Environmental GIS

Calvert K and Simandan D (2010) Energy, space, and society: a reassessment of the changing landscape of energy production, distribution, and use Journal of Economics and Business Research XVI(1), pp. 13-37.
ABSTRACT: While geography has always mattered for the energy sector, the relative effects of location and distance on the economics of energy regimes are increasing as we begin to deploy more renewable energy technologies. This reintroduction of the friction of distance is leading to an energy landscape that is far different from fossil-based regimes. The new energy paradigm, based as it is upon the physics and the economics of renewable energy, is being reflected in the landscape as distributed, decentralized, and diversified patterns of energy generation. Because the increased use of renewable energy technologies is beginning to change the spatial patterns of political and socioeconomic activities, a thorough understanding of these patterns is crucial to increasing the socio-political acceptability of new technologies and to avoiding the socially costly unintended consequences of policy and investment decisions.  This paper proposes a theoretical foundation upon which economists and economic geographers could scaffold their analyses of the spatial characteristics of the economics of energy use.  To this end, we bring together two complementary conceptualizations of economic geography: firstly, as the study of the effects of location and distance on energy economics, and secondly, as the study of the ways in which political, economic, and technological energy-related practices give rise to particular spatial patterns of socio-economic welfare. We end the paper by developing the concept of energy rationality and showing how it relates to discussions of metarationality, common sense, and wisdom.

Rapid urbanization has greatly increased the volume of runoff generated in many developed areas and subsequently resulting in flooding. This study evaluated the flood prone area of Igbokoda town in Ondo State and developed a flood risk map to facilitate proper planning and future flood mitigation. Scientific technique of GIS was used to identify flood risk areas within the study area. The Landsat 5 (TM), Landsat 7 (ETM+) and Landsat 8 (LC) images for 1986, 1999 and 2013 coupled with STRM 90 m DEM data of the area were used to identify three categorized risk zones. A total of 339 basins were delineated and stream network on the landscape of this area were carved. Hydrological and vegetation cover analyses were conducted using the satellite imageries obtained from United States Geological Surveys Archive online over the study area for three different epochs 1986, 1999 and 2013. There was a sharp decrease in area of vegetation cover from 1986 (19,630 ha) to 1999 (16,527.36 ha) and in 2013 (12,246.80 ha). The hydrological analysis results revealed that a major part of the residential area within the largest basin delineated was associated with low elevation and high slope angle. The combined stream network and slope of the area were used in developing flood risk zones. Three zones were specified: high, medium, and low flood risk zones. The total area covered by the high risk zone was 28.5615 km 2 while the area of the medium and small risk zones were 15.94759 km 2 and 31.3619 km 2 respectively. It is recommended that an increased awareness on flood risk zone should be created among the populace of Igbokoda to guide them in further development.

Azlin Samsudin, Tarmiji Masron, Mokhtar Saidin, Jeffrey Abdullah and Saiful Shahidan.(2010). LEMBAH BUJANG, SEBUAH KERAJAAN LAMA YANG BERPUSAT:
DARI PERSPEKTIF SISTEM MAKLUMAT GEOGRAFI (GIS).IN: Seminar Prosiding: Penanda Arasan Penyelidikan Arkeologi di UKM (Editor: Asyaari Muhamad, Nik Hassan Shuhaimi Nik Abd. Rahman and Zuliskandar Ramli).Institut Alam Dan Tamadun Melayu (ATMA), Bangi.Pages: 305 - 325

Abstract:

