Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS)

Michael E. Dorcas, John D. Willson, Robert N. Reed, Ray W. Snow, Michael R. Rochford, Melissa A. Miller, Walter E. Meshaka, Jr., Paul T. Andreadis, Frank J. Mazzotti, Christina M. Romagosa, and Kristen M. Hart

“Invasive species represent a significant threat to global biodiversity and a substantial economic burden. Burmese pythons, giant constricting snakes native to Asia, now are found throughout much of southern Florida, including all of Everglades National Park (ENP). Pythons have increased dramatically in both abundance and geographic range since 2000 and consume a wide variety of mammals and birds. Here we report severe apparent declines in mammal populations that coincide temporally and spatially with the proliferation of pythons in ENP. Before 2000, mammals were encountered frequently during nocturnal road surveys within ENP. In contrast, road surveys totaling 56,971 km from 2003–2011 documented a 99.3% decrease in the frequency of raccoon observations, decreases of 98.9% and 87.5% for opossum and bobcat observations, respectively, and failed to detect rabbits.

Map of South Florida illustrating sampling locations in relation to python distribution. Road surveys for mammals were conducted in the 1990s and 2000s along the Main Park Road (MPR) in Everglades National Park (ENP). Areas recently invaded by pythons and surveyed for mammals in 2009–2011 include Big Cypress National Preserve (BCNP), Collier-Seminole State Park (CSSP), Chekika (CHK), and Key Largo. Immokalee and Corbett Wildlife Management Area (CWMA; north of the map) are two sampled sites where pythons have not yet become established. The purple region represents the area of ENP where pythons were found in the 1990s and where reproduction was first reported (16). Red triangles represent localities of pythons found during 2008–2009.

“Road surveys also revealed that these species are more common in areas where pythons have been discovered only recently and are most abundant outside the python’s current introduced range. These findings suggest that predation by pythons has resulted in dramatic declines in mammals within ENP and that introduced apex predators, such as giant constrictors, can exert significant top-down pressure on prey populations. Severe declines in easily observed and/or common mammals, such as raccoons and bobcats, bode poorly for species of conservation concern, which often are more difficult to sample and occur at lower densities.”

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Ugur Alganci, Dursun Seker, and Elif Sertel

“The rapid population growth and related urbanization in developing countries mostly affect the metropolitan cities. The urban sprawl that comes with rapid population growth changes land use / cover (LULC) dynamics that mostly results with decrease in natural resources such as forests or pastures and farmlands. In the last decade, a common population growth is observed all over Turkey with increase at 66 provinces out of 81. Antalya is one of the important cities of Turkey that exposed to unplanned urban sprawl. It was at the 29th place according to 1927 population census while it rose to 7th place according to 2000 census results. According to “9th Progress Report” issued by Ministry of Development, Antalya is the city that exposed to fastest population growth with a rate of %0, 48 during 1990-2000.
Antalya is the most popular touristic city of the Turkey, with its 650 km of coastline, appropriate climatic conditions, historical and natural beauties. Its population has increased due to employment facilities and migration related to tourism. It is also a n important agricultural center with its fertile soil and rainy climate. Development in industry and building trade also results with continuous development and rapid urbanization. Main effects of population growth and related urbanization are; change of watersheds, forests and agricultural lands into settlement in an irregular and uncontrolled way and urban sprawl.

“In terms of effective analysis of urbanization; determination of spatial distribution and trend, effects on other land cover types and relationship between topographic parameters become very important. At this point, spatial and topographic information derived from satellite imagery can be used as main data resources. Images obtained from optical satellites that are capable of observing large areas fastly and repeatedly, have been used for decomposition of land cover types and time dependent changes of them depending on spatial, spectral and temporal resolution capabilities. Spatio-temporal analysis of satellite images provides valuable information about changes in LULC dynamics.

“In this research, the effects of urban sprawl over LULC dynamics of Antalya were investigated in terms of spatial and areal changes using multitemporal satellite imagery. Landsat 5 TM images belonging to 1984, 2001 and 2010 were subjected to registration and supervised classification process. LULC information derived from these analyses was used for areal changes between years. Topographic parameters such as aspect and slope were produced from ASTER GDEM data at the same time. After applying a raster –vector conversation to whole dataset, relationship between LULC changes and spatial-topographic characteristics of the area was determined.”

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Golden Research Thoughts

Debabrata Mondal

“In modern time, Geographic Information System (GIS) has been considered as a powerful tool in mapping of ground water resources. The study area Murshidabad district has experienced a remarkable change in ground water table throughout the decades. The present paper is an attempt to evaluate the decadal trend of ground water fluctuation in several blocks of the district along with their possible causes by using the data from secondary sources and processed them through GIS software.

