Map Of France Research Articles

Inconsistent Regulatory Mapping Quietly Threatens Rivers and Streams.

Even the most stringent environmental law cannot protect a river if its tributaries remain exposed to pollution and other threats upstream. Excluding a subset of watercourses from legal protection therefore threatens to alter freshwater ecosystems across entire river networks and the services they provide, such as drinking water and flood regulation. Considerable attention has been devoted to defining the scope of environmental laws protecting watercourses. Yet how these definitions are implemented through regulatory mapping, the cartography of waterbodies that legally qualify as watercourses and are thus protected, has not been examined outside of the United States. Here, we demonstrate the consequences of regulatory mapping on the extent of river networks that are protected, using France as a case study. By assembling the first map of France's watercourses protected under the Water Law, we estimate that a quarter of previously mapped hydrographic segments were excluded from protection and found stark geographical variations in the extent of protected ecosystems. Headwater and nonperennial segments are disproportionately excluded by 28% compared to their prevalence (67%) in the overall hydrographic network, with potentially far-reaching implications for biodiversity and people. We expect regulatory frameworks in most countries to be equally susceptible to local interpretation of legal definitions.

INFERRING THE SCALE AND CONTENT OF A MAP USING DEEP LEARNING

Abstract. Visually impaired people cannot use classical maps but can learn to use tactile relief maps. These tactile maps are crucial at school to learn geography and history as well as the other students. They are produced manually by professional transcriptors in a very long and costly process. A platform able to generate tactile maps from maps scanned from geography textbooks could be extremely useful to these transcriptors, to fasten their production. As a first step towards such a platform, this paper proposes a method to infer the scale and the content of the map from its image. We used convolutional neural networks trained with a few hundred maps from French geography textbooks, and the results show promising results to infer labels about the content of the map (e.g. ”there are roads, cities and administrative boundaries”), and to infer the extent of the map (e.g. a map of France or of Europe).

Book review: Political map of France at the turn of the First decade of the 21st century

Book review: Political map of France at the turn of the First decade of the 21st century

‘[T]his world is now thy pilgrimage’: William Michael Rossetti's Cognitive Maps of France and Italy

This paper takes as its starting point the conceptual metaphor ‘life is a journey’ as defined by Lakoff and Johnson (1980) in order to advance a new reading of William Michael Rossetti's Democratic Sonnets (1907). These political verses may be defined as cognitive-semantic poems, which attest to the centrality of travel in the creation of literary and artistic meaning. Rossetti's Democratic Sonnets is not only a political manifesto against tyranny and oppression, promoting the struggle for liberalism and democracy as embodied by historical figures such as Napoleon, Mazzini, Cavour, and Garibaldi; but it also reproduces Rossetti's real and imagined journeys throughout Europe in the late nineteenth century. This essay examines these references in light of the issues they raise, especially the poet as a traveller and the journey metaphor in poetry. But its central purpose is to re-read Democratic Sonnets as a cognitive map of Rossetti's mental picture of France and Italy. A cognitive map, first theorised by Edward Tolman in the 1940s, is a very personal representation of the environment that we all experience, serving to navigate unfamiliar territory, give direction, and recall information. In terms of cognitive linguistics, Rossetti is a figure whose path is determined by French and Italian landmarks (Paris, the island of St. Helena, the Alps, the Venice Lagoon, Mount Vesuvius, and so forth), which function as reference points for orientation and are tied to the historical events of the Italian Risorgimento. Through his sonnets, Rossetti attempts to build into his work the kind of poetic revolution and sense of history which may only be achieved through encounters with other cultures.

Targeting and mapping expansive soils (Loiret, France): geometrical analysis of laboratory soil spectra in the short-wave infrared domain (1100–2500 nm)

Abstract Short-wave infrared (SWIR: 1100–2500 nm) reflectance spectra of soil samples, acquired under laboratory-controlled conditions, were used to estimate the swelling potentials of the soils and to use SWIR spectroscopy to improve a part of the swelling-risk map of France. A total of 332 samples were collected to the west of Orléans (France) in various geological formations and swelling-risk areas and along two (eastern and western) transects with different samples spacings. Comparisons between the swelling potentials of the soils and the swelling-risk areas of the map exhibit good correlation in the south of the sampling area; however, there are several inconsistencies in the north of the study area that highlight the necessity of locally redrawing the accepted swelling-risk map of France. The sampling interval (approximately 260 m) along the eastern transect was too sparse and does not appear to have effectively captured the smallest and/or isolated lithologies. The sampling interval along the western transect (approximately 50 m) revealed the presence of an unmapped swelling-potential zone, which was confirmed by several soil samples. The sample interval along the western transect appears to be more suitable for mapping the smallest lithologies. The presence of several samples in close proximity that exhibit the same swelling potential is a robust indication of the presence of a zone with constant swelling potential. A new swelling-risk map of the sampling area was produced based on the soil samples. The map produced by interpolation did not permit the representation of discrete lithological units, introduced spurious swelling-risk zones that however could be representative of tillage in agricultural zones. More samples are therefore needed to produce a reliable map on the scale of the sampling area. According to swelling potential uncertainty related to soil sampling and soil treatment, spectroscopy-based approach proposed here cannot be used to replace the existing swelling-risk map of France. This method permits however the rapid and low-cost estimation of the swell potentials of a large number of samples, which could be used at regional-scale to target areas where doubt remains or where infrastructure damages attributed to swelling behavior are known. At local scale, soil samples need to be properly and laboratory treated to accurately produce local revised and detailed swelling-risk maps.

