Street networks in relation to landforms: Implications for fast-growing cities简

In addition to socio-economic factors, major landforms may affect the city structure and urban form. Here we show that landforms have significant effects on the city shape and street patterns of the fast-growing Iranian cities of Dezful （a river） and Khorramabad （moun- tains and valleys）, but no clear effects on the cities of Yazd and Nain. Also, where the street orientation is peaked, the Gibbs/Shannon entropy （a measure of dispersion or spread） is low, but increases as the distribution becomes more uniform because of landform constraints. The streets in the old inner parts of all the cities are, on average, shorter and denser （more streets per unit area） than the streets of the newer outer parts. The entropies of the outer parts are also greater than those of the inner parts, implying that the street-length distribution gradually becomes more dispersed or spread as the city expands. All these cities have been fast growing in the past decades, with the newer outer parts expanding rapidly. As shown here, the rapidly formed outer parts （with greater dispersion in street patterns） have significantly different textures from those of the older inner parts, indicating different functionality and growth processes. These quantitative methods for street-network analysis can be used worldwide, particularly for analysing the effects of landforms on city shape and texture.     

The early Cretaceous marine transgression and its significance for landscape interpretation

Significant elements of the Australian landscape date from Mesozoic or earlier times. Australia did not separate completely from other Gondwanan components until Early Tertiary times and these Mesozoic and older elements can therefore be regarded as Gondwanan. During the separation and northern drift of the continent and particularly in Late Jurassic and earlier Cretaceous times the sea invaded and spread across much of the erstwhile landmass. The associated sediments not only covered and preserved much of the pre‐existing land surface, but they also augmented the effects of thalassostatic loading of the basins, causing further subsidence. Hinge lines developed near the coastal zones of the times, so that subsidence of the basins caused adjacent land masses to rise. Many old land surfaces have been re‐exposed at the former oceanic margins, but epigene forms are preserved high in the relief on the uplifted blocks. They survive partly because, as Crickmay (1976) suggested, rivers effectively erode at and near their channels; the divides remain untouched. A reinforcement effect also operates because the valleys are wet sites, the interfluves dry. Hence weathering and erosion proceed apace in the former while the latter are stable, allowing palaeoforms to survive.     

Landscapes and Literature: A Look at the Early Twentieth Century Rural South

Abstract

This article examines samples of southern literature from the first half of the twentieth century that can be used to understand geographically the rural landscapes of the Coastal Plain from North Carolina through Mississippi. The socioeconomic imprint upon the land, climatic perceptions, and the role of the forest are themes addressed. The advantages and significance of using a literary approach are also discussed.     

BOOK REVIEWS

Book Reviewed in this article: Hillslope Processes. Binghamton Symposia in Geomorphology International Series: 16. Athol D. Abrahams , ed. The Atlas of Central America and the Caribbean. The Diagram Group . The Cultural Atlas of Islam. Isma'il R. al Faruqi and Lois Lamaya'al Faruqi . Atlas of Israel Contemporary Africa: Development, Culture and the State. Morag Bell . Fundamentals of Physical Geography. David Briggs and Peter Smithson . The Bicentennial Census: New Directions for Methodology in 1990. Constance F. Citro and Michael L. Cohen , eds . World Patterns of Modern Urban Change: Essays in Honor of Chauncy D. Harris. Michael P. Conzen , ed . New Directions for Agriculture and Agricultural Research: Neglected Dimensions and Emerging Alternatives. Kenneth A. Dahlberg , ed . Water Resources Atlas of Florida. E.A. Fernald and D.J. Patton , eds . Landscape Ecology. R.T.T. Forman and M. Godron . The Myth of the North American City: Continentalism Challenged. Michael Goldberg and John Mercer . The Permafrost Environment. Stuart A. Harris . Climate and Circulation of the Tropics. Stefan Hastenrath . The Island of South Georgia. Robert Headland . The Making of Urban Europe, 1000-1950. Paul M. Hohenberg and Lynn Hollen Lees . Bombay in Transition: The Growth and Social Ecology of a Colonial City, 1889–1980. Meera Kosambi . Plant Closings; Public or Private Choices? Richard B. McKenzie , ed . Malaysia: Tradition, Modernity and Islam. R.S. Milne and Diane K. Mauzy . Technology on the Frontier: Mining in Old Ontario. Dianne Newell . The Maritime Political Boundaries of the World. J.R.V. Prescott . Tall Office Buildings in the United States. James W. Pygman and Richard Kateley (Real Estate Research Corporation). Technology, Regions, and Policy. John Rees , ed . The United States and the Regional Organization of Asia and the Pacific: 1965-1985. W.W. Rostow . Renewable Energy: Progress, Prospects. Stephen W. Sawyer Wisconsin Foundations. Gwen Schultz . Dwelling, Place and Environment: Towards a Phenomenology of Person and World. David Seamon and Robert Mugerauer , eds . Power and Place: Canadian Urban Development in the North American Context. Gilbert A. Stelter and Alan F.J. Artibise , eds . Small Firms in Regional Economic Development: Britain, Ireland and the United States. D. J. Storey , ed . Mathematical Methods in Human Geography and Planning. A. G. Wilson and R. J. Bennett . El Niño North: Niño Effects on the Eastern Subarctic Pacific Ocean. W. S. Wooster and D. L. Fluharty , eds . The Soviet Iron and Steel Industry. Craig ZumBrunnen and Jeffrey Osleeb .     