“Groundwater is the only reliable water resource for domestic, as well as for agriculture practice in those countries where rainfall is erratic. Since the country of India has its economic base lying on agricultural sector, a major emphasis has been given to accelerate the agricultural production without concerning the environmental issues for feeding its huge population. From the last few decades gradual depletion of groundwater supplies as a consequence of continued population growth and initiation of Boro cultivation over the Gangetic moribund delta has now been considered as an emerging problem. Now a day’s Murshidabad district is also facing this invisible hazard of groundwater depletion. In this regard monitoring, analyzing of groundwater is necessary for assessing its quantity.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     “Ground water fluctuation map is an important tool for analyzing the temporal as well as spatial changing pattern of groundwater resources. In this regard Geographic Information System (GIS) plays a crucial role for analyzing, model building and interpreting the groundwater data. In order to obtain long term groundwater information, GIS has been used in this study to visually and spatially analyze groundwater data.”

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Benedikt Gräler, Lydia Gerharz, and Edzer Pebesma

“This study investigates the potential of spatio-temporal kriging approaches for daily mean PM10 concentrations. The methods used include separate daily variogram estimates, temporally evolving variograms, the metric model, the separable covariance model and the product-sum model, and are combined with multiple linear regression. These methods are applied to daily mean rural background PM10 concentrations across Europe for the year 2005, and incorporate daily EMEP model data and elevation data as predictors.

Interpolated maps for daily PM10 concentration from May 1 to 9, 2005.

“The air quality indicators used in this study are the daily and yearly mean PM10 concentrations and the number of days exceeding the limit value 50 µg/m³ (NOE). The quality assessment of the different techniques relies on a cross-validation. Statistical measures are used to quantify the improvement for different indicators.

“It is shown that daily interpolations can improve the statistical performance of the interpolation of annual mean PM10 concentrations. Furthermore, some advantages of daily estimates are described. Besides the improvement in annual mean PM10 concentration maps, studying the phenomenon in a wider spatio-temporal context becomes possible with daily estimates. Especially the estimation the number of days PM10 concentrations exceed certain limits can be done in a more natural way. Likewise, the detection of outliers and data inhomogeneity benefits from a daily spatio-temporal model.

“Interpolation with the simple spatio-temporal variogram models used here exploits the temporal correlations present and out performs the purely spatial interpolation methods. Based on temporal variability of the spatial short-distance variation component, a discussion is given on the suitability of this statistic to infer measurement errors, and alternative approaches are proposed.”

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University of Bielefeld, School of Public Health, Department of Public Health Medicine

Background
Global climate change and urban health are of global concern because the majority of the world’s population live in urban areas. Health problems are particularly prevalent in the rapidly urbanising megacities of developing countries, where a growing number of residents live in slums. Moreover, urban health in developing countries is increasingly affected by the diverse effects of global climate change, e.g. through droughts, inundations and an increased burden of infectious and non-infectious diseases and injuries. Research on the complex of health and the environment in urban areas of developing countries is urgently needed. Although transdisciplinary research in this scientific area is gaining importance, capacity building measures are still rare.

Approach
We offer a one-week seminar that focuses on statistical analysis and spatial-epidemiological modelling in the context of urban health in megacities of developing countries. Seminar topics are concentrating on health and the urban environment under a changing climate, including megacity development, burden of disease, and socio-ecological health determinants. The aim is to combine theoretical and lab work on statistical analysis and spatial-epidemiological modelling techniques in a transdisciplinary approach. We expect 30 participants with at least half of them being from developing countries.

Expected outcomes
Our participants will get a deeper understanding of the spatial and epidemiological dimensions of urban health under the view of climate change. Participants will be able to understand the multiple dimensions of health problems in megacities of developing countries and to apply statistical techniques which are commonly used in health sciences and in geography. They will further be able to work more effectively in collaboration with other disciplines for understanding and investigating multidisciplinary problems. These measures will enable them to develop sustainable strategies for the improvement of living conditions in megacities of developing countries.

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Virginia Harris

“High resolution remotely sensed images (~ 1 m pixels) are becoming increasingly accessible at little to no cost. These images present new opportunities to explore landcover mapping and wildlife habitat modeling at finer scales. These fine scale images may be particularly useful for mapping rangeland vegetation composed of smaller life forms (e.g. shrubs and grasses rather than trees) and habitat for wildlife species in these rangelands. The pygmy rabbit (Brachylagus idahoensis) is a species of special concern in the Great Basin shrub steppe and adjacent mountain ranges in the western US. Its primary habitat is in the sagebrush steppe dominated by plant communities that include big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata) and rabbit brush (Chrysothamnus spp.), however its selection for levels of shrub cover and spatial arrangement of shrubs is not well known. This study evaluated selection for landscape structure by pygmy rabbits at two study sites in the Lemhi Valley of east central Idaho across a series of extents and landscape metrics. Specifically the landscape composition and spatial patterns of shrub cover within 6, 60, and 120-m buffers around known pygmy rabbit locations were quantified on a map with 3-m pixel resolution and four shrub canopy cover classes (0-5%, 5-15%, 15-25%,and >25%). A sum rank nonparametric test wasused to evaluate habitat selection in proportion to different shrub cover classes, patch shape, evenness, and patch interspersion. Selection by pygmy rabbits differed between study sites and among buffer sizes. Results indicated that pygmy rabbits were selecting habitat based on landscape structure. Specifically, the rabbits showed selection for areas of 15-25% shrub cover within the smallest buffer size, and interspersion of cover levels across the landscape as indicated by the largest buffer size.  Furthermore, it was demonstrated that fine scale remote sensing and landscape pattern analysis are useful  tools in assessments of habitat selection by pygmy rabbits at multiple scales.”

