GRASS GIS

Nowadays, daily life intensively depends on public services. Increasing population and urbanization take humans away from environment which may lead to chaos in usage of city lands. Consequently, human is in trouble using public services and facilities including green spaces. Isfahan, one of the metropolitans, has 18 m2 green spaces per person while City Park of district 8 is of inappropriate distribution with regard to population density. To create a localization map of civil park, Isfahan district 8 has been selected. The selected district delimits to Baharestan in north and to Kaveh street in west and to Shahid Forouqi in south and to Emam Komeini street in west-south. Finally, GIS has been used to create given layers and calculate weights based on AHP. According to overlap between layers, the most appropriate places have been identified.

The development and application of an algorithm to compute Köppen-Geiger climate classifications from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) and Paleo Model Intercomparison Project (PMIP) climate model simulation data is described in this study. The classification algorithm was applied to data from the PMIP III paleoclimate experiments for the Last Glacial Maximum, 21k years before present (yBP), Mid-Holocene (6k yBP) and the Pre-Industrial (0k yBP, control run) time slices. To infer detailed classification maps, the simulation datasets were interpolated to a higher resolution. The classification method presented is based on the application of Open Source Software, and the implementation is described with attention to detail. The source code and the exact input data sets as well as the resulting data sets are provided to enable the application of the presented approach.

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.

-In the heart of the Altepetl- En el corazón del Altépetl : La unidad política de Tlapa-Tlachinollan a través del SIG y el análisis espacial. La Montaña de Guerrero, México.
This paper is about La Montaña and the altepetl of Tlapa Tlachinollan; the former, one of the regions that constitutes the Mexican state of Guerrero, the later, a complex polity that became powerful during the Post-Classic Period (AD 1300-1500). A series of spatial and non-spatial analyses were made in order to depict and try to understand the political unit called altepetl;  which literally means "the waters, the mountains" and is considered the main political unit (polity) in central and southern Mexico. Due to its relation with geography, it is propose that we can recreate how the altepetl used to work during these years based mainly in: 1) a series of viewsheds to identify if the visual affordances of this mountainous region affected the character of the polities. 2) building a network to explore the connectivity of each site. This way we can know to what degree did major routes of communication affect the character of the polities and 3) during these years small polities fought each other in order to control all over the waters and the mountains, so we explore a new method to define regions using cost surfaces and real archaeological areas to simulate a territory

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.

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and related geospatial software have been increasingly employed in archaeological research and practice during the last twenty years. They have transcended their initial use in territory studies to become part of more theoretically conscious landscape and on-site focused analyses and nowadays are routinely used in most archaeological projects. GIS analysts, rather than using a single piece of software, employ combinations of them according to their knowledge, the specific needs of the project and the availability of software. However, most professional archaeologists using GIS tend to use proprietary software due to several reasons: its assumed ease of use, their wider availability in universities and research centres, their compatibility with mainstream proprietary operating systems (also standard in public institutions), the existence of courses, books, and seminars on the use of these packages and/or the provision of technical support. While some of these reasons are still valid, during the last years open source GIS software has become more accessible, secure and compatible and many efforts have been directed towards the provision of adequate tutorials, courses and “help” files, resulting in their increased use in archaeological applications.
In this paper it is argued that GIS open source software offers, not just a valid but, in some cases, a better alternative to the use of proprietary packages. After a brief overview of the archaeological use and applicability of GIS and other geospatial software, different open source packages are presented and their characteristics outlined and compared to those of widely employed proprietary software. It is concluded that the implementation of non-proprietary geospatial software can cover most of the needs of both professional archaeologists and researchers reducing costs without compromising in strength, security, ease of use and training potential, traditionally attributed to most commercial software.

Dieses Paper beschreibt auf welche Weise der Prozessionsweg von Athen nach Delphi, den die Pythais-Prozession genommen haben könnte, mit Hilfe der least-cost-path Methode rekonstruiert wurde. Die Methode selbst wird dabei anhand des GRASS-GIS Moduls r.walk im Detail vorgestellt. Weiterhin werden verschieden in der Forschung diskutierte Ansätze zur Optimierung der Ergebnisse und zur Verwendung innerhalb der Archäologie diskutiert. Als Fallbeispiel dient die sogenannte 'Oinoe-Road' eine antike griechisches Straße im Nordwesten der eleusinischen Ebene.

