Hasil untuk "Geography (General)"

S. Sitch, C. Huntingford, N. Gedney et al.

D. Bloom, J. Sachs

J. Baxter, J. Eyles

Longfei Cui, Xinyu Niu, Haizhong Qian et al.

The extraction of shape features from vector elements is essential in cartography and geographic information science, supporting a range of intelligent processing tasks. Traditional methods rely on different machine learning algorithms tailored to specific types of line and polygon elements, limiting their general applicability. This study introduces a novel approach called “Pre-Trained Shape Feature Representations from Transformers (PSRT)”, which utilizes transformer encoders designed with three self-supervised pre-training tasks: coordinate masking prediction, coordinate offset correction, and coordinate sequence rearrangement. This approach enables the extraction of general shape features applicable to both line and polygon elements, generating high-dimensional embedded feature vectors. These vectors facilitate downstream tasks like shape classification, pattern recognition, and cartographic generalization. Our experimental results show that PSRT can extract vector shape features effectively without needing labeled samples and is adaptable to various types of vector features. Compared to the methods without pre-training, PSRT enhances training efficiency by over five times and improves accuracy by 5–10% in tasks such as line element matching and polygon shape classification. This innovative approach offers a more unified, efficient solution for processing vector shape data across different applications.

Tobias Heimann, Lara-Sophie Wähling, Tomke Honkomp et al.

Bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) is a crucial element in most modelling studies on emission pathways of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to limit global warming. BECCS can substitute fossil fuels in energy production and reduce CO _2 emissions, while using biomass for energy production can have feedback effects on land use, agricultural and forest products markets, as well as biodiversity and water resources. To assess the former pros and cons of BECCS deployment, interdisciplinary model approaches require detailed estimates of technological information related to BECCS production technologies. Current estimates of the cost structure and capture potential of BECCS vary widely due to the absence of large-scale production. To obtain more precise estimates, a global online expert survey ( N = 32) was conducted including questions on the regional development potential and biomass use of BECCS, as well as the future operating costs, capture potential, and scalability in different application sectors. In general, the experts consider the implementation of BECCS in Europe and North America to be very promising and regard BECCS application in the liquid biofuel industry and thermal power generation as very likely. The results show significant differences depending on whether the experts work in the Global North or the Global South. Thus, the findings underline the importance of including experts from the Global South in discussions on carbon dioxide removal methods. Regarding technical estimates, the operating costs of BECCS in thermal power generation were estimated in the range of 100–200 USD/tCO _2 , while the CO _2 capture potential was estimated to be 50–200 MtCO _2 yr ^−1 by 2030, with cost-efficiency gains of 20% by 2050 due to technological progress. Whereas the individuals’ experts provided more precise estimates, the overall distribution of estimates reflected the wide range of estimates found in the literature. For the cost shares within BECCS, it was difficult to obtain consistent estimates. However, due to very few current alternative estimates, the results are an important step for modelling the production sector of BECCS in interdisciplinary models that analyse cross-dimensional trade-offs and long-term sustainability.

Tesfaye Tadesse, Yericho Berhanu, Ginjo Gitima et al.

Land use and cover changes alter the functions and structures of ecosystem, resulting in variations in Ecosystem Service Values (ESVs). Thus, we examined the impacts of land use/land cover (LULC) changes on ESVs from 1992 to 2052 using geospatial technologies. The Landsat images were classified using the supervised maximum likelihood classification technique, and future changes in LULC were predicted using the CA-Markov model. Ecosystem Service Values coefficients were adopted from empirical studies and ESVs changes were evaluated based on the benefit transfer method using LULC data for the study periods, with their corresponding modified ESVs coefficients. The results revealed that, the proportions of grassland, forestland and shrubland declined by 58.5 %, 48.15 % and 33.48 %, respectively, from 1992 to 2022. Simultaneously, the highest rate of expansions of waterbodies (34 times), farmland and settlement threefold as well as bareland (60.2 %) from 1992 to 2022 was noticed. As a result, decreasing trends were experienced in the total ESVs of the district from US$33.6 million in 1992 to US$27.79 million in 2022, and are anticipated to further decline to US$25.94 million in 2052. The ESVs of forestland, shrubland and grassland shrank from 53.1 %, 40 % and 2.78 % in 1992 to 33.28 %, 33.16 % and 1.4 % in 2022 these changes are anticipated to continue for the next three decades, except trend for the increase in grassland ecosystem service value. Therefore, the government should redesign effective land management strategies to alleviate the negative consequences of LULC changes, facilitate payment for ecosystem services, and design ecotourism to boost the income of residents for major land use management-based production systems to increase the ESV in the district.