Lembah Bujang telah dikaji sejak sedekad yang la/u dan dikatakan sebagai kerajaan Kedah Tua dari abad ke 1 masihi hingga 14 masihi. Ia juga dilaporkan sebagai salah satu kerajaan lama yang penting dalam abad tersebut sebagai salah satu persinggahan dalam perdagangan di rantau Asia Tenggara. Ma/ah dikatakan juga, penempatan di Lembah Bujang adalah merupakan satu kerajaan atau negeri yang mempunyai penyusunan masyarakat yang tersusun dan jaringan pertukaran barangan tersendiri dengan menggunakan sungai-sungai sebagai penghubung antara kawasan. Fungsi setiap tapak juga telah ditafsirkan berdasarkan kepada kajian o/eh Jane Allen pada tahun 1988. Kesemua tersebut adalah hasil daripada kajian arkeologi melalui  tinjauan dan ekskavasi yang dilakukan oleh pengkaji-pengkaji terdahulu. Bagaimanapun, kajian terhadap taburan tapak-tapak arkeo/ogi di Lembah Bujang dengan menggunakan pendekatan Sistem Maklumat Geografi (GIS) tidak pernah dilakukan /agi. 0/eh itu, ana/isis GIS telah dilakukan ke atas taburan tapak-tapak arkeologi yang sedia ada untuk menentukan polo penempatan dan pusat penempatan tersebut dan sungai utama yang menjadi nodi dalam kerajaan lama. Ana/isis yang dijalankan menunjukkan taburan tapak-tapak adalah tertumpu pada dua lembangan iaitu kawasan tadahan sungai Merbok dan Sungai Muda. Kedua-dua sungai ini memainkan peranan dalam kerajaan Kedah Tua. Ana/isis terhadap polo taburan tapak-tapak arkeologi pula berdasarkan kepada 3 atribut iaitu ketinggian, kecerunan dan fungsi setiap tapak menunjukkan bahawa wujud polo penempatan dan pusat kerajaan Kedah Tua. Polo penempatan Lembah Bujang ada/ah berkisar kepada Sungai Merbok sebagai sungai utamanya berbanding dengan sungai Muda. Ma/ah ana/isis tersebut juga menunjukkan bahawa kawasan Pengkalan Bujang dan sepanjang sungai Pengkalan Bujang kemungkinan merupakan pusat kerajaan Kedah Tua. Sekitarnya merupakan kawasan aktiviti ekonominya. Kewujudan pusat kerajaan, menunjukkan wujudnya kerajaan lama dan penempatan di Lembah Bujang merupakan sebuah penempatan satu negeri yang mempunyai kerajaan berpusat.

Groundwater quality is gradually deteriorating due to agricultural activities and its evaluation is there for eneeded before use. The aim of this study was to evaluate groundwater quality for use in the foundry industry using water quality data, including PH, EC, TDS, Cl and HCO3, from 26 wells located in Jolgeh and Bon-Rud districts, Iran. Zoning and classification of the area were done, based on groundwater quality, using a GIS software and the existing standards for water use. Results showed that groundwater in the East, North and Southwest of the area was of acceptable quality for use in the foundry industry, but water quality deteriorated from the East to the West of the area. It was found that for foundry industry about 4 percent of area ground water could be used without any limitation, 2 percent with low limitation, 7 percent with moderate limitations, and the rest with high limitation or even unusable. Agricultural activities in the region are having a negative impact on the quality of groundwater.

"Most of the datasets presented in this thesis are available for free in ArcGIS shapefile format on the University of Edinburgh's DataShare Open data repository at http://datashare.is.ed.ac.uk/. These datasets are available for everyone to use as it is important to encourage data sharing in support of research activities. There are also some CORONA satellite images available on DataShare for the Syrian Jazira region.

I need to note as well that the archaeological dataset (http://dx.doi.org/10.7488/ds/1735) associated with this thesis has copyright protection, and my thesis must be cited in any publication that has incorporated this dataset into any research associated with it.

Relevant to CORONA, and the thesis, is a paper presented at a 1997 conference which first introduced CORONA satellite imagery to archaeologists doing research in the Near East.  Martin Fowler also wrote about the potential of CORONA in the Aerial Archaeology Research Group (AARG) news.

Mathys, Tony. “The Use of Declassified Intelligence Satellite Photographs in a GIS (IDRISI) to Map Archaeological Sites and the Surrounding Landscape in the Northeastern Region of the Syrian Jazirah. The University of Chicago Oriental Institute, NASA and St. Cloud State University Remote Sensing Applications in Archaeology Conference. St. Cloud, Minnesota, May 29-31, 1997.

Unfortunately, the Oriental Institute did not publish the papers presented at this conference; several academics, in attendance, built their careers on this presentation without any citation to it.

My gratitude and thanks to Dr Sarah Parcak for citing this unpublished conference paper in her book (Satellite Remote Sensing in Archaeology), and to Dr Aled Rowlands and Dr Apostolos Sarris for citing it in their Journal of Archaeological Science article 34 (2007)."

This thesis is copyright protected.
© 2001 Antone J.  Mathys. All Rights Reserved.""