Wind Power in View: Energy Landscapes in a Crowded World

Books reviewed:

Rayner, John N. Dynamic Climatology: Basis in Mathematics and Physics

Blair, Alasdair and Hitchcock, David. Environment and Business

Black, Brian. Petrolia: The Landscape of America's First Oil Boom

Sharma, Martha B. and Elbow, Gary S. Using Internet Primary Sources to Teach Critical Thinking Skills in Geography

Klemen?i?, Mladen (ed.) Atlas Europe

Kliot, Nurit and Newman, David Geopolitics at the End of the Twentieth Century: The Changing World Political Map

O’Sullivan, Patrick M. The Geography of War in the Post – Cold War World

Duany, Andres, Plater-Zyberk, Elizabeth, and Speck, Jeff. Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream

Kayden, Jerold S. Privately Owned Public Space: The New York City Experience

Borjas, George J. Heaven's Door: Immigration Policy and the American Economy

Andreas, Peter. Border Games: Policing the U.S.-Mexico Divide

England, John. Retail Impact Assessment: A Guide to Best Practice

Outtes, Joel. O Recife: Gënese do Urbanismo, 1927 – 1943 (Recife: The Birth of Urbanism, 1927 –1943)

Njoh, Ambe J. Urban Planning, Housing, and Spatial Structures in Sub-Saharan Africa: Nature, Impact, and Development Implications of Exogenous Forces

Hanson, Philip and Bradshaw, Michael (eds.) Regional Economic Change in Russia

Pyne, Stephen J. Book Review Commentary: A response to Terence Young's review of Stephen J. Pyne's How the Canyon Became Grand     

Mapping natural and urban environments using airborne multi-sensor ADS40–MIVIS–LiDAR synergies

The recent and forthcoming availability of high spatial resolution imagery from satellite and airborne sensors offers the possibility to generate an increasing number of remote sensing products and opens new promising opportunities for multi-sensor classification. Data fusion strategies, applied to modern airborne Earth observation systems, including hyperspectral MIVIS, color-infrared ADS40, and LiDAR sensors, are explored in this paper for fine-scale mapping of heterogeneous urban/rural landscapes. An over 1000-element array of supervised classification results is generated by varying the underlying classification algorithm (Maximum Likelihood/Spectral Angle Mapper/Spectral Information Divergence), the remote sensing data stack (different multi-sensor data combination), and the set of hyperspectral channels used for classification (feature selection). The analysis focuses on the identification of the best performing data fusion configuration and investigates sensor-derived marginal improvements. Numerical experiments, performed on a 20-km stretch of the Marecchia River (Italy), allow for a quantification of the synergies of multi-sensor airborne data. The use of Maximum Likelihood and of the feature space including ADS40, LiDAR derived normalized digital surface, texture layers, and 24 MIVIS bands represents the scheme that maximizes the classification accuracy on the test set. The best classification provides high accuracy (92.57% overall accuracy) and demonstrates the potential of the proposed approach to define the optimized data fusion and to capture the high spatial variability of natural and human-dominated environments. Significant inter-class differences in the identification schemes are also found by indicating possible sub-optimal solutions for landscape-driven mapping, such as mixed forest, floodplain, urban, and agricultural zones.     

