Geographic Objects Research Articles

Database “Biography” – a New Information Resource of the State Public Historical Library of Russia

The article is devoted to a new information resource of the State Public Historical Library of Russia (SHPL) – the Biography database, which takes into account publications of a biographical and iconographic nature in pre-revolutionary periodicals. The database is part of the reference apparatus of the biography cabinet – a new structural unit as part of the reference and bibliographic department of the SHPL. A distinctive feature of the resource is the combination of biographical information about a person, bibliographic descriptions of information sources and direct links to their digital copies in the “Open Electronic Library” of the SHPL. The practical experience of the SHPL bibliographers in the formation of the database and the creation of normative records is presented, the range of sources used in its formation and the creation of normative records is characterized. Examples of normative records of geographic objects are given. The main search capabilities of the database, available to readers of the SHPL and for remote users are described. The possibilities of further development of the information resource, including information from registers of births, creation of a corporate project with interested libraries and archives of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation are considered. This will provide additional opportunities to recreate the biographies of Russians of the late 19th – early 20th centuries, and can become a serious help both for professional historians and for a wide range of amateur genealogists studying the history of their famil.

THE STRUCTURE OF THE NORTHERN KHMELNYTSKYI MICROTOPONYMS

Microtoponyms form a moving layer of names that can quickly become obsolete, have a clear etymology or lose motivation, move due to various circumstances from one class of names to another. Therefore, microtoponyms are characterized by such features as: informality, instability, variability, situationality, motivation, the influence of intralinguistic factors (dialects, features of orthoepy and phonetics, etc.), functioning mainly in oral speech. Our task was to find out the structure of the microtoponymicon of the Northern Khmelnytskyi, to analyze individual works (mainly abstracts of dissertations or separate articles) in terms of the presence / absence of terminology for micro-objects and to propose our own structure of microtoponymicon (for example, names of small geographical objects of the Northern Khmelnytskyi).

Medical and geographical determinants of oncopathology in the population

The aim: to study the permanent risk factor of oncopathology in order to determine its medical and geographical features and assess their impact on oncopathology of the population of Zaporizhzhia region. Materials and methods. By means of spatial and geographical, as well as analytical and statistical methods, territories were medically and statistically differentiated, with the assessment of the natural environment quality. Epidemiological study of malignant neoplasms was conducted retrospectively for the period of 2004–2015, in accordance with the International Classification of Diseases ICD-10. Determination of environmental impact on oncopathology was performed using the attributive fraction. Results. Geoactive space is characterized by a variety of natural and climatic conditions of lithosphere, hydrosphere and landscapes. The main physical and geographical objects of the Zaporizhzhia region (Ukrainian Crystal Shield, the Dnipro, the Sea of Azov) form six zones, which differ in the diversity of system-forming elements. Specific features of discontinuous disturbances of the lithosphere of the Ukrainian crystal shield are abnormally high electrical conductivity of the earth’s crust, intense electromagnetic fields, high concentration of radon in aquifers, and streams of high-energy fluids. Conclusions. The highest geopathogenic impact is manifested in the fault zone of the Ukrainian crystal shield. The highest values of the attributive fraction of malignant neoplasms were registered in this zone among the whole population (26.8 %), among the adult population (25.4 %) and the able-bodied population (32.7 %). The oncopathological potential of natural conditions was least manifested in the valley of the Dnipro breakthrough and the Azov Upland, where the attributive fraction for almost all indicators did not exceed 8.2 %.

Building fuzzy areal geographical objects from point sets

AbstractRepresentations of fuzzy geographic objects and analyses of their spatial relationships have received considerable attention in the GIS and spatial database domains over the past 30 years. However, building fuzzy geographical objects from real data is still a challenge. Simple fuzzy areal object models are too restrictive for many applications, and general fuzzy areal models may not be restrictive enough; as a result, the extent of fuzzy regions that satisfy the relevant conditions may be too large to affect the location description and spatial analysis. A condition by which the number of cores is not greater than one is added for the general object model, and an operable method for constructing fuzzy objects from the point set is proposed. Two peak and pass sets are determined for the membership surface by the fuzzy morphometric analysis method. The first set is used to initially divide the footprint of the fuzzy surface into smaller subfootprints, and the second set is used to merge insignificant fuzzy objects with their nearest significant fuzzy objects; thus, unreasonable division is avoided. Cross‐validation is adopted to evaluate the generated fuzzy objects. An experiment is provided to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method.