Municipal waste management in the last two decades has become a global environmental priority in the context of increasing amounts of waste generated due to the development of a mass consumer society. Various issues of waste management , territorial and temporal variability, spatial analysis of treatment or disposal facilities, systemic implications on the environment, the harmonization of international policy at national, regional and local level are solid arguments for studying this field by geography. Mostly technical or economic studies, lacking a vision of territory are supplemented in the conceptual and methodological level by geographers. This paper performed on the one hand, an overview of various approaches in current literature on waste management issue and on another hand analyses the geographical contributions in this field. Our conclusions lead to the idea that waste management must be performed according to the geographical features of the territory concerned.

Landfilling prevails in waste management options in Romania like others new EU members, being contrary to the concept of waste hierarchy promoted in recent years by EC. Waste disposal is done usually in non-compliant landfills and Government established a program to close these sites. This paper aims to analyse the transition from traditional waste management systems to an integrated system at national, regional and local scale. Assessment of landfills location based on buffer analysis (using GIS techniques) is made according to the proximity of five critical factors (CF) such as: residential area, industry & commercial units, agricultural lands, rivers & lakes, forest and protected areas, all these factors being sensitive to pollution. Thus, most of these old sites are badly or improperly located related to surroundings and only few have an acceptable location in the study area! Therefore, the proposed method can be a necessary tool in EIA studies of these environmental threats at regional scale.

Laboratory of Archeo-geophysics
www.phys.uni-sofia.bg/bul/departments/ucsrt/agpl/index.html
The laboratory was created in 2006 for the implementation of space technology (Ground penetrating radars) for the survey and geophysical exploration of archaeological sites in Bulgaria
Paleoluminescence Laboratory
The laboratory uses methods and equipment developed at the Physics Department. They are subject to three Bulgarian inventions, and one Canadian patent of our laboratory’s team. Some of the devices developed, and used by the laboratory have no analogues abroad, others are subject to numerous attempts of coping or modifing by other laboratories around the world.

In a challenging world of exponentially increasing numbers, relationships, and complexities, the GIS-based technologies make possible the gathering, compilation, analysis, as well as representation of very large amounts of hypothetical and/or real-world data. The computational and representational capabilities offered by these technologies promise the ability to deal effectively with even greater complexities and challenges of maintaining sustainable urban patterns in the future. This study offers an introductory outline of prominent sustainability issues as they relate to the planning and design of urban areas, where growth and sprawl bring other major concerns. Due to their unprecedented computational and representational capabilities computers, programs, digital satellite imagery, remote sensing and numerous other GIS-based technologies are regularly employed in many processes supporting such urban planning and design processes. The GIS applications in sprawling urban areas typically involve tracking land uses, monitoring the specific changes in urban population, densities, construction, housing, roads, as well as services. The GIS-based technologies, tools, and methodologies reviewed in this study are particularly chosen because of their significance in measuring, monitoring, modeling, and analyzing urban sprawl. This study finds that some of the most common methodologies include the use of software such as ERDAS (Leica) and ArcGIS (ESRI), as well as data retrieved from sources such as Landsat MSS, TM, ETM+ and IRS LISS-III.

An 8 Richter Scale (RS) earthquake struck West Sumatra on Wednesday, 30 September 2009, at 17.16 pm which led to huge number of landslides. Hence a comprehensive landslide susceptibility mapping (LSM) should be produced in order to reduce the damages to people and infrastructures. In the international landslide literature, various statistical methods such as frequency ratio (FR) and logistic regression (LR) have been widely used individually for LSM, but they have some weaknesses. FR which is able to perform bivariate statistical analysis (BSA) assesses the influence of classes of each conditioning factor on landslide occurrence. However, the correlation between the factors is mostly neglected. On the other hand, LR is able to analyze the relationship among the factors while it is not capable to evaluate the classes of each landslide conditioning factor. This paper aims to propose an ensemble method of FR and LR in order to overcome their weak points. For LSM, a landslide inventory map with a total of 87 landslide locations was extracted from various sources. Then the landslide inventory was randomly divided into two datasets 70% for training the models and the remaining 30% was used for validation purpose. The landslide conditioning factors consist of: altitude, curvature, river, SPI, rainfall, soil type, soil texture, land use/cover (LULC), peak ground acceleration (PGA), geology, slope, aspect, lineament and topographic wetness index (TWI). Four PGA of 7.5, 8, 8.6 and 9 were acquired and PGA 8 which was related to the 2009 earthquake was used to generate the model. Finally, the produced landslide susceptibility maps were validated using an area under the (ROC) curve method. For the model which was derived by PGA 8, the validation results showed 84% and 78% success and prediction rates respectively. Furthermore, the prediction rates for the models made by PGA 7.2, 8.6 and 9 are 79%, 78% and 81% respectively. The result proved the reasonable efficiency of the proposed method for earthquake induced landslide susceptibility mapping. Also the proposed ensemble method can be used in other hazard studies as it is capable to produce rapid and accurate assessment for disaster management and decision making.

