Statistical and machine learning methods have many applications in the environmental sciences, including prediction and data analysis in meteorology, hydrology and oceanography, pattern recognition for satellite images from remote sensing, management of agriculture and forests, assessment of climate change, and much more. With rapid advances in machine learning in the last decade, this book provides an urgently needed, comprehensive guide to machine learning and statistics for students and researchers interested in environmental data science. It includes intuitive explanations covering the relevant background mathematics, with examples drawn from the environmental sciences. A broad range of topics are covered, including correlation, regression, classification, clustering, neural networks, random forests, boosting, kernel methods, evolutionary algorithms, and deep learning, as well as the recent merging of machine learning and physics. End-of-chapter exercises allow readers to develop their problem-solving skills and online data sets allow readers to practise analysis of real data.

This work reflects preoccupations with the threats posed to our environment due to climatic factors, major and natural hazards of all kinds and demographic influences. Topics covered include land surface processes, coastal zones and atmospheric risks.

Earth observation data policy has received little attention, even though the conditions of access to Earth observation data are fundamental to the exploitation of and the further growth of the Earth observation sector. This unique book addresses this limitation.

The ideas and techniques of virtual reality are now being made available for the creation of artificial or virtual geographies (a virtual geography refers to the creation of artificial geographies for use in research and teaching, using ideas and techniques from the field of virtual reality (VR)).
Such virtual geographies are currently being constructed and used at a number of sites and include virtual cities, landscape visualisation, visualising past and future geographies, visualising abstract concepts and taking people on virtual field courses.
Virtual Reality in Geography covers 'through the window' VR systems, 'fully immersive' VR systems and hybrids of the two types. The authors examine the Virtual Reality Modelling Language approach, and explore its deficiencies when applied to real geographic environments. This book will be of great interest to geographers, computer scientists and all those interested in multimedia and computer graphics. There is an accompanying CD-ROM containing a rich selection of images and pieces of virtual reality software.
This is a totally unique book covering an area of geography that is rapidly becoming used in all aspects of the field. It covers all the major uses and methods of virtual reality used by geographers and the lack of anything else written about the subject to date should ensure a wide readership. The authors have produced a CDROM that comes with the book of virtual reality images that will be a fascinating companion to the text.

eBook available with sample pages: 020330585X

Contents:
1. Introduction by the Editors 2. Setting the Stage 3. Ontological Background 4. Databases for Temporal GIS: Applications 5. Definition of Socio-economic Units

This work presents cases studies of applications of Geotechnology such as Geography Information Systems, virtual reality and cellular automaton and multi-agent systems in the field of urban planning and design.These are joint research presentations with students and colleagues from Kanazawa University. All these case studies are about application in Japanese or Chinese cities, which are on-field examples reflecting the enormous spread of geo-computation technology. Nevertheless, the concepts have wide applicability to other contexts. The works can be classified into three types of Geotechnological applications at different levels of urban spaces, which are relevant to different kinds of urban planning and development projects. The book is comprised of three parts: Part 1: Geosimulation and land use plan Part 2: Geo Visualization and urban design Part 3: Geography information system and planning support

There is considerable current academic interest in the interface between geographical information systems (GIS) and the environment. This new monograph explores the process from start to finish. It begins with information acquisition in the environment and moves on to tool and techniques for manipulating the information, visualisation and navigation methods for exploring it, and computation and modelling techniques for its analysis. It then concludes with a survey of decision support, for its application.
Spatial Information and the Environment is the eighth book in the Innovations in GIS series initiated in 1994. The series is in essence derived from a selection of the presentations made at the annual GIS Research UK conference 2000 held in York, and has now changed its focus by concentrating on a single topic, making each text distinctive.

eBook available with sample pages: 0203302796

For the seventh consecutive year, the AGILE promotes the publication of a book collecting high-level scientific papers from unpublished fundamental scientific research in the field of Geographic Information Science. As the agenda for Europe 2020 is currently being set, this book demonstrates how geographic information science is at the heart of Europe. The contributions open perspectives for innovative services that will strengthen our European economy, and which will inform citizens about their environment while preserving their privacy. The latest challenges of spatial data infrastructures are addressed, such as the connection with the Web vocabularies or the representation of genealogy. User generated data (through social networks or through interactive cameras and software) is also an important breakthrough in our domain. A trend to deal more and more with time, events, ancient data, a nd activities is noticeable this year as well. This volume collects the 23 best full papers presented during the 16th AGILE Conference on Geographic Information Science, held between 14 and 17 May 2013 in Leuven, Belgium.