Análisis de la variación de uso de suelo en el entorno de S'Ena Arrubia, situada en el golfo de Oristano, en el centro oeste de Cerdeña. Este estanque está clasificado como Lugar de Importancia Comunitaria (LIC) y Zona de Protección Especial para las Aves (ZEPA) de acuerdo con las Directivas 92/43 y CEE 79/409, siendo una importante vía para las aves. Fue activada como un refugio de avifauna y reserva natural sufriendo a lo largo de los años de varias modificaciones ambientales. Hemos procedido a una recopilación de datos sobre la flora, la fauna y el estado de uso de suelo alrededor de la charca teniendo en cuenta las normativas ambientales europeas sobre los límites posibles en la presión humana para los LIC en Italia. Finalmente se ha realizado un estudio SIG de los cambios ambientales y de uso del suelo sufrido en la cuenca considerando una distancia máxima de 15 km de distancia al fin de comparar nuestros resultados con los datos procedentes de la investigación bibliográfica. Introducción Las actividades de estrés medioambiental en un estanque cerca de una zona periurbana son: la ganadería y las actividades agrícolas que proporcionan un paisaje antrópico es decir principalmente las presiones constantes y difusas a lo largo del tiempo han producido un cambio radical respecto a su aspecto original. Este estudio ha intentado a abordar a los problemas teóricos y prácticos que plagan a la conservación de los entornos naturales por la actividad humana. Se ha procedido a una investigación con datos de libre acceso y se han creados modelos SIG del uso del suelo para evaluar la tendencia evolutiva ambiental (Uzunov, 2003). Los datos recopilados y procesados de manera conjunta describen por un lado el estado actual de charca y por otro como la actividad humana que manipula el equilibrio natural de la charca y su entorno. Nuestro objetivo es medir como la constante presión antrópica en una zona de humedal periurbano afecta al equilibrio medioambiental protegido por las directivas europeas medioambientales.

Using a variety of quantitative approaches, interactions between prehistoric sites in the Göksu valley and south-central Anatolia are modelled within their wider multi-regional and diachronic socio-economic networks to assess the prominence and influence of communities in south-central Anatolia from the Late Chalcolithic to the end of the Early Bronze Age (c. 4200–2000 BC). Since the 1950s, some have understood the valley as significant in terms of movement and communication through the Taurus mountain chain that divides the southern Anatolian plateau from the Mediterranean coast. This view is called in to question through the application of geospatial and computational methods, namely least cost pathway and social network analyses. Archaeologists use least cost pathway analysis to model movement in the past. Similarly, social network analysis is used to model contact and interaction in the past. The approach adopted in this paper seeks to combine the two methods to investigate social structure and the nature of interaction in late prehistoric south-central Anatolia. The results suggest that views of the Göksu valley as the primary or a prominent means of connecting the southern Anatolian plateau and the Mediterranean coast may need to be reassessed.Göksu vadisindeki prehistorik yerleşimler ve güney Anadolu'nun orta kısımları arasındaki etkileşim farklı ölçüm yöntemleri kullanılarak değerlendirilmiş ve Geç Kalkolitik dönemden Erken Tunç Çağı'nın sonuna kadar (yaklaşık M.Ö. 4200–2000) çok bölgeli ve art zamanlı sosyo-ekonomik bir ağ içinde modellendirilmiştir. 1950'lerden bu yana pek çok araştırmacı güney Anadolu platosunu Akdeniz kıyılarından ayıran Toros dağları üzerindeki bu vadinin bölgesel hareket ve iletişim açısından önemli olduğu görüşünü kabul etmişlerdir. Bu görüş, jeo uzamsal ölçü araçları ve bilişimsel metotlarla, yani en düşük maliyetli yollar ve sosyal ağ analizleri uygulaması aracılığıyla sorgulanmaktadır. Arkeologlar geçmişteki hareketi modellemek için en düşük maliyetli yol analizi metodunu kullanırlar. Benzer şekilde, geçmişteki iletişim ve etkileşimi modellemek için de sosyal ağ analizi kullanılır. Bu çalışmada benimsenen yaklaşım, geç prehistorik dönemde güney Anadolu'nun orta kısımlarındaki sosyal yapıyı ve etkileşimin doğasını araştırmak için bu iki yöntemi birleştirmektir. Sonuçlar, güney Anadolu platosunu Akdeniz kıyılarına bağlayan ve bariz bir biçimde başlıca ulaşım yolu olarak karşımıza çıkan Göksu Vadisi'nin yeniden değerlendirilmesi gerektiğini düşündürmektedir.