Reducing landscape heterogeneity for improved land use and land cover (LULC) classification across the large and complex Ethiopian highlands

This paper presents a land use and land cover (LULC) classification approach that accounts landscape heterogeneity. We addressed this challenge by subdividing the study area into more homogeneous segments using several biophysical and socio-economic factors as well as spectral information. This was followed by unsupervised clustering within each homogeneous segment and supervised class assignment. Two classification schemes differing in their level of detail were successfully applied to four landscape types of distinct LULC composition. The resulting LULC map fulfills two major requirements: (1) differentiation and identification of several LULC classes that are of interest at the local, regional, and national scales, and (2) high accuracy of classification. The approach overcomes commonly encountered difficulties of classifying second-level classes in large and heterogeneous landscapes. The output of the study responds to the need for comprehensive LULC data to support ecosystem assessment, policy formulation, and decision-making towards sustainable land resources management.     

Modeling of multi-strata forest fire severity using Landsat TM Data

Most of fire severity studies use field measures of composite burn index (CBI) to represent forest fire severity and fit the relationships between CBI and Landsat imagery derived differenced normalized burn ratio (dNBR) to predict and map fire severity at unsampled locations. However, less attention has been paid on the multi-strata forest fire severity, which represents fire activities and ecological responses at different forest layers. In this study, using field measured fire severity across five forest strata of dominant tree, intermediate-sized tree, shrub, herb, substrate layers, and the aggregated measure of CBI as response variables, we fit statistical models with predictors of Landsat TM bands, Landsat derived NBR or dNBR, image differencing, and image ratioing data. We model multi-strata forest fire in the historical recorded largest wildfire in California, the Big Sur Basin Complex fire. We explore the potential contributions of the post-fire Landsat bands, image differencing, image ratioing to fire severity modeling and compare with the widely used NBR and dNBR. Models using combinations of post-fire Landsat bands perform much better than NBR, dNBR, image differencing, and image ratioing. We predict and map multi-strata forest fire severity across the whole Big Sur fire areas, and find that the overall measure CBI is not optimal to represent multi-strata forest fire severity.     

Capitalism, masculinity and whiteness in the dialectical landscape: The case of Tarzan and the Tycoon

The intent of this paper is to explore how ‘reel’ and ‘real’ landscapes can be rendered dialectic. The analysis focuses on the filming of Tarzan's Secret Treasure (1941) at the wildlife preserve of Wakulla Springs in Florida, which was administered by the financial tycoon Ed Ball. Using Mitchell's recent commentaries on ‘good’ and ‘bad’ dialectics as our entry point, we offer two readings of this cinematic process. The first renders the on and off screen Wakulla Springs as ideological fodder, serving to valorise capital, masculinity and whiteness. The second reading addresses how this place has been actively constructed from discourses pertaining to class, gender and race, such that Wakulla exists as a series of fully relational spaces within diverse contexts, both ‘real’ and ‘reel’. In structuring our analysis in this manner, we hope to make clear why it does indeed matter for film geographers to acknowledge the conceptual presumptions brought to bear in the framing of the real and the reel as objects of analysis. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

延安地质遗迹特征及世界地质公园建设方案

延安地处黄土高原腹地,黄河中游,富集发育了类型多样的地质遗迹资源。在现场调查和综合研究的基础上,将延安地质遗迹划分为黄土层型剖面、黄土地貌景观、黄河蛇曲群、黄土丹霞等为典型代表的3大类7类12个亚类。这些地质遗迹资源分布相对集中,具有极高的科学研究价值和黄土高原独有的景观美学特征,在世界范围内具有独特性、典型性和对比意义。延安丰富的地质遗迹与革命圣地的厚重人文历史、自然生态系统三者和谐共生,相互辉映,全方位展示了黄土高原最为典型的自然和人文特色。经分析论证,认为延安建设世界地质公园条件具备,机遇成熟,影响深远,效应显著,并提出建设延安地质公园的构想和推荐方案,并希冀尽快启动相关申报和建园工作。