Estimation of pH optima and tolerances of diatoms in lake sediments by the methods of weighted averaging,least squares and maximum likelihood,and their use for the prediction of lake acidity

Ecological optima and tolerances with respect to autumn pH were estimated for 63 diatom taxa in 47 Finnish lakes. The methods used were weighted averaging (WA), least squares (LS) and maximum likelihood (ML), the two latter methods assuming the Gaussian response model.WA produces optimum estimates which are necessarily within the observed lake pH range, whereas there is no such restriction in ML and LS. When the most extreme estimates of ML and LS were excluded, a reasonably close agreement among the results of different estimation methods was observed. When the species with unrealistic optima were excluded, the tolerance estimates were also rather similar, although the ML estimates were systematically greater.The parameter estimates were used to predict the autumn pH of 34 other lakes by weighted averaging. The ML and LS estimates including the extreme optima produced inferior predictions. A good prediction was obtained, however, when prediction with these estimates was additionally scaled with inverse squared tolerances, or when the extreme values were removed (censored). Tolerance downweighting was perhaps more efficient, and when it was used, no additional improvement was gained by censoring. The WA estimates produced good predictions without any manipulations, but these predictions tended to be biased towards the centroid of the observed range of pH values.At best, the average bias in prediction, as measured by mean difference between predicted and observed pH, was 0.082 pH units and the standard deviation of the differences, measuring the average random prediction error, was 0.256 pH units.     

Motion of animated streamlets appears to surpass their graphical alterations in human visual detection of vector field maxima

ABSTRACT

Animations have become a frequently utilized illustration technique on maps but changes in their graphical loading remain understudied in empirical geovisualization and cartographic research. Animated streamlets have gained attention as an illustrative animation technique and have become popular on widely viewed maps. We conducted an experiment to investigate how altering four major animation parameters of animated streamlets affects people’s reading performance of field maxima on vector fields. The study involved 73 participants who performed reaction-time tasks on pointing maxima on vector field stimuli. Reaction times and correctness of answers changed surprisingly little between visually different animations, with only a few occasional statistical significances. The results suggest that motion of animated streamlets is such a strong visual cue that altering graphical parameters makes only little difference when searching for the maxima. This leads to the conclusion that, for this kind of a task, animated streamlets on maps can be designed relatively freely in graphical terms and their style fitted to other contents of the map. In the broader visual and geovisual analytics context, the results can lead to more generally hypothesizing that graphical loading of animations with continuous motion flux could be altered without severely affecting their communicative power.     

Conflation of OpenStreetMap and Mobile Sports Tracking Data for Automatic Bicycle Routing

This article investigates how workout trajectories from a mobile sports tracking application can be used to provide automatic route suggestions for bicyclists. We apply a Hidden Markov Model (HMM)‐based method for matching cycling tracks to a “bicycle network” extracted from crowdsourced OpenStreetMap (OSM) data, and evaluate its effective differences in terms of optimal routing compared with a simple geometric point‐to‐curve method. OSM has quickly established itself as a popular resource for bicycle routing; however, its high‐level of detail presents challenges for its applicability to popularity‐based routing. We propose a solution where bikeways are prioritized in map‐matching, achieving good performance; the HMM‐based method matched correctly on average 94% of the route length. In addition, we show that the extremely biased nature of the trajectory dataset, which is typical of volunteered user‐generated data, can be of high importance in terms of popularity‐based routing. Most computed routes diverged depending on whether the number of users or number of tracks was used as an indicator of popularity, which may imply varying preferences among different types of cyclists. Revising the number of tracks by diversity of users to surmount local biases in the data had a more limited effect on routing.     

The distribution of late-Quaternary woody taxa in northern Eurasia: evidence from a new macrofossil database

We present a database of late-Quaternary plant macrofossil records for northern Eurasia (from 23° to 180°E and 46° to 76°N) comprising 281 localities, over 2300 samples and over 13,000 individual records. Samples are individually radiocarbon dated or are assigned ages via age models fitted to sequences of calibrated radiocarbon dates within a section. Tree species characteristic of modern northern forests (e.g. Picea, Larix, tree-Betula) are recorded at least intermittently from prior to the last glacial maximum (LGM), through the LGM and Lateglacial, to the Holocene, and some records locate trees close to the limits of the Scandinavian ice sheet, supporting the hypothesis that some taxa persisted in northern refugia during the last glacial cycle. Northern trees show differing spatio-temporal patterns across Siberia: deciduous trees were widespread in the Lateglacial, with individuals occurring across much of their contemporary ranges, while evergreen conifers expanded northwards to their range limits in the Holocene.     

Automatic determination of stream networks from DEMs by using road network data to locate culverts

Determining stream networks automatically from digital elevation models is an issue that is actively being studied. The quality of elevation models has increased over time, but many hydrologically critical features, such as culverts, are often missing from the elevation data. To analyze the surficial water flow, one must either prepare a special elevation model or post-process an already-existing model.

This study builds on the traditional, well-established method of determining the stream network from digital elevation models. We have extended the traditional method by locating culverts automatically, using road network data as an input. We show, by comparison to the reference data, that the culverts being most relevant for the stream network can be found with good accuracy. We demonstrate that by including the automatically located culverts in the automatic stream network determination, the quality of the generated network can be noticeably improved.     

Multi‐epoch time‐resolved photometry of the eclipsing polar CSS081231:071126+440405

The eclipsing polar CSS081231:071126+440405 turned bright (V_max ∼ 14.5) in late 2008 and was subsequently observed intensively with small and medium‐sized telescopes. A homogeneous analysis of this comprehensive dataset comprising 109 eclipse epochs is presented and a linear ephemeris covering the five years of observations, about 24000 orbital cycles, is derived. Formally this sets rather tight constraints on the mass of a hypothetical circumbinary planet, M_pl ≤ 2 M_Jup. This preliminary result needs consolidation by long‐term monitoring of the source. The eclipse lasts 433.08 ± 0.65 s, and the orbital inclination is found to be i = 79.3°–83.7°. The centre of the bright phase displays accretion‐rate dependent azimuthal shifts. No accretion geometry is found that explains all observational constraints, suggesting a complex accretion geometry with possible pole switches and a likely non‐dipolar field geometry. (© 2015 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)