Landscape Photographs Research Articles

Kit Carson and the First Battle of Adobe Walls: A Tale of Two Journeys by Alvin R. Lynn

Reviewed by: Kit Carson and the First Battle of Adobe Walls: A Tale of Two Journeys by Alvin R. Lynn James Blackshear Kit Carson and the First Battle of Adobe Walls: A Tale of Two Journeys. By Alvin R. Lynn. (Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 2014. Pp. 284. Maps, illustrations, notes, bibliography, index.) In 1864, at the height of the Civil War, Colonel Kit Carson led 335 Union Army volunteers and 70 Indian auxiliaries out of Fort Bascom, New Mexico Territory, into the Texas Panhandle in search of Kiowa and Comanche bands who had been raiding along the Santa Fe Trail. In the heart of winter, after pushing the expedition across some of the most difficult country in the Southwest, he found the Indians deep within Comanchería. The battle that followed occurred near the ruins of an old adobe trading post. In this battle, later to be known as the First Battle of Adobe Walls, Carson quickly realized he was about to be overwhelmed and ordered a retreat back to New Mexico. Alvin R. Lynn’s account of this expedition is informative and entertaining on a number of levels. Both an experienced field archeologist and a historian of the Texas Panhandle, Lynn combines the two fields to create a multi-dimensional history of Carson’s journey across the Llano Estacado. He uses a metal detector and primary source documents to follow the expedition into Texas, searching the swales in the prairie grasses for wagon ruts and artifacts. He did such detective work for more than fifteen years, mapping Carson’s two-hundred mile journey and, in the process, identifying where his army camped and where they fought. The subtitle, A Tale of Two Journeys, reveals that two parallel narratives run through this work. One details Carson’s expedition and his furious fight against the Indians. The second is a recounting of the modern-day archeological journey that uncovered a trove of artifacts from Carson’s 1864 march. [End Page 121] Lynn’s familiarity and love of the land shine throughout as he describes the various topographies he traversed, making insightful observations at every point along the way. Such observations draw Carson’s own experiences closer. Along with the text, which is beautifully written, there are eighteen maps that detail individual sections of Carson’s route from Fort Bascom to Adobe Walls, including each place that his troopers camped. There are also sixteen archeological maps noting specific locations where artifacts were uncovered, from the Kiowa village Carson’s men destroyed to the actual ground where most of the fighting took place. There are also numerous black-and-white photos of key individuals, landscapes, and artifacts, a number of color illustrations of the battle, and many spectacular color vistas of the trail. The book is oversized with a beautifully rendered cover. While the reader may assume that this is a coffee-table book, it is not. Aside from the excellent graphics, photos, and tables, Lynn also furnishes a solid, sourced account of the journey and the battle. While the narrative of both Carson’s and Lynn’s journeys are the book’s strength, the archeological component of the work is also well-crafted. Such a combination provides readers interested in a variety of fields with the opportunity to join Lynn on his own expedition down the Canadian River to Adobe Walls. It is well worth the trip. James Blackshear Austin College/Collin College Copyright © 2015 The Texas State Historical Association

