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Articles 1 - 30 of 388

Full-Text Articles in Geography

Assessing Future Drought Scenarios In Rangpur, Bangladesh Using Cmip6 Climate Projections And Drought Indices, Mijanur Rahman, Hossain Al Mahbub, Mst Sanjida Alam, Janifer Alam, Nusrut Sharmin, Md Naim Molla Dec 2026

Assessing Future Drought Scenarios In Rangpur, Bangladesh Using Cmip6 Climate Projections And Drought Indices, Mijanur Rahman, Hossain Al Mahbub, Mst Sanjida Alam, Janifer Alam, Nusrut Sharmin, Md Naim Molla

Student Publications [Scholarly]

Climate-induced drought has become a growing concern across South Asia as rising temperatures and monsoon variability intensify hydroclimatic stress. This study evaluates historical (1979–2014) and future (2015–2100) hydroclimatic conditions in Rangpur using observed data and CanESM5 projections for three CMIP6 scenarios (SSP1-1.9, SSP2-2.6, SSP5-8.5). Multi-scale Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) and Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) were applied to detect droughts, while Tmax and Tmin Z-scores quantified heat anomalies and compound drought–temperature events. Historical records show strong rainfall variability with no significant long-term trend, but significant warming particularly in Tmin indicating increasing evaporative demand. Future projections reveal moderate precipitation increases (+ …


The U.S. Forest Monitor: Establishing A Historical Baseline For The Drivers And Climate Impacts Of Permanent Forest Loss, Christopher A. Williams, Natalia Hasler Oct 2026

The U.S. Forest Monitor: Establishing A Historical Baseline For The Drivers And Climate Impacts Of Permanent Forest Loss, Christopher A. Williams, Natalia Hasler

Geography

This report introduces the U.S. Forest Monitor, a new system for tracking permanent forest conversion across the United States and reveals that forest loss is occurring at a significant and increasing scale. The burden of forest loss is unevenly distributed with 11 states representing 70% of all loss nationally. Forestland provides critical benefits including habitat and biodiversity, clean water and air, outdoor recreation, healthy soils, and climate regulation. Forests today face many threats, including fire, pest outbreaks and other stressors. Permanent deforestation, the focus of this report, involves the clearing of forests for another land use – like development and …


Gis Methods To Distinguish Between Land Changes From Smallholder Agriculture And Mining In A Time Series For A Tropical Protected Area Forest, Pacifique Mubamba Madibi, Jean-Paul Kibambe Lubamba, Aiyin Zhang, Robert Gilmore Pontius Sep 2026

Gis Methods To Distinguish Between Land Changes From Smallholder Agriculture And Mining In A Time Series For A Tropical Protected Area Forest, Pacifique Mubamba Madibi, Jean-Paul Kibambe Lubamba, Aiyin Zhang, Robert Gilmore Pontius

Geography

Tropical protected areas face pressures from smallholder agriculture and illegal mining, yet many monitoring approaches reduce these dynamics to net forest loss, obscuring whether change is alternating or persistent. In the Okapi Wildlife Reserve, Democratic Republic of the Congo, where the zoning plan allows only nonperennial crops in agriculture zones and forbids mining throughout the reserve, we analyzed annual Joint Research Centre–Tropical Moist Forest maps from 2000 to 2024 at 30 m spatial resolution. We applied Trajectory Analysis and DynamicPATCH across three study zones: agriculture, mining, and hunting–conservation. Trajectory Analysis classifies each pixel’s twenty-five-year non-forest time series into categories such …


The Timing Of Albedo Declines With Reforestation, Christopher A. Williams, Surendra Shrestha, Susan Cook-Patton, Natalia Hasler, Drew E. Terasaki-Hart, Samantha Yeo Sep 2026

The Timing Of Albedo Declines With Reforestation, Christopher A. Williams, Surendra Shrestha, Susan Cook-Patton, Natalia Hasler, Drew E. Terasaki-Hart, Samantha Yeo

Geography

Reforestation is a leading climate solution for removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, but generally decreases surface albedo, which diminishes its climate mitigation value. Knowing how quickly this albedo effect unfolds relative to carbon removal is critical for planning climate mitigation actions, yet the temporal changes in albedo are poorly described. This study uses satellite observations to characterize temporal changes in albedo with stand development for different forest types and ecoclimatic settings around the world. We find that about half of the climate warming effect from decreased albedo occurs within 40 years, but that it takes anywhere from 50 to …


