Land use change and its ecological effect in Qian'an County of Jilin Province

Based on GIS and statistical methods, with the help of searching historical literatures and calculating the landscape indices, the land use changes of Qian'an County in both spatial and temporal aspects from 1945 to 1996 has been analyzed in this paper. And the driving forces of land use changes and their ecological effects are discussed too. The main findings of this study are as follows: (1) Land use changed greatly in Qian'an during 1945-1996, characterized by a decrease in grassland, wetland and water bodies, and an increase in cultivated land, saline-alkali land, and the land for housing and other construction purposes. Grassland decreased by 175,828.66 ha, and cultivated land increased by 102,137.23 ha over the half century. Accordingly, the main landscape type changed from a steppe landscape to a managed agricultural ecosystem. (2) Results of correlation analysis show that the land use change in the study area was mainly driven by the socioeconomic factors.　(3) The ecological effects of land use change in the area are characterized by serious salinization, degression of soil fertility and the weakening of landscape suitability.     

InSAR用于南极测图的可行性研究

利用1996年ERS 1/2tandem方式的雷达影像数据进行了生成Grove山数字高程模型的试验研究,并与实测的DEM进行比较分析,论证了利用InSAR技术进行南极测图的可行性。试验证明,在南极研究中,InSAR是一种非常有效的手段,不仅可用于地图制图,而且在冰川动力学、冰貌环境变化等研究领域也有巨大的潜力。     

Practical Experiences with Films, Cameras and Navigation Systems

The first author commenced his experiences with aerial photography in 1945, when he joined the Royal Air Force (RAF). The aerial cameras used at that time were the Williamson F24 and F52, with Ilford HP3 and FP3 panchromatic films. Subsequently the Williamson F95 camera was tested against the USAF Sonne 11 camera. During his final years in the RAF, a variety of film types was employed: colour, monochrome infra-red and false colour infra-red. Additional experience was gained when the author was employed by the International Training Centre (ITC), The Netherlands and he saw the further development of the air camera from the Wild RC8 and Zeiss (Oberkochen) RMK 15/23 to the Wild RC20, Zeiss (Jena) LMK and Zeiss (Oberkochen) RMK TOP. He predicts that the future lies with digital cameras.
The second author started working with aerial photography in the 1950s. Details are given of cameras, visual navigation sights and survey aircraft dating from that period. Overseas operations, carried out mainly by Hunting Surveys and Fairey Surveys, posed particular problems because the majority of the work there was undertaken without the aid of existing maps. The introduction of external navigation systems is described, from the Decca ship navigation system, through the GNS-200 VLF/Omega low frequency radio system to INS, the Inertial Navigation System. The author later joined the ITC, which enabled him to participate in trials of the Computer-controlled Photo Navigation System. Eventually practical experience was gained with differential GPS, particularly in countries in southeast Asia. Aerial photography currently appears to benefit less from financial investment than the photographic, aviation and survey industries. However, the satisfaction of making a significant contribution to major overseas development projects outweighs the frustration of lack of acceptance of plans for the future of the air survey industry.     

Image Sources for Informal Settlement Management

Informal settlements are a common feature of developing countries. In South Africa the improvement of living conditions in these settlements and the upgrading to formal housing types are regarded as being of central importance to the nation's development. Effective settlement improvement and upgrading activities, which we here term "management", require adequate spatial data. To date, the acquisition of spatial models of informal settlements has been based on conventional mapping techniques, and mostly on photogrammetry. Data are compiled using analogue or analytical methods. These are manual and hence require both considerable expertise and expensive equipment. Moreover, these methods are uneconomical over the often relatively small, densely populated areas covered by informal settlements and are also too expensive to employ with a regularity required to support such tasks as change detection. Alternative imaging sources and mapping techniques are therefore needed.
In this article we examine the problem of spatial information acquisition for informal settlement management from three perspectives: spatial information requirements, the role which imagery can play in satisfying these spatial information requirements, and effective imaging options. We focus on the potential of high resolution satellite imaging, small format digital aerial imagery and digital multispectral video systems for rapid mapping. We also discuss the example of automated shack extraction from aerial imagery.     