Oil Culture ed. by Ross Barrett and Daniel Worden

Reviewed by: Oil Culture ed. by Ross Barrett and Daniel Worden Robert Lifset Ross Barrett and Daniel Worden, eds., Oil Culture. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2014. 424 pp. Cloth, $90; paper, $30. This large, sprawling, edited volume seeks to explore the question, What is oil culture? Lurking behind that question is something more than the desire to examine a commodity both ubiquitous and absent in our understanding of culture. A real sense of crisis animates many of the book’s essays, whether driven by the impact of peak oil or climate change, and provides a degree of political relevance to how the question is answered. The volume’s editors imply that a failure of imagination is partly responsible for society’s inability to move beyond oil, a failure best remedied by examining oil as cultural material, as part of our everyday experience and aesthetics. Doing so can add a new chapter to our understanding of how oil capitalism emerged, developed, and became entrenched by identifying and scrutinizing those moments when oil’s expansion generated ambivalence and resistance, providing the space from which to imagine a future beyond oil. The book is divided into five parts consisting of twenty contributions. Part 1, “Oil’s Origins and Modernization,” consists of four essays, the first three of which examine whale oil culture, spiritualism in the early oil industry, and a Standard Oil Trust sculpture designed to rehabilitate the company’s image. In the fourth essay, Frederick Buell offers an ambitious survey of literary interpretations of oil’s meaning since the nineteenth century. Buell finds two contradictory discourses: the first, a discourse of exuberance characterized by promotionalism and progress; the second, a discourse of catastrophe defined by economic and environmental apocalypse. The essays in part 2, “Oil’s Golden Age,” examine American automobile culture, the film Giant and television show Dallas, John [End Page 264] Joseph Mathews’s 1934 novel Sundown, and Bernardo Bertolucci’s 1967 corporate-sponsored documentary La Via del Petrolio. The first two essays explore affirmations of oil-based lifestyles, the second two focus on oil-extractive frontiers (Oklahoma and Iran). The cultural work that helped affirm the second half of the twentieth century’s oil capitalism is the subject of part 3, “The Local and Global Territories of Oil.” Two essays examine how mapping and fiction serve as examples of how culture could be used to facilitate or resist western corporate efforts to establish production zones in the Middle East and Africa. Two additional essays examine the growing intensity of petroleum use in western life. One considers how contemporary female photography serves to delegitimize women’s anti-oil activism; another appraises the role oil has played in advancing the neoliberal refashioning of American social life and politics. A final essay, by Michael Watts, provides an insightful comparison of the Niger Delta and the Gulf of Mexico. Part 4, “Exhibiting Oil,” opens with a piece that surveys how offshore oil platforms are exhibited and interpreted in American aquariums. A second scans two photographic exhibitions, observing how contemporary landscape photographers treat petromodernity. And Stephanie LeMenager imagines how the George C. Page Museum of Los Angeles (known as the La Brea Tar Pits Museum) might be reconceptualized to envision a post-oil future. The essays in part 5, “The Futures of and without Oil,” focus on photography, fiction, and oil documentaries in an effort to probe how culture might foster new perspectives on the past and a post-oil future. Gerry Canavan’s essay, for example, divides twentieth-century science fiction into two interpretative perspectives: a techno-utopian belief in the capacity to invent new energy systems supplanting oil, and an apocalyptic fear of the end of oil as marking an end point in human history. Oil Culture began as a panel at the American Studies Association annual meeting in 2009 and grew into a special 2012 issue of the Journal of American Studies from which ten of the book’s twenty essays are reprinted. While the topic of energy organizes entire disciplines and subfields in engineering and the natural and physical sciences, the humanities have not to date successfully integrated [End Page 265] energy into their understanding of the world. This...

Image Text Ithaca

ITHACA COLLEGE ITHACA, NEW YORK JULY 9-10, 2015 The second annual Image Text Ithaca (ITI) symposium brought together thirteen ITI workshop fellows and several invited guests for public presentations on campus of Ithaca College over course of one evening and next day, following a workshop during which this year's fellows worked on new image and text projects. The brief public event began with a talk by Jason Fulford, a fellow from 2014 workshop, and Tamara Shopsin. They shared individually produced works such as Fulford's photo book Hotel Oracle (2013) and Shopsin's illustration work for New York Times, as well as inspirations (which range from semiotics to poetic ambiguity) for joint book projects including absorbing image-only monograph This Equals That (2014). Other invited speakers included Federica Chiocchetti, who spoke about website she founded, The Photocaptionist, on which are paired visual and text-based works (either found or commissioned) to promote the practice of concubinage between photography and literature, images and words. Chiocchetti also shared several projects she has worked on for Victoria and Albert Museum. Maria Damon of Pratt Institute offered a hypnotic essay moving between cross-stitching, alphabetics, and novels of Kathy Acker, weaving a linguistic thread through a rich cultural history. Matvei Yankelevich, another 2014 fellow, utilizing images and found text from throughout twentieth century (from works by poet Laura Riding to writings by philosopher Vilem Flusser), examined foundational space and structure of books and their elements, recommending how they should be read. This year's ITI fellows (five senior fellows and eight junior fellows) participated in a four-day workshop in days preceding symposium. Since most came from either photography or writing backgrounds, this was first time many had worked in image and text combinations. Daniel Augscholl and Anya Jasbar, cofounders of Ahorn Magazine, an online publication dedicated to contemporary photography, presented a photo essay on theme of desire, combining text and landscape photographs. Photographer Ben Alper presented a screening and audio performance of a project he began during this year's workshop session and had wrapped up that very morning (Thursday). Titled In event of misinterpretation or human error, piece uses found text and photographs from decades-old Popular Mechanics magazines to explore meaning within randomness. Writer Christine Hume used same source material, commenting on white privilege by augmenting text, which she read aloud as images she had selected from magazines were projected. On Friday, Hume presented an original spoken text with an underlayer of found audio of a 911 call and supplemental stressed breathing to heighten tension. Photographer Andre Bradley shared a photographic project with a spoken personal narrative about history, memory, learning, and identity. [Ed. note: See Bradley's Portfolio in this issue of Afterimage.] Author John Keene read text from two short projects, one about online dating (with facially redacted profile photographs culled by ITI co-director Nicholas Muellner from gay online dating archives) and other concerning slavery and based on work of Kara Walker. …