A Novel Edge-Based Accuracy Assessment Framework For Target Detection From Remotely Sensed Images, Yingfan Zhang, Weiyi Hou, Lyndon Estes, Rui Lu, Shijie Zhu, Aiyin Zhang, Zhou Shi, Su Ye Aug 2026

A Novel Edge-Based Accuracy Assessment Framework For Target Detection From Remotely Sensed Images, Yingfan Zhang, Weiyi Hou, Lyndon Estes, Rui Lu, Shijie Zhu, Aiyin Zhang, Zhou Shi, Su Ye

Geography

Accuracy assessment is critical for evaluating map quality and improving algorithms for target detection in remotely sensed images. Traditional methods for assessing a target-detection task were often performed by estimating the relative pixels of correct and incorrect identifications (e.g., F1 score). However, this approach only considers the pixel-by-pixel agreement and ignores important aspects of positional errors and target object quality. To provide comprehensive diagnostic information, we propose a novel edge-based accuracy assessment framework. This framework firstly applied a newly proposed assessment tool, Dynamic Epsilon-band Accuracy Function (DEAF), which is a linear fitting function from a series of edge accuracies associated …


Nasa Earth Exchange HawaiʻI Downscaled Climate Projections Cmip6 (Nex-Hidcp-Cmip6) Dataset, Bridget Thrasher, Ian Brosnan, Abby Frazier, Kristen Sanflippo, Matthew P. Lucas Aug 2026

Nasa Earth Exchange HawaiʻI Downscaled Climate Projections Cmip6 (Nex-Hidcp-Cmip6) Dataset, Bridget Thrasher, Ian Brosnan, Abby Frazier, Kristen Sanflippo, Matthew P. Lucas

Geography

Hawaiʻi’s complex topography, pronounced microclimates, and geographic isolation make coarse-scale global climate model output inadequate for local planning, and high-resolution climate projections tailored to the state have until now been lacking. To address this gap, we introduce the NASA Earth eXchange Hawaiʻi Downscaled Climate Projections CMIP6 (NEX-HIDCP-CMIP6), a new archive of downscaled historical and future climate projections based on output from Phase 6 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6) over the State of Hawaiʻi. The dataset covers the years 1950–2100 and includes three variables (maximum temperature, minimum temperature, and precipitation) from five CMIP6 experiments (the historical experiment and the …


Fresh Phytoplankton Bloom Growth In The Fall And Its Control On Ocean Heating In The Pacific Arctic Region, Clare B. Gaffey, K E. Frey, Bonnie Light, Lee W. Cooper, Jacqueline M. Grebmeier May 2026

Fresh Phytoplankton Bloom Growth In The Fall And Its Control On Ocean Heating In The Pacific Arctic Region, Clare B. Gaffey, K E. Frey, Bonnie Light, Lee W. Cooper, Jacqueline M. Grebmeier

Geography

Delayed sea ice freeze-up and decreased sea ice extent in the Pacific Arctic region have altered light availability in marine waters, extending the ice-free season and increasing opportunities for photosynthetic activity and energy exchanges. This study investigates phytoplankton bloom progression during the fall using chlorophyll pigments and examines the impact phytoplankton have on heat distribution within the water column. Measurements of chlorophyll-a concentrations and its associated degradation product pheophytin were made in conjunction with optical measurements of light transmittance within the upper water column during the Synoptic Arctic Survey cruise in the Central Arctic Ocean and northeast Chukchi Sea in …


Evaluating Long-Term Seasonal Variability Of Aerosol Optical Properties In Colorado, Erin K. Boedicker, Andre Bergeron, Gerardo Carrillo-Cardenas, Dominik Kulakowski, John Rogan, Elizabeth Andrews, Gannet A. Hallar May 2026

Evaluating Long-Term Seasonal Variability Of Aerosol Optical Properties In Colorado, Erin K. Boedicker, Andre Bergeron, Gerardo Carrillo-Cardenas, Dominik Kulakowski, John Rogan, Elizabeth Andrews, Gannet A. Hallar

Geography

Aerosol particles resulting from both wildfires and dust events introduce considerable uncertainty into both climate research and public health assessments. These challenges are becoming particularly evident in the western US. To gain a deeper understanding of western US aerosol properties, we analyzed 13 years (2011–2024) of surface in-situ aerosol optical data from Storm Peak Laboratory (SPL) in northwestern Colorado, and 6 years (2019–2024) of surface in-situ aerosol optical data from Table Mountain (BOS) in central Colorado. The aerosol optical properties at both sites demonstrate a strong summer wildfire smoke signal (peaking in August) and evidence of springtime dust events. BOS …


Energy Transitions By Wire? The Spatial Politics Of Transmission Development In New England, Maddy Kroot Apr 2026

Energy Transitions By Wire? The Spatial Politics Of Transmission Development In New England, Maddy Kroot

Student Publications [Scholarly]

This data set is a corpus of de-identified transcripts from a doctoral research project examining local opposition to two high-voltage transmission lines in northern New England. The corpus includes 41 transcripts from interview participants who consented for their de-identified transcripts to be posted to the Clark Digital Commons. This research was supported by the NSF Human-Environment and Geographical Sciences Doctoral  Dissertation Research Improvement Award (#2400991).


