositional phenomena? If so how might this operate?
The thesis discusses the first question in critical detail before going on to argue that the answer to the second is positive. Three-dimensional data and the development and coupling of modelling techniques to GIS allow for a better and more faceted understanding of the excavation record.
This research concentrates on experimenting and evaluating three-dimensional GIS for the study of archaeological excavation as a process that generates archaeological data at many different levels, in variously forms and across different spaces (from the site to the computer).
Whereas the research focuses more on theoretical concepts that contribute to defining the nature of archaeological data in exploratory multidimensional complex environments, the practical examples presented narrow down to the application of three-dimensional representations in two specific excavation scenarios: the Neolithic site of Kouphovouno in Greece and the Hoge Vaart excavation in the Netherlands.
Results of this study outline a conceptual framework for representing spatial (and temporal) excavation information, and provide a blueprint for creating a model for storing, manipulating and analysing archaeological excavation data. In addition to the framework, some procedures are defined for outlining the core data needed for representing excavation data in three dimensions.

Traditional approaches to urban and field survey in archaeology and related disciplines (ancient sources, archive data and historical cartography, GIS processing, surface artefacts collection…), are nowadays growingly supported by a wide range of remote sensing techniques. These allow not only to better understand and valorise complex archaeological sites, but also provide previously unavailable tools to enhance efficiency in prospection, excavation, documentation and corresponding analysis of recovered material. In this work, these issues are highlighted by the presentation of a geophysical prospection making use of ground penetrating radar and the 3D reconstruction of an excavation by laser scanning. The need for integration of different techniques is also being discussed.

Sediment delivered from water erosion causes substantial waterway
damages and water quality degradation. A number of factors such as
drainage area size, basin slope, climate, land use/land cover may
affect sediment delivery processes. The goal of this study is to define a
computationally effective suitable soil erosion model in the Drăgan
river watershed, for future sedimentation studies. Geographic
Information System (GIS) is used to determine the Universal Soil Loss
Equation Model (U.S.L.E.) values of the studied water basin. The
methods and approaches used in this study are expected to be
applicable in future research and to watersheds in other regions.

The aim of the paper is both to review the scientific literature about spatial data mining methods - in particular spatial clustering methods developed in recent years - and to present an original application of the recently proposed RedCap method of spatial clustering and regionalization on Florentine Metropolitan Area (FMA). Demographic indicators computed on official data provided by the Italian Institute of Statistics (Istat), are the input of a spatial clustering and regionalization model in order to get a classification of the FMA municipalities into a number of homogeneous (with respect to demographic structure) and spatially contiguous zones.
In the optics of a progressive decentralization of the governance activities we believe that the FMA represents a very interesting case of study. This due to the fact that the individuation of new spatial areas built considering both the demographic characteristics of the resident population and the spatial dimension of the territory where this population insists could become a useful tool for local governance.

I analyze oligopolistic competition among three or more firms located on Hotelling's (1929) Main Srreet and show that in contrast with Hotelling's duopoly, the symmetric locational structure supports a noncooperative equilibrium in prices. However, in a two-stage game of location choice in the first stage, and price choice in the second stage, there exists no subgame-perfect equilibrium where the whole market is served. This is because, starting from any locational pattern, firms have incentives to move toward the central firm. This strong version of the Principle of Minimum Differentiation destroys the possibility of a locational equilibrium. The results are a direct consequence of the existence of boundaries the space of location. The sharp difference between these results and those of the standard
circular model (whose product space lacks boundaries) shows that the general use of the circular model as an approximation to the line interval model may be unwarranted.

I analyze oligopolistic competition among three or more firms located on Hotelling's (1929) Main Sreet and show that in contrast with Hotelling's duopoly, the symmetric locational structure supports a noncooperative equilibrium in prices. However, in a two-stage game of location choice in the first stage, and price choice in the second stage, there exists no subgame-perfect equilibrium where the whole market is served. This is because, starting from any locational pattern, firms have incentives to move toward the central firm. This strong version of the Principle of Minimum Differentiation destroys the possibility of a locational equilibrium. The results are a direct consequence of the existence of boundaries the space of location. The sharp difference between these results and those of the standard
circular model (whose product space lacks boundaries) shows that the general use of the circular model as an approximation to the line interval model may be unwarranted.

