Memorial landscapes: analytic questions and metaphors

Over the past two decades, geographers have probed the intersection of collective memory and urban space. Their sustained interest in the subject reflects an understanding of the social condition of commemoration and the important role that space plays in the process and politics of collective memory. Along with other critical social scientists, geographers envision these public symbols as part of larger cultural landscapes that reflect and legitimate the normative social order. A review of the extant literature indicates that geographers scrutinize memorial landscapes through three conceptual lenses that may be understood via the metaphors of ‘text,’ ‘arena,’ and ‘performance.’ These metaphors are in turn mobilized through a series of analytic questions that serve to identify the interests served and denied by landscape ‘texts,’ the ‘arenas’ in which they are produced, and the ways in which they are enacted via ‘performance.’ This article’s synopsis of the subfield’s predominant metaphors and its attendant questions contributes to the ongoing cultural geographic project of articulating and implementing methods for interpreting landscapes as open-ended symbolic systems.

济宁市湿地公园建设与植物景观配置初探

以济宁市湿地公园建设为例,论述了区域内湿地公园建设的基础条件、现状和发展方向。分析了不同类型的湿地公园建设重点和保护恢复的主要措施,针对济宁市河流、库塘(塌陷地)、湖泊为主体的湿地公园的植物景观建设特点,提出相关的景观建设要点和植物配置建议。     

The Neogene and Quaternary of England: landscape evolution,tectonics, climate change and their expression in the geological record

During the Neogene and Quaternary, tectonic and climatic processes have had a profound impact upon landscape evolution in England and, perhaps as far back as 0.9 Ma, patterns of early human occupation. Until the Late Miocene, large-scale plate tectonic processes were the principal drivers of landscape evolution causing localised basin inversion and widespread exhumation. This drove, in places, the erosion of several kilometres of Mesozoic cover rocks and the development of a regional unconformity across England and the North Sea Basin. By the Pliocene, the relative influence of tectonics on landscape evolution waned as the background tectonic stress regime evolved and climatic influences became more prominent. Global-scale climate-forcing increased step-wise during the Plio-Pleistocene amplifying erosional and depositional processes that operated within the landscape. These processes caused differential unloading (uplift) and loading (subsidence) of the crust (‘denudational isostasy’) in areas undergoing net erosion (upland areas and slopes) and deposition (basins). Denudational isostasy amplified during the Mid-Pleistocene Transition (c.0.9 Ma) as landscapes become progressively synchronised to large-scale 100 ka ‘eccentricity’ climate forcing. Over the past 0.5 Ma, this has led to the establishment of a robust climate record of individual glacial/interglacial cycles enabling comparison to other regional and global records. During the Last Glacial-Interglacial Transition and early Holocene (c.16–7 ka), evidence for more abrupt (millennial/centennial) scale climatic events has been discovered. This indicates that superimposed upon the longer-term pattern of landscape evolution is a more dynamic response of the landscape to local and regional drivers.     

Very high resolution Earth Observation features for testing the direct and indirect effects of landscape structure on local habitat quality

Modelling the empirical relationships between habitat quality and species distribution patterns is the first step to understanding human impacts on biodiversity. It is important to build on this understanding to develop a broader conceptual appreciation of the influence of surrounding landscape structure on local habitat quality, across multiple spatial scales. Traditional models which report that ‘habitat amount’ in the landscape is sufficient to explain patterns of biodiversity, irrespective of habitat configuration or spatial variation in habitat quality at edges, implicitly treat each unit of habitat as interchangeable and ignore the high degree of interdependence between spatial components of land-use change. Here, we test the contrasting hypothesis, that local habitat units are not interchangeable in their habitat attributes, but are instead dependent on variation in surrounding habitat structure at both patch- and landscape levels. As the statistical approaches needed to implement such hierarchical causal models are observation-intensive, we utilise very high resolution (VHR) Earth Observation (EO) images to rapidly generate fine-grained measures of habitat patch internal heterogeneities over large spatial extents. We use linear mixed-effects models to test whether these remotely-sensed proxies for habitat quality were influenced by surrounding patch or landscape structure. The results demonstrate the significant influence of surrounding patch and landscape context on local habitat quality. They further indicate that such an influence can be direct, when a landscape variable alone influences the habitat structure variable, and/or indirect when the landscape and patch attributes have a conjoined effect on the response variable. We conclude that a substantial degree of interaction among spatial configuration effects is likely to be the norm in determining the ecological consequences of habitat fragmentation, thus corroborating the notion of the spatial context dependence of habitat quality.     