Otomasi Trigger dengan Penentuan Sudut dalam Foto Panorama Berbasis Arduino Uno

AbstrakDalam pemotretan panorama diperlukan alat bantuyang dapat menentukan besar pergeseran arah kamera secara konsisten agar diperoleh foto-foto yang pas tanpa ada bagian yang hilang karena tidak terfoto. Dengan didapatnya foto yang saling tersambung maka dapat dilakukan penggabungan foto untuk menjadi sebuah foto panorama. Penggabungan foto-foto hasil pemotretan dapat dilakukan dengan cara image stiching (menjahit), yaitu menyambung foto-foto hasil pemotretan dari satu titik tetap.Alat yang dirancang merupakan alat yang otomatis menentukan besar sudut perputaran head kamera dengan input jumlah pergeseran dan akan melakukan pemotretan (triggering) bila sudut sudah sesuai dengan input. Pengujian sistem meliputi pengujian variasi jumlah pergeseran menggunakan satu nilai focal length dengan memvariasikan nilai pan dan tilt. Pengujian ketelitian konsistensi pergeseran dan arah kamera. Pengujian besar perpotongan setiap pergeseran dengan menggabungkan 2 foto yang sejajar kemudian dicari seberapa besar irisan yang dihasilkan.Berdasarkan pengujian menggunakan kamera DSLR diperoleh hasil alat dapat bekerja dengan baik secara otomatis berdasarkan nilai input pan dan tilt serta dapat melakukan triggering. Pergeseran efisien diperoleh pada nilai pan sebanyak 9 kali dan tilt 4 kali menggunakan lensa dengan focal length 18 mm. Hasil analisa tingkat kesalahan pergeseran bernilai kurang dari 3% yang menjadikan alat ini stabil dan konsisten dalam pergerakannya. Kata kunci—foto panorama, Arduino Uno, otomasi, fotografi AbstractIn landscape photography, some supporting devices are needed to assign how much the camera’s shifting consistently is. It is needed to get good photos without any blank spot photos. The linked photos could be rendered to be a landscape photo using a photography software. It is could be done by image stiching, a way to stich photos taken from one constant taking point. The device is an automatic device which could assign how much the rotation degree of the camera’s head with given input, how much the shift is. It will take a shot if the rotation degree is appropriate with the given input. The system testing by variying the shift value of camera using one focal length value. The accuration test of the consistency of camera’s shift and camera’s direction. The error value could be determined by joining two parallel photo.According to the testing, tool can work automatically and also trigering can do well. Efficient shift in the number of photos and good results using the pan 9 times and tilt 4 times. The results of the error rates shift analysis have value less than 3% and that makes the tool quite stable and consistent in its movements. Keywords— panoramic photo, arduino uno, automation ,photography.