"Most of the datasets presented in this thesis are available for free in ArcGIS shapefile format on the University of Edinburgh's DataShare Open data repository at http://datashare.is.ed.ac.uk/. These datasets are available for everyone to use as it is important to encourage data sharing in support of research activities. There are also some CORONA satellite images available on DataShare for the Syrian Jazira region.

I need to note as well that the archaeological dataset (http://dx.doi.org/10.7488/ds/1735) associated with this thesis has copyright protection, and my thesis must be cited in any publication that has incorporated this dataset into any research associated with it.

Relevant to CORONA, and the thesis, is a paper presented at a 1997 conference which first introduced CORONA satellite imagery to archaeologists doing research in the Near East.  Martin Fowler also wrote about the potential of CORONA in the Aerial Archaeology Research Group (AARG) news.

Mathys, Tony. “The Use of Declassified Intelligence Satellite Photographs in a GIS (IDRISI) to Map Archaeological Sites and the Surrounding Landscape in the Northeastern Region of the Syrian Jazirah. The University of Chicago Oriental Institute, NASA and St. Cloud State University Remote Sensing Applications in Archaeology Conference. St. Cloud, Minnesota, May 29-31, 1997.

Unfortunately, the Oriental Institute did not publish the papers presented at this conference; several academics, in attendance, built their careers on this presentation without any citation to it.

My gratitude and thanks to Dr Sarah Parcak for citing this unpublished conference paper in her book (Satellite Remote Sensing in Archaeology), and to Dr Aled Rowlands and Dr Apostolos Sarris for citing it in their Journal of Archaeological Science article 34 (2007)."

This thesis is copyright protected.
© 2001 Antone J.  Mathys. All Rights Reserved.""

Spatial analysis has been a significant field of tourism geography for over 40 years. Yet despite its significant contribution to tourism planning and management and spatial knowledge of tourism and its effects it has been an unfashionable area of tourism geography in recent years as a result of the 'cultural turn' in geography and the emergence of so-called 'critical' tourism studies. Nevertheless, its capacity to identify tourism related change and the growth of user generated spatial data as a result of improved access to spatial technologies means that there is renewed interest in the field.

This chapter is divided into three main sections. The first section provides a definition of spatial analysis and its scope, which includes spatial data analysis, spatial statistical analysis, spatial modelling and spatial data manipulation, usually in a geographic information system (GIS). However, despite its potential to contribute to understandings of mobility, and its relationship to time-geography in tourism, perceptions of spatial analysis as an uncritical geography may be influenced by its strong quantitative emphasis. The chapter then goes on to discuss some of the major research contributions in contemporary spatial analysis with respect to spatial interaction and modelling tourist movement before examining the utilisation of GIS and advanced tracking technologies and the integration of spatial analysis with qualitative methods. The chapter concludes by noting the critical function of spatial analysis, particularly with respect to its capacity to identify accessibility to resources, and its value in policy arguments.

In one of the 10 driest country in the world, Amman consumes 40 % of the national water. Amman water supply are rare, far away and over exploited.
Amman first pump station was built in 1928 for the new quarters of the City. Until 1952, Amman used its sources and the Sayl waters. The first Palestinian dislocation in 1948 imposed urgent changes in the drinking water systems. After 1952, the population totaled 108.304 inhabitants. In 1955, various pumping stations were built in distant regions to divert water from springs like the Sail Amman Water transfers from distant springs were increased in the 1980s when important quantities began to be pumped from the Azraq. The large transfers to Amman and the development of local irrigated agriculture provoked a very severe overexploitation of the aquifer, and the drying up of this desert oasis. One glass of water out of 4 drinked in Amman is coming from Azraq aquifer.