A preliminary report about the methodology for the ancient landscape potential reconstruction developed at the CNR-ITABC for the Tiber Valley Project. The speech regards both the project and its goals and the specific work on the ancient landscape.

This work wants to be an overview about the various “open source” software that can be used to obtain rendering and photogrammetric data geo-referenced from digital photos.
In fact, all the phases of digital photogrammetric processing can be performed by open source software. This paper, therefore, wants to provide an alternative to the use of the most famous commercial photogrammetric software, taking into consideration and comparing the different methods of photogrammetric processing available in the open source environmental to obtain the final aims pursued and showing off how it is possible to integrate the information coming out the different software used in order to the best result possible.
The software used were: MicMac, OpenMVG, CloudCompare, MeshLab, Qgis2.8 and GrassGIS7.
The comparison between the different photogrammetric processings through the software mentioned above has been tested on a burial in “enchytrismòs” found out during the archaeological excavations in the site of Poggio Gramignano (Italy).
Generally the main final results we can obtain from a photogrammetric survey are:
    1. a 3d model of the area or og the object investigated in the form of a “dense points cloud” rendered with  associated texture;
    2. a Digital Surface Model (DSM);
    3. an orthophoto.
These results can also be geo-referenced in a geographic reference system and can be used for many different purposes in the light of the kind of the research carring out.
Even in this case, therefore, we worked on reaching the same final results that the “open source” software used allowed to obtain, resulting in a very hight reliability.
Moreover, the final outputs can be managed and used to obtain, in the GIS environment, further data such as sections, altimetric profiles and so on and to associate them a database in order to have alphanumeric information for every vectorial element.

Originally formulated based on marine geological research concerned with the timing and tempo of the Black Sea infilling, the Black Sea flood Hypothesis (BSfH) argues that this process was a catastrophic event ~7150 BP that greatly impacted the prehistoric peoples who lived along the ancient shoreline. The resulting mass migration of peoples led to great transformations across Europe and southwest Asia. Continued research in the region has challenged the timing and impact of the event, arguing instead that it was neither sudden nor catastrophic. However, the BSfH continues to be invoked as a plausible explanation for the lack of early Holocene or Neolithic period sites in northern Turkey. Results from spatial modelling along the Turkish coast suggest that the explanatory power of the BSfH to explain this absence is exaggerated. Rather, other environmental and social factors must be considered in explaining the complete lack of early Holocene sites across the region.

Kilometric Abundance Index (KAI) is a common measure used in wildlife studies because it allows a straightforward comparison of species abundance in different sites or at different times. KAI expresses the ratio of the total number of individuals (or of signs of presence) observed along a transect by the total transect length covered at each site. v.transect.kia is a new tool for GRASS GIS, developed for automating the evaluation of KAI, reducing the risk of manual errors especially when handling large datasets. It can also split the transects according to one environmental variable (typically habitat type) and evaluate true 3D transect length. It calculates KAI using a point map of sightings and saves the results in the attribute table, the output can be displayed in any GIS or used for further statistical analysis. The tool has been tested on field data from Northern Italy for mountain hare (Lepus timidus), allowing a first wide-area estimate.

The paper is focused on historical connotations of the Tell el-Retaba site to its geographic position with regards to hydrologic and pedologic situation. It suggests the position of Wadi Tumilat on the Peutinger map and persistence of desert (military) routes in the area around the Wadi. The river aggradation mound ascertained in Tell el-Retaba allows us to suggest an existence of natural riverbeds or a canal in Wadi Tumilat even before the Second Intermediate Period. The paper also brings some pedological explanations to origins of settlement. It presumes that besides the canal on the western and southern side of the Tell a marshland/swamp could also originate on its northern side, after the settlement occurred on the Tell. The occupation probably developed directly on the Bw horizon of original soil, as agricultural or grazing settlement. The humiferous A horizon was removed prior to construction.