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are computer-based tools used to collect, store, manipulate and display spatially-referenced information. They are used to support decision-making in a wide variety of contexts, including spatial planning and environmental management. Because the process of GIS production, from software development to visualization of GIS output, is characterized by political, economic and social motivations, it is important that GIS practitioners are aware of issues such as access to data and the political economy of information, and the nature of GIS epistemologies vis-à-vis multiple coexisting perceptions of reality. Lack of such appreciation can lead to social and spatial marginalization of communities. Use of GIS in a research program for environmental management of the Cooum River in Chennai, and in support of participatory processes for managing environment and health in slums are used to demonstrate appropriate applications of GIS in India. Internet-distributed GIS as a potential avenue to address issues of public access to data is also considered.

The Coastal Chumash resided in permanent towns supplied by an economy of hunting, gathering and fishing practiced in a region possessing high ecological diversity. An elaborate exchange system trading food, raw resources and manufactured goods was developed most likely to deal with the occasionally unpredictable environment. Anthropologists argue that it was the environmental productivity of the region where Chumash peoples resided which contributed to higher populations and greater sociopolitical complexity than that of other hunter-gatherer societies. The Burton Mound site, CA-SBA-28, was consistently documented by the Spanish expeditions of the 16th-19th centuries as being adjacent to a principal town of the Barbareño Chumash. As a result of historic and modern construction, this important site and many others in the Santa Barbara Channel Region either no longer exist or are inaccessible. Thus, the collections resulting from three excavations at CA-SBA-28 are of considerable significance. Only one of the collections has been the subject of a major publication (Harrington 1928). In 1969, Dr. Claude Warren directed excavations of the site prior to pending construction. The faunal remains recovered from the 1969 excavation are studied for the first time to investigate Coastal Chumash subsistence during phases of the Early and Middle periods for which little is known. Analysis of the faunal assemblage provides insights into timing and use of Chumash watercraft, and how climatic uncertainty may have affected subsistence and settlement patterns.

Flood susceptibility Weights-of-evidence (WoE) Support vector machine (SVM) GIS Remote sensing Malaysia s u m m a r y Flood is one of the most devastating natural disasters that occur frequently in Terengganu, Malaysia. Recently, ensemble based techniques are getting extremely popular in flood modeling. In this paper, weights-of-evidence (WoE) model was utilized first, to assess the impact of classes of each conditioning factor on flooding through bivariate statistical analysis (BSA). Then, these factors were reclassified using the acquired weights and entered into the support vector machine (SVM) model to evaluate the correlation between flood occurrence and each conditioning factor. Through this integration, the weak point of WoE can be solved and the performance of the SVM will be enhanced. The spatial database included flood inventory, slope, stream power index (SPI), topographic wetness index (TWI), altitude, curvature, distance from the river, geology, rainfall, land use/cover (LULC), and soil type. Four kernel types of SVM (linear kernel (LN), polynomial kernel (PL), radial basis function kernel (RBF), and sigmoid kernel (SIG)) were used to investigate the performance of each kernel type. The efficiency of the new ensemble WoE and SVM method was tested using area under curve (AUC) which measured the prediction and success rates. The validation results proved the strength and efficiency of the ensemble method over the individual methods. The best results were obtained from RBF kernel when compared with the other kernel types. Success rate and prediction rate for ensemble WoE and RBF-SVM method were 96.48% and 95.67% respectively. The proposed ensemble flood susceptibility mapping method could assist researchers and local governments in flood mitigation strategies.