Historical-cultural education functions of geosystems of specially protected nature areas on the example of the Pribaikalsky National Park

The paper considers the role of historical-cultural objects in the forming educational functions of geosystems. This task is essential for specially protected nature areas, where educational ecotourism activity is implemented. A model area is the Pribaikalsky National Park. We studied historical peculiarities of formation of the local natural complexes, socio-cultural and other anthropogenic processes that influenced the modern configuration of the park landscapes. The research revealed that various relief forms, geographic object location and vegetation have the primary role in determining the historical-cultural functions of geosystems. Modern socio-economic and tourist infrastructure, in contrast to old settlements, gravitates towards the local historical-cultural sites. The created geoinformation database includes different characteristics of the local historical-cultural objects. These are a type, location, availability, approximate historical time age and significance for educational tourism development. In the result we also presented a fragment of the schematic map of the historical-cultural, archaeological and other object significance for educational tourism on the one of the key plots of the Pribaikalsky National Park. The determining the historical-cultural functions of geosystems is important for assessment of the recreational potential of the territory and further mapping recreational and educational activity goals for national parks.

MYTHOLINGUISTIC ANALYSIS OF DIFFERENT TOPONYMS IN KARAKALPAK EPICS

This article provides information on the type of folk descriptive analysis of the analysis of toponyms, the origin of some toponyms in Karakalpak folk tales, toponymic legends and myths associated with them. Thus, theoretical materials on the mytholinguistics formed in linguistics and its object of study are presented. Legends and myths in Karakalpak folklore related to the origin of some toponyms in Karakalpak epics are analyzed. The peculiarities of the population's naming of geographical objects are studied. Toponyms in Karakalpak epics such as "Adak kala", "Konyrat", "Khorezm", "Chimbai", "Bagdad", "Nur ata" are analyzed. It was noted that the naming of geographical objects by the Karakalpak people is often associated with human names.

Linguistic and Geographical Dynamics of Orographic Terms

The terrain is diverse. Depending on the features in different regions, geographical objects are assigned different names. Each nation, based on its life and worldview, depending on nature, gives different names to the places in which it lives. The article will provide a linguistic and geographical analysis of the relationship of the triad man – earth – name, taking into account the traditions common to all peoples inhabiting the Earth, including the principles of naming the Kazakh ethnic group. Geographical names in modern science are evaluated as the “language of the earth”. It is divided into generalizing and individualizing names. The generalizing names include folk terms, the individualizing names are toponyms, the first have a descriptive meaning, the second are individualizing, i.e. they perform the function of personification from other forms. Since they are closely related to each other, they originate from each other, in most cases they are of a long nature. This is the evolutionary dynamics of language development. In this article, prepared on the basis of the concepts of “interdisciplinary connection”, “complexity”, which attract attention by their relevance in modern science, the regularities of the development of orographic terms are also considered. The course of development is divided into terminological, as an element of an artistic language, and toponymic directions of development. The figurative meaning, the term meaning, the toponymic meaning are a vivid manifestation of these three directions in one word. The truth is that over time, becoming more and more autonomous from each other, each in its own way turns into a separate sphere. The research is devoted to the theoretical and applied description of the degree of quality with the definition of the lexical system of orographic terms that have developed in the language of the people for centuries.

