Context and background
A typical character of land tenure or property systems in sub-Saharan Africa is that the systems exclude women (implicitly and explicitly) (Chigbu, 2019). Over the past twenty years, several African countries have done some efforts towards improving the state of women’s land rights as a means to achieve gender equality in land ownership. The problem is that, there is no research paper that has analyzed these efforts at sub-regional levels (North, Central, West, East and Southern Africa), by providing data on these sub-regional efforts (best practices and successful interventions) jointly made to achieve gender equality in land ownership.
Objective and research questions:
This paper seeks to provide analysis and understanding on how these sub-regional efforts can be used as triggers to pave the way for the adoption of a gender-focused continental guidelines on women’s land rights in Africa. Our research is centered around the following two joint questions: What are the efforts done at sub-regional levels to strengthen women’s land rights in Africa and what mechanisms can be put in place to pave the way for the adoption of a gender-focused continental guideline?
Methodology:
Using case studies and best practices from the five African sub-regions, our research adopts an approach that collected and analyzed data from existing policy documents, laws, academic papers, and other materials through a desk review on women's land rights and land tenure security. In this paper, we discuss the current state, gaps, challenges and opportunities in strengthening women's land rights in North, Central, West, East and Southern Africa, by highlighting the main best practices which can pave the way for a future without gender inequalities in land ownership. This review was conducted from January to September 2024.
Results:
The results obtained from my analysis are: the mechanisms for implementing women’s tenure security; the tools for codifying women’s land tenure; and the monitoring progress for strengthening women’s land rights in Africa. These mechanisms, tools and monitoring processes can serve as a trail (pathway) to the design and adoption gender-focused continental guidelines on women's land rights in Africa. These mechanisms are the main recommendations of my research work. Therefore, if adopted and enforced at the continental level by the African Union, these mechanisms, tools and monitoring processes can guaranty an equal ownership to land between men and women in Africa.
Saddle-point extraction is essential for accurately identifying topographic features and landforms and conducting geomorphological mapping. However, the widely used positive–negative terrain method (PNTM) is often plagued by a substantial number of false saddle points, a prevalent issue in many extraction techniques. To address this challenge, this study presents a novel model that combines the PNTM with a convolutional neural network (CNN) called PNTM-CNN. In this approach, candidate saddle points are first identified using the PNTM and then refined using a CNN that integrates multiscale topographic features. The experimental results indicate that the PNTM-CNN model, which leverages four scales of features (elevation, aspect, curvature, slope, and hillshade), effectively reduces the occurrence of false saddle points, achieving a precision of 89%, a recall of 83%, and an F1 score of 85%. This performance significantly exceeds that of the traditional moving window analysis and topological association methods. Although the automation level of the PNTM-CNN model requires improvement, the integration of deep learning methods offers new insights for addressing complex topographic feature extraction challenges and shows a promising application potential.
ABSTRACTUrban rail transit (URT) systems play an evident role in shaping city spatial structures; however, the principles and mechanisms behind this influence are not fully understood. This paper reviews research progress on the coupling relationship between URT and urban space, focusing on big data analysis methods and the timeliness and sequence of coupling effects. It highlights the importance of the temporal dimension in coupling analysis. By thoroughly exploiting data value and extracting key elements, big data technology imparts temporal attributes to these elements, exploring their interaction and influence mechanisms over different time sequences. The paper also discusses the potential application of big data to urban planning to support sustainable urban development. Finally, the paper outlines future research directions, including the deepened application of big data to urban spatial analysis and the role of new data sources in understanding and shaping the coupling relationship between URT and urban space. This analysis offers new perspectives and methodologies for urban development and transportation planning.
This paper provides an overview of quantitative geography, and the methods that have come to define it. This is part of a conference marking the 50th anniversary of the Journal of Regional Science. Six broad categories are used to discuss the range of methods found in quantitative geography: geographic information systems; airborne sensing (global positioning system, photogrammetry and remote sensing); statistics and exploratory spatial data analysis; mathematics and optimization; regional analysis; and, computer science and simulation. Particular emphasis is given to the state of the art in each area, with discussion on major unresolved issues and future research directions.