Can visitors visually distinguish successive coastal landscapes? A case study from the Curonian Spit (Lithuania)

Visual distinctiveness of the series of successive coastal landscapes featuring the Curonian Spit, a UNESCO World Heritage site, has been investigated using black and white landscape photos as visual stimuli. Based on the results of the chi-square test it was confirmed with strong statistical evidence that lay visitors indeed are capable of visual distinguishing different coastal landscapes and habitats which occur in the succession series from the shifting dunes to the mature forest. In all investigated 45 different cases of coastal landscapes the ‘null hypothesis’ was rejected with p < 0.00001. If the photographs representing the landscapes are carefully selected by a dedicated group of professionals, then lay visitors can correctly distinguish the landscapes and/or habitats even in the case when black and white photographs are applied as visual stimuli.

Nature as Spectacle: Photographic Representations of Nature in Early Twentieth-Century Korea

At the turn of the twentieth century, landscape photography began to emerge as a new way to represent nature in Korea. Landscape photographs of the Korean peninsula were printed in modern media, such as the daily newspaper Maeilsinbo, the public cultural magazine Cheongchun, and picture postcards. This article explores the photographic representation of nature in Korea in the 1910s. Landscape images of the period were rooted in the visual regime of the camera obscura, and they often borrowed techniques and themes from Korean traditional landscape painting, or sansuhwa. The photographic medium was important in shaping new perceptions, aesthetic experiences, and discourses on nature. This article examines several categories of landscape photography, including images of scenic and historical places, idyllic and bucolic scenes, and urban parks. These categories were common in Korean western-style landscape painting and art photography of the 1920s, and continue to be seen to this day in Korean visual culture.

Landscape Photography, Geographic Education, and Nation‐Building In Democratic Kampuchea, 1975–1979

On April 17, 1975, Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, fell to the armed forces of the Communist Party of Kampuchea (). Cambodia, however, was not primed for revolution. This is significant in that it contributed to specific postconflict policies and programs initiated by the , including the promotion of geographic education and the use of propaganda photographs. In this article we examine six photographs produced during the Khmer Rouge era. Our main thesis is that when viewing these photographs, we are witnessing the photographic production of a nationalist landscape. As geographers have argued, photographs are inauthentic from the standpoint of “truthful” representations. However, the photographs produced by the are authentic simulacra in their “truthful” representation of how the envisioned both the revolution and subsequent administration of Democratic Kampuchea. In so doing, our research is positioned within a longer tradition of cultural‐political geography that has examined the use of landscape photographs as political instruments used in nation‐building.

Landscape perception based on personal attributes in determining the scenic beauty of in-stand natural secondary forests

The aim of this paper was to validate factors affecting the in-stand landscape quality and how important each factor was in determining scenic beauty of natural secondary forests. The study was limited to 23 stand-level cases of natural secondary forests in Shen Zhen city in southern China. Typical samples of photographs and public estimations were applied to evaluate scenic beauty inside the natural secondary forests. The major factors were then selected by multiple linear-regression analysis and a model between scenic beauty estimation (SBE) values and in-stand landscape features was established. Rise in crown density, fall in plant litter, glow in color of trunk, fall in arbor richness, and rise in visible distance increased scenic beauty values of in-stand landscape. These five factors significantly explained the differences in scenic beauty, and together accounted for 45% of total variance in SBEs. Personal factors (e.g. gender, age and education) did not significantly affect the ratings of landscape photos, although variations of landscape quality were affected by some personal factors. Results of this study will assist policymakers, silviculturists and planners in landscape design and management of natural secondary forests in Shenzhen city. People can improve the scenic beauty values by pruning branches and clearing plant litter, which subsequently improve the forest health and contribute to forest recreation.

Our Brothers’ Keeper

This article considers the practice of witness in the world—witness to the world—in particular the character and temper, nature and purpose, significance and resonance of “moral witness,” a kind of ideal type, as conceived by the philosopher Avishai Margalit. It proposes that the artist plays an important role as a moral witness and that the work of art itself performs the same function, even after the fact—the phenomenon of “postwitness.” In this context, it identifies an ethics of precision or exactitude and adduces a variety of exemplars, ranging from poetry to photography, including Shot at Dawn (2014), a suite of landscape photographs which are also war photographs and memorial photographs, and acts of moral witness, by Chloe Dewe Mathews.