Local Institutions Mediate Effects Of Land Scarcity In Indigenous Territories In Amazonia, Ana Lucía Araujo Raurau, Oliver T. Coomes Apr 2026

Local Institutions Mediate Effects Of Land Scarcity In Indigenous Territories In Amazonia, Ana Lucía Araujo Raurau, Oliver T. Coomes

Student Publications [Scholarly]

Indigenous territories in Amazonia sustain forest cover through the practice of swidden-fallow agriculture, yet declining land availability threatens both the ecological sustainability of this agricultural system and its contributions to community livelihoods. While scholars recognize land scarcity’s potential to drive transformations in shifting cultivation systems, we lack a systematic understanding of how local institutional frameworks shape heterogeneous responses to resource constraints. This study examines how land access mechanisms, distribution dynamics and property regimes among Indigenous communities mediate experiences of and adaptations to land scarcity in the Peruvian Amazon. We conducted a comparative case study of Solidaridad and Tamboruna, two land-scarce …


Altimetry Data From Icesat-2 Brings Value To The Private Sector, Molly E. Brown, Aimee Neeley, Abigail Phillips, Denis Felikson Apr 2026

Altimetry Data From Icesat-2 Brings Value To The Private Sector, Molly E. Brown, Aimee Neeley, Abigail Phillips, Denis Felikson

Student Publications [Scholarly]

This short communication synthesizes evidence on how the Ice, Cloud and Land Elevation Satellite-2 (ICESat-2) altimetry data are used by private sector actors and the implications for economic value creation. Using secondary research that collected and summarized information from existing data from reports, journals, websites, and databases, the work identifies 54 companies across 9 sectors leveraging ICESat-2-derived elevation, canopy height, bathymetry, and surface measurements to inform decision-making, risk assessment, and new business models. The analysis situates ICESat-2 within a broader context where freely available Earth observation data can generate substantial private- and public-sector value, potentially exceeding hundreds of billions in …


Is Field Size An Indicator Of Farm Size In Smallholder-Dominated Croplands?, Sitian Xiong, Protensia Hadunka, Brian P. Mulenga, Kathy Baylis, Philippe Rufin, Lyndon Estes Mar 2026

Is Field Size An Indicator Of Farm Size In Smallholder-Dominated Croplands?, Sitian Xiong, Protensia Hadunka, Brian P. Mulenga, Kathy Baylis, Philippe Rufin, Lyndon Estes

Geography

Farm size is a key characteristic of agricultural systems, closely linked to farming and land management practices. However, data on farm size are often difficult to obtain, especially in smallholder-dominated regions, and where available, they are rarely spatially explicit. This study examines the use of field size as a proxy for farm size, aiming to identify field size thresholds that can distinguish farms of different sizes. Using household-level data from Zambia’s Crop Forecast Survey, we applied both continuous and categorical methods to quantify the field-to-farm size relationship. Non-parametric Theil–Sen regression revealed a generally linear relationship between log-transformed field and farm …


A Framework For Food Reliability In Zambia, Junren Wang, Megan Konar, Sitian Xiong Mar 2026

A Framework For Food Reliability In Zambia, Junren Wang, Megan Konar, Sitian Xiong

Student Publications [Scholarly]

Ensuring the reliability of domestic food supplies is increasingly critical given the compounding shocks of production variability, transportation constraints, and demand surges. This study develops a spatially explicit framework for Zambia, introducing the food reliability index to quantify the probability that food requirements exceed supply under stochastic conditions. By integrating probabilistic production estimates with a gravity model of domestic trade, we evaluate reliability dynamics across rural and urban landscapes. We apply this framework to establish a 2020 baseline and project future vulnerabilities to 2050. To address projected deficits, we simulate intervention scenarios, comparing the efficacy of cropland expansion, yield intensification, …


Geospatial Analysis Of Urban Heat Islands And Heat Vulnerability In Chattogram, Bangladesh: Implications For Public Health Risks, Mst Sanjida Alam Feb 2026