Nowadays, GIS Technologies are used in many areas of human life, both in everyday life and scientific research. The purpose of the presented study is to identify the relationship between the scale of topographic maps and the main hydrographic characteristics of the river based on the data of observations in the Siverskyi Donets basin. The study is based on the results of the identification of the hydrographic network, which was performed based on the Open Street Map in the GIS environment of the QGIS program using the method of A. N. Straller and I. N. Hartzman. The process of identifying, describing, and analyzing subcontracted connections consists in assigning its identification order to each element of the river network, which makes it possible to compare and standardize streams. Operating with a hierarchical "tree" of the channel network, the main characteristic of which is the number of elementary, unbranched streams, it is possible to identify and analytically describe the dependencies between the detailing of the map and the main characteristics of the river network structures, such as water discharges, network density, drainage basin area, and river length. The basis for describing these relationships was the method of B.V. Kindiuk, who introduced the concept of the coefficient of the river network structure or the fractional order of the stream as a basis for approximating the above-mentioned dependencies, which allows mathematically describing the obtained functions and obtaining numerical values of empirical parameters. Using QGIS made it possible to create maps of the Siverskyi Donets hydrographic network within Ukraine based on maps of scales 1:50 000 and 1:200, 000. With their help, as well as data from a 1:100,000 map, the number of elementary unbranched watercourses was calculated, and each element of the system was identified, where the order of the main river changes depending on the map scale. The change in these indicators shows a tendency to increase the density and complexity of the river network with increasing map detail, and, as a result, potential changes in indicators of the catchment area, water runoff, and river length. The identified dependencies were expressed mathematically in the form of functions, and are also characterized by high values of the approximation reliability coefficient, which made it possible to construct a general transitional graph from the order of the water flow to the scale of the map with the corresponding values of the calculation parameters. The novelty and practical significance lie in the fact that the use of modern GIS technologies in hydrological science significantly increases the quality of cartographic data and concerning the studied object - the Siverskyi Donets River creates a database in the form of digital maps for further use in hydrographic studies. This sub‑basin has not been previously studied using the methodology proposed by B. V. Kindiuk about the influence of map scales on the characteristics of the river network structure. Such study from a practical point of view, can significantly help the work of engineers, researchers, and designers with cartographic data. This study is designed to explain the peculiarities in the scaling of river networks and propose a mechanism for a scientifically based transition from the existing map scale to the desired one within the Siverskyi Donets sub-basin.
The scientific work presents mathematical and cartographic modeling of the climate dynamics of the Rostov region using the global meteorological product CRU TS version 4.06 in the period from 2020 to 2040. The work used CRU TS global climate data from 1960 to 2020 to model data for 2030 and 2040. A technique for mathematical-cartographic modeling of climate dynamics based on global climate products is presented. Using the geographic information system QGIS version 3.18, raster images were vectorized, which made it possible to export them to a MS Excel spreadsheet. Based on the data obtained, 2 tables were prepared. One includes actual data for 2020 and modeling data in terms of the average annual air temperature for 2030 and 2040 for the municipal districts of the Rostov region. The second table includes actual data for 2020 and simulation data in terms of the average annual air temperature for 2030 and 2040 for the urban districts of the Rostov region. The relationship between actual data for 2020 and data for 2030 and 2040 does not exceed 10%. This allows us to say that a stable climate has been established on the territory of the Rostov region, which is not subject to serious climatic changes in the future. According to the actual data and simulation data, maps were created and compiled using the interpolation method of inversely weighted distances in terms of the average annual air temperature for 2020, 2030, and 2040.
The topicality of the topic is due to significant changes in the state of the components of the environment, namely the soil cover, and the use of agricultural land under the influence of the consequences of military operations in 2022-2023.
