Towards a collaborative global land cover information service

ABSTRACT

The need and critical importance of global land cover and change information has been well recognized. Although rich collection of such information has been made available, the lack of necessary information services to support its easy access, analysis and validation makes it difficult to find, evaluate, select and reuse them through well-designed workflows. Aiming at promoting the development of the needed global land cover information services, this paper presents a conceptual framework for developing a Collaborative Global Land Cover Information Service (CoGland), followed by discussions on its implementation strategies. The framework supports connected and shared land cover and change web services around the world to address resource sharing, community service and cross-board collaboration needs. CoGland can benefit several recent international initiatives such as Future Earth, and many societal benefit areas. The paper further proposes that CoGland be developed within the framework of the Group on Earth Observations with the support of a number of key organizations such as the United Nations Expert Committee on Global Geospatial Information Management, the International Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing, and International Society of Digital Earth. It is hoped that this paper can serve as a starting point for further discussions on CoGland developments.     

George Jobberns,freemasonry, geopolitics and the post‐WWII world

The article suggests Jobberns’ view of geopolitics ultimately rested on the work of British geographer Sir Halford Mackinder overlain by the writing of American political geographers. Jobberns’ geopolitical thinking was, however, also strongly informed by his being a Freemason. WWII, as the overshadowing external event of Jobberns’ early years at Canterbury, amplified his interest in geopolitics both as a way of understanding the world and, at a time when geography was not universally accepted as a university discipline, as a means of promoting to a wider public the utility of a geographical perspective on world affairs.     

基于GeoNames和Solr的地名数据全文检索

地名数据是一种重要的地理信息资源,目前我国的地名数据库建设多局限于国内地名,缺少国外数据。传统地名数据的检索多为关键字查询,查询效率低且无法用于复杂地名查询。文中提出一种基于开源地名数据库GeoNames和开源搜索引擎Solr的地名数据全文检索方法,通过分析GeoNames的数据类型和结构,构建MySQL地名数据库,并利用Solr建立地名索引,提供基于Web服务的地名数据全文检索。实验表明,基于Solr的地名数据全文检索能够显著提高地名数据检索效率,对于复杂地名查询,也能进行有效地检索。     

明代中国人环球测绘《坤舆万国全图》——兼论《坤舆万国全图》的作者不是利玛窦

通过对详细的地理地名考析,结论是《坤舆万国全图》并非意大利传教士利玛窦根据欧洲世界地图翻译绘制,该地图的地理测绘不是1602年完成,而是1430年左右,即郑和第六次大航海之后。该地图的欧洲部分是1400年以前的地理,中国部分为1430年左右,部分美洲却是1800年以后欧洲人才知道的,与西方公认的地理大发现历史严重冲突。卫匡国的《中国新地图集》不可能是他在中国9年内完成,证明经纬度、球形投影等技术是明代中国人发明的地图绘制技术,不是"西学东渐"。此外,其他明代文化文物在美洲遗存等旁证有力支持地图论据,证明明代中国人比哥伦布先抵美洲,《坤舆万国全图》是中国文献,用现代地图学技术测绘,明代中国人是15世纪世界地理大发现和现代地图学的真正先驱。     

Environmental controls on food web regimes: A fluvial perspective

Because food web regimes control the biomass of primary producers (e.g., plants or algae), intermediate consumers (e.g., invertebrates), and large top predators (tuna, killer whales), they are of societal as well as academic interest. Some controls over food web regimes may be internal, but many are mediated by conditions or fluxes over large spatial scales. To understand locally observed changes in food webs, we must learn more about how environmental gradients and boundaries affect the fluxes of energy, materials, or organisms through landscapes or seascapes that influence local species interactions. Marine biologists and oceanographers have overcome formidable challenges of fieldwork on the high seas to make remarkable progress towards this goal. In river drainage networks, we have opportunities to address similar questions at smaller spatial scales, in ecosystems with clear physical structure and organization. Despite these advantages, we still have much to learn about linkages between fluxes from watershed landscapes and local food webs in river networks. Longitudinal (downstream) gradients in productivity, disturbance regimes, and habitat structure exert strong effects on the organisms and energy sources of river food webs, but their effects on species interactions are just beginning to be explored. In fluid ecosystems with less obvious physical structure, like the open ocean, discerning features that control the movement of organisms and affect food web dynamics is even more challenging. In both habitats, new sensing, tracing and mapping technologies have revealed how landscape or seascape features (e.g., watershed divides, ocean fronts or circulation cells) channel, contain or concentrate organisms, energy and materials. Field experiments and direct in situ observations of basic natural history, however, remain as vital as ever in interpreting the responses of biota to these features. We need field data that quantify the many spatial and temporal scales of functional relationships that link environments, fluxes and food web interactions to understand how they will respond to intensifying anthropogenic forcing over the coming decades.     