Ethno-toponymy of America

In onomastics, geographical objects have been classified in different variants, depending on the reasons for the name. These classifications were conducted according to the specialisation and goals of the researchers. The formation of geographical names means only the name of oronymic, hydronymic, economic, zoonymic, and phytonymic objects. The naming of these types of geographical objects is mainly focused on the characteristic feature. However, ethnotoponyms, patrotoponyms and anthropoponims do not have a characteristic feature but reflect the belonging of objects to the people, tribe, generation and personality. Toponymic nomination refers mainly to oronyms and, to some extent, to hydronymic toponyms. In American oronymy, all geographical names formed as a result of a historical event are based on the detailed history and fact of residence of Native American Indians, which is one of their main characteristics

Intra-annual land cover mapping and dynamics analysis with dense satellite image time series: a spatiotemporal cube based spatiotemporal contextual method

ABSTRACT Land covers provide essential information for understanding and detecting ecosystem, resources, and environmental dynamics. However, they are generally mapped at coarser temporal scales to study the inter-annual changes, while scant attention has been paid to map intra-annual land cover dynamics at finer temporal scales. Moreover, existing studies are still limited in intra-annual land cover mapping with dense satellite image time series (SITS). Accordingly, this study proposed a novel approach to accurately classify dense SITS for mapping intra-annual land cover dynamics. First, dense SITS is segmented at multiple spatiotemporal scales to generate optimal spatiotemporal cubes (ST-cubes), which are chosen as classification units. Second, the ST-cubes based on spectral, textural, spatial, and temporal features are integratively defined and employed in SITS classification. Third, the spatiotemporal context is modeled by a spatiotemporally extended conditional random field model that measures both spatiotemporal features and semantic correlation between geographic objects. Finally, the proposed method is applied to map the intra-annual land cover dynamics. Comparative experiments of SITS classification are carried out between our method and three existing competitors in a suburban area in Beijing, China, with a dense Sentinel-2 SITS. Moreover, based on the classification results, we analyzed the quantitative intra-annual dynamics of land cover. The result shows that our approach achieves significant improvements in classification accuracy over existing methods, indicating the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed method in mapping intra-annual land cover dynamics with dense SITS.

The Use of Small Format Air Photos for Mapping Land Cover Changes in Gumuk Pasir Parangtritis Core-Zone, 2015-2019

Gumuk Pasir Parangtritis is one of the potentials of the coastal area of ​​Parangtritis village in Yogyakarta, with several important roles for the coastal ecosystem and its surroundings, such as ecology, disaster, tourism, economy, and aquifer reserves. However, behind this important role, the existence of sandbanks is increasingly threatened from year to year because the area of ​​sand cover continues to decline, especially in the core zone. Therefore, regular and effective mapping and monitoring efforts are needed. This study aims to a) conduct land cover mapping using the Geographic Object Based Image Analysis (GEOBIA) method in the 2015-2019 timeframe; b) analyze changes in land cover in the core zone of sandbanks during 2015-2019; and c) evaluate the results of restoration of sand dune core zone in terms of land cover changes that have occurred until 2019. Small format aerial photographs (FUFK) are the data used in this study while the mapping method used is rule-based classification. The land cover of the sand dune core zone in 2015 included buildings, vegetation, sand, roads and ponds, while in 2019 it was in the form of buildings, vegetation, sand, and roads. Based on the classification results in the two years, it can be seen that there are changes in land cover (including area) through the cross-section of the two classification results. Some of the factors include the number of land use changes, the amount of vegetation, and sand mining. Furthermore, this change can be used as a basis for evaluating the success of the restoration efforts of the Gumuk Pasir Parangtritis core zone to date. The results of the evaluation show that the restoration carried out so far has not had much impact so it can be said that it has not been successful, because the area of ​​sand cover has actually decreased a lot (from 528,680 m2 to 344,347 m2), while the land cover in the form of vegetation and buildings has increased in size (from 869,341 m2 to 1,037,879 m2 for vegetation cover and an area of ​​4,674 m2 to 22,953 m2 for buildings).