Mapping Cyberspace is a ground-breaking geographic exploration and critical reading of cyberspace, and information and communication technologies. The book:
* provides an understanding of what cyberspace looks like and the social interactions that occur there
* explores the impacts of cyberspace, and information and communication technologies, on cultural, political and economic relations
* charts the spatial forms of virutal spaces
* details empirical research and examines a wide variety of maps and spatialisations of cyberspace and the information society
* has a related website at http://www.MappingCyberspace.com.
This book will be a valuable addition to the growing body of literature on cyberspace and what it means for the future.

Sixty years after its birth, Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) evolved as a key player of earth observation, and it is continually upgraded by enhanced hardware functionality and improved overall performance in response to user requirements. The basic information gained by SAR includes the backscattering coefficient of targets, their phases (the truncated distance between SAR and its targets), and their polarization dependence. The spatiotemporal combination of the multiple data operated on the satellite or aircraft significantly increases its sensitivity to detect changes on earth, including temporal variations of the planet in amplitude and the interferometric change for monitoring disasters; deformations caused by earthquakes, volcanic activity, and landslides; environmental changes; ship detection; and so on. Earth-orbiting satellites with the appropriate sensors can detect environmental changes because of their large spatial coverage and availability. Imaging from Spaceborne and Airborne SARs, Calibration, and Applications provides A-to-Z information regarding SAR researches through 15 chapters that focus on the JAXA L-band SAR, including hardware description, principles of SAR imaging, theoretical description of SAR imaging and error, ScanSAR imaging, polarimetric calibration, inflight antenna pattern, SAR geometry and ortho rectification, SAR calibration, defocusing for moving targets, large-scale SAR imaging and mosaic, interferometric SAR processing, irregularities, application, and forest estimation. Sample data are created by using L-band SAR, JERS-1, PALSAR, PALSAR-2, and Pi-SAR-L2. This book is based on the author's experience as a principal researcher at JAXA with responsibilities for L-band SAR operation and researches. It reveals the inside of SAR processing and application researches performed at JAXA, which makes this book a valuable reference for a wide range of SAR researchers, professionals, and students.

Global problems require global information, which satellites can now provide. With ever more sophisticated control methods being developed for infectious diseases, our ability to map spatial and temporal variation in risk is more important than ever. Only then may we plan control campaigns and deliver novel interventions and remedies where the need is greatest, and sustainable success is most likely. This book presents a comprehensive guide to using the very latest methods of surveillance from satellites, including analysing spatial data within geographical information systems, interpreting complex biological patterns, and predicting risk both today and as it may change in the future. Of all infectious disease systems, those that involve free-living invertebrate vectors or intermediate hosts are most susceptible to changing environmental conditions, and have hitherto received most attention from the marriage of analytical biology with this new space technology. Accordingly, this volume presents detailed case studies on malaria, African trypanosomiasis (sleeping sickness), tick-borne infections and helminths (worms). For those who are unfamiliar with this science, and unsure how to start, the book ends with a chapter of practical advice on where to seek hands-on instruction. The lessons to be learned from these studies are applicable to many other epidemiological and ecological problems that face us today, most significantly the preservation of the world's biodiversity.
Key Features
* Only book to provide a synthesis of complex biology, quantitative analysis, space technology and practical applications, focused on solving real epidemiological problems on a global scale
* Broad scope, with methods relevant to subjects ranging from biodiversity to public health
* Practical advice on relevant courses
* 24 pages of colour plates

The early 21st century marks a new era in space exploration. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) of the United States, The European Space Agency (ESA), as well as space agencies of Japan, China, India, and other countries have sent their probes to the Moon, Mars, and other planets in the solar system. Planetary Remote Sensing and Mapping introduces original research and new developments in the areas of planetary remote sensing, photogrammetry, mapping, GIS, and planetary science resulting from the recent space exploration missions. Topics covered include: Reference systems of planetary bodies Planetary exploration missions and sensors Geometric information extraction from planetary remote sensing data Feature information extraction from planetary remote sensing data Planetary remote sensing data fusion Planetary data management and presentation Planetary Remote Sensing and Mapping will serve scientists and professionals working in the planetary remote sensing and mapping areas, as well as planetary probe designers, engineers, and planetary geologists and geophysicists. It also provides useful reading material for university teachers and students in the broader areas of remote sensing, photogrammetry, cartography, GIS, and geodesy.