Quantifying land use/land cover spatio-temporal landscape pattern dynamics from Hyperion using SVMs classifier and FRAGSTATS®

This study aims to quantify the landscape spatio-temporal dynamics including Land Use/Land Cover (LULC) changes occurred in a typical Mediterranean ecosystem of high ecological and cultural significance in central Greece covering a period of 9 years (2001–2009). Herein, we examined the synergistic operation among Hyperion hyperspectral satellite imagery with Support Vector Machines, the FRAGSTATS^® landscape spatial analysis programme and Principal Component Analysis (PCA) for this purpose. The change analysis showed that notable changes reported in the experimental region during the studied period, particularly for certain LULC classes. The analysis of accuracy indices suggested that all the three classification techniques are performing satisfactorily with overall accuracy of 86.62, 91.67 and 89.26% in years 2001, 2004 and 2009, respectively. Results evidenced the requirement for taking measures to conserve this forest-dominated natural ecosystem from human-induced pressures and/or natural hazards occurred in the area. To our knowledge, this is the first study of its kind, demonstrating the Hyperion capability in quantifying LULC changes with landscape metrics using FRAGSTATS^® programme and PCA for understanding the land surface fragmentation characteristics and their changes. The suggested approach is robust and flexible enough to be expanded further to other regions. Findings of this research can be of special importance in the context of the launch of spaceborne hyperspectral sensors that are already planned to be placed in orbit as the NASA’s HyspIRI sensor and EnMAP.     

Identification of geologic contrasts from landscape dissection pattern: An application to the Cascade Range, Oregon, USA

This paper demonstrates the plausibility of inferring the spatial variability of geology from topographically derived landscape dissection patterns. This enables surveying large regions for spatial variability in geology, for which direct remote sensing is not feasible, by studying variability in dissection pattern, a feature extracted straight off from digital elevation model data. Dissection pattern is obtained automatically by a novel algorithm, especially designed to delineate the valleys with high accuracy in order to reflect spatial variability in dissection density. The dissection pattern is encapsulated by a continuous map of drainage density, a raster variable best suited for showing spatial variability of dissection. Such a map, constructed for the study area in the Cascade Range, Oregon, USA, shows a sharp discontinuity in the dissection pattern, indicating change in underlying geology. Possible factors controlling the dissection pattern such as climate, local and regional slopes, vegetation, and geology are examined, and geology has been found to be the dominant controlling factor. The dissection contrast coincides with the boundary between the Western and High Cascades, two geologic provinces with different rock ages and types. The older and less permeable Western Cascades are associated with denser dissection pattern, whereas the younger and more permeable High Cascades correspond to less dissected pattern. This new mapping method can be applied to locations where topography is the only readily available data, and the generated map could be used to extract previously unknown geologic or environmental information.     

Satellite monitoring of urbanization and environmental impacts—A comparison of Stockholm and Shanghai