Extracting ecological information from oblique angle terrestrial landscape photographs: Performance evaluation of the WSL Monoplotting Tool

While aerial photography and satellite imagery are the usual data sources used in remote sensing, land based oblique photographs can also be used to measure ecological change. By using such historical photographs, the time frame for change detection can be extended into the late 1800s and early 1900s, predating the era of aerial imagery by decades. Recent advancements in computing power have enabled the development of techniques for georeferencing oblique angle photographs. The WSL Monoplotting Tool is a new piece of software that opens the door to analyzing such photographs by allowing for extraction of spatially referenced vector data from oblique photographs. A very large repeat photography collection based on the world's largest systematic collection of historical mountain topographic survey images, the Mountain Legacy Project, contains >6000 high resolution oblique image pairs showing landscape changes in the Rocky Mountains of Alberta between ca. 1900 – today. We used a subset of photographs from this collection to assess the accuracy and utility of the WSL Monoplotting Tool for georeferencing oblique photographs and measuring landscape change. We determined that the tool georeferenced objects to within less than 15 m of their real world 3D spatial location, and the displacement of the geographic center of over 121 control points was less than 3 m from the real world spatial location. Most of the error in individual object placement was due to the angle of viewing incidence with the ground (i.e., low angle/highly oblique angles resulted in greater horizontal error). Simple rules of control point selection are proposed to reduce georeferencing errors. We further demonstrate a method by which raster data can be rapidly extracted from an image pair to measure changes in vegetation cover over time. This new process permits the rapid evaluation of a large number of images to facilitate landscape scale analysis of oblique imagery.

Book Review: Sailor, Meaningful Places: Landscape Photographers in the Nineteenth-Century American West, by Jared Farmer

Book Review: Sailor, Meaningful Places: Landscape Photographers in the Nineteenth-Century American West, by Jared Farmer

Metaphor and Memento in Christine Shank's Our First Year Together

Christine Shank's powerful and continually unfolding work, our first year together, is an ongoing series of photographs and edition of two artists' books, begun --in 2009 and exhibited at Visual Studies Workshop in fall 2014. The title suggests the story of a couple or a human relationship. This is reinforced by two images: one showing an anonymous male figure and the other an anonymous female figure. The woman is photographed from behind, with long hair obscuring her features, and the man's eyes are closed in contemplation, so that the individuals' identities and experiences remain ambiguous. Instead, photographs of domestic objects, still lifes, and landscapes evoke conflicting emotions, interpersonal dynamics, and various moments in the trajectory of a relationship. Throughout the series, photographed objects take on complex human characteristics. For example, one photograph presents a close-up of a pink bubble of chewing gum pinned to a wall. The bubble gum suggests a human form, with its rounded shape and delicate droop evoking a pregnant belly. The pink color and the expansion of the material suggest the stretching of flesh. The pink bubble brings to mind youth and ebullience, both in terms of lightheartedness and the shape of the object. Yet the bubble is partially deflated and pierced by the pin, so that it simultaneously conveys disenchantment, loss, and violence. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Other images represent human relationships as well, such as the photograph of two vertical stacks of sliced grocery store bread that evoke two figures. The stack on the left leans toward the other, perhaps in aggression or need for support. The stack on the right seems to recede and comply, its curvilinear shape accommodating the other, yet it appears unbalanced at the base. The bright blue twist ties in the foreground may at first seem playful, yet they are contorted, conveying intense emotion. Throughout the photographic series, domestic objects appear familiar, yet also disquieting. For example, embroidered cloth with wrinkles shows dailywear, and partially used bars of soap convey a sense of intimacy. Yet there are also photographs of knifelike icicles or blood stains on linen cloth, suggesting undercurrents of violence. Within the context of the title ourfirst year toget/ier, the landscapes hold different resonance. On one level, they recall the process of taking photographs as a memento of a place of importance in a personal relationship. On another level, however, the landscapes evoke human qualities--from the turbulent water and waves to fertile green grass (with occasional dry patches), to the rocky, barren earth and the placid sea. Also fascinating are the different arrangements of the images. For example, a photograph of a vase and flowers on a wooden table recalls the tradition of vanitas painting. …