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Holly Voller and Trent Curtin

“In order to maintain fit-for-purpose fire stations in Melbourne, the MFB is often forced to relocate fire stations. However, the identification of suitable land in a built-up metropolitan area remains difficult. This increases the likelihood that the MFB will be required to compulsorily acquire land and defend the chosen location in a court of law. A recent fire station relocation demonstrated the need for a methodology that was conceptually and technically robust, transparent and reproducible in order to withstand an increased level of scrutiny.

“Using spatial information technologies, data from AIRS (Australasian Incident Reporting System) and, for the first time, data from the MITM (Melbourne Integrated Transport Model), the MFB has developed a new methodology to support the identification of an ideal geographical area for the relocation of fire stations.

Area of Optimal Performance and Deciles within the Bounding Area

“The methodology comprises two discrete phases, which together narrow the search for potential land candidates. These results provide decision makers with robust information that can be used to ensure that the relocation is optimal for meeting response time benchmarks and provides a sound evidential basis for which site selection and land acquisition can be based. This presentation will detail the newly developed methodology and its underpinning rationale using a recent relocation as a case study.”

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Sucharita SRIRANGAM and W. FORSYTH

“Chennai, South India, is a city in which historicity and modernity are evident, both culturally and physically. It is a typical example of an Indian city which has many Hindu temples in its urban landscape. Each temple has a variety of commercial activity around it, often in the form of retail activity.

Spatial evaluation of the temple locations: space syntax study.

“This paper explores the spatial context of these varied functional patterns and whether they have any significance. The empirical case‐studies examine the contemporary spatial context of 36 temples and establish how these exemplify the relationship between the temples and retail activity. The study uses Space Syntax analysis, land‐use descriptions and figure‐ground studies, at city and district levels. In conclusion, it presents five spatial typologies, a set of principles that illustrate the spatial relationships between the temples and retail activity. It becomes evident that there is a significant relationship between the historical evolution of the temple locations and the retail land use which occurs and therefore the spatial typologies which are found.”

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Antti Tanskanen, Leilani T Nillos, Antti Lehtinen, Hanna Nohynek, Diozele Hazel M Sanvictores, Eric A F Simoes, Veronica L Tallo, Marilla G Lucero, and Arivac Consortium

“Background:  The goal of this Geographic Information System (GIS) study was to obtain accurate information on the locations of study subjects, road network and services for research purposes so that the clinical outcomes of interest (e.g., vaccine efficacy, burden of disease, nasopharyngeal colonization and its reduction) could be linked and analyzed at a distance from health centers, hospitals, doctors and other important services. The information on locations can be used to investigate more accurate crowdedness, herd immunity and/or transmission patterns.

Distribution of the landmarks and road network in the study area Background map: www.openstreetmap.org

“Method:  A randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blind trial of an 11-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (11PCV) was conducted in Bohol Province in central Philippines, from July 2000 to December 2004. We collected the information on the geographic location of the households (N = 13,208) of study subjects. We also collected a total of 1982 locations of health and other services in the six municipalities and a comprehensive GIS data over the road network in the area.

“Results:  We calculated the numbers of other study subjects (vaccine and placebo recipients, respectively) within the neighborhood of each study subject. We calculated distances to different services and identified the subjects sharing the same services (calculated by distance). This article shows how to collect a complete GIS data set for human to human transmitted vaccine study in developing country settings in an efficient and economical way.

“Conclusions: The collection of geographic locations in intervention trials should become a routine task.  The results of public health research may highly depend on spatial relationships among the study subjects and between the study subjects and the environment, both natural and infrastructural.”

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International Journal of Remote Sensing

Enton Bedini

“The Malmbjerg molybdenum deposit in central East Greenland is a world-class porphyry molybdenum deposit. The porphyry molybdenum deposit occurs within a granite stock intruded into sedimentary rocks. The Malmbjerg molybdenum deposit is associated with a pronounced zone of hydrothermal alteration. The reflectance spectra of rock samples from the Malmbjerg alteration assemblage show absorption features of a number of minerals including topaz, jarosite, goethite, muscovite, phengite, epidote, chlorite and smectite. This study investigated the Malmbjerg alteration assemblage using airborne imaging spectrometer data recorded by the HyMap imaging system. The HyMap data were analysed using an unsupervised classification based on Kohonen self-organizing maps and partial spectral unmixing based on the matched filter algorithm. The mapping results show the spatial distribution of jarosite, goethite, phengite, epidote/chlorite, smectite, topaz and non-altered sediments. The remote-sensing mapping results bring new information for the alteration assemblage at Malmbjerg, especially for the occurrence and the spatial distribution of a phengite zone in the altered sediments overlying the molybdenum deposit and for the propylitic alteration zone. The study is an example of detailed characterization by imaging spectrometry of alteration assemblages associated with porphyry molybdenum deposits. This research also shows the potential of imaging spectrometry as a tool for geological mapping and exploration in the Arctic regions of East Greenland.”

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