P. Tarolli, W. Cao, G. Sofia et al.

Human societies have been reshaping the geomorphology of landscapes for thousands of years, producing anthropogenic geomorphic features ranging from earthworks and reservoirs to settlements, roads, canals, ditches and plough furrows that have distinct characteristics compared with landforms produced by natural processes. Physical geographers have long recognized the widespread importance of these features in altering landforms and geomorphic processes, including hydrologic flows and stores, to processes of soil erosion and deposition. In many of the same landscapes, archaeologists have also utilized anthropogenic geomorphic features to detect and analyse human societal activities, including symbolic formations, agricultural systems, settlement patterns and trade networks. This paper provides a general framework aimed at integrating geophysical and archaeological approaches to observing, identifying and interpreting the full range of anthropogenic geomorphic features based on their structure and functioning, both individually and as components of landscape-scale management strategies by different societies, or “sociocultural fingerprints”. We then couple this framework with new algorithms developed to detect anthropogenic geomorphic features using precisely detailed three-dimensional reconstructions of landscape surface structure derived from LiDAR and computer vision photogrammetry. Human societies are now transforming the geomorphology of landscapes at increasing rates and scales across the globe. To understand the causes and consequences of these transformations and contribute to building sustainable futures, the science of physical geography must advance towards empirical and theoretical frameworks that integrate the natural and sociocultural forces that are now the main shapers of Earth’s surface processes.

Yuri N. Golubchikov, Alexey N. Gunya, Matthias Schmidt

Natural differences in the regional development of Russia are presented in many legislative acts dedicated to the Russian Far North. In contrast, the unique nature and complexity of mountainous and high-mountain territories are protected only by a few regional acts. The reason for this lies in the complexity and multicomponent criteria required for assigning these territories the status of protected areas and in the fact that their boundaries do not correspond with administrative boundaries. The main materials underlying the article are legal documents (regulations, laws, etc.) concerning the institutionalization of the northern and mountainous territories. A comparative analysis of regional policy in relation to mountainous and northern territories takes into account similar criteria, such as vegetation types and patterns, forest borders or crop frontiers. Almost two-thirds of the territory of Russia refers to the North and more than half of the territory is occupied by mountains. The first attempts to institutionalize the North were undertaken in the 1930s, while the programmes for the development of mountainous territories gained legal support only at the end of 20th century and only in some regions. The most important difference between the institutionalization of the North and the mountains is the fact that the state initiated the creation of special legal conditions for the North. In the case of the mountains, the initiator was the public, initially at the regional level. Currently, three constituent entities of the Russian Federation adopted laws on mountain areas, but so far there are no all-Russian laws. The main lobbyists are the North Caucasian regions, while the Siberian regions (with the exception of the Altai Republic) are rather passive in discussing mountain issues. The elaborated legislation for the North seems to be closely related to the potential and realised income from natural resource extraction. For this reason, corresponding legislation for the mountain regions is not expected particularly soon, due to the lack of legal resources. Efforts aimed to provide legal support for mechanisms that compensate the socio-economic discrepancies between mountainous areas and more developed “flat places” should take into account the experience of institutionalizing the Northern territories of the Russian Federation.