Nonlinear vegetation cover changes in the North Ethiopian Highlands: Evidence from the Lake Ashenge closed basin

Vegetation cover changes in African drylands are often thought to result from population growth, social factors and aridification. Here we show that long-term vegetation proxy records can help disentangling these main driving factors. Taking the case of North Ethiopia, we performed an integrated investigation of land cover changes over the last four centuries around the endorheic Lake Ashenge, as derived from pollen analysis and repeat photography complemented with information from historical sources. Pollen and sediment analysis of radiocarbon-dated lake deposits shows a phase of environmental destabilization during the 18th century, after a more stable previous period. This is evidenced by decreases of tree pollen (Juniperus, Olea, Celtis, Podocarpus <5%), increases in Poaceae (>40%) and deposition of coarser silt lake sediments (>70%). Quantitative analysis of 30 repeated landscape photographs around the lake indicates a gradual decline of the vegetation cover since a relative maximum during the mid-19th Century. Vegetation cover declined sharply between the 1950s and the 1980s, but has since begun to recover. Overall, the data from around Lake Ashenge reveal a nonlinear pattern of deforestation and forest regrowth with several periods of vegetation cover change over the past four centuries. While there is forcing of regional drought and the regional land tenure system, the cyclic changes do not support a simplified focus on aridification or population growth.

A repeat photograph analysis of long‐term vegetation change in semi‐arid South Africa in response to land use and climate

AbstractQuestionsHow has the vegetation of the major biomes (Grassland, Nama‐karoo, Albany Thicket, Azonal) of southeastern South Africa changed over the course of the 20th century? How do changes in climate and land‐use drivers relate to long‐term changes in vegetation? What are the implications of these findings for land degradation hypotheses and future climate change projections for the region?LocationThe biogeographically complex semi‐arid, Karoo Midlands region of the southeastern part of South Africa.MethodsWe re‐photographed 65 historical landscape photographs, the majority of which dated from 1950 to 1970, to measure long‐term changes in the cover of grasses, dwarf shrubs, tall shrubs and alien plants. The cover of each growth form as well as total vegetation cover was estimated from matched photograph pairs with the aid of detailed cover estimates recorded in the field. The change in cover was relativized between sites by dividing the difference in cover between the two time steps by the number of years between photographs, expressed as the percentage change in cover per decade. Significant changes in mean annual rainfall and the standardized precipitation index (SPI) from 27 climate stations were assessed using a Mann‐Kendall test for trend. This non‐parametric test was also used to assess the significance of long‐term trends in the number of cattle, sheep and goats in each of the biomes over the period 1911–1996.ResultsGrass cover and total vegetation cover had increased by between 1.0% to 4.5% per decade and 2.0% to 4.5% per decade, respectively, in all biomes investigated. In contrast, the cover of dwarf shrubs had decreased significantly by between 0.25% and 3.0% per decade, although not significantly so in the Nama‐karoo biome. The change in tall shrub cover varied between different biomes but had generally increased in the study area. Alien plants were absent in the historical photographs and had increased significantly but only in Azonal habitats, where increases of 1.5% per decade were recorded. For the majority of climate stations no significant trend in mean annual rainfall and SPI values was recorded, while stocking rate had declined significantly in all biomes by between 36% and 48% from 1911 to 1996.ConclusionsThe findings support the hypothesis that vegetation cover and condition has improved in the semi‐arid regions of South Africa. These findings are discussed in light of future projections for the region.

Does landscape related expertise influence the visual perception of landscape photographs? Implications for participatory landscape planning and management

Does expertise in landscape related issues influence the way landscapes are observed? In an eye tracking experiment 21 landscape experts and 21 laymen were asked to observe 74 landscape photographs, each for 10s. Experts seemed to make significantly more fixations and saccades, had a longer scan path and a larger visual span than the laymen. As a consequence, in the same amount of time, experts visually explored the landscape photographs to a wider extent and in a more global and holistic fashion. This is probably due to the presence of expertise, which seemed to enhance efficient information extraction, enabling experts to interpret and understand the landscapes more easily. In contrast, the laymen's visual exploration of the landscapes was considerably more restricted as they spent significantly more time and attention to singular objects, in particular to buildings. This behaviour may be a result of the lack of expertise, which makes longer fixation times necessary to understand the meaning of the composing landscape elements. A slower information processing leaves less time to visually explore the landscape photograph and hampers laymen to observe the landscape as a whole. Consequently, experts and laymen may not perceive the same features in a landscape and might not even see the same landscape. This conclusion is important for participatory landscape management in which experts and laymen are asked to visually assess landscapes. The often diverging assessments of both groups could partially be explained by their literally different view on landscapes, on which their judgement is based.