This study investigates urbanization and its potential environmental consequences in Shanghai and Stockholm metropolitan areas over two decades. Changes in land use/land cover are estimated from support vector machine classifications of Landsat mosaics with grey-level co-occurrence matrix features. Landscape metrics are used to investigate changes in landscape composition and configuration and to draw preliminary conclusions about environmental impacts. Speed and magnitude of urbanization is calculated by urbanization indices and the resulting impacts on the environment are quantified by ecosystem services. Growth of urban areas and urban green spaces occurred at the expense of cropland in both regions. Alongside a decrease in natural land cover, urban areas increased by approximately 120% in Shanghai, nearly ten times as much as in Stockholm, where the most significant land cover change was a 12% urban expansion that mostly replaced agricultural areas. From the landscape metrics results, it appears that fragmentation in both study regions occurred mainly due to the growth of high density built-up areas in previously more natural/agricultural environments, while the expansion of low density built-up areas was for the most part in conjunction with pre-existing patches. Urban growth resulted in ecosystem service value losses of approximately 445 million US dollars in Shanghai, mostly due to the decrease in natural coastal wetlands while in Stockholm the value of ecosystem services changed very little. Total urban growth in Shanghai was 1768 km² and 100 km² in Stockholm. The developed methodology is considered a straight-forward low-cost globally applicable approach to quantitatively and qualitatively evaluate urban growth patterns that could help to address spatial, economic and ecological questions in urban and regional planning.     

Multi‐process Late Quaternary landscape evolution modelling reveals lags in climate response over small spatial scales

Landscapes evolve in complex, non‐linear ways over Quaternary timespans. Integrated geomorphological field studies usually yield plausible hypotheses about timing and impact of process activity. Landscape Evolution Models (LEMs) have the potential to test and falsify these landscape evolution hypotheses. Despite this potential, LEMs have mainly been used with hypothetical data and rarely to simulate the evolution of an actual landscape. In this paper, we use a LEM (LAPSUS: LandscApe ProcesS modelling at mUlti dimensions and scaleS) to explore if it is possible to test and falsify conclusions of an earlier field study on 50 ka landscape evolution in Okhombe Valley, KwaZulu Natal, South Africa. In this LEM, five landscape processes interact without supervision: water driven erosion and deposition, creep, solifluction, biological weathering and frost weathering. Calibration matched model results to three types of qualitative fieldwork observations: individual process activity over time, relative process activity over time and net landscape changes over time. Results demonstrate that landscape evolution of the Okhombe valley can be plausibly simulated. A particularly interesting and persistent feature of model results are erosional and depositional phases that lag climatic drivers both by decades, and by several ka within a few hundred meters. The longer lag has not been reported for this spatial scale before and may be an effect of slow landscape‐soil‐vegetation feedbacks. The combined modelling and fieldwork results allow a more complete understanding of these responses to climate change and can fill in hiatuses in the stratigraphical record. Suggestions are made for methodological adaptations for future LEM studies. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Assessment of wetland fragmentation in the Tarim River basin, western China

The wetlands in the middle and lower reaches of the Tarim River are a rich area of biodiversity and natural resources in the inland arid region of China. However, this wetland area has decreased in size during the past several decades. Water quality and biodiversity has declined due to expanded agricultural activities since 1960s. Using remote sensing (RS), geographic information system (GIS) and global positioning system (GPS) techniques, we investigated the dynamics, spatial patterns and fragmentation of the wetlands in the middle and lower reaches of the Tarim River from 1980 to 2000. We found that the total area of the wetlands was reduced by 45.8% and the density of the patches increased four times from 1980 to 1990. From 1990 to 2000, though the total area of the wetlands slightly increased the number of the patches increased three times and the density of the patches doubled. Based on the analyses of transition matrixes, diversity and fragmentation indexes, and spatial distribution alternation of the wetlands, we found the landscape diversity and fragmentation indices increased while wetland dominance index decreased dramatically. Among the wetland types, the areas of the river-channel, reservoir and pond wetlands increased while the areas of the lake and marsh wetlands decreased continuously.     

基于手持GPS洞庭湖区植被景观格局外业调绘研究

本文以1：50000的地形图为工作底图，采用手持GPS技术、利用实地调查与分解森林资源分布图相结合的方法，对洞庭湖区植被分布状况进行了外业调绘的研究。建立了外业调绘过程中植被群落斑块最小面积和边界的确定原则及其斑块类型与编码。探讨了手持GPS实现WGS-84坐标系向1954北京坐标系的转化方法。并进行了精度估算，其点位误差≤5．8m，完全可以满足洞庭湖区植被分布外业调绘的精度要求。运用该方法进行植被分布的外业调绘，可以解决运用传统的定位测量方法在湖区定位难的问题，提高了外业作业效率。