There is a need to assess the scale of changes in the environment, primarily the soil cover, as the most disturbed as a result of hostilities, under the influence of these factors, to determine their respective scales, spatial localization and ecological and legal consequences.
The main negative factors that lead to damage to agricultural land include (according to Kondratenko A.F. 2022): 1. Driving through the territory of heavy equipment (tanks and other types of tracked equipment, which leads to soil compaction and degradation); 2. The use of anti-tank and anti-personnel mines, which leads to changes in landscapes, relief and soil degradation; 3. Shelling and bombing of the territory, which leads to the formation of craters (funnels) and mixing of soil horizons. Sinkholes in places where shells fall are not only a factor of landscape damage and destruction of vegetation, but also a factor of soil pollution: they leave in the soil a significant amount of metal, sulfur and sulfur compounds, heavy metals, ammonia, phosphorus, coal dust, sulfuric acid and sulfate compounds, formaldehydes, lead, mercury; 4. Construction of trenches and other protective shelters for military personnel and equipment (soil disturbance and degradation); 5. Fires in natural areas and agricultural fields. As a result, the fertile soil layer burns out, dehydration and "sterilization" occurs - both pathogenic microorganisms and useful biota die, nutrients are lost. In our opinion, this classification generally covers well the spectrum of factors affecting the soil cover of military operations. At the same time, this classification is incomplete and does not cover some common cases, for example, the creation of systems of defensive structures leads to the violation of soil horizons and changes in the structure of the soil, the spread of erosion (Makarenko N. A., et al., 2022). Also, since it was developed for the conditions of military operations in Donetsk region as of 2014-2017, it needs to be supplemented and clarified, for example, it is worth adding the concepts of ecocide and destruction of infrastructure.
The use of indicators of soil condition, monitoring of the development of degradation processes based on operational data and the possibility of using geoportals, dashboards and other means of public access to open data plays a particularly important role in the context of the impact of the consequences of military actions on the soil cover, prospects for agricultural production and, in general, on the quality of life.
Key words: agricultural lands, soil cover, soil degradation, dynamics of land use, military operations.
Research on the integration of the human-environment system has been an important part of Chinese human geography for over a century, constituting the distinctive academic nature of the field. Human geography has been established as an interdiscipline of natural science and social science, highlighting the combination of academic inquiry and decision application, and exploring the interaction mechanisms and sustainable development model between the human sphere and natural sphere at different spatial scales. The development of the discipline is in line with the basic concepts advocated by the global research platform “Future Earth”, which has promoted the strong development of human geography in China, and has produced important societal influences. By selecting some of the most influential academic achievements, this paper briefly describes theoretical methods and social contributions to reflect the development process of human geography in the study of integrated human and environment systems in different stages in China. It also demonstrates the influence of the following elements on the adherence of Chinese human geography to the integration of human and environment systems: classical Chinese philosophical thinking on harmony between people and land, western theories of the human-environment relationship, Soviet economic geography research methods, the science of sustainability, the social demands of the construction of contemporary Chinese ecological civilization, ever-improving mathematical models and big data methods for studying enormous and complex systems, and management system reform and special scientific research system and background in China.
ABSTRACT How is undocumented migration typically mapped in contemporary cartography? To answer this question, we conduct an iconological dissection of what could be seen as the epitome of the cartography on undocumented migration, the map made by Frontex – the EU’s border agency. We find that, rather than a scientific depiction of a migratory phenomenon, its cartography peddles a crude distortion of undocumented migration that smoothly splices into the xenophobic tradition of propaganda cartography – and stands in full confrontation with contemporary geographical scholarship. We conclude with an urgent appeal for more scientifically robust, critical and decidedly more creative cartographies of migration.
The authors analyze the existing methods of calculating the mathematical basis of a topographic map. The availability of the material in the high polar latitude territories of Russia is estimated (according to the information in the Federal Portal of Spatial Data). An automated procedure for calculating, constructing and storing information on the mathematical basis of a topographic map is considered. A program with a simple interface is proposed, in which the coordinates of one point are needed to calculate the mathematical basis of a topographic map, and its name is required to store and retrieve the calculated information. It can function in the MS Excel environment, the database is created in the SQL Server program. The graphical representation is implemented in the AutoCAD software. It is a convenient tool for processing geodetic information and preparing topographic, geodetic, cartographic documentation in the form of tablets and layouts of sheets of maps.