Space-Time Covariation of Mortality with Temperature: A Systematic Study of Deaths in France, 1968-2009.

BackgroundThe temperature–mortality relationship has repeatedly been found, mostly in large cities, to be U/J-shaped, with higher minimum mortality temperature (MMT) at low latitudes being interpreted as indicating human adaptation to climate.ObjectivesOur aim was to partition space with a high-resolution grid to assess the temperature–mortality relationship in a territory with wide climate diversity, over a period with notable climate warming.MethodsThe 16,487,668 death certificates of persons > 65 years of age who died of natural causes in continental France (1968–2009) were analyzed. A 30-km × 30-km grid was placed over the map of France. Generalized additive model regression was used to assess the temperature–mortality relationship for each grid square, and extract the MMT and the RM25 and RM25/18 (respectively, the ratios of mortality at 25°C/MMT and 25°C/18°C). Three periods were considered: 1968–1981 (P1), 1982–1995 (P2), and 1996–2009 (P3).ResultsAll temperature–mortality curves computed over the 42-year period were U/J-shaped. MMT and mean summer temperature were strongly correlated. Mean MMT increased from 17.5°C for P1 to 17.8°C for P2 and to 18.2°C for P3 and paralleled the summer temperature increase observed between P1 and P3. The temporal MMT rise was below that expected from the geographic analysis. The RM25/18 ratio of mortality at 25°C versus that at 18°C declined significantly (p = 5 × 10–5) as warming increased: 18% for P1, 16% for P2, and 15% for P3.ConclusionsResults of this spatiotemporal analysis indicated some human adaptation to climate change, even in rural areas.Citation:Todd N, Valleron AJ. 2015. Space–time covariation of mortality with temperature: a systematic study of deaths in France, 1968–2009. Environ Health Perspect 123:659–664; http://dx.doi.org/10.1289/ehp.1307771

Forging a national identity for France after 1789: the role of landscape symbols

ABSTRACTThe construction of a national identity for France after the Revolution of 1789 was a slow and deliberate but complex process, associated with the control from Paris of flows of ideas, goods, capital and people over the territory of France. Above all, it was a battle for the minds of those living within its boundaries. The State's powerful armoury included landscape iconography, and it used that weapon effectively. Its impact reached into the remotest corners of the country, deep into la France profonde, distant both physically and psychologically from Paris. This article considers the role of some key cultural icons (including the national flag, the Gallic coq, public buildings such as government offices and schools, and war memorials) in contributing to the construction of a new mental map of France for those who lived within its territory.

Creating Map Readers: Republican Geographic and Cartographic Discourse in G. Bruno's (Augustine Fouillée) 1905 Le Tour de la France par deux enfants

G. Bruno's (Fouillée) Le Tour de la France par deux enfants, first published in 1877 and with maps in her 1905 edition, introduced geography and provided maps to millions of French school children. The work also marks a crossroads between old and new ways of understanding France. Fouillée's narration describes the boys’ journey and championed republican values of honesty, cleanliness and hard work but it also introduced a republican geographic discourse to generations of school children. In the text, the author situates towns within both departments and the old, provincial regions, suggesting that a significant portion of her readership still relied on the latter classification. Fouillée's cartographic discourse, on the other hand, tells a different story. Her national and regional maps show how France was divided administratively but also downplay the republican nomenclature championed in the narration. None of Fouillée's map titles or their legends acknowledge the 86 departments in metropolitan France. Even her map of France at the end of the book, the one document on which Fouillée provides a clear shape of the entire nation, divides the country by region. Even if disparate, Fouillée's narration and cartography taught readers that France was one unified, if culturally diverse, nation.

‘We close towns for a living’: spatial transformation and the Tour de France

This paper explores the ways in which the passage of the Tour de France bicycle race through France produces a distinctive cultural cartography or social map of France. Drawing on Lefebvre's (1991) conceptual triad of spatial practice, representations of space and representational spaces, the paper argues that the Tour de France both represents and is a space that is annually reordered and structured by very particular cultural practices. Through an analysis of the process (and politics) of route selection, the incorporation of iconic landscape and the transformation of civic space as the race moves across the country, the paper foregrounds the socially constructed nature of map making and the role of human intervention in producing and reproducing key cultural cartographies of France through the Tour de France.

