Environmental Security: A Geographic Information System Analysis Approach—The Case of Kenya

Studies into the relationships between environmental factors and violence or conflicts constitute a very debated research field called environmental security. Several authors think that environmental scarcity, which is scarcity of renewable resources, can contribute to generate violence or social unrest, particularly within states scarcely endowed with technical know-how and social structures, such as developing countries. In this work, we referred to the theoretical model developed by the Environmental Change and Acute Conflict Project. Our goal was to use easily available spatial databases to map the various sources of environmental scarcity through geographic information systems, in order to locate the areas apparently most at risk of suffering negative social effects and their consequences in terms of internal security. The analysis was carried out at a subnational level and applied to the case of Kenya. A first phase of the work included a careful selection of databases relative to renewable resources. Spatial operations among these data allowed us to obtain new information on the availability of renewable resources (cropland, forests, water), on the present and foreseen demographic pressure, as well as on the social and technical ingenuity. The results made it possible to identify areas suffering from scarcity of one or more renewable resources, indicating different levels of gravity. Accounts from Kenya seem to confirm our results, reporting clashes between tribal groups over the access to scarce resources in areas that our work showed to be at high risk.     

Subhabitat selection by foraging threespine stickleback (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Gasterosteus aculeatus</Emphasis>): previous experience and social conformity

Any mechanism that allows animals to increase their foraging efficiency is likely to be selected for, including the ability to learn to recognise and subsequently discriminate between habitat types based on their profitability. In a series of laboratory studies, we manipulated prey densities across two different experimental subhabitats and demonstrated that threespine stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus) can develop foraging preferences for subhabitats that have previously yielded prey. Fish were not recalling the spatial location of prey patches; rather, they were discriminating between subhabitats based on foraging experience there and allocating foraging effort accordingly. Foraging preferences took around 14 days to develop, and once established, they persisted independently of experimental prey density, suggesting that fish were using experience rather than real-time sampling to select foraging grounds. When we presented focal fish with social information cues, we found that they preferentially used local enhancement and current public information cues when they conflicted with previous experience, but that they did not use prior public information. This suggests that in the presence of conspecifics, individuals prioritise social conformity over the use of private information. We discuss our results in the context of optimal foraging and the trade-offs associated with balancing conflicting private and social information.     

地震前兆资料减灾信息的综合开发

近一、二十年建立起来的地震前兆观测台网,不仅为地震预测预报提供了大量科学数据,而且蕴藏着丰富的减灾信息,有待我们去开发。综合观测、综合分析和综合预报是防灾减灾的必由之路。     

基于中低分辨率遥感影像的分类方法对比研究——以鄱阳湖水鸟栖息地遥感分类为例

选取中国鄱阳湖南矶山湿地为研究范围,通过分析候鸟在越冬期的栖息特征,构建适宜于提取候鸟栖息地的湿地分类系统。以Landsat8卫星OLI遥感影像为数据源,采用面向对象分类方法,通过多尺度分割、特征提取和决策树建立等关键步骤,实现湿地信息的快速提取;通过与传统像元法的分类结果对比,系统分析了面向对象方法在基于中低分辨率遥感影像的湿地信息提取中的有效性。研究表明:在面向对象湿地信息提取中,构建不同等级的分割尺度,在多个尺度上提取同一地物,可以更好识别复杂的湿地景观类型;相比仅依据像元光谱特征进行分类的传统像元方法,面向对象方法综合利用光谱、空间、形状和纹理等多种特征,因此可以获得更高的精度(总体分类精度达到87.64%,Kappa系数为 0.855 2);基于中低分辨率遥感影像,采用面向对象分类方法,能够获得较高精度的湿地景观分布,是一种成本较低且行之有效的技术手段。     

Importance of timely metadata curation to the global surveillance of genetic diversity