Semantic Boosting: Enhancing Deep Learning Based LULC Classification

The classification of land use and land cover (LULC) is a well-studied task within the domain of remote sensing and geographic information science. It traditionally relies on remotely sensed imagery and therefore models land cover classes with respect to their electromagnetic reflectances, aggregated in pixels. This paper introduces a methodology which enables the inclusion of geographical object semantics (from vector data) into the LULC classification procedure. As such, information on the types of geographic objects (e.g., Shop, Church, Peak, etc.) can improve LULC classification accuracy. In this paper, we demonstrate how semantics can be fused with imagery to classify LULC. Three experiments were performed to explore and highlight the impact and potential of semantics for this task. In each experiment CORINE LULC data was used as a ground truth and predicted using imagery from Sentinel-2 and semantics from LinkedGeoData using deep learning. Our results reveal that LULC can be classified from semantics only and that fusing semantics with imagery—Semantic Boosting—improved the classification with significantly higher LULC accuracies. The results show that some LULC classes are better predicted using only semantics, others with just imagery, and importantly much of the improvement was due to the ability to separate similar land use classes. A number of key considerations are discussed.

Үндсни сойлын чинртә йиртмҗин үзмҗ (Байн-Һолын Һурвн тулһ гидг һазрын домгуд) (= Природные объекты в этнокульурном ландшафте: предания о местности Гурван тулга в Баянголе)

The article deals with toponymic stories and legends of the Oirat people inhabiting the Bayingolin Mongol Autonomous Prefecture of Xinjiang. The work is based on the author’s field materials and some literary sources. Toponymic legends and tales belong to the genre of oral non-fictional prose. Those are stories about geographical objects and natural monuments of a particular area. The main feature of toponymic tales and legends is that they reliably explain the nature, origin or names of natural objects. They are often associated with the names of historical characters and deeds attributed to them. Their main purpose is to preserve the memory of important events and figures in history. The dominant function of legends and fables is recognized as a cognitive one. Reference to the toponymic stories and legends of the Oirat people of Xinjiang makes it possible to peer into the distant past and better study the peculiarities of life and household activities of the Oirat people. The former reflect many aspects of spiritual and material life of the people. This article for the first time examines and analyzes the local originality of subjects, and motifs of toponymic tales and legends of the Bayangol Oirat, associated with the name of the Oirat warrior and commander Galdama. New field materials which are the witnesses of the historical memory of the people are introduced into scientific discourse.

TEXT-WORLDS IN MICHAEL SWAN’S POETRY: A READER’S PERSPECTIVE

The article highlights the role of world-building elements in the process of readers’ interpretation of poetic texts. According to Text World Theory (P. Werth, J. Gavins), elements that set temporal and spatial boundaries, specify objects and entities; elements that describe their qualities; and those that desceibe events, actions or states enable readers to construct their own text-worlds – mental representations of the discourse. This principle underpins our analysis of free verse poetry of Michael Swan, a contemporary British linguist and poet. His texts abound in references to objects, entities, spatial and temporal relationships in the world around us; often, they dominate in the verbal context of a poem. Such references are a characteristic feature of both narrative and metaphor-based poetry. World-building elements are perceived as especially foregrounded in the poems where no conclusion or attitude are explititly stated. There are the following types of world-builders in Michael Swan’s poems: units that denote God as the supreme being, persons, animals and birds, geographic objects, material objects, objects and phenomena in the world of nature, scientific objects and notions, phenomena of human spiritual life, temporal and spatial parameters. We also consider their attributes. Taken together, they illustrate Michael Swan’s general themes – the nature of reality and being, the conception of God, human beings in social and historical contexts, human psychology, human relationships with nature, art. Besides, Swan’s mimetic reflection of reality has a significant emotionl potential. A mini-experiment within the framework of this research shows that it is necessary to further develop students’ skills in inferential interpretation of poetry.

A Three-Dimensional Buffer Analysis Method Based on the 3D Discrete Global Grid System

Three-dimensional (3D) buffer analysis is among the basic functions of 3D spatial analysis, and it plays an important role in 3D geographic information systems. The rapid development of the 3D Discrete Global Grid System (DGGS) provides a new method for the 3D spatial analysis of geographic information. According to the spatial topology characteristics of the 3D DGGS and the concept of dimensionality reduction, a 3D buffer analysis method based on the spatial grid of the Earth system is proposed to solve the problem of the buffer algorithm of a space object being unsatisfactory at present. In this paper, we present a method to calculate the distance between cells based on the side length of the spherical grids according to the geometric characteristics of the grids. For the grids of a geographic object, we describe the Euclidean distance expansion algorithm and the radial elevation expansion algorithm that helped us to obtain its 3D buffer. Finally, in terms of algorithm complexity and visualization effect, compared with the traditional raster buffer algorithm, the method presented in this paper has lower complexity, an improved visualization effect, and stronger generality.