Figure and Landscape Photo Quality Assessment Based on Visual Aesthetics

Figure and Landscape Photo Quality Assessment Based on Visual Aesthetics

Meaningful Places: Landscape Photographers in the Nineteenth-Century American West. By Rachel McLean Sailor. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2014. 240pp. Illustrations, maps, notes, bibliography, and index. Cloth $45.00.

<i> Meaningful Places: Landscape Photographers in the Nineteenth-Century American West. </i> By Rachel McLean Sailor. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2014. 240pp. Illustrations, maps, notes, bibliography, and index. Cloth $45.00.

Probabilistic Convex Hull Queries over Uncertain Data

The convex hull of a set of two-dimensional points, P, is the minimal convex polygon that contains all the points in P. Convex hull is important in many applications such as GIS, statistical analysis and data mining. Due to the ubiquity of data uncertainty such as location uncertainty in real-world applications, we study the concept of convex hull over uncertain data in 2D space. We propose the Probabilistic Convex Hull(PCH) query and demonstrate its applications, such as Flickr landscape photo extraction and activity region visualization, where location uncertainty is incurred by GPS devices or sensors. To tackle the problem of possible world explosion, we develop an O(N <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">3</sup> ) algorithm based on geometric properties, where N is the data size. We further improve this algorithm with spatial indices and effective pruning techniques, which prune the majority of data instances. To achieve better time complexity, we propose another O(N <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sup> log N) algorithm, by maintaining a probability oracle in the form of a circular array with nice properties. Finally, to support applications that require fast response, we develop a Gibbs-sampling-based approximation algorithm which efficiently finds the PCH with high accuracy. Extensive experiments are conducted to verify the efficiency of our algorithms for answering PCH queries.

A rapid indicator of cultural ecosystem service usage at a fine spatial scale: Content analysis of social media photographs

Cultural ecosystem services (CES) are an important benefit that habitats provide, particularly in the fragments of natural ecosystems that remain in urban areas. To manage CES we need to understand what people use habitats for, and where different activities take place. It is challenging to assess CES provision, as surveys and interviews are time consuming and can be expensive. Social media data, particularly geo-tagged photographs, are spatially explicit and contain visual information that can be used to infer cultural use. Indicators of CES derived from social media make use of existing data so may contribute useful information for rapid, cost-effective assessments of CES. In this study we develop an indicator of CES usage that is derived from photographs from an image-sharing website, at two different scales. First, we compare four small (<150ha) urban mangrove sites in Singapore, using photograph content to classify sites according to predominant cultural use. Second, the spatial distribution of different CES was modelled within one site using MaxEnt. A resampling simulation was conducted to identify the sensitivity of the photograph classification to the number of photographs classified. Photographs of social recreation, organisms and landscapes occurred most commonly. The proportional occurrence of photograph types differed between sites depending on their characteristics. Within one site, the probability of occurrence of social recreation photographs was highest around built focal points, while photographs of organisms were more likely in the mangrove and terrestrial habitats. Classifying more than 50–70 photographs (which would take approximately 30minutes) gave only small increases in categorisation accuracy. This tool for CES assessment rapidly provided information that would be useful for managing Singapore's mangroves. The approach could be widely applied to assess CES provision across a range of habitats and settings, helping CES to become more commonly considered in ecosystem service evaluations.

Rachel McLean Sailor. Meaningful Places: Landscape Photographers in the Nineteenth-Century American West.

Rachel McLean Sailor. Meaningful Places: Landscape Photographers in the Nineteenth-Century American West.