Landscape Reconstruction Research Articles

Sacred Sounds, Secular Spaces: Transforming Catholicism through the Music of Third-Republic Paris, by Jennifer Walker

<i>Sacred Sounds, Secular Spaces: Transforming Catholicism through the Music of Third-Republic Paris</i>, by Jennifer Walker

Implementing the Council of Europe Landscape Convention: The Deûle Park, Reawakening of a Landscape

This paper is a study of a representative example of the application of the Council of Europe Landscape Convention (CEP), with a project that is emblematic of the implementation of the CEP as the first winner of the Council of Europe's landscape award in 2009. It shows how the principles of that international treaty ratified by France and enshrined in national law was able to inspire public plans and policies for the reconstruction of landscapes that met the objectives of the four sustainable development pillars of culture, environment, society, and economy. This example demonstrates that public policies can bring positive results in those fields and generate not only quality public space but also significant improvement in the quality of life by ensuring access to the fundamental good of landscape while preserving access to another fundamental good of drinking water. The paper starts with a short history of the Landscape Convention, then brie fly explores its main premises and values, before providing the concrete example of the Deûle Park or Parc de la Deûle located within the Lille metropolitan area, in the North of France.

Understanding the information journeys of late-life migrants to inform support design: Information seeking driven by a major life transition

Little is known about the information behaviors of older migrants who migrate later-in-life and their settlement experiences in the host country. Through the intersectional lens of information behavior in transition theory and the information journey framework, this article reports on a qualitative study investigating the information behaviors of late-life migrants who recently migrated to Australia. A narrative inquiry was conducted with 22 older Chinese migrants (aged 67 on average) who participated in focus group discussions and in-depth interviews, yielding 269 pages of the transcripts and notes for analysis. Older Chinese migrants’ information behaviors were demonstrated as a five-stage information journey model driven by information seeking for migration, involving the identification of primary concerns of living, the orientation of the new setting and local information landscapes, response to the new information reality, and reconstruction of information landscapes across the transitional phases of understanding, negotiating, and resolving. The findings expand the knowledgebase on information behavior in the significant transition of late-life migration and a life event-oriented information journey. Practical implications are provided for information interventions and support that may be useful at different stages of information journey in transition.

Reconstruction of 3D topographic landscape in soft X-ray fluorescence microscopy through an inverse X-ray-tracing approach based on multiple detectors

The study of X-ray fluorescence (XRF) emission spectra is a powerful technique used in applications that range from biology to cultural heritage. Key objectives of this technique include identification and quantification of elemental traces composing the analyzed sample. However, precise derivation of elemental concentration is often hampered by self-absorption of the XRF signal emitted by light constituents. This attenuation depends on the amount of sample present between the radiation source and detection system and allows for the exploitation of self-absorption in order to recover a sample topography. In this work, an X-ray-tracing application based on the use of multiple silicon drift detectors, is introduced to inversely reconstruct a 3D sample with correct topographical landscape, from 2D XRF count rates maps obtained from spectroscopy. The reconstruction was tested on the XRF maps of a simulated sample, which is composed of three cells with different size but similar composition. We propose to use the recovered 3D sample topography in order to numerically compute the self-absorption effects on the X-ray fluorescence radiation, thereby showing that a quantitative correction is possible. Lastly, we present a web application which implements the suggested methodology, in order to demonstrate its feasibility and applicability, available at: https://github.com/ElettraSciComp/xrfstir.

Monitoring Ecological Changes on a Rapidly Urbanizing Island Using a Remote Sensing-Based Ecological Index Produced Time Series