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are computer-based tools used to collect, store, manipulate and display spatially-referenced information. They are used to support decision-making in a wide variety of contexts, including spatial planning and environmental management. Because the process of GIS production, from software development to visualization of GIS output, is characterized by political, economic and social motivations, it is important that GIS practitioners are aware of issues such as access to data and the political economy of information, and the nature of GIS epistemologies vis-à-vis multiple coexisting perceptions of reality. Lack of such appreciation can lead to social and spatial marginalization of communities. Use of GIS in a research program for environmental management of the Cooum River in Chennai, and in support of participatory processes for managing environment and health in slums are used to demonstrate appropriate applications of GIS in India. Internet-distributed GIS as a potential avenue to address issues of public access to data is also considered.

ABSTRACT:
Distinguishing between natural and human-induced sources of estuarine sedimentary elemental concentrations often relies on mathematical normalisation (using geochemical or granulometric variables) and multivariate statistical techniques (e.g. Principle Component Analysis (PCA)). However, the extent to which these mathematical treatments can influence the interpretation of the data is not well constrained.

We report here the highest resolution mapping of surface sediment elemental concentrations in the Pearl River Estuary (PRE) to date (n = 77) and detail an investigation on the effect of “pre-defining” elements of interest before statistical analysis, a comparison of common normalisation techniques and discuss implications for the identification and interpretation of sediment elemental concentrations enriched by human activities.

Our analysis indentifies 4 distinct patterns of distribution in the PRE: North River, Western Shoal, Macau and Coastal Water distribution patterns. Mapping of these raw distribution patterns underpins a conceptual understanding of the interacting processes driving these patterns of deposition in the PRE, aiding the implementation of PCA and mathematical normalisation. However, we find evidence that (i) different normalisation elements/parameters can significantly alter the distribution patterns in elemental concentrations when applied across the entire PRE and may not reflect the true distribution (i.e. an artefact), and (ii) developing a reduced dataset for PCA can also alter the underlying trends in the spatial data; both of which significantly impact upon the subsequent environmental interpretation of source and human-induced pollution effects.

However, we demonstrate that through interpolation and mapping of raw geochemical data, zonation of the PRE can allow for much more accurate normalisation within discrete regions using the most appropriate conservative tracer element for each specific region identified.

Google Earth Engine (GEE) is a cloud centered platform for temporal and spatial geoprocessing and analysis on global challenges that require more computation power and involve large geospatial datasets. In GEE, the user analyses are automatically parallelized to make use of the computers housed in Google data centers. Moreover, GEE comes with a massive data catalog of 40 years of historical and current remotely sensed imageries (e.g., MODIS, Landsat) and other data. This data archive is constantly updated with the acquisition of new images. GEE also allows users to do spatial and temporal analyses based on their own data (e.g., vector, raster) that are exported into GEE data catalog. The exported data can be kept private or made available for other users of GEE.

To facilitate the users, such as academicians and scientists, and to script more complex analysis, the functionality of GEE is exposed through Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) for JavaScript and Python.

Reclaimed water from small wastewater treatment facilities in the rural areas of the Beira Interior region (Portugal) may constitute an alternative water source for aquifer recharge. A 21-month monitoring period in a constructed wetland treatment system has shown that 21,500 m3 year−1 of treated wastewater
(reclaimed water) could be used for aquifer recharge. A GIS-based multi-criteria analysis was performed, combining ten thematic maps and economic, environmental and technical criteria, in order to produce a suitability map for the location of sites for reclaimed water infiltration. The areas chosen for aquifer
recharge with infiltration basins are mainly composed of anthrosol with more than 1 m deep and fine sand texture, which allows an average infiltration velocity of up to 1 m d−1. These characteristics will provide a final polishing treatment of the reclaimed water after infiltration (soil aquifer treatment (SAT)),
suitable for the removal of the residual load (trace organics, nutrients, heavy metals and pathogens).
The risk of groundwater contamination is low since the water table in the anthrosol areas ranges from 10 m to 50 m. On the other hand, these depths allow a guaranteed unsaturated area suitable for SAT. An area of 13,944 ha was selected for study, but only 1607 ha are suitable for reclaimed water infiltration.
Approximately 1280 m2 were considered enough to set up 4 infiltration basins to work in flooding and
drying cycles.