An analysis of changes in the urban landscape composition and configuration in the Sancaktepe District of Istanbul Metropolitan City,Turkey using landscape metrics and satellite data

Changes in landscape composition and configuration patterns of Sancaktepe Municipal District in the Asian side of Istanbul Metropolitan City of Turkey were analysed using landscape metrics. Class-level and landscape-level metrics were calculated from the land cover/land use data using Patch Analyst, an extension in the Arc View GIS. The land cover/land use data were derived from classified satellite images of Landsat Thematic Mapper of 2002 and 2009 for Sancaktepe District. There was evidence of increase in agglomeration process of built-up patches as indicated by the increases in mean patch size, decrease in total edge and number of patches between 2002 and 2009. The urban expansion pattern experienced overall was not fragmented but concentrated due to infilling around existing patches. Changes in Area-Weighted Mean Shape Index and Area-Weighted Patch Fractal Dimension Index indicated that the physical shapes within built-up, forest and bareland areas were relatively complex and irregular. A conclusion is made in this study that spatial metrics are useful tools to describe the urban landscape composition and configuration in its various aspects and certain decisions whether to approve a specific development in urban planning could, for example, be based on some measures of urban growth form or pattern in terms of uniformity and irregularity, attributable to the dynamic processes of agglomeration and fragmentation of land cover/land use patches caused by urban expansion.     

Separation of global time-variable gravity signals into maximally independent components

The Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) products provide valuable information about total water storage variations over the whole globe. Since GRACE detects mass variations integrated over vertical columns, it is desirable to separate its total water storage anomalies into their original sources. Among the statistical approaches, the principal component analysis (PCA) method and its extensions have been frequently proposed to decompose the GRACE products into space and time components. However, these methods only search for decorrelated components that on the one hand are not always interpretable and on the other hand often contain a superposition of independent source signals. In contrast, independent component analysis (ICA) represents a technique that separates components based on assumed statistical independence using higher-order statistical information. If one assumes that independent physical processes generate statistically independent signal components added up in the GRACE observations, separating them by ICA is a reliable strategy to identify these processes. In this paper, the performance of the conventional PCA, its rotated extension and ICA are investigated when applied to the GRACE-derived total water storage variations. These analyses have been tested on both a synthetic example and on the real GRACE level-2 monthly solutions derived from GeoForschungsZentrum Potsdam (GFZ RL04) and Bonn University (ITG2010). Within the synthetic example, we can show how imposing statistical independence in the framework of ICA improves the extraction of the ‘original’ signals from a GRACE-type super-position. We are therefore confident that also for the real case the ICA algorithm, without making prior assumptions about the long-term behaviour or on the frequencies contained in the signal, improves over the performance of PCA and its rotated extension in the separation of periodical and long-term components.     

Evaluating the impact of data quantity, distribution and algorithm selection on the accuracy of 3D subsurface models using synthetic grid models of varying complexity

Testing the accuracy of 3D modelling algorithms used for geological applications is extremely difficult as model results cannot be easily validated. This paper presents a new approach to evaluate the effectiveness of common interpolation algorithms used in 3D subsurface modelling, utilizing four synthetic grids to represent subsurface environments of varying geological complexity. The four grids are modelled with Inverse Distance Weighting and Ordinary Kriging, using data extracted from the synthetic grids in different spatial distribution patterns (regular, random, clustered and sparse), and with different numbers of data points (100, 256, 676 and 1,600). Utilizing synthetic grids for this evaluation allows quantitative statistical assessment of the accuracy of both interpolation algorithms in a variety of sampling conditions. Data distribution proved to be an important factor; as in many geological situations, relatively small numbers of randomly distributed data points can generate more accurate 3D models than larger amounts of clustered data. This study provides insight for optimizing the quantity and distribution of data required to accurately and cost-effectively interpolate subsurface units of varying complexity.     

MODIS多波段数据对南极海冰变化的监测研究

以归一化雪被指数法为基础根据南极的环境特点提出了MODIS影像的0．86m与1．24m的新波段组合方法分别实现了晴空与薄云下的海冰提取大幅度地提高了南极海冰监测的效率与分辨率 结合AMSR－E微波数据进行了海冰变化研究得到2002 2010年的全南极海冰范围与净冰面积都在2月份达到最小值均值分别为3．17×106　km2与2．42×106　km2 都在9月份达到最大值均值分别为18．40×106　km2与16．60×106　km2 而全南极海冰的年际变化可分为三个阶段从2002 2004年海冰基本持平2005 2007年海冰减少2008 2010年海冰重新增长这与南极海冰20a长周期的推断相符合但9年间的全南极海冰无明显的趋势性变化