Seasonal Changes in Nano/Micro-Zooplankton Herbivory and Heterotrophic Nano-Flagellates Bacterivory off Cape Esan, Southwestern Hokkaido, Japan

Seasonal changes in nano/micro-zooplankton grazing on pico-, nano- and micro-size phytoplankton and heterotrophic nano-flagellates (HNF) feeding on heterotrophic bacteria were quantified by the dilution technique in the surface layer off Cape Esan, southwestern Hokkaido, Japan. Pico- and nano-size phytoplankton were major components throughout the year except in spring when a diatom bloom was observed. Although there was little seasonal variation in bacteria and HNF biomass throughout the year, the micro-zooplankton biomass varied appreciably with a peak in spring. Nano/micro-zooplankton grazing or feeding on pico-size chl-a and bacteria were well balanced throughout the year. However, nano-size and micro-size chl-a growth were much greater than grazing in summer. Nano/micro-zooplankton ingestion of phytoplankton was greater than their ingestion of bacteria almost throughout the year, which suggests phytoplankton are more important as food sources of nano/micro-zooplankton in microbial food webs off Cape Esan than bacteria off Cape Esan. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Stable isotope analysis of Pacific salmon: insight into trophic status and oceanographic conditions over the last 30 years

Food web interactions and the response of Pacific salmon to physical processes in the North Pacific Ocean over interannual and interdecadal timescales are explored using naturally occurring stable isotope ratios of carbon (¹³C/¹²C) and nitrogen (¹⁵N/¹⁴N). Stable isotope analyses of five species of sexually mature North Pacific salmon from Alaska (Oncorhynchus spp.) cluster into three groups: chinook salmon (O. tshawytscha) have the highest values, followed by coho (O. kisutch), with chum (O. keta), sockeye (O. nerka), and pink (O. gorbuscha) together having the lowest values. Although detailed isotopic data on salmon prey are lacking, there are limited data on relevant prey items from areas in which they are found in high abundance. These data suggest that the characteristics of the sockeye, pink and chum we have analyzed are compatible with their diets including open ocean squid and zooplankton, which are in general agreement with stomach content analyses. Isotope relationships between muscle and scale show consistent relationships for both δ¹³C (R²=0.98) and δ¹⁵N (R²=0.90). Thus, scales, which have been routinely archived for many systems, can be used for retrospective analyses. Archived sockeye salmon scales spanning 1966–1999 from Red Lake, Kodiak Island, Alaska were analyzed for their stable isotope ratios of carbon and nitrogen. The δ¹⁵N record displays a decreasing trend of ˜3‰ from 1969–1982 and an increasing trend of ˜3‰ from 1982–1992, while the variations in δ¹³C are relatively minor. These trends may result from factors such as shifts in trophic level of feeding and/or feeding location, or may originate at the base of the food web via changes in processes such as nutrient cycling or primary productivity. Detailed studies on prey isotopic variability and its controls are needed to distinguish between these factors, and thus to improve the use of stable isotope analysis as a tool to learn more about present and past ecosystem change in the North Pacific and its relation to climatic change.     

Design and Implementation of a Distributed GIS Portal for Oil Spill and Harmful Algal Bloom Monitoring in the Marine Environment

A web-based distributed system for monitoring and forecasting of the marine environment has been developed in line with INfrastructure for SPatial InfoRmation in Europe (INSPIRE) and Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) recommendations for a European Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI). This system, called DISPRO, enables integration and distribution of multi-source data from satellites, aircraft, and in situ instruments, as well as results from numerical models. Geographic data and metadata are stored on a set of distributed computer nodes and retrieved and integrated by a web GIS client by means of Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Web Map Server (WMS) technologies. A profile of ISO 19115 was developed for metadata handling, using eXtensible Markup Language (XML) as a platform independent encoding mechanism. DISPRO has been demonstrated in six European coastal zone and ocean regions in the spring and summer of 2005. The overall positive experiences of both service providers and end users indicate that the system should be further developed into an operational GMES service.     

长江口海水入侵数值预报网络发布系统

文中对利用三维数值模拟技术所建立一个高分辨率的三维盐度数值信息集进行数据挖掘和可视化分析,采用ADOBE公司的RIA技术,针对海水入侵数值预报信息所固有的特性和规律,通过动态可视化技术对数据进行形象化、对其信息赋予智能化,从而展现各信息集的各个数据层面的属性、规律,透过动态视觉效果,进一步反映和揭示了数据信息所映射的时空规律特征。研究的目标是利用Studio 8的核心技术来构建一套海水入侵数值预报动态可视网络发布系统。     

The role of cultural and creative services in the evaluation of the world urban system

Traditionally, academic evaluation of the world urban system has been based on economic approaches and focused on primary cities. However, the recent convergence between economic and cultural spheres, known in specialist literature as the ‘new economy’ or ‘cognitive–cultural capitalism’, requires the inclusion of secondary cities and cultural parameters, such as creative and cultural services, to obtain knowledge of the world urban system with greater accuracy. Accordingly, the authors have developed the Synthetic Index of Cultural Components (objective 1). Subsequent statistical treatment through a principal component analysis and a cluster analysis not only shows a representation of the multifunctional character of the world urban system (objective 2) but also identifies the cultural specializations that urban planners use to position cities worldwide (objective 3). The results demonstrate that the reputation of a city derives not only from its productive economic character but also from other cultural creative services that give meaning to its multidimensional perspective. The authors conclude that these services are empirically valid when the cultural dimension is measured, as they are illustrative of the cultural mechanisms that help cities to supply symbolic, experiential, and cultural capital, all of which are vital in the competitive context of globalization.