In 2000 40% of Amman Water supplies comes from the Jourdain through Deir Alla-Zai-Dabouq pumping station. 22 % comes from Azraq , 18 % through Qatrana, Swaqa and Qastal wells.  In 1999 the government privatized the water sector and gave its managment to the LEMA (lyonnaise des eaux – Montgomery Watson –  Arabtech Jardaneh.) with a 55 millions dollars grant from the World bank. With the growth of the city of Amman a new project emerged to convey water from Disi fossil aquifer at the border with Saudi Arabia. Water must be conveyed on 325 km: 65 wells of 500 m depth will be digged. The project aims at providing Amman with 100 Millions cubic meter of high quality. It needs plenty electricity.

Between 16 and 22°S in the Central Andes the climate is seasonally arid with precipitation decreasing south-westwards. The lowest altitude of rock glacier activity corresponds closely to the 0°C isotherm, not the glacier ELA which rises to the south in response to increasing aridity. Inactive rock glaciers probably mark the position of a former 0°C isotherm which followed a similar trend but was about 400 m lower.

This paper summarizes an archaeological survey methodology aimed to contrast and to improve the information contained in the Archaeological Inventories about the closest area to “El Casetón de la Era II”, the first enclosure excavated in the North Meseta. The objective is to do the best with a future locational analysis that will bring new knowledge about a kind of sites that are changing many of the previous ideas about the Recent Prehistory in the middle Douro Valley.

Soil erosion is a serious environmental and production problem in south Portugal. The objectives of the study were to develop and validate a soil erosion-predicting model based on the revised Universal Soil Loss Equation (RUSLE) in a geographic information systems (GIS) environment. The maps resulting from the interpolation techniques were introduced in a GIS and their values reclassified. After that, spatial modeling was used do develop the final overlay map from all the information of the analyzed soil properties and RUSLE parameters simulating a “potential soil erosion map”. The study showed that the serious eroded area (when sediment is higher than 50 t/ha) is 20%, but contributes 60% sediments of all watersheds. This system will be used to provide site specific land use and management methods that could decrease risk of erosion in the higher risk locations of the study watershed.

Aim  To develop a new modelling approach for spatially autocorrelated non-normal data, and apply it to a case study of the role that fire–vegetation–soil feedbacks play in maintaining boundaries between fire-sensitive and fire-promoted plant communities.

Location  A mulga (Acacia aneura) shrubland–spinifex (Triodia spp.) grassland mosaic, central Australia.

Methods  Autoregressive error models were extended to non-normal data by incorporating neighbourhood values of the response and predictor variables into generalized nonlinear models. These models were used to examine the environmental correlates of three response variables: mulga cover; fire frequency in areas free of mulga; and the presence of mulga banding. Mulga cover and mulga banding were assessed visually by overlaying 4477 × 1 km2 grid cells on both Landsat 7 ETM+ and very high resolution imagery. Fire frequency was estimated from an existing fire history for central Australia, based on remotely sensed fire scars.

Results  The autoregressive error models explained 27%, 47% and 57% of the null deviance of mulga cover, fire frequency and mulga banding, respectively, with 12%, 15% and 24% of the null deviance being explained by environmental variables alone. These models accounted for virtually all residual spatial autocorrelation. While there was a clear negative relationship between mulga cover and fire frequency, there was little evidence that mulga was being restricted to parts of the landscape with inherently low fire frequencies. Mulga was most abundant at very low slope angles and on red earths, both of which are likely to reflect high site productivity, while fire frequency was not clearly affected by slope angle and was also relatively high on red earths.

Main conclusions  The modelling approach we have developed provides a much needed way of analysing spatially autocorrelated non-normal data and can be easily incorporated into an information-theoretic modelling framework. Using this approach, we provide evidence that mulga and spinifex have a highly antagonistic relationship. In more productive parts of the landscape, mulga suppresses spinifex and fire, while in less productive parts of the landscape, fire and spinifex suppress mulga, leading to the remarkable abruptness of mulga–spinifex boundaries that are maintained via fire–vegetation–soil feedbacks.