Bilevel Optimization of Intercity Railway Alignment

Intercity railway transit is the primary way to transfer passengers and freight over long distances on land. The design of an intercity railway alignment is usually challenging and complex because of great topographic variations and intersections with many existing geographic objects. This paper presents a bilevel optimization model for intercity railway alignment (BRAO) following the horizontal-vertical alignment design philosophy. The upper level is the horizontal alignment optimization, while the nested lower level is the vertical alignment optimization. A multistage augmented differential evolution algorithm is adopted for the solution at both levels. BRAO could generate corridor alignment, initial alignment, and optimal alignment through different allocations of the number and boundaries of decision variables. A real-world case study of railway design is conducted to verify the effectiveness of the BRAO model based on a geographic information system.

Knowledge and Geo-Object Based Graph Convolutional Network for Remote Sensing Semantic Segmentation.

Pixel-based semantic segmentation models fail to effectively express geographic objects and their topological relationships. Therefore, in semantic segmentation of remote sensing images, these models fail to avoid salt-and-pepper effects and cannot achieve high accuracy either. To solve these problems, object-based models such as graph neural networks (GNNs) are considered. However, traditional GNNs directly use similarity or spatial correlations between nodes to aggregate nodes’ information, which rely too much on the contextual information of the sample. The contextual information of the sample is often distorted, which results in a reduction in the node classification accuracy. To solve this problem, a knowledge and geo-object-based graph convolutional network (KGGCN) is proposed. The KGGCN uses superpixel blocks as nodes of the graph network and combines prior knowledge with spatial correlations during information aggregation. By incorporating the prior knowledge obtained from all samples of the study area, the receptive field of the node is extended from its sample context to the study area. Thus, the distortion of the sample context is overcome effectively. Experiments demonstrate that our model is improved by 3.7% compared with the baseline model named Cluster GCN and 4.1% compared with U-Net.

EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH OF THE ACCURACY OF NAVIGATION GNSS - RECEIVERS IN CONDITIONS OF THE CONSTRUCTED TERRITORY

Use of digital geodetic support technologies with the use of GNSS satellite systems in combination with electronic geodetic instruments, introduction of new methods of construction of geodetic networks, collection of information by ground and aerospace surveying, unification of exchange formats of measurement results based on computer technologies and their application conditions. Substantiation and development of remote methods of spatial information collection requires analysis and consideration of a number of errors in order to improve accuracy.
 Wikimapia is a map project for shared use with open content, which aims to identify all geographical objects with the introduction of useful information about them. It combines an interactive web map and a Wiki system.
 One of the features of the Wikimapia resource is that it is possible to determine geographical coordinates. To do this, you need to move the cross cursor on the object of interest and get its coordinates visually.
 The purpose of the study was to determine the accuracy of the coordinates of GPS receivers Garmin Oregon 450 in the built-up area, using as a basis for calibration, the resource "Wikimapia".
 In order to determine the accuracy of the location with the help of GARMIN Oregon 450 GPS receivers, GNSS measurements were performed at 30 marker points.
 Ellipsoidal coordinates were recalculated into spatial rectangles according to known formulas.
 In order to assess the accuracy of determining the location of marker points, the differences in the coordinates of their position were found and the root mean square error from a number of measurements was found.
 The average error of coordinate measurements was ± 4.79 m for the GPS receiver.
 Based on experimental research, the possibility of using the resource "Wikimapia" not only to quickly determine the coordinates of topographic objects, determine their categories, but also with sufficient accuracy to apply for the calibration of navigation GNSS receivers when there is no network of geodetic points.
 A promising direction in the process of scientific and practical research should be the creation of a general mathematical model for predicting the influence of the plurality on the location and improvement of navigation aids.