<i>"Freely Thrown Open to the Use of All":</i> The Library of Virginia and Alexandre Vattemare’s <i>Système d’Echange International</i>

During this past year, a map intern was working on an unidentified collection of French and Dutch maps. Each map was stamped with “Systeme d’Echange International, A.V.” Based on the intern’s research, I was able to identify this map as La Carte l’Etat-Major, a topographical map of France and a portion of the Netherlands consisting of approximately 250 sheets, dated circa 1851. I had also asked him to try to figure out the significance of the stamp. In his final report, he indicated that the initials A.V. stood for Alexandre Vattemare, who had been a ventriloquist. Naturally, this information piqued my interest, the ventriloquist part in particular. The question that came to mind was why the Library of Virginia, a state library, would have maps from a French ventriloquist.

Seeing and imagining the “same” objects in unilateral neglect

Dissociations between perceptual and imaginal neglect are typically investigated by using very different tasks (e.g. visual target cancellation vs. place descriptions). Here we report patients’ performance on imaginal and perceptual tasks which shared identical stimuli and procedure, except for the modality of stimulus presentation. In different tasks, participants either saw towns/regions on a map of France or heard their names, and pressed one of two keys according to the stimulus location (left or right of Paris). Neglect patients as a group were less accurate for left-sided stimuli in both modalities, but on single-case analysis only one patient with perceptual neglect had asymmetrical imaginal accuracy. These results confirmed that imaginal neglect is relatively rare, and is usually associated with perceptual neglect. Perceptual neglect resulted more frequent and severe than imaginal neglect, also when assessed using strictly comparable tests, consistent with the exogenous orienting bias typically observed in these patients.

Ceste figure contient tout le royaulme de France. Cartography and national identity in France at the end of the Hundred Years War

This paper examines a little known map of France made around the middle of the fifteenth century, for a genealogical manuscript of the text known as A tous nobles, conserved today as Bibliothèque nationale de France [BnF] MS fr. 4991. It argues that the map's prominence in the manuscript articulates a notion of French identity based on a bond to the territory of France rather than on fealty to its king. Using other images from the manuscript, it considers the importance of geography to the emergence of French national sentiment at the time of the Hundred Years War.

Picturing France in the Fifteenth Century: The Map in BNF MS Fr. 4991

A map of France is included in a manuscript, dated to around 1460, entitled A tous nobles, which contains a historical account and genealogy of the French kings. The map was produced in the wake of the Hundred Years War, when conflict with the English challenged both French identity and territory. The map, however, smooths over a century of war to reveal a nation both strong and independent. Through the mapmaker's selection of places, and his use of fluvial boundaries to define the area concerned, he has created an image of France shaped by ideology and history that is wholly in keeping with its location in the manuscript, where the renaming of Gaul as France is described. The map reveals the territory of France to be a critical link between the mythical past and the political present. This connection between history and territory, also reiterated in the text itself, is presented in a graphic format that may be related to contemporary practice of using maps along with legal documents in the resolution of territorial disputes. Seen in the light of the king's claim to the lands ruled by his ancestors, the map thus constitutes a rare medieval example of French national identity expressed in relation to French territory. Dr Camille Serchuk is professor of art history at Southern Connecticut State University, New Haven, Connecticut, USA.

Reading a Vision of Space: The Geographical Map Collection of Charles‐Etienne Coquebert de Montbret (1755–1831)

Charles‐Etienne Coquebert de Montbret owned a collection of 868 manuscript and printed maps, which he classified and described in detail in a catalogue. The collection, only recently rediscovered, is particularly valuable because it not only reflects the collector's main interests but also contains a large number of maps bearing his annotations and colouring. Personal additions such as these afford a rare insight into a map owner's, or map user's, mind, and Coquebert de Montbret's collection enables us to understand the cartographical practices adopted by one individual in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Coquebert de Montbret's interest in physical geography emerges clearly, especially in the way he set about compiling the geological map of France which he published in 1823 with Jean‐Baptiste Julien Omalius d'Halloy. Examples of the three main ways he made use of his maps—to locate towns and regions, to record geographical information and to make sense of space—are discussed in this paper.

The role of cognitive factors in the rod-and-frame effect.