Ángel R. Valera, María C. Pineda, Jesús A. Viloria
In order to strengthen the study of soil-landscape relationships in mountain areas, a digital soil mapping approach based on fuzzy set theory was applied. Initially, soil properties were estimated with the regression kriging (RK) method, combining soil data and auxiliary information derived from a digital elevation model (DEM) and satellite images. Subsequently, the grouping of soil properties in raster format was performed with the fuzzy c-means (FCM) algorithm, whose final product resulted in a fuzzy soil class variation model at a semi-detailed scale. The validation of the model showed an overall reliability of 88% and a Kappa index of 84%, which shows the usefulness of fuzzy clustering in the evaluation of soil-landscape relationships and in the correlation with soil taxonomic categories.
Changes in ice shelf dynamics significantly impact the discharge rate of grounded ice, sea ice formation, and marine environments. In particular, changes of a sub-shelf pinning point induce complex dynamics of an ice shelf. In this study, we investigated decadal changes (2010–2020) in the area, ice velocity, and grounding line position of Campbell Glacier Tongue (CGT) in East Antarctica, which has an ice pinning point at the southwestern end, and analyzed the effect of the pinning conditions on the dynamics of CGT. Panchromatic band images of Landsat-7 Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus and Landsat-8 Operational Land Imager, COSMO-SkyMed X-band synthetic aperture radar (SAR), and Sentinel-1 C-band SAR datasets were employed. The surface area of CGT digitized from the optical and SAR imagery decreased by 8% in the last decade, during which four ice calving events that caused icebergs with an area range of 3.8–5.4 km2. The largest calving at the ice pinning point occurred in March 2014, which created an iceberg with 4 km2. The ice velocity of CGT was measured via the normalized cross-correlation-based image matching of the Landsat panchromatic images. The ice velocity along the flow direction and its anomaly of CGT hardly changed in the hinge zone from 2011 to 2020. The ice velocity increased by ~7% and the flow direction steered abruptly ~7° to the east in the freely floating zone after the 2014 calving at the ice pinning point. Considering the retreat of the local grounding line at the pinning point analyzed by COSMO-SkyMed double-differential interferometric SAR, the advancing glacier tongue came in contact with the sloping eastern flank of the locally elevated seabed at the pinning point after the calving, and the ice-bed contact area decreased, causing a sudden acceleration and eastward rotation of ice flow. It is expected that continuous calving at the ice pinning point of CGT may lead to an abrupt changes in glacier tongue dynamics again, and continuous monitoring is necessary.
High-quality, normalized differential vegetation index (NDVI) time-series data are fundamental for environmental remote sensing applications; however, their quality is often influenced by complicated factors such as atmospheric aerosols and cloud coverage. Hence, in the current study, a robust reconstruction method based on envelope detection and the Savitzky-Golay filter (ED-SG) was developed to reduce noise in the NDVI time-series. To verify the performance of ED-SG, simulation experiments were implemented and NDVI time-series samples were selected for different land cover types derived from MOD09GQ, Sentinel-2 and Landsat 8 OLI of Yangtze River Basin, between December 2018 and December 2019. The experimental results yielded an agreement coefficient and variance of 0.9599 and 0.0006, respectively on simulated time-series, Additionally, the smoothness metrics of evergreen broadleaf forests, evergreen needleleaf forests, deciduous broadleaf forests, herbaceous, and croplands were 0.0019, 0.0017, 0.0012, 0.0012, and 0.0013, respectively. Ultimately, the reconstructed time-series metrics showed significant improvements in robustness and smoothness over conventional methods. Moreover, the simplistic mechanisms of the ED-SG model enabled it to run effectively in the Google Earth Engine over the NDVI time-series of the whole Yangtze River Basin.