Island ecosystems are susceptible to the considerable impacts of increasing human activities, landscape reconstruction, and urban expansion, resulting in changes in the ecological environment and urban ecological security issues. Remote sensing techniques can achieve the near-real-time ecological environment monitoring of these rapidly changing areas. The remote sensing-based ecological index (RSEI), as a comprehensive remote sensing ecological environment index, was adopted to dynamically monitor urban ecological quality (EQ) over time in this study, combined with the Landsat-based detection of trends in disturbance and recovery (LandTrendr) algorithm. Annual composite images were generated using Landsat 5, Landsat 7, and Landsat 8 imagery to extract four metrics (Greenness, Moisture, Heat, and Dryness) to calculate RSEI from 1991 to 2021. The ecological quality in the study area was evaluated using a five-level classification (poor, inferior, medium, good, and excellent), and the changes in EQ on a pixel basis were identified by the LandTrendr algorithm. The results showed that (1) the average value of the RSEI ranged from 0.47 to 0.57 over 31 years, indicating that EQ was maintained at the medium level; (2) the distribution of different EQ levels had visible patterns, and an area of 47.87 km2 was affected by a poor EQ at least once in 31 years; (3) 38.22 km2 of this area experienced EQ poor disturbance once, and 3.05 km2 of the area had poor disturbance twice. Urban expansion, forest degradation, and policy are the main factors causing the reduction of the RSEI. The results demonstrate that combining time series of RSEI and LandTrendr can effectively monitor the changes of EQ, which is helpful to identify the spatial–temporal variation patterns of EQ and provide valuable information for policymakers and protection.

Paleo-topographic Reconstruction of Cultural Landscapes using Remote Sensing and GIS: A case study of the ancient port of Tamralipti

Human interaction with the landscape they inhabit leaves imprints that are largely inconspicuous on the ground. Yet, these remain the most thought provoking among the sets of clues available to us in fuelling the quest to understand our past. Spatial view provided by satellite imagery plays a pivotal part in enabling us to identify these imprints in the form of patterns. In this study, a paleo-environmental reconstruction of a particular cultural landscape using geo-spatial tools has been attempted. A range of historical documents (textual records such as traveller’s accounts dating to 5th and 7th centuries CE, maps of the Indian sub-continent published in the 18th and 19th centuries) and satellite imagery of the last 50 years (CORONA, Google Earth Digital Globe ) are used to identify and analyse the distribution of cultural sites that are hitherto unexplored to understand the impact of past changes to the landscape of these ancient sites located along one of the most dynamic regions of the Indian subcontinent: the Gangetic Delta. The identification of numerous sites of a distinct pattern and their distribution, analysed along with the morphological signature of the landscape on which they remain almost undetected has led to certain inferences on the possible location and extents of the ancient port of Tamralipti. The study also reveals the coastal and deltaic changes in the vicinity of the ancient port.

Labour standards in the Ghanaian construction sector: an investigation of the governance landscape

PurposeThis paper aims to investigate the governance of labour standards in the less-studied yet rapidly globalising Ghanaian construction sector. While incorporation into international production networks generates several opportunities for workers, the drivers of adverse incorporation originate at multiple levels of analysis. The study offers an investigation into such drivers and their interconnections.Design/methodology/approachThe authors utilise a multi-scalar framework and mixed methods of analysis. Both the qualitative and multi-level quantitative analyses rely on a primary dataset collected among 30 firms and 304 respondents, through semi-structured interviews.FindingsA composite yet unbalanced labour standards governance configuration emerges, where the absence of social governance combined with a weak role of the State leaves labour standards subject to the variegated landscape of firms' embeddedness in the sector.Originality/valueThe construction industry is acquiring ever-increasing relevance in the economic trajectory of Ghana as well as that of several other African economies, not least for its large employment generation potential. Research on the governance of labour standards in the sector is, however, largely missing. The authors argue that labour incorporation dynamics represent a complex under-investigated regulatory challenge as well as a policy-making priority. The analysis is one of the first to offer a reconstruction of the governance landscape determining the challenges workers face in the Ghanaian construction sector, from both a qualitative and quantitative perspective.

Landscape evolution and the karst development in the Ojo Guareña multilevel cave system (Merindad de Sotoscueva, Burgos, Spain)

ABSTRACT The Ojo Guareña karst system (OG) is located in the SE Cantabrian Range in northern Spain (Burgos, Spain). It is a multilevel cave system composed of 6 levels and is one of the longest cavities in the Iberian Peninsula (110 km). The spatial patterns and geomorphological characteristics of OG constitute a first-order record for studying the principal mechanisms of how the karst evolved by reconstruction and analysis of the external landscape. This extended karst system is attributed to the action of the local drainage system driven by Quaternary climatic fluctuations and lithological-structural controls. To contribute to this debate, we performed a detailed geomorphological mapping of this area (1:25,000 scale), differentiating the landforms according to the main geomorphological processes (structural, gravity, fluvial, glacial, weathering and polygenetic) involved. These datasets were used to draw a detailed geomorphological map and give a preliminary interpretation of the local landscape evolution.

