The 2011 GeoDesign Summit will be held 05-07 January 2011 in Redlands, California. More details will be posted to the GeoDesign Summit web site as they become available.
Day: February 10, 2010
GeoMAPP: A Geospatial Multistate Archive and Preservation Partnership
Journal of Map And Geography Libraries, Volume 6 Issue 1, 2010: Preservation of Digital Geospatial Materials
Alec Bethune; Butch Lazorchak; Zsolt Na
“The Geospatial Multistate Archive and Preservation Partnership, GeoMAPP, is a collaborative effort addressing the preservation of at-risk and temporally significant digital geospatial content in state and local governments. The project is one of four initial state government partnerships funded by the Library of Congress’s National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program. The GeoMAPP partnership includes representatives from the geospatial and archive staffs of Kentucky, North Carolina, and Utah. GeoMAPP is exploring digital preservation issues in a number of topic areas, including business planning, data inventory and metadata, appraisal and access, content life cycle and transfer demonstration, and communications and industry outreach.”
Soil-borne Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons in El Paso, Texas: Analysis of a Potential Problem in the United States/Mexico Border Region
Journal of Hazardous Materials, Volume 163, Issues 2-3, 30 April 2009, Pages 946-958
Roberto J. De La Torre-Roche, Wen-Yee Lee, and Sandra I. Campos-Díaz
“Ultrasonic extraction followed by Stir Bar Sorptive Extraction (SBSE) and thermal desorption inline coupled with Gas Chromatography and Mass Spectrometry (TD/GC/MS) was used to perform a comprehensive determination of soil-borne polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in El Paso, Texas. The method provided good sensitivity and faster processing time for the analysis. The total PAHs in El Paso soil ranged from 0.1 to 2225.5 μg kg−1. Although the majority of PAH concentrations did not exceed the soil screening levels regulated by the United States Environmental Protection Agency, the existence of PAHs in this ecosystem is ubiquitous. Naphthalene were found in 100% of the soil samples; while the heavy PAHs (five- and six-ring) were not often detected and mostly remained in closer proximity to industrial areas and major traffic points. The results ruled out the possibility of petroleum refining as the significant source of local soil-borne PAH contamination, but they suggested that the PAHs found in El Paso soil were closely linked to human activities and possible other industrial processes.”
GIS-based High-resolution Spatial Interpolation of Precipitation in Mountain–plain Areas of Upper Pakistan for Regional Climate Change Impact Studies
Theoretical and Applied Climatology, Volume 99, Numbers 3-4 / January, 2010
Muhammad Waseem Ashiq, Chuanyan Zhao, Jian Ni and Muhammad Akhtar
“In this study, the baseline period (1960–1990) precipitation simulation of regional climate model PRECIS is evaluated and downscaled on a monthly basis for northwestern Himalayan mountains and upper Indus plains of Pakistan. Different interpolation models in GIS environment are used to generate fine scale (250 × 250 m2) precipitation surfaces from PRECIS precipitation data. Results show that the multivariate extension model of ordinary kriging that uses elevation as secondary data is the best model especially for monsoon months. Model results are further compared with observations from 25 meteorological stations in the study area. Modeled data show overall good correlation with observations confirming the ability of PRECIS to capture major precipitation features in the region. Results for low and erratic precipitation months, September and October, are however showing poor correlation with observations. During monsoon months (June, July, August) precipitation pattern is different from the rest of the months. It increases from south to north, but during monsoon maximum precipitation is in the southern regions of the Himalayas, and extreme northern areas receive very less precipitation. Modeled precipitation toward the end of the twenty-first century under A2 and B2 scenarios show overall decrease during winter and increase in spring and monsoon in the study area. Spatially, both scenarios show similar pattern but with varying magnitude. In monsoon, the Himalayan southern regions will have more precipitation, whereas northern areas and southern plains will face decrease in precipitation. Western and south western areas will suffer from less precipitation throughout the year except peak monsoon months. T test results also show that changes in monthly precipitation over the study area are significant except for July, August, and December. Result of this study provide reliable basis for further climate change impact studies on various resources.”
GIScience 2010 Workshops and Tutorials Announced
Organizers of the Sixth international conference on Geographic Information Science, to be held in Zurich, Switzerland 14-17 September 2010, have posted the list of tutorials and workshops that will take place on 14 September:
Tutorials:
- Development of Web GIS and Web Mapping Applications with QGIS mapserver
- Geometric Algorithms and Efficiency for GIScience
- A Practical Introduction to Geospatial Visual Analytics
- GISolve Toolkit: Cyberinfrastructure-based Geographical Information Systems
Workshops:
- Emerging Methods for Studying the Use of Spatial Technologies
- Role of Volunteered Geographic Information in Advancing Science
- Linked Spatiotemporal Data
- Workshop on Movement Pattern Analysis
The Application of Geostatistics in Grain Size Trend Analysis: A Case Study of Eastern Beibu Gulf
Journal of Geographical Sciences, Volume 20, Number 1 / February, 2010
Fei Ma, Yaping Wang, Yan Li, Changjiang Ye, Zhiwei Xu, and Fan Zhang
“There are 71 surface sediment samples collected from the eastern Beibu Gulf. The moment parameters (i.e. mean size, sorting and skewness) were obtained after applying grain size analysis. The geostatistical analysis was then applied to study the spatial autocorrelation for these parameters; while range, a parameter in the semivariogram that meters the scale of spatial autocorrelation, was estimated. The results indicated that the range for sorting coefficient was physically meaningful. The trend vectors calculated from grain size trend analysis model were consistent with the annual ocean circulation patterns and sediment transport rates according to previous studies. Therefore the range derived from the semivariogram of mean size can be used as the characteristic distance in the grain size trend analysis, which may remove the bias caused by the traditional way of basing on experiences or testing methods to get the characteristic distance. Hence the results from geostatistical analysis can also offer useful information for the determination of sediment sampling density in the future field work.”
Ph.D. Positions in Computational Geoscience at Technical University of Denmark
“The Inverse Modeling and Geostatistics Project, Center for Energy Resources Engineering and Department of Informatics and Mathematical Modelling, Technical University of Denmark (DTU).
“The Inverse Modeling and Geostatistics Project is offering three PhD student positions for excellent, highly motivated candidates interested in computational geoscience. All three positions are available starting March 1, 2010 or as soon as possible. The positions are for three years.
“The positions are associated with DTU’s Center for Energy Resources Engineering (CERE) and are funded by The Danish Council for Independent Research – Technology and Production Sciences (FTP), DONG energy, and DTU. The projects are supervised by Professor Klaus Mosegaard, Associate Professor Alexander A. Shapiro, Associate Professor John Bagterp Jørgensen, and Professor Erling H. Stenby.”
GIS and Science 