This book provides a non-technical introduction to High Performance Computing applications together with advice about how beginners can start to write parallel programs. The authors show what HPC can offer geographers and social scientists and how it can be used in GIS. They provide examples of where it has already been used and suggestions for other areas of application in geography and the social sciences. Case studies drawn from geography explain the key principles and help to understand the logic and thought processes that lie behind the parallel programming.

The intersection of two disciplines and technologies which have become mature academic research topics in the 1990s was destined to be a dynamic area for collaboration and publication. However, until now no significant book-length treatment of the meeting of GIS and Virtual Reality has been available. This volume puts that situation to rights by bringing these together to cement some common understanding and principles in a potentially highly promising area for technological collaboration and cross-fertilisation.
The result is a volume which ranges in subject matter from studies of a Virtual GIS Room to Spatial Agents, and from an Environmental Multimedia System to Computer-Assisted 3D Geographic Education. All the contributors are well-known international scientists, principally from the computational side of GIS. It will be a valuable resource for any GIS researcher or professional looking to understand the leading edge of this fertile field.

This edited book is a collection of information on recent advancements in remote sensing for forestry application. The main focus of this book is to address the novel applications in remote sensing in terms of recent techniques, sensors, methods and data collection. Remote sensing has been used for many decades. Today, remote sensing is heavily utilized in forest management, which is acquired from airborne and space-borne platforms using satellite data. In recent years, there have been rapid advances in the new types of sensors. The new generations of satellite sensors are introduced not only to provide important information on forest ecosystems, but also to improve the techniques and accuracies obtained by the traditional approaches. Researchers have become increasingly aware of the potential of remote sensing to address important forestry issues and challenges. The number of forestry publications using remote sensing has grown very rapidly, and this is noticeable with many recent technologies and applications. This book provides valuable source of reference to foresters, researchers, ecologists, climate change scientists and scholars who use remote sensing in their work. Furthermore, it serves as an academic book for undergraduate and graduate students of forestry, agriculture, natural resources and environmental sciences. The book demonstrates and engages the students how the new advancements in remote sensing technology and theory relate to the many real-world forestry applications. It gives readers deeper understanding on how remote sensing has come a long way and evolved into a mature science in the past five decades.

Do more with your GIS and understand the foundation of spatial analysis: geographic patterns and relationships. A geographic information system (GIS) enables so much more than mapping. A GIS inherently enables spatial analysis that can give you a better understanding of your geographic data. GIS analysis reveals answers to questions like: Where is it? Where's the most and least? How much is where? What's inside? What's nearby? What's changed But how do you get started? The second edition of The Esri Guide to GIS Analysis, Volume 1 shows how and more. With easier to read maps and text, The Esri Guide to GIS Analysis, Volume 1, second edition, dives beneath the surface of mapping, beyond displaying data to using it to reveal geographic insights. Learn the basic concepts of spatial analysis and GIS. Build on that understanding with essential map-building skills to unveil and display patterns and relationships. The Esri Guide to GIS Analysis, Volume 1, second edition, also includes a guide to online lessons that reinforce the concepts and demonstrate GIS application. Written for both new and experienced GIS users using an easy to follow format, the second edition of The Esri Guide to GIS Analysis, Volume 1 helps you build a foundation of the basic tasks needed to handle a wide range of analysis applications and prepares you for more advanced GIS skills.

GIS users and professionals are aware that the accuracy of GIS results cannot be naively based on the quality of the graphical output. Data stored in a GIS will have been collected or measured, classified, generalised, interpreted or estimated, and in all cases this allows the introduction of errors.; With the processing of translation of this data into the GIS itself further propagation or amplification or errors also occur. It is essential that GIS professionals understand these issues systematically if they are to build ever more accurate systems.; In this book the authors decade of study into these problems is brought into focus with an account of the development, application and implementation of error propagation techniques for use in environmental modelling with GIS. Its purpose is to provide a methodology for handling error and error propagation.