The aim of this work – research of topological inconsistencies during adjustment and junction of adjacent map sheets of digital topographic maps of scale 1:50000 with the use of rigorous analytical geodetic methods on the reference ellipsoid in the geoinformation environment. The research analyzes the phenomenon of topological inconsistencies of frames of adjacent digital topographic maps of 1:50000 scale within the zones of Gauss-Krueger projections and the feasibility of transition to rigorous analytical geodetic methods in the geoinformation environment during the creation of the topographic database “The Main state topographic map” by determining the differences between the vertices of the frames of digital topographic maps at a scale of 1: 50000 at the boundaries of the projection zones. This phenomenon was discovered during work at the state enterprise “Research Institute of Geodesy and Cartography”. The dependences are shown and analyzed, which show the changes in the distances between the vertices of the frames of adjacent map sheets of scale 1: 50000 in longitude and latitude. These values range from 1 mm to 8 mm, which leads to topological inconsistencies in the form of gaps and overlaps of adjacent map sheets. These gaps and overlaps complicate the process of adjustment of map sheets and make it impossible to automate the process of the junction of features into the topographic database. The scientific novelty of the research is to justify the use of rigorous analytical geodetic methods and tools instead of analog cartometric and standard methods of instrumental GIS; the use of a reference ellipsoid, not just cartographic projections, a spheroid or a sphere. The practical significance of research is the use of rigorous analytical geodetic methods that significantly minimize the values of gaps and overlaps, as the establishment of tolerances for these values does not automate the process of correct adjustment and junction of map sheets. The performed research can be used to create the topographic database “The Basic topographic map scale 1: 10000”, during the creation and updating of geospatial data in the geoinformation environment and the implementation of geodetic methods to determine the cartometric characteristics of features using GIS. Given the results of research, we can conclude that the present stage of application of geographic information systems in topographic and geodetic activities requires increasing the level of data topology and accuracy of all cartometric methods, which leads to the transition to extremely rigorous analytical geodetic methods directly on the reference ellipsoid.
Abstract An appreciation for old maps as culturally important documents came slowly in the United States. The first precondition for this shift was the reframing of history brought by political independence. The second was the growth of facsimile maps, which made these sources available to a wider audience. The third was a loose network of scholars, archivists, collectors, and federal actors—including Johann Georg Kohl—who gradually began to advocate for the cultural and political significance of old maps. Yet ongoing advocacy for a federal map collection did not produce results until the end of the Civil War, just as the trade in old maps coincided with the emergence of university-based historical and geographical research. The rapid growth of institutional map collections—including the Library of Congress Division of Maps—by the turn of the twentieth century bears out this shift. The idea that outdated maps might be valuable evidence of history and culture could only develop once maps were understood not simply as instruments of accuracy, but meaningful artifacts of history. Here we trace this complex story across multiple areas of American life from the early nineteenth century to the interwar period.
ABSTRACT Cadastral maps constitute the geographical basis of resource administration in most developed countries, including those in Scandinavia, where they function as a framework for organizing the economic utility of land and associated decision-making processes. The authors investigate the history of Danish cadastral cartography with a focus on its representation of landscape. They explore representations of landscape in maps of a study area in Denmark, produced between 1807 and 1942, and analyse them in the context of the general history of Danish cadastral cartography. Their results show that an initial landscape-oriented perspective on property changed to a focus primarily on legal boundaries. The limitations of that particularistic mode of representation were recognized in 1929 and subsequently several unsuccessful attempts were made to reintroduce a holistic representation of landscape. The authors conclude that the history of cadastral map-making is reflected in current mapping practices, which are characterized by a perspective in which economic aspects of a landscape are seen as separate from its ecological, physical and visual characteristics. Thus, further investigations of this mismatch between the cartographic representation of cadastral structures and the landscape are important in relation to understanding and mitigating many of today’s environmental problems in the landscape.