Genetic diversity within species represents a fundamental yet underappreciated level of biodiversity. Because genetic diversity can indicate species resilience to changing climate, its measurement is relevant to many national and global conservation policy targets. Many studies produce large amounts of genome-scale genetic diversity data for wild populations, but most (87%) do not include the associated spatial and temporal metadata necessary for them to be reused in monitoring programs or for acknowledging the sovereignty of nations or Indigenous peoples. We undertook a distributed datathon to quantify the availability of these missing metadata and to test the hypothesis that their availability decays with time. We also worked to remediate missing metadata by extracting them from associated published papers, online repositories, and direct communication with authors. Starting with 848 candidate genomic data sets (reduced representation and whole genome) from the International Nucleotide Sequence Database Collaboration, we determined that 561 contained mostly samples from wild populations. We successfully restored spatiotemporal metadata for 78% of these 561 data sets (n = 440 data sets with data on 45,105 individuals from 762 species in 17 phyla). Examining papers and online repositories was much more fruitful than contacting 351 authors, who replied to our email requests 45% of the time. Overall, 23% of our email queries to authors unearthed useful metadata. The probability of retrieving spatiotemporal metadata declined significantly as age of the data set increased. There was a 13.5% yearly decrease in metadata associated with published papers or online repositories and up to a 22% yearly decrease in metadata that were only available from authors. This rapid decay in metadata availability, mirrored in studies of other types of biological data, should motivate swift updates to data-sharing policies and researcher practices to ensure that the valuable context provided by metadata is not lost to conservation science forever.     

地方环境管理信息系统的设计(续)——模块和数据库设计

模块化设计是REMIS的基本方法,数据库是REMIS的核心。本文论述了模块化设计和数据库设计的基本方法和成果。据此得到的模块化分解和数据库结构方案可以保证系统实施的稳定性和灵活性,同时使系统保持较高的运行效率。     

The optimal pricing of pollution when enforcement is costly

We consider the pricing of a uniformly mixed pollutant with a model of optimal, possibly firm-specific, emissions taxes and their enforcement under incomplete information about firms’ abatement costs, enforcement costs, and pollution damage. We argue that optimality requires an enforcement strategy that induces full compliance by every firm, except possibly when a regulator can base the probabilities of detecting individual violations on observable correlates of violators’ actual emissions. Moreover, optimality requires discriminatory taxes, except when a regulator is unable to use observable firm-level characteristics to gain some information about the variation in firms’ abatement costs or monitoring costs.     

Identifying Habitat Variables Important to the Rare Columbia Spotted Frog in Utah (U.S.A.): an Information-Theoretic Approach

Abstract:  We identified habitat associations of the rare Columbia spotted frog (  Rana luteiventris ). We used an information-theoretic approach that encouraged careful consideration of previous studies, demanded a priori formulation of hypotheses and models, and provided interpretable results while avoiding some criticisms of traditional statistical analyses. We formulated hypotheses about habitat associations based on conductivity, emergent vegetation, littoral zone depth, pond hydrology, and water temperature. We modeled hypothesized associations with logistic regression and used Akaike's information criterion to quantify evidence for models, weigh the relative importance of each habitat variable, and select predictive models. Although variable, results suggested that spotted frogs are more likely to occur in ponds that do not shrink in size seasonally, maintain relatively constant seasonal water temperature, and have high emergent vegetation cover. Associations we identified will assist actions in Utah that may be critical to local persistence of spotted frogs. Moreover, this approach for identifying associations has great potential for other rare species.     

太湖流域城镇形态的遥感信息提取模型研究

城市形态学在城市地理学的发展过程中占有重要地位，为战后城市地理学成为一门独立学科起了重要的推动作用。20世纪50年代后，因城市形态的研究没有取得突破性的进展，城市形态的研究似乎变成传统景观研究内容的一部分。20世纪80年代后，城市化、城市郊区化进程加快，城镇研究越来越受到重视，但城市地理学者在研究城镇之前必须对城乡进行划分，而城乡划分的基础是城市形态的信息提取，因而对城市形态的研究又得到重视，但城镇形态信息提取没有找到一个切实有效的方法。利用遥感技术，以太湖流域苏锡常地区为例，建立城镇形态信息的提取模型－仿归一化植被指数法，且通过对比监督分类法，说明仿归一化植被指数法提取城镇信息的特点，为城乡划分，城镇聚落结构，城市群等研究提供客观，简便的获取城镇信息的方法。     

地理信息系统在可持续发展预警中的应用

本文针对可持续发展预警函需解决的如何计量区域间在可持续发展中的关系和如何减少人为因素以及如何解决专家系统与预警模型系统的融合等难题 ,提出建立可持续发展预警信息系统 ,即以地理信息系统作平台 ,充分利用Internet网络数据 ,结合地理信息系统的空间分析功能及其对空间数据、属性数据的管理功能 ,实现对预警指标数据的动态补充和管理 ,在此基础上实现可持续发展预警的专家系统、预警模型系统、数据管理系统、信息发布系统有效地拟合