The influence of innovative management alternatives (participatory governance, effort management, decision rules) on biological robustness (BR) in various fisheries relevant to the EU (Baltic, Western Shelf, Faroe Islands, North Sea), was investigated with a numerical simulation model developed in the EU projects EFIMAS (2004–2008) and COMMIT (2004–2007). The index for BR was set as the percentage of years in which standard biological reference points (Bpa, Fpa) were met. The results suggest that new information obtained through participatory governance may affect BR by reducing bias rather than increasing precision, implying that participatory governance should rather focus on potential sources of bias than on (perceived) low sampling efforts. Further analyses suggest that effort-based regimes combined with catch quota restrictions improve BR. However, the relative effect of catch quotas versus effort management on BR varies with circumstances, implying that careful and case-specific analyses are needed to weigh one against the other. This requires more detailed data than generally available at present, including electronic surveillance, detailed catch data, environmental/productivity data, recruitment and misreporting. Finally we analysed a decision rule consisting of a two-step management system, which allows TAC adjustment according to the state of the stock monitored during the fisheries season. Such measures may improve the BR.

In mountain regions, permafrost is important for the geomorphology of high altitudes areas as well for the water resources of inhabited watersheds. Under the present Global Warming, the possible degradation of permafrost during the coming decades could hence provoke various kind of slope instability and change drastically the hydrological functioning (Kääb et al., 2006). A better understanding of the distribution of the permafrost is therefore a necessary prerequisite for further analysis and mitigation of those hazards.
As permafrost is in most cases invisible and, though covering large areas, its distribution is largely unknown. Extensive permafrost “mapping” can be approached only through either empirical, statistical or physically based modelling (Riseborough et al., 2008). Permafrost maps have been produced this way for the Swiss Alps. 
As no such map existed yet for the French Alps, this paper thus intends to present an overview of the main available datasets on the presence of permafrost, in rockfaces as well within debris accumulations: inventories of geomorphological indicators (rockglaciers and other creeping landforms related to the presence of ground ice) and in-situ measurements (BTS, geophysical soundings …). Among various types of available models, a statistico-empirical one has been set up: it is based on the relation between the two most important topoclimatic controls (solar radiation and air temperature) of the rockglaciers presence. This relation was computed on a lithologically, geomorphologically and climatically homogeneous small massif (Combeynot Massif, ≈ 45° N, 40km²) which presents numerous rockglaciers in various topoclimatic contexts (Bodin, 2007). Two versions of the model, one for the root of rockglaciers, one for their frontal part, have been combined to assess the potential presence of permafrost in the entire French Alps. Two validation procedures have been performed using independent rockglaciers inventories: one in the Mercantour Massif (lat. ≈ 44° N), one in the Vanoise Massif (lat. ≈ 45.5° N). The comparison between training set and validation set shows a good correspondence of the altitude and aspect of the actual rockglaciers and of the modelled front and root areas. Those first results are thus encouraging as they already provide to public and to decision-makers usable new information about permafrost presence in their territory. At fine scales (lower than the watershed), more investigations are nevertheless necessary to detect and characterise precisely the permafrost, either in debris accumulation or in rock-face.