VadelTsopgni Eneckdem, R. A. Feumba, Odovie Tsomo
et al.
This study deals with a model combining cartography with mathematical simulation for the optimal evaluation of wind potential in the context of the absence of networks of in-situ observation stations. It is based on both geographic Information Systems (GIS), climate data from NASA Surface Meteorology and Solar Energy (SSE) from 1985 to 2018, and field survey data from 2018.The NASA-SSE data, made it possible to obtain information on the direction of the winds, to determine Original Research Article Eneckdem et al.; JGEESI, 25(4): 53-66, 2021; Article no.JGEESI.68118
In 1985, I was lecturing in the Geography Department at Portsmouth Polytechnic. My lectures focused on cartographic design and production which focussed on the manual production of colour separation artwork, as part of the photo-mechanical production process, that led to subsequent printing via the printing press. Even thoughmy lecturing programme at the time was focused around paper production and delivery of geographic information, I was searching for an alternative, non-printing, and non-computer-driven, alternatives for portraying geographic information. I had experimented with interactive slides, film, photography, and television. In looking for a medium that would allow me to experiment with a conglomerate of graphics +maps, what I found in 1985 was interactive videodisc. In that year, I attended the Association of British Geographers conference and heard a paper presented by Doctor Helen Mounsey on Birkbeck College’s involvement in the development of the BBC/Philips/Acorn Computers-supported Domesday Project interactive videodisc. I later visited Birkbeck College in London in 1985, where I was briefed about their involvement in the project and viewed the ‘real thing’. The Domesday project was produced to commemorate the 900th anniversary of the original Doomsday Book of 1085. It was seen as a contemporary version of the 1085 book and a contemporary (1985) record of the geography and social activities carried out throughout Great Britain. Rather than being stored and delivered as a bound paper book, as the original Domesday records did, this product was a hybrid analogue/digital product. The possibilities of what could be achieved by interposing a computer and software between the keyboard and tracker ball allowed for the frames on the video disc to not just be viewed sequentially, but a specific frame could be viewed, frames could be played as movies and these could be accompanied by text and sound. It must be noted that the Domesday videodisc wasn’t the first geographically-related videodisc package. This was the Aspen Movie Map Project (1978), developed at the MIT Architecture Machine Group. This package used videodiscs, controlled by computers, to allow the user to ‘drive’ down corridors or streets of Aspen, Colorado (Negroponte, 1995a). Exposure to this videodisc system changed completely how I thought about how geographic information could be delivered, and it was the catalyst for my research in interactive integrated multimedia cartographic systems over the following 35 years.
In Islam, the sacred direction or qibla is toward the sacred Kaaba in Mecca, which edifice is astronomically aligned.Various ritual acts from prayer to burial are to be performed in the sacred direction. Muslim scholars devised two sets of solutions for finding the qibla from any locality. The first involved a sacred geography with the world divided around the Kaaba and the qibla in each sector defined by an astronomical horizon phenomenon. The second involved mathematical geography with the qibla calculated by exact or approximate mathematical procedures, albeit using medieval geographical coordinates. This dichotomy to some extent explains the orientation of medieval Islamic religious architecture. In this paper, the ultimate achievements in each tradition will be presented and compared; a serious investigation of orientations is a task for the future.
This article discusses a single late-fifteenth-century English manuscript as evidence for an understudied form of “virtual” pilgrimage. Bringing together the techniques of codicological, textual, and cartographic-historical research, the article shows how Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 426 presents a vision of the world profoundly inflected by Holy Land pilgrimage, in which scholarly, mathematical geography is placed in the service of knowledge and understanding of the Holy Land. Indeed, within MS 426, the process of gaining understanding of the world’s geography and of the place of the Holy Land within it becomes a kind of virtual pilgrimage: a form of vicarious wandering that prompts religious contemplation and devotion. The article, which includes discussion of the manuscript’s unique and previously unstudied Jerusalem map, thus reminds us to keep in mind the inadequacy of modern taxonomies for dealing with the messy materialities of medieval texts.