Despite the considerable work carried out in risk management, vulnerability indexes and aggregative assessments remain a serious issue. The main challenges facing vulnerability assessment are the collection, integration, and synthesis of large quantities of heterogeneous data to provide reliable estimations. This situation has led to the neglect of all significant interactions between the considered indicators, despite their being essential to vulnerability analysis. The scope of the article is to show that most obstacles to vulnerability assessment can be overcome by shifting the focus from absolute vulnerability assessment (i.e., the attempt to quantify an absolute level of weakness or resilience) to relative vulnerability assessment (i.e., the attempt to find out which populations and places are vulnerable and why). We propose a first attempt to assess relative vulnerability. The spectroscopy of urban vulnerability reveals the heterogeneity of vulnerability by focusing on the locally convergent specific characteristics and processes reinforcing (or reducing) vulnerability to inform the implementation of more targeted mitigation policies. This is a two-step approach, first focusing on the vulnerability underlying factors and establishing vulnerability profiles; the second step is to focus on their spatial distribution to confront each vulnerability profile to its multithreat exposure. The Lyon, France, and Bucharest, Romania, case studies reveal the risk transfers induced by some risk management policies and they highlight that vulnerability is a multidimensional phenomenon almost impossible to assess by using a single index. The two case studies also permit local multithreat comparisons as well as international comparisons. A pesar del considerable trabajo llevado a cabo sobre manejo de riesgos, los índices de vulnerabilidad y evaluaciones agregadas siguen siendo asunto serio. Los principales retos que se enfrentan en la evaluación de vulnerabilidad son la recolección, integración y síntesis de grandes cantidades de datos heterogéneos para generar cálculos confiables. Esta situación ha llevado a que se desechen todas las interacciones significativas entre los indicadores considerados, a pesar de ser esenciales para el análisis de la vulnerabilidad. El ámbito del artículo busca mostrar que la mayoría de los obstáculos a la evaluación de la vulnerabilidad pueden obviarse cambiando el foco de evaluación absoluta de la vulnerabilidad (es decir, el intento de cuantificar un nivel absoluto de debilidad o resiliencia) a uno de evaluación de la vulnerabilidad relativa (o sea, el intento de descubrir qué poblaciones y lugares son vulnerables, y por qué lo son). Formulamos una primera propuesta para evaluar la vulnerabilidad relativa. La espectroscopia de la vulnerabilidad urbana revela la heterogeneidad de vulnerabilidad al enfocarse en las características y procesos específicos localmente convergentes que refuerzan (o reducen) la vulnerabilidad para informar la implementación de políticas de mitigación más definidas. Se trata de un enfoque de dos etapas, que primero se enfoca en los factores ocultos de la vulnerabilidad y en establecer perfiles de vulnerabilidad; la segunda etapa consiste en concentrarse en su distribución espacial para confrontar cada perfil de vulnerabilidad con su exposición de amenaza múltiple. Los estudios de caso de Lyon, Francia y Bucarest, Rumania, revelan las transferencias de riesgo inducidos por algunas políticas de manejo de riesgos, a la vez que destacan que la vulnerabilidad es un fenómeno multidimensional casi imposible de evaluar utilizando un solo índice. Los dos estudios de caso permiten también hacer comparaciones locales de amenaza múltiple, lo mismo que comparaciones internacionales.

Hydrogeochemical investigations with emphasis on groundwater fluoride concentrations were carried out in the Shivani watershed area, Karnataka, South India. This drought-prone watershed is characterised by poor groundwater potential and is composed of different lithounits like gneisses, migmatites, tonalites, mafics–ultramafics, conglomerates and quartzites. Analysis of spatial variation of groundwater fluoride concentration through the use of GIS technology software platforms like ArcView 3.2a and MapInfo Professional 8.5 has enabled the identification of low-fluoride and high-fluoride areas within the watershed. Geochemical data indicates that 38% of groundwater samples have excessive fluoride concentration which poses a health risk to the population of the area. Correlation studies indicate that higher groundwater alkalinity activates leaching of fluoride resulting in elevated concentrations of fluoride. No other significant geochemical interrelationship could be identified between fluoride and rest of the physico-chemical parameters owing to the lack of any significant correlation coefficients. This holds good in the case of both low-fluoride (<1.5 mg/L) and high-fluoride (>1.5 mg/L) groundwaters of the watershed. However, differential or non-uniform type (positive or negative) of coefficient of correlation is observed between fluoride at different levels and other physico-chemical parameters. Among the different lithounits of the study area, gneisses house comparatively more number of high-fluoride groundwaters. Fluoride-bearing minerals biotite, hornblende and apatite are the probable natural sources of groundwater fluoride.