Optimal segmentation parameters prediction using a orthogonal decomposition approach for geographical object based classification of urban areas

Good image segmentation produces objects that are internally homogeneous and distinct from their neighbors. Several approaches are used to assess the quality of segmentation parameters including visual observation of multiple segmentation results and techniques, which calculate measures of intra segment homogeneity and inter segment heterogeneity. Some of these techniques have been reported without considering under and over segmentation; occurrences and others exhibit some mathematical formulation instabilities when dealing with very heterogeneous areas. Moreover, the majority of segmentation assessment techniques focus on the evaluation of the scale parameter and give little attention to the influence of other parameters, such as compactness on the performance of the scale parameter. To the best of our knowledge, no existing approach can predict the optimal compactness thresholds that would enhance the performance of the scale parameters, or predict which scale parameter will perform best under certain compactness constraints. This paper proposes three spatial autocorrelation models, which identify the optimal parameters for single scale and multilevel segmentations of urban environments. Tested using a GeoEye satellite image of the City of Cape Town (South Africa), results reflect that the best combination of parameters to optimally segment the area and those that would poorly perform were successfully identified.

Mapping large-scale and fine-grained urban functional zones from VHR images using a multi-scale semantic segmentation network and object based approach

Urban functional zones (UFZs) are essential for characterizing both urban spatial configurations and socio-economic properties and monitoring urbanization process, thus UFZs are fundamental to urban planning, management and renewal. Although many efforts in remote sensing field have been made to map UFZs, large-scale and fine-grained UFZ maps required by a broad range of urban applications are still unavailable. Existing methods generally rely on pre-determined mapping units, such as image tiles and road blocks, which significantly limit the mapping quality and the automation degree of mapping UFZs. Given that UFZs are composed of diverse geographic objects, this study proposes a novel object-based UFZ mapping method using very-high-resolution (VHR) remote sensing images. First, a multi-scale semantic segmentation network that achieves pixel-wised predictions is proposed to predict urban-functions for geographic objects by capturing multi-scale contextual information. Afterwards, a conditional random field (CRF) framework is designed to regroup objects into UFZs to produce the final UFZ map, wherein road vectors are incorporated to restrict the procedure. The presented object-as-analysis-unit scheme conquers the drawbacks of mapping-unit pre-determination and the semantic segmentation model provides accurate function information for objects, thus they can be applied for producing large-scale and fine-grained UFZ maps. In the experiment, the proposed method is evaluated by producing UFZ maps for Beijing and Shanghai, China, and competitive results with overall accuracy of 91.6% and 89.1% are achieved, respectively. Finally, the generated UFZ maps are utilized to analyze the urban-function structures of the two cities. The proposed method can be regarded as a significant development that appears to be promising and practical for mapping UFZ maps for real-world urban applications.

Spatial pattern of geodiversity assessment in the Marrecas River drainage basin, Paraná, Brazil

Geodiversity refers to the variety of abiotic elements and processes present at different scales and dimensions in an area. In this study, the combination of geological formations, structural lineaments and dikes, geomorphological compartments, soil classes, relief, hydrographic systems, and climatic aspects is considered as the geodiversity of the Marrecas River drainage basin in the south-western region of the state of Paraná, southern Brazil. These components were superimposed on a regular 2 × 2 km grid map (1:250,000) and geodiversity indices were applied to quantify and assess the variation of their distribution along the Marrecas River drainage basin. The results indicate a lower geodiversity on some interfluves and in the river estuary area with a homogeneous relief. On the other hand, higher geodiversity rates were detected in several valleys, which contain a greater variation of abiotic elements because they are embedded and dissected. Common diversity indices, which are generally used in biodiversity studies, were used to determine the distribution of the geodiversity richness in the study area, such as: Shannon, Simpson’s, E-Pielou, Margalef and Menhinick indices. Similar to the biodiversity, the assessment of the geodiversity should not be restricted to the richness but should also include the spatial distribution of environmental components in the study area according to frequency levels. The results show that geographic objects, which are continuous rather than discrete, are more useful and the absence of standards regarding the assessment of the geodiversity. Continuous data should be preferred as basic data for any area.