This book integrates spatial analysis into the study and management of conflicts, and offers a model in conflict studies that incorporates theoretical explanations of conflict, its causes, and impacts, with a geospatial strategy for intervening in disputes over allocation and use of natural resources (connects theory and practice). Alongside a theoretical analysis of resource conflicts and an account of Participatory Mapping and PGIS development, this book provides a case study of GIS applications in conflict mediation. The book also lays out a practical and straightforward demonstration of PGIS applications in conflict management using a real-world case study, and traces the Participatory Mapping and PGIS movements' evolution, compares PPGIS and PGIS practices, and makes distinctions between traditional GIS applications and PGIS practice. The approach embodies the enhanced use of spatial information and media, sets of tools for analyzing, mapping, and displaying spatial data and a platform for participatory discussions that enhances consensus-building. The book, therefore, contributes to the search for novel approaches for managing current and emerging conflicts. With this book, resource managers, development practitioners, students, and scholars of Participatory Mapping and PGIS applications and conflict studies will be equipped with the principles, skills, and the tools they need to manage non-violent resource conflicts and keep the disputes from slipping into violence. The book will also be a valuable text for basic and advanced studies in Participatory Mapping and PGIS applications, Conflict Resolution and Conflict Management.

The classical dances of the subcontinent have undergone fission, been deconstructed and become part of a contemporary dance idiom. Some of the most innovative work has taken place because of interaction with Western dancers or because it was conceived in a Western and/or global context. This work examines the British experience, the work and contribution of Indian dance practioners based in Britain working primarily in a British/European context and how these factors have contributed to the development of Indian dance.

Seeks to redress the ways that femme identites have been elided, idealized, or not fully historicized in a productive reconsideration of lesbian and butch-femme history, of feminism, and of queer thought. As femme sexual politics provide a liberatory model, the text, as a feminist project offers an alliance between many communities of women previously passed over by feminism. This collection argues that femmes have been causal to shifts within feminism, the creation of queer theory, and the shaping of butch-femme and lesbian history. The text is divided into three sections: histories; generations; and futures. Contributors write about femme in terms of: sexuality, gender, race and ethnic communities, class experience, national borders, bisexuality, body image, incest survival, aging, bar culture, heterosexuality, activism, transgender and transsexual desire, and feminism. The book portrays femmes as contestatory lesbian identities, radical feminist positions, and subversive queer models.

This volume contains the proceedings from the COSPAR Colloquium on "Space Remote Sensing of Subtropical Oceans" which took place between 12 and 16 September, 1996, at the Institute of Oceanography of the National Taiwan University.

Included are contributions addressing the issue, from scientific points of views, of why the first scientific satellite of Taiwan, ROCSAT-1, should be equipped with the Ocean Colour Imager (OCI) for oceanographic investigations.

Over the years since the launch of the first of the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometers (AVHRRs) in 1978, the data from these instruments have come to be used for a very wide range of non-meteorological applications. In this book, the author describes the satellite system, the instrument itself, the control of the spacecraft and the data-recovery arrangements. The book also covers various aspects of the processing of the data to extract useful environmental information. The applications of the data to marine problems, based primarily on the study of sea-surface temperatures from the thermal-infrared channels of the instrument, are considered, as well as the study of vegetation and a whole variety of other land-based and hydrological applications.

Derived from presentations made at the fourth annual UK National Conference on GIS Research, this work consists of contributions by leading experts in: geography, mathematics, computing science, surveying, archaeology, planning and medicine.

The contributors to this edited collection demonstrate that geographic information research is truly global in character, cutting across a wide range of disciplines and addressing conceptual, methodological, technical, ethical and political issues alike. Of the six themes, two are broadly concerned with data integration (geographic data infrastructures, GIS diffusion and implementation); two are more technical and conceptual in nature (generalisation, concepts and paradigms), and two reflect to a larger extent the application-driven nature of GIS technology (spatial analysis and multimedia). Each section is introduced by chapters highlighting the key research issues. Further chapters explore these issues in greater depth, and benefit from the international collaboration. Through the comparison of results included in this book, the prospects for advancing the field and addressing the challenges of GIS research are greatly improved.

The ability to manipulate spatial data in different forms and to extract additional meaning from them is at the heart of GIS, yet genuine spatial analysis tools are rarely incorporated into commercial software, thus seriously limiting their usefulness. The future of GIS technology wil depend largely on the incorporation of more powerful analytical and modelling functions - and there is agreement within the GIS community of the urgent need to address these issues. This text attempts this task. It presents the latest information on incorporating spatial analysis tools into GIS, and includes concepts and applications from both the environmental and socio-econimc sciences.