Moutain areas are occasionaly affected by complex mass movements of high magnitude and large extent, which generally involve water, snow, rock and ice in variable proportions. Those events can take the form of rock avalanche, landslide, debris flow, glacier collapse or a combination of these phenomenons. In the Central Andes of Chile, they affect hardly accessible regions with low population, explaining the scarcity of previous studies. Nevertheless, during the last 30 years, some documented examples of such events in this region have shown that the volume of material involved is in the order of several millions of m3, the areas affected can reach several tenth of km2 and the velocity of the movement can exceed several tenths of m/s.
In this context, this study intends i) to inventory and to describe the main characteristics of events previously documented in the Central Andes of Chile, and ii) analyse in detail two recent events (2005-2007) never described before which have affected in one case a glacier and in another case a rock glacier.
With the objectives of determining the possible chain of triggering factors and interpreting the event’s significance in terms of geomorphic, cryogenic and climatic dynamics, we used air photographs, satellite imagery (Landsat TM & ETM+; Quick Bird when available in Google Earth 5.0), data from the closest meteorological stations, glacier mass balance data and seismic records to investigate the collapse of a rock glacier occurred in 2006 on the west-facing flank of the Cerro Las Tórtolas (6160 m asl; 29º58’ S. - 69º55’ W.), in the arid North of Chile, and the collapse of a glacier that occurred during austral summer 2006-2007 on the South side of the Tinguiririca Volcano (4075 m asl; 34°48’ S. - 70°21’ W.).
The rock glacier collapse of the Cerro Las Tórtolas West flank occurred during the spring of 2006, but signs of destabilization were already observable since the end of 2005. The deposit of the collapsed mass of the glacier covered 0.12km2, evertheless part of the material mobilized was channelised in a 200m-wide ravine generating an hyper-concentrated flow of snow, ice, water and debris, which traveled for 3 km downslope.
The event of the Tinguiririca Volcano South flank occurred between the 29th of December 2006 and the 14th of January 2007 and affected a mountain glacier of 0.46 km2. The destabilization of this later led to a quasi complete detachment of the glacier mass, which flowed to the bottom of the valley and, incorporating rock debris, snow and water, traveled downslope for more than 7 km.
The destabilization and collapse of both studied landforms occurred during exceptionnaly warm periods of spring and summer and the climatic conditions produced intense glacier downwasting in Chile. This situation might have favoured the destabilization, either by reducing the basal friction of the glacier or by saturating the detritic sole of the rock glacier, both mechanisms being related to large quantity of melt water in the system. Although further research is needed, this temporal concordance suggests that those extreme geomorphologic phenomenons could be partly related to warming air temperatures.

Dentro de los estudios de análisis del territorio el comportamiento
visual de los yacimientos arqueológicos juega
un papel fundamental para la comprensión de las estrategias
de ocupación del espacio. En el caso que ahora nos ocupa,
el objeto de estudio viene dado por las diferentes manifestaciones
de la monumentalidad neolítica de la cuenca del
Sever (Portugal-España). La consideración de distintos
factores que entran en juego en la visibilidad nos permite valorar
el papel jugado por la topografía, las estructuras arquitectónicas
y las distintas relaciones entre éstas; la importancia
de la variabilidad microtopográfica como factor de
limitación a la visibilidad, o las particularidades de localización
respecto al entorno inmediato de los monumentos
son algunos de los puntos a destacar dentro de la cuenca.

The predictive power of logistic regression, support vector machines and bootstrap-aggregated classification trees (bagging, double-bagging) is compared using misclassification error rates on independent test data sets. Based on a resampling approach that takes into account spatial autocorrelation, error rates for predicting "present" and "future" landslides are estimated within and outside the training area. In a case study from the Ecuadorian Andes, logistic regression with stepwise backward variable selection yields lowest error rates and demonstrates the best generalization capabilities. The evaluation outside the training area reveals that tree-based methods tend to overfit the data.

The performance improvements that can be achieved by classifier selection and by integrating terrain attributes into land cover classification are investigated in the context of rock glacier detection. While exposed glacier ice can easily be mapped from multispectral remote-sensing data, the detection of rock glaciers and debris-covered glaciers is a challenge for multispectral remote sensing. Motivated by the successful use of digital terrain analysis in rock glacier distribution models, the predictive performance of a combination of terrain attributes derived from SRTM (Shuttle Radar Topography Mission) digital elevation models and Landsat ETM+ data for detecting rock glaciers in the San Juan Mountains, Colorado, USA, is assessed. Eleven statistical and machine-learning techniques are compared in a benchmarking exercise, including logistic regression, generalized additive models (GAM), linear discriminant techniques, the support vector machine, and bootstrap-aggregated tree-based classifiers such as random forests. Penalized linear discriminant analysis (PLDA) yields mapping results that are significantly better than all other classifiers, achieving a median false-positive rate (mFPR, estimated by cross-validation) of 8.2% at a sensitivity of 70%, i.e. when 70% of all true rock glacier points are detected. The GAM and standard linear discriminant analysis were second best (mFPR: 8.8%), followed by polyclass. For comparison, the predictive performance of the best three techniques is also evaluated using (1) only terrain attributes as predictors (mFPR: 13.1–14.5% for best three techniques), and (2), only Landsat ETM+ data (mFPR: 19.4–22.7%), yielding significantly higher mFPR estimates at a 70% sensitivity. The mFPR of the worst three classifiers was by about one-quarter higher compared to the best three classifiers, and the combination of terrain attributes and multispectral data reduced the mFPR by more than one-half compared to remote sensing only. These results highlight the importance of combining remote-sensing and terrain data for mapping rock glaciers and other debris-covered ice and choosing the optimal classifier based on unbiased error estimators. The proposed benchmarking methodology is more generally suitable for comparing the utility of remote-sensing algorithms and sensors.