We compared the contribution and the effectiveness of modulating the orientation perception of two types of visual information: the visual frame and the visual polarity of objects. In experiment 1, we examined the effect of a square frame, a mouse, an elephant, and a map of France on the apparent vertical. In the upright position, despite the presence of tilted individual component features, the visual objects had no illusory visual tilt effects. When tilted, these objects had a substantial effect on the direction that appeared to be vertical. However, rod-setting errors were smaller in the inducing objects than when observed with the frame display. In the second experiment, the results of experiment 1 were replicated with a meaningful circular contour--a porthole and a clock. The presence of the external circular contour did not abolish the illusion on the apparent vertical. Moreover, in experiment 3, a clock whose numbers were displaced and not tilted--to avoid the possible tilt influence of visual cues--was also able to deflect the subjective visual vertical. This finding suggests that through top-down processing shapes can act as a framework which serves as a reference influencing the perceived orientation of the inner objects.

Statistical Recycling of Documentary Information: Estimating Regional Variations in a Pre-Censal Population

In the process of studying the French Revolution, the authors were faced with the problem of how to use rather poor pre-censal data. Not only were there many different sources available, but there is little information on how they were collected, or how reliable they were. Rather than abandoning hope, or arbitrarily choosing one or another of the sources, the authors factor analyzed them, and found that there had been two main methods of collecting provincial population and estimates in eighteenth-century France. The censuses loading heavily on the most important factor turned out to be those based on counts of births. Using factor loadings to adjust each of the provincial population estimates according to the source will permit the authors to use this data with considerable confidence. The authors use this methodological discussion in order to examine broader issues of data reliability and the utility of quantitative sources in social historical work in general. I. THE SCIENTIFIC USE OF FLAWED DATA For a number of years, we have been engaged in a study of the French Revolution of 1789, using a quantitative methodology which, at bottom, is the search for systematic regional covariations. We seek to study the correlations among three classes of variables, all measures of variations among regions of France: conditions of social life (broadly defined) in the old regime, the openly voiced demands and grievances of the French public at the beginning of the great upheaval (expressed in the famous cahiers de doleances produced by tens of thousands of assemblies across the country), and proand counterrevolutionary acts by various groups during the revolutionary period.' Our research is addressed to such questions as: How did the politics of the French in 1789 vary across the map of France? What aspects of the social, economic, and governmental structure are associated with different sorts of demands? And how are these variations in political views correlated with variations in revolutionary participation?2 In order to perform such studies, we must, of course, standardize many of our measures by population.3 For example, if we wish to study the correlation between the incidence of a certain tax and some other variable, such as hostility to the government, we often must convert the tax to some per capita measure, and for *We are particularly grateful for the detailed reading, the critical comments, research advice and actual data series generously provided by Jacques Dupaquier. Of course, we remain responsible for all errors.

Response to Arnaud

Philosophers, and no doubt workers in other areas where problems are hard and theories soft, are prone to embark on ambitious and not really soundly motivated programs of reduction. An important modern example of this, I think, is the attempt to reduce relational to notional belief. There are frames of mind in which it seems that notional belief is basic and that relational belief is unintelligible unless it can be reduced to notional belief. One becomes enchanted with a picture of the mind in the light of which one can see how a mind can grasp, in the attitude of belief, a complete sentence or complete proposition, but one cannot see how a mind can grasp in any attitude a mixture made up partly of non-linguistic objects and partly of a predicate or propositional function. One wants to ask: how can a mind have one foot on extensions and the other on intensions? One may be put into this frame of mind by reflection on the idea that the sentence is the unit of meaning. Or one may be picturing a person's beliefs at a time as being like a map. Thus Ramsey: A belief of the primary sort is a map of neighbouring space by which we steer. It remains such a map however much we complicate it or fill in details ([2]: 238). Our beliefs are a map; but a map of France which had Paris and Vezelay and Mont Blanc on it would be France. Here I mean that the actual cities and the actual mountain, not symbols for them, are on the map, for that is what would be analogous to relational belief. Yet, when we let ourselves put pictures and preconceptions aside, take our language as it comes, and ask about the logical forms of belief sentences, we find that sentences which are most naturally represented as involving relational belief occur as frequently and make as much sense as those most naturally represented as involving notional belief. Moreover, with regard to its degree, the relation is, in Kenny's term, variably polyadic: Jones believes that someone loves someone, Jones believes of Ann that someone loves her, Jones believes of Ann and Stan that he loves her. This variable polyadicity of 'believes' formally parallels that of 'true of'.

How did Oronce Fine draw his large map of France?

How did Oronce Fine draw his large map of France?

A Correction

In PHYSICS TODAY, November, page 55 we would like to rectify three errors in the map of France. Lyon and Marseille should have been spelled in French for consistency. Clermont should be Clermont-Ferrand, which is located in the center of France. Saclay is misleading because it is a suburb of Paris in which the Atomic Energy Commission is located.

A manuscript economic map of France (end of the XVIIIth century)

A manuscript economic map of France (end of the XVIIIth century)