Geospatial Analysis Of Urban Heat Islands And Heat Vulnerability In Chattogram, Bangladesh: Implications For Public Health Risks, Mst Sanjida Alam

Student Publications [Scholarly]

Rapid urbanization and land use change are intensifying the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect and its associated health risks. It is the most common problem in the cities across the Global South. Chattogram the second-largest city in Bangladesh that has highly urbanized and experiencing transformation of croplands and vegetation into impervious surfaces. The changes contribute to the increase in the surface temperature and vulnerability of urban residents. This study aims to determine spatiotemporal patterns of UHI between 2011 and 2024 and the Heat Vulnerability Index (HVI) for 2024 and its associated health risk of Chattogram District. The HVI was developed …


The Rise Of Brownfield Mining Is Reshaping Global Mineral Supply And Intensifying Social And Environmental Risk, Deanna Kamp, Julia Loginova, Alex M. Lechner, Michelle Li Ern Ang, Riska A. Kuswati, Muhamad Risqi U. Saputra, Corinne Unger, Anthony J. Bebbington, John R. Owen Feb 2026

The Rise Of Brownfield Mining Is Reshaping Global Mineral Supply And Intensifying Social And Environmental Risk, Deanna Kamp, Julia Loginova, Alex M. Lechner, Michelle Li Ern Ang, Riska A. Kuswati, Muhamad Risqi U. Saputra, Corinne Unger, Anthony J. Bebbington, John R. Owen

Geography

Global mineral demand is rising faster than supply growth, driven by efforts to scale renewable energy, transport, digital, and defense infrastructure. Yet, new mine commissioning has slowed, with production growth sustained by “brownfield” mining—expanding and intensifying extraction at existing sites. Because mine expansion is considered routine industry practice, questions about the global scale and scope of brownfielding are not prominent in public discussion or scientific research, limiting our understanding of its socioecological risks. Here, we leverage global production, exploration, and capital-expenditure data from 1998 to 2024 to uncover a decade-long acceleration in brownfield mining. We identify 366 brownfield mines, with …


Assessing The Robustness Of Prithvi Geospatial Foundation Model For Coastal Habitat Mapping Under Data Availability And Domain Shift Scenarios, Sam Khallaghi, Rishi Singh, Rahebeh Abedi, Ronald J. Eastman, Lyndon Estes, Sujit Roy, Rahul Ramachandran, Hamed Alemohammad Jan 2026

Assessing The Robustness Of Prithvi Geospatial Foundation Model For Coastal Habitat Mapping Under Data Availability And Domain Shift Scenarios, Sam Khallaghi, Rishi Singh, Rahebeh Abedi, Ronald J. Eastman, Lyndon Estes, Sujit Roy, Rahul Ramachandran, Hamed Alemohammad

Geography

Self-supervised learning techniques and geospatial foundation models are garnering increasing attention within the remote sensing community, marking a pivotal shift toward more adaptable, generalizable and data efficient methodologies. Despite their growing popularity, comparative analyses between these emergent models and traditional, task-specific supervised deep learning models for tasks such as semantic segmentation remain largely unexplored. This study is formulated as a comparative analysis to scrutinize the efficacy of the finetuned Prithvi geospatial foundation models against a supervised convolutional neural network trained from scratch for semantic segmentation of mangrove forests and pond aquaculture under varying levels of data availability and domain shift. …


Legibility Grabs: Contesting Hegemony And Water Governance In Western Bahia, Brazil, Rowan A. Compton, Gustavo De L.T. Oliveira Jan 2026

Legibility Grabs: Contesting Hegemony And Water Governance In Western Bahia, Brazil, Rowan A. Compton, Gustavo De L.T. Oliveira

Geography

This article examines how irrigated agribusiness interests in western Bahia, Brazil, are capturing the infrastructure of water governance itself — the basin committees, digital monitoring platforms, and fee structures through which water becomes visible and governable. Drawing on Gramscian theories of hegemony and James Scott's analysis of state legibility, we develop the concept of ‘legibility grabs’ to describe how dominant actors appropriate not only resources but the institutional mechanisms that render those resources objects of governance. Based on documentary analysis and 48 interviews conducted during fieldwork in 2024–2025, we demonstrate how agribusiness has waged wars of position within participatory institutions, …


Improved Climate Services In Hawai‘I: The Collaborative Development Of Drought-Related Decision Support Tools, Ryan J. Longman, Derek Ford, Cherryle Heu, Jennifer Geis, Abby Frazier, Christian P. Giardina, James T