Bianka Guadalupe Castillo Treminio

[Introducción]: La información ambiental georreferenciada que provienen de instituciones ambientales constituye información base, para mejorar la gestión ambiental y de sostenibilidad en la región de América Latina y El Caribe. [Objetivo]: Evaluar la evolución espacio-temporal del nivel freático utilizando datos de niveles de agua subterránea medidos en la red de pozos de monitoreo del acuífero Valle de Sébaco. [Metodología]: Se evaluó durante la época seca del 2010 al 2018 (9 años) la fluctuación de los niveles de agua subterránea, a partir de datos de niveles de agua medidos en la red de pozos de monitoreo del acuífero Valle de Sébaco. El enfoque geoestadístico que se empleó en este conjunto de datos, para revelar los modelos predictivos fue el método Kriging Empírico Bayesiano (EBK), dicho método obtuvo una representación espacial de la superficie freática del acuífero y posteriormente fue utilizado para calcular la velocidad y aceleración del nivel freático. [Resultados]: Durante el período analizado los mapas de aceleración del nivel freático mostraron valores medios de -0.52 m/año. Estos valores sugieren que una parte del acuífero está experimentando un descenso en los niveles freáticos que podría verse agravado rápidamente con los fenómenos climáticos y el aumento de la demanda del recurso. [Conclusiones]: El enfoque utilizado para la evaluación cuantitativa de los niveles de agua subterránea es adecuado para países que carecen de base de datos de parámetros hidráulicos específicos de un acuífero.

G. Baaklini, G. Baaklini, R. El Hourany et al.

<p>The eastern Mediterranean surface circulation is highly energetic and composed of structures interacting stochastically. However, some main features are still debated, and the behavior of some fine-scale dynamics and their role in shaping the general circulation is yet unknown. In the following paper, we use an unsupervised neural network clustering method to analyze the long-term variability of the different mesoscale structures. We decompose 26 years of altimetric data into clusters reflecting different circulation patterns of weak and strong flows with either strain or vortex-dominated velocities. The vortex-dominated cluster is more persistent in the western part of the basin, which is more active than the eastern part due to the strong flow along the coast, interacting with the extended bathymetry and engendering continuous instabilities. The cluster that reflects a weak flow dominated the middle of the basin, including the Mid-Mediterranean Jet (MMJ) pathway. However, the temporal analysis shows a frequent and intermittent occurrence of a strong flow in the middle of the basin, which could explain the previous contradictory assessment of MMJ existence using in-situ observations. Moreover, we prove that the Levantine Sea is becoming more and more energetic as the activity of the main mesoscale features is showing a positive trend.</p>

James E. Anderson, Mario Larch, Mario Larch et al.

Stephen J. Redding

This paper reviews recent research on geography and trade. One of the key empirical findings over the last decade has been the role of geography in shaping the distributional consequences of trade. One of the major theoretical advances has been the development of quantitative spatial models that incorporate both exogenous first-nature geography (natural endowments) and endogenous second-nature geography (the location choices of economic agents relative to one another) as determinants of the distribution of economic activity across space. These models are sufficiently rich to capture first-order features of the data, such as gravity equations for flows of goods and people. Yet they remain sufficiently tractable as to permit an analytical characterization of the properties of the general equilibrium and facilitate counterfactuals for realistic policy interventions. We distinguish between models of regions or systems of cities (where goods trade and migration take center stage) and models of the internal structure of cities (where commuting becomes relevant). We review some of key empirical predictions of both sets of theories and show that they have been remarkably successful in rationalizing the empirical findings from reduced-form research. Looking ahead, the combination of recent theoretical advances and novel geo-coded data on economic interactions at a fine spatial scale promises many interesting avenues for further research, including discriminating between alternative mechanisms for agglomeration, understanding the implications of new technologies for the organization of work, and assessing the causes, consequences and potential policy implications of spatial sorting.