El análisis de los incentivos regionales sobre las decisiones de localización empresarial ha sido objeto de gran interés por parte de la economía regional. Sin embargo, son escasos los estudios que han contrastado en términos de probabilidad las predicciones de los modelos teóricos con datos georreferenciados de  empresas. En este trabajo se analiza el impacto de las ayudas regionales en la estructura sectorial  de las empresas del Corredor del Henares comparando las predicciones obtenidas a partir de múltiples simulaciones con los esquemas de localización observados en la base de datos SABI. La metodología aplicada en las simulaciones es la denominada basada en agentes. En lugar de simular el comportamiento general del fenómeno objeto de estudio, se define el comportamiento individual de los agentes implicados y se establecen las reglas generales de interacción entre los mismos para a partir de ellos obtener sus comportamientos emergentes. Los resultados obtenidos indican que los incentivos regionales además de favorecer el desplazamiento de las empresas hacia las zonas con ayudas generan nuevos entornos que favorecen el surgimiento en las zonas sin ayudas de nuevas empresas de características –y sectores- diferentes a las que de otro modo hubieran surgido.

Kokap subdistric is located in Kulonprogo. It has some problems of  landslides and  mis use of land. The research was proposed to determine the regions having potential of land degradation based on the land capability and population pressure analysis.

This research was carried out using  field survey. The field survey was based on stratified random sampling of landform unit as area sampling unit. The LCLP software was applied for land capability classification. The Soemarwoto method was applied for the evaluation of  population pressure on the agriculture land.

The results of this research were: (1) land capability in the study area was varies from class II – class VII with limitation factors of  slope, soil erodibility, soil texture, soil permeability  and  soil efectif depth, (2) the whole study area fell into high population pressure class (that means it had exceed of it’s land capability), (3) most of the study area (51,9%) had been classified into high potential of  land degradation.

Keywords: Land Capability, Population Pressure On Agriculture Land, Land Degradation.

In the context of a general retreat of glaciers in the dry Andes, this study focuses on the state and recent evolution of debris-covered glaciers and permafrost-related landforms, especially rock glaciers, in the semiarid to semihumid Laguna Negra catchment, a part of the Andes of central Chile at 33.5°S, that is a key contributor of drinking water for the city of Santiago. We conducted catchment-scale geomorphological mapping, diachronic analysis of 1955 and 1996 orthophotographs and digital elevation models (DEMs), and the analysis of ground temperatures and their sensitivity to climate variation. Rock glaciers dominate spatially and in terms of water storage over glaciers (area ratio: 1.7:1; ratio of water equivalents: 1.5:1). An intense downwasting has affected both debris-covered and exposed glacier components in the Punta Negra subcatchment, a process that is associated with the growth of numerous thermokarst depressions. The altitudinal transect of ground temperature suggest that permafrost is widespread above ∼4000 m asl, although it can also occur at lower elevations on sheltered footslopes and within rock glaciers. The sensitivity analysis indicates that the near-surface ground thermal regime at high altitudes is strongly influenced by the snow cover disappearance date, which may therefore constitute an important control on the effect of climatic warming.