Los puntos centrales del debate son:
a) Las controversias por la participación (o no) de grupos privados en la gestión del recurso. Por un lado se discute la necesidad de financiamiento del sector hídrico; por el otro, se olvidan algunas experiencias de fracaso en la administración privada del recurso;
b) La pertinencia de los transvases con el objetivo de mejorar la disponibilidad de recursos en las zonas donde faltan, lo que para algunos críticos podría significar el traslado de grandes volúmenes del líquido para uso agrícola;
c) El paradigma “tecnológico” de importar el líquido de zonas indígenas para satisfacer la sed de grandes ciudades, sin aparente tratamiento de los conflictos que se generan;
d) Una dicotomía aparentemente falsa entre aquellos que piensan en el agua como derecho humano y quienes lo piensan como bien económico. Esto parece olvidar la necesidad de buscar alternativas ecológicas a los usos del agua.

Este dossier se compone de tres apartados y dos anexos. En el primero se ofrecen elementos sobre un debate internacional a propósito la crisis mundial del agua, seguido de información sobre el estrés hídrico en México. El subsecuente consiste en un panorama de lo que significaría los transvases en la zona metropolitana del Valle de México y los conflictos indígenas que ya genera. El último se destina al debate concreto sobre el dictamen de la nueva Ley de Aguas y los actores que participan en él, con sus posturas respectivas. Para concluir se presentan dos anexos: uno con información estadística a propósito de los usos del agua en el medio urbano; mientras que el otro contiene las participaciones de los ponentes del foro Agua: escasez y riesgos.

In today’s increasingly complex urban environments the concepts of urban growth and sprawl are particularly relevant to the long-term sustainability of urban areas.  Development  and  use  of  effective  urban  design  methods  to  measure,  monitor  and  manage  urban  growth  as  well  as  to  minimize  sprawl requires an equally complex set of methods and technologies in place. Within the larger context of regional and city planning, one can easily observe that a wide array of geographic information system (GIS) methods are under rigorous research and development to be utilized in vital decision-making processes  of  ecological  and  sustainable  urban  design.  This  study  reviews  and closely  examines  a  number  of  articles  on  GIS-based  methods  proposed and/or applied in urban areas throughout the world.

Landslide susceptibility mapping is indispensable for disaster management and planning development operations in mountainous regions. The potential use of light detection and ranging (LiDAR) data was explored in this study for deriving landslide-conditioning factors for the spatial prediction of landslide-susceptible areas in a landslide-prone area in Ulu Klang, Malaysia. Nine landslide-conditioning factors, such as altitude, slope, aspect, curvature, stream power index (SPI), topographic wetness index (TWI), terrain roughness index (TRI), sediment transport index (STI), and slope length (SL), were directly derived from LiDAR for landslide-susceptibility mapping. The main objective of this research was to propose a novel ensemble landslide susceptibility mapping method to enhance the performance of individual methods of support vector machine (SVM) and evidential belief function (EBF). SVM is time-consuming when various data types, such as nominal, scale, and ordinal, are used. This characteristic of the individual SVM method is not optimal for hazard modeling. This drawback can be resolved by assessing the effects of the classes of each conditioning factor on landslide occurrence through a datadriven EBF method. Hence, EBF was applied in this study, and weights were acquired for the classes of each conditioning factor. The conditioning factors were reclassified based on the attained weights and entered into SVM as a scale to evaluate the correlation between landslide occurrence and each conditioning factor. Four SVM kernel types [radial basis function kernel (RBF), sigmoid kernel (SIG), linear kernel (LN), and polynomial kernel (PL)] were tested to explore the efficiency of each kernel in SVM modeling. The efficiencies of the ensemble EBF and SVM methods were examined through area under curve (AUC). The RBF kernel obtained better results than the other kernel types. The success and prediction rates obtained from the validation results of ensemble EBF and RBF-SVM method were 83.04% and 80.04%, respectively. The proposed novel ensemble method reasonably accelerated the processing and enhanced the results by combining the advantages of both methods.