In Galicia, works that studied the megalithic locational patterns developed only fieldwork-based approaches. As a result, the locational criteria were defined using ideas through a direct analysis at field, and never have been quantified and modelled with GIS methods until nowadays. In this work, a GIS methodology and a point pattern approach for the study of megalithic locational patterns is carried out. Starting from the definition of locational factors managed by literature, a number of first and second order properties were converted into spatial variables. From this point, specific regularities among the distribution of sites were established, which allows to determine trends in Galician megalithic occupation and open new possibilities of analysis in the study of Galician megalithic landscapes.

La percepción remota desde sensores (multiespectrales e hiperespectrales) instalados a bordo de satélites espaciales aporta una visión global de la superficie terrestre. Esta visión es sistemática cuándo los programas de teledetección están diseñados para la observación periódica en el tiempo y en el espacio, hecho que permite estudiar los ciclos de la vegetación: la fenología. En este trabajo, analizamos una serie temporal basada en 15 años de imágenes del sensor MODIS en la que utilizamos como unidad mínima de observación el NDVI promedio mensual de los datos de reflectividad del citado sensor a una resolución espacial de 250 metros. De este modo, después de un riguroso pre-procesamiento de los datos, generamos una serie temporal con frecuencia mensual - una por cada mes-  integrada por 180 imágenes, desde enero de 2002 hasta diciembre de 2016, y abordamos un análisis fenológico estacional aplicado a la superficie forestal con masas densas de alcornoque en el sur de la península Ibérica. Los resultados revelaron una primera aproximación a la caracterización de la fenología de estas masas forestales. A escala regional, la especie mostró un NDVI promedio de 0,68, alcanzando una cifra 0,76 en las poblaciones del suroeste de Andalucía donde los píxeles sólo informaron sobre copas. Considerando el conjunto de la región, los valores máximos se dieron en noviembre (0,74) y los valores mínimos en septiembre (0,62),  mientras que en las poblaciones del suroeste donde se produce el óptimo de la especie y aparecen masas más densas, los extremos en el NDVI oscilaron entre 0,81 y 0,76.

In dieser Diplomarbeit soll anhand eines kleinen regionalen Beispieles die Problematik der "Regenwald-Zerstörung" untersucht werden. Dabei soll es nicht darum gehen, weitere Argumente für oder gegen die Vernichtung weiterer Regenwaldressourcen zu finden, sondern es wird versucht zu verstehen, was im Moment mit den Wäldern der südwestlichen Zentralafrikanischen Republik geschieht. Im Moment bezieht sich dabei auf einen relativ eng gesetzten Zeitraum, der sich auf Veränderungen innerhalb der ca. letzten dreißig Jahre bezieht. "Geschieht" soll von vornherein implizieren, daß der Wald natürlicherweise einer ständigen Eigendynamik unterliegt, andererseits aber auch stark durch exogene Einflüsse mitgestaltet wird. "Verstehen" meint hier, daß die postulierten rezenten Veränderungen in tropischen Regenwäldern mit geographischen Methoden erfasst und analysiert werden sollen, um eine Aussage über die räumliche Konfiguration von Landbedeckungsmustern machen zu können, die schlussendlich zu einer Beurteilung der aktuell wirkenden Gestaltungskräfte in den wechselfeuchten Tropen der Zentralafrikanischen Republik führen sollen.

Continuous monitoring of extreme environments, such as the European Alps, is hampered by the sparse and/or irregular distribution of meteorological stations, the difficulties in performing ground surveys and the complexity of interpolating existing station data. Remotely sensed Land Surface Temperature (LST) is therefore of major interest for a variety of environmental and ecological applications. But while MODIS LST data from the Terra and Aqua satellites are aimed at closing the gap between data demand and availability, clouds and other atmospheric disturbances often obscure parts or even the entirety of these satellite images. A novel algorithm is presented in this paper, which is able to reconstruct incomplete MODIS LST maps. All nine years of the available daily LST data (2000–2008) have been processed, allowing the original LST map resolution of 1,000 m to be improved to 200 m, which means the resulting LST maps can be applied at a regional level. Extracted time series and aggregated data are shown as examples and are compared to meteorological station time series as an indication of the quality obtained.
Keywords: complex terrain; map reconstruction; MODIS LST; time series; GIS; growing degree days; threshold maps; mountainous environments; meteorological station data