M. Böhm, Rhiannon Williams, Huw R. Bramhall et al.

Nicole Fuenzalida, Catalina Olivares-Del-Real

The purpose of this article is to present some of the considerations that arose following the development of an experience of caregiving for teams of professionals who support, investigate, and collect testimonies on human rights violations and the processing of Chile’s dictatorial past. The care experience was based on the psychodrama method, applied in workshop format, over three sessions of approximately two hours each, throughout the months when the interviews of the oral archive project “Resistir Recordando” (2019) were being designed and implemented. This process lasted a year. The project had an archaeological-anthropological approach, developed under the auspices of the Borgoño Memory Corporation, a collective dedicated to building a memorial site for the former secret detention, torture, and extermination center Cuartel Borgoño (1977-1989), located in Santiago, Chile. A qualitative analysis of the instruments used in the care workshop, especially letter writing, observation, and personal notes, is presented to explain the approaches, focus decisions, scopes, and projections. From a perspective that gathers the principles of Dussel’s ethics and multisite ethnography, and that understands the social actors as collaborators, the text discusses the notion of otherness implied in memory work. We conclude that, in general, memory work and research on human rights violations, focused on the testimonial-victim voice, deploy self-care actions that pathologize and individualize the problem. This article proposes that we should consider the figure of professionals and the field of memory as a working space susceptible of being cared for. This opens a new field of discussion on the practice of caring for professional teams, which implies considering other places of enunciation and listening, from the recognition of the density that acquires the treatment of “our catastrophe,” the otherness involved in memory work, and the unresolved nature of the violence it entails.

Matthew T. Huber

Péter Bagoly-Simó, Johanna Hartmann, Verena Reinke

Abstract This paper aims to explore some of the changes affecting the teaching and learning of secondary geography as a result of the COVID‐19 pandemic. In doing so, it sets a focus on geographical knowledge and its alteration in times of extraordinary measures to diagnose its challenges. Against the background of current debates on competence‐ and standard‐based education from the sociology and history of education as well as from geography education, problem‐centred interviews served to explore the perspectives of 15 German secondary school teachers on the alterations their Geography teaching suffered since the COVID‐19 lockdown. Analytical categories were general challenges, communication with stakeholders, educational media usage, and the role of COVID‐19 in geographical knowledge acquisition. The results uncovered, along with systemic challenges, two main areas in need of consideration to redefine subject‐specific knowledge in times of competence‐based education, namely geography teachers' professional identity and perspectives on the role of geographical competencies.

Jamie Furlong

Abstract A well-established narrative has existed for some time in British politics: “left behind” places are gradually moving to the Conservatives as Labour dominate in urban, “cosmopolitan” areas. Merging constituency-level census data with election results, this article applies various regression techniques to test this idea on multiple definitions of “left-behindedness” at every general election between 1979 and 2017 in England and Wales. Conclusive results indicate that the Conservatives have gained support at Labour's expense in largely older, white, working class constituencies. However, Labour remain dominant in disadvantaged areas with high levels of insecure employment and poverty remains the most important positive predictor of Labour's support. It is therefore premature to argue that “left behind” places are moving from Labour to the Conservatives, providing that “left behind” is re-conceptualised to refer to the most disadvantaged areas rather than older, white, “traditional working class” populations.

R. Hassink, Huiwen Gong, Pedro Marques

N. Phelps, Miguel Atienza, Martín Arias

M. Lawhon, L. Le Roux

ABSTRACT Despite growing attentiveness to cities in the global south, questions remain as to how to enact a more global urban studies. We analyze five contemporary textbooks as a lens into how southern cities ought to be incorporated in teaching as well as the field of urban geography. We find both separate chapters for southern cities (southern urbanism), and southern cities integrated into existing thematic chapters (a world of cities). We further show that i) the global south is 2–33% of the content; ii) information about the south is typically more general than the north, but never as universal trends iii) representations differ not just in content but in style and iv) the south is exemplar or exception rather than as a source of theory. We suggest that geographers must continue their efforts in thinking about how southern cities should be incorporated in urban geography in and outside the classroom.