In California, the Vegetation Type Map (VTM) project of the 1930’s has provided valuable historical vegetation data. Albert Wieslander led this effort to survey the forests of California in the 1930’s. His crews surveyed over 150,000 km2, drawing detailed vegetation maps, taking 3000 photos and 17,000 vegetation plots. We developed a technique to digitize the Placerville 309quadrangle VTM, rendering it to a Geographic Information System (GIS). The map covers 2408.8 km2 of the west slope of the Sierra Nevada. In this area VTM crews identified 59 dominant plant species and eight genera or land cover classes and mapped their distribution into 3422 polygons. They identified recently disturbed areas that covered 13.5%of the landscape. We compared the digital VTM quad to CALVEG, a satellite-derived vegetation map from 1996. Land cover change for California Wildlife Habitat Relationship (WHR) vegetation types had occurred on 42.1%of the area. WHR types with the largest gains were: Montane Hardwood, Douglas-Fir, and Annual Grassland. Low elevation hardwoods, particularly Blue Oak Woodland (dominated by Quercus douglasii, Fagaceae), chaparrals and upper elevation conifers were the types that lost the most area. Differences in mapping techniques are unlikely to be the cause of this change because the analysis used controlled for map-based errors.  Potential causes of the observed change at these physiognomic levels of classification include human perturbation, succession, and climate change.

Climate change is a looming threat for many aspects of human society, not the least of which is agriculture and food. Theobroma cacao, the plant behind the much-loved chocolate bars, is especially vulnerable to shifts in precipitation and temperature regimes. It also forms the backbone for many smallholder farmers in tropical areas. This study examines the bioclimatic suitability of current cocoa growing areas under future climate change projections, and proposes areas to focus further attention on research. While the cocoa belt as a whole faces declining suitability for growing, some of the most crucial regions for the cocoa industry – West Africa and the Amazon – are under augmented threat as the century progresses. With this knowledge as backdrop, it is possible to direct energy not only into adaptation measures for regions at risk (including alternative management and crop diversification), but also look to new opportunities for cocoa farming.

Landslides are one of the most dangerous natural hazards in the world which have significant negative impact on so many lives and properties. Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) is an imaging technique for measuring changes in the detailed characteristics of the surface which is timely and cost effective. This research aimed to detect the landslide that occurred in Gunung pass area, Malaysia using InSAR generated from ALOS-PALSAR repeat pass data. The signals information was converted into amplitude and phase for both scenes where the phases were used to construct the InSAR. Goldstein filter was used to reduce the phase noise and the results were used as an input for phase unwrapping. Using the unwrapped phase, the vertical displacement was measured and landslide was recognized. Results showed the efficiency of InSAR in detecting the movement of landslide in Gunung pass without the differential having to generate DInSAR. The results were validated using the observed reference point of the landslides and the root mean square error (RMSE) was 0.19. Furthermore, advance 3D processing was performed for measuring the volume of the landslides. The achievements of current research represented that PALSAR data yield excellent performance to generate the interferometric and landslide could be detected very precisely in highly vegetated tropical forest.

Numerous studies are dedicated to landslide susceptibility, hazard and risk zoning, being considered an efficient way to reduce negative consequences caused by landslides and notably improve land-use planning. However, studies on vulnerability communities subject to landslides related consequences are limited, and in Romania, the situation is not different. This paper focuses on the applicability of landslide risk zoning, at different scales, to a sector of Iasi Cuesta from Moldavian Plateau (Romania), where landslides register a significant extent, being classified among the areas most exposed at this type of risk in the country. Special attention is given to the assessment of the vulnerability of communities towards landslides. Multiple data domains were used: ortophoto maps, topographical maps, geological maps, DEM at 1:25,000 (for the entire study area) and 1:5000 scale (for the case studies) and specific information extracted from GUP (General Urban Plan) provided by local administrations. The landslide inventory, multicriteria qualitative and quantitative analysis and GIS application have facilitated data processing and spatial visualization results and allowed obtaining the landslide hazard map. Identification of basic elements at risk (buildings, roads, agricultural land) and consideration of specific indicators (distance to buildings, distance to road network, population resilience) allowed to assess vulnerability, that we consider the most important component in the risks’ equation. The final risk map, obtained by the combination of both the landslide hazard map and vulnerability, reveals significant weight of high (16%) and very high (14%) risk classes in all area affected by this process.