The Laurichard active rock glacier is the permafrost-related landform with the longest record of monitoring in France, including an annual geodetic survey, repeated geoelectrical campaigns from 1979 onwards and continuous recording of ground temperature since 2003. These data were used to examine changes in creep rates and internal structure from 1986 to 2006. The control that climatic variables exert on rock glacier kinematics was investigated over three time scales. Between the 1980s and the early 2000s, the main observed changes were a general increase in surface velocity and a decrease in internal resistivity. At a multi-year scale, the high correlation between surface movement and snow thickness in the preceding December appears to confirm the importance of snow cover conditions in early winter through their influence on the ground thermal regime. A comparison of surface velocities, regional climatic datasets and ground sub-surface temperatures over six years suggests a strong relation between rock glacier deformation and ground temperature, as well as a role for liquid water due to melt of thick snow cover. Finally, unusual surface lowering that accompanied peak velocities in 2004 may be due to a general thaw of the top of the permafrost, probably caused both by two successive snowy winters and by high energy inputs during the warm summer of 2003.

A conference paper /in Czech/ describing two complementary approaches to the spatial investigation of the prehistoric cemetery at Holešov, Moravia, Czech Republic. GIS, multivariate statistics, and a combination of these have been utilized to explore and visualize the data. The questions followed here are the relative chronology of the site and the formal variability of burial assemblages.

Coral reef ecosystems are topographically complex environments and this structural heterogeneity influences the distribution, abundance and behavior of marine organisms. Airborne hydrographic lidar (Light Detection and Ranging) provides high resolution digital bathymetry from which topographic complexity can be quantified at multiple spatial scales. To assess the utility of lidar data as a predictor of fish and coral diversity and abundance, seven different morphometrics were applied to a 4 m resolution bathymetry grid and then quantified at multiple spatial scales (i.e., 15, 25, 50, 100, 200 and 300 m radii) using a circular moving window analysis. Predictive models for nineteen fish metrics and two coral metrics were developed using the new statistical learning technique of stochastic gradient boosting applied to regression trees. Predictive models explained 72% of the variance in herbivore biomass, 68% of parrotfish biomass, 65% of coral species richness and 64% of fish species richness. Slope of the slope (a measure of the magnitude of slope change) at relatively local spatial scales (15-100 m radii) emerged as the single best predictor. Herbivorous fish responded to topographic complexity at spatial scales of 15 and 25 m radii, whereas broader spatial scales of between 25 and 300 m radii were relevant for piscivorous fish. This study demonstrates great utility for lidar-derived bathymetry in the future development of benthic habitat maps and faunal distribution maps to support ecosystem-based management and marine spatial planning.

Effective management of coral reef ecosystems requires accurate, quantitative and spatially explicit information on patterns of species richness at spatial scales relevant to the management process.We combined empirical modelling techniques, remotely sensed data, field observations and GIS to develop a novel multi-scale approach for predicting fish species richness across a compositionally and topographically complex mosaic of marine habitat types in the U.S. Caribbean. First, the performance of three different modelling techniques (multiple linear regression, neural networks and regression trees) was compared using data from southwestern Puerto Rico and evaluated using multiple measures of predictive accuracy. Second, the best performing model was selected. Third, the generality of the best performing modelwas assessed through application to two geographically distinct coral reef ecosystems in the neighbouring U.S. Virgin Islands. Overall, regression trees outperformed multiple linear regression and neural networks. The best performing regression tree model of fish species richness (high, medium, lowclasses) in southwestern Puerto Rico exhibited an overall map accuracy of 75%; 83.4% when only high and low species richness areaswere evaluated. In agreement with well recognised ecological relationships, areas of high fish species richness were predicted for the most bathymetrically complex areas with high mean rugosity and high bathymetric variance quantified at two different spatial extents (≤0.01km2). Water depth and the amount of seagrasses and hard-bottom habitat in the seascape were of secondary importance. This model also provided good predictions in two geographically distinct regions indicating a high level of generality in the habitat variables selected. Results indicated that accurate predictions of fish species richness could be achieved in future studies using remotely sensed measures of topographic complexity alone. This integration of empirical modelling techniques with spatial technologies provides an important new tool in support of ecosystem-based management for coral reef ecosystems.