Cultural Heritage with the Use of Low-Level Aerial Survey Techniques, Space Modelling and Multimedia Reconstruction of the Topographic Landscape (Example of a Windmill in Western Poland)

Technological advancement of the last decades allowed one to develop the process of documentation and popularize the cultural heritage in the form of spatial objects and structures by means of reality modelling. The main goal of the article was to develop a methodology based on the compilation of activities in the field of acquisition (UAV), processing (Metashape and SkechUp), and publication (YouTube) of the data for the purpose of documentation and promotion of topographic cultural heritage objects recorded on nineteenth century maps (pre-industrial landscape). The research was carried out on a windmill located in Kamionka (Poland). It is located in the region of Wielkopolska (Witkowo borough), the cultural landscape of which, despite the progressive industrialization in the nineteenth century, has been shaped mainly by the agricultural land use. The most important results obtained at subsequent stages of the work were finally presented in the form of a short film. This type of presentation based on the use of multimedia is a comprehensive form of sharing research results. YouTube, as the leading medium for publishing audiovisual content, is one of the best places to share research results related to the promotion of cultural heritage.

Spatial and temporal patterns of upland vegetation over the last 200 years in the northern pyrenees: Example from the Bassiès valley, Ariège, France

Quantitative estimates of past vegetation with a clearly defined spatial scale are a critical step to better understand the patterns and processes of changes in vegetation and land-cover over time and space. However, such estimates are difficult to obtain from pollen data due to their lack of spatial dimension and the inter-taxonomic differences in pollen production, dispersal, and deposition mechanisms. This study assesses the potential of the Landscape Reconstruction Algorithm (LRA) to reconstruct the spatial and temporal patterns of upland vegetation in the Bassiès Valley, northern Pyrenees over the last 200 years, a period characterised by a decline of traditional pastoral activities. We used well-dated pollen records from eight bogs and ponds and vegetation and land-cover data within a 1-km radius from each site to evaluate the LRA-based reconstruction of local land-cover. The LRA approach was then used to reconstruct the 200-year history of local land-cover dynamics at 10 to 20-year intervals around each site in relation to land-abandonment. Our study shows that in addition to allowing long-term reconstruction, LRA estimates (1) are more sensitive to vegetation composition changes over time and space compared to historical land-cover maps and pollen percentages, and (2) improve the reconstruction of past local vegetation compared to pollen percentages alone. The LRA results reveal site-specific land-cover trajectories within the small-sized study area over 200 years. Some sites exhibit changes in land-cover composition with heathland and tree cover increase (ESC, EM), while others are found to be more stable, dominated 1) exclusively by heathland (LEG, W1652), 2) heathland with intermediate proportions of grassland (FOUZ, SIG), or 3) exclusively by grassland (OT). This land-cover composition variability over space and time may be related both to local topography and past grazing activity. The quantification of past vegetation dynamics provides opportunities for bridging the gap between researchers, policy makers and practitioners, and should be taken into account to further investigate the effect of long-term grazing activities on the past and modern plant and landscape diversity.

Disentangle the effects of environment and disturbance on landscape dynamics using LANDIS forest landscape model

Forest landscapes pattern and development are affected by environment and disturbance. Disentangling their effects is important to understanding current landscape and predicting future changes. Such studies are limited by short-term observation and sparse disturbance-history data. Spatially-explicit forest landscape modeling represents a solution to these limitations. Here, we reconstructed the 300-year-time-series (1710–2010) of post-volcanic-eruption forest landscapes experiencing periodic-typhoons in Changbai Mountain, China, using LANDIS forest landscape model. We used a factorial simulation design to quantify the main and interactive effects of environment and typhoon on forest landscape recovery. Results showed environment had dominant effects (>80%) on early recovery (1710–1760), suggesting early forest development follows deterministic community-assembly processes governed by environment. However, as forest matured, disturbance became dominant (>50%) at later-recovery stages (1860–2010). This study showed that historical landscape reconstruction reveals the full spectrum of interplays of environment, disturbance, and succession in forest ecosystems, which may not be captured by short-term studies.

Nutrigonometry II: Experimental strategies to maximize nutritional information in multidimensional performance landscapes.

Animals regulate their nutrient consumption to maximize the expression of fitness traits with competing nutritional needs (“nutritional trade‐offs”). Nutritional trade‐offs have been studied using a response surface modeling approach known as the Geometric Framework for nutrition (GF). Current experimental design in GF studies does not explore the entire area of the nutritional space resulting in performance landscapes that may be incomplete. This hampers our ability to understand the properties of the performance landscape (e.g., peak shape) from which meaningful biological insights can be obtained. Here, I tested alternative experimental designs to explore the full range of the performance landscape in GF studies. I compared the performance of the standard GF design strategy with three alternatives: hexagonal, square, and random points grid strategies with respect to their accuracy in reconstructing baseline performance landscapes from a landmark GF dataset. I showed that standard GF design did not reconstruct the properties of baseline performance landscape appropriately particularly for traits that respond strongly to the interaction between nutrients. Moreover, the peak estimates in the reconstructed performance landscape using standard GF design were accurate in terms of the nutrient ratio but incomplete in terms of peak shape. All other grid designs provided more accurate reconstructions of the baseline performance landscape while also providing accurate estimates of nutrient ratio and peak shape. Thus, alternative experimental designs can maximize information from performance landscapes in GF studies, enabling reliable biological insights into nutritional trade‐offs and physiological limits within and across species.

Environmental landscape and subsistence strategy of the Shunshanji Culture: A review.

The Shunshanji Culture is the earliest known Neolithic culture in the mid-lower Huai River. In recent years, with new discoveries and deeper studies of the Shunshanji Culture, the concept of the Shunshanji cultural site group has gradually formed. Among them, various types of rice remains have been unearthed in large quantities, which provide key materials for discussing rice farming, rice cultivation and domestication, and related issues in the Huai River Basin. Previous studies have conducted reconstruction of local vegetation landscape and analysis of subsistence strategies on some systematically excavated Shunshanji cultural sites and obtained some new understandings. Integrative research, however, is lacking. In this review, we combine the construction of the local environmental landscape with the settlement landform within the Shunshanji cultural site group and then incorporate it into the regional environmental evolution of the mid-lower Huai River. The consistency and difference in their subsistence were also summarized. In particular, we focus on the relevant clues of the early paddy field cultivation system in the region and perform comparative studies.

Research on garden landscape reconstruction based on geographic information system under the background of deep learning

Research on garden landscape reconstruction based on geographic information system under the background of deep learning

3D Modeling System of Indoor Environment Art Landscape Design under Statistical Equation

Abstract This paper establishes a three-dimensional virtual landscape model based on statistical equations. This paper completes the analysis of interior design requirements by analyzing the structure of the interior design platform and the indoor positioning algorithm from the three-dimensional virtual perspective. We realize the 3D reconstruction of indoor landscape through the 3D visual image reconstruction module and VRLM browser module. The experimental results show that the designed 3D virtual landscape is more realistic. Its artistic effect is better.

‘He Went Down to Joppa and Found a Ship Going to Tarshish’ (Jonah 1:3): Landscape Reconstruction at Jaffa and a Potential Early Harbour

Recent excavations of Tel Yafo (Jaffa), Israel, underscore its role as an historically important Mediterranean port. In 2014, the Ioppa Maritima Project conducted a geological investigation determining that from ca. 5000–2000 years BP, a small estuarine system existed east and north of Tel Yafo that could have served as a harbour. The marine re-entrant formed through sea-level rise and flooding of a small valley, and the stream mouth was probably also partially blocked by coastal sands. Sediment aggradation, wetland development, and anthropogenic activity largely filled the embayment leaving only a depression east of Tel Yafo in the area of Bloomfield Stadium and Groningen Park.

Geomorphological classification of the landscape in urban areas: hints from some study cases in Italy

Urban geomorphology is a recent topic and its theory and practice require continuous updates. However, few studies have focused on issues specifically connected with the cartographic representation of geomorphological processes and landforms in urban environments, with the aim of reconstructing and clarifying the original physical landscape. Recent studies conducted in Italian cities have tried to propose new strategies for detecting and mapping human induced modifications to the topography, and anthropogenic landform classification has been recently deepened in the revised Italian national guidelines for geomorphological mapping, proposed by AIGeo and ISPRA. In this work, natural landforms modified by man and new artificial landforms are explored and compared in three Italian cities: Genoa, Rome and Perugia. In these urban areas, human activities have remodeled the topographic surface and become the most important landscape moulder. Many reliefs have been erased, whereas thick layers of anthropogenic deposits covered most of the natural landforms, with the result, for example, of hiding or greatly modifying the natural drainage network. Geomorphological studies in urban environments allow the reconstruction of the physical landscape before human modifications and the implementation of innovative methodological tools, and an effective legend to represent the urban landforms and their evolution over time.

Developments of Conventional and Microfluidic Flow Cytometry Enabling High-Throughput Characterization of Single Cells

This article first reviews scientific meanings of single-cell analysis by highlighting two key scientific problems: landscape reconstruction of cellular identities during dynamic immune processes and mechanisms of tumor origin and evolution. Secondly, the article reviews clinical demands of single-cell analysis, which are complete blood counting enabled by optoelectronic flow cytometry and diagnosis of hematologic malignancies enabled by multicolor fluorescent flow cytometry. Then, this article focuses on the developments of optoelectronic flow cytometry for the complete blood counting by comparing conventional counterparts of hematology analyzers (e.g., DxH 900 of Beckman Coulter, XN-1000 of Sysmex, ADVIA 2120i of Siemens, and CELL-DYN Ruby of Abbott) and microfluidic counterparts (e.g., microfluidic impedance and imaging flow cytometry). Future directions of optoelectronic flow cytometry are indicated where intrinsic rather than dependent biophysical parameters of blood cells must be measured, and they can replace blood smears as the gold standard of blood analysis in the near future.

ScEpiLock: A Weakly Supervised Learning Framework for cis-Regulatory Element Localization and Variant Impact Quantification for Single-Cell Epigenetic Data.

Recent advances in single-cell transposase-accessible chromatin using a sequencing assay (scATAC-seq) allow cellular heterogeneity dissection and regulatory landscape reconstruction with an unprecedented resolution. However, compared to bulk-sequencing, its ultra-high missingness remarkably reduces usable reads in each cell type, resulting in broader, fuzzier peak boundary definitions and limiting our ability to pinpoint functional regions and interpret variant impacts precisely. We propose a weakly supervised learning method, scEpiLock, to directly identify core functional regions from coarse peak labels and quantify variant impacts in a cell-type-specific manner. First, scEpiLock uses a multi-label classifier to predict chromatin accessibility via a deep convolutional neural network. Then, its weakly supervised object detection module further refines the peak boundary definition using gradient-weighted class activation mapping (Grad-CAM). Finally, scEpiLock provides cell-type-specific variant impacts within a given peak region. We applied scEpiLock to various scATAC-seq datasets and found that it achieves an area under receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) of ~0.9 and an area under precision recall (AUPR) above 0.7. Besides, scEpiLock’s object detection condenses coarse peaks to only ⅓ of their original size while still reporting higher conservation scores. In addition, we applied scEpiLock on brain scATAC-seq data and reported several genome-wide association studies (GWAS) variants disrupting regulatory elements around known risk genes for Alzheimer’s disease, demonstrating its potential to provide cell-type-specific biological insights in disease studies.

De novo reconstruction of cell interaction landscapes from single-cell spatial transcriptome data with DeepLinc

Based on a deep generative model of variational graph autoencoder (VGAE), we develop a new method, DeepLinc (deep learning framework for Landscapes of Interacting Cells), for the de novo reconstruction of cell interaction networks from single-cell spatial transcriptomic data. DeepLinc demonstrates high efficiency in learning from imperfect and incomplete spatial transcriptome data, filtering false interactions, and imputing missing distal and proximal interactions. The latent representations learned by DeepLinc are also used for inferring the signature genes contributing to the cell interaction landscapes, and for reclustering the cells based on the spatially coded cell heterogeneity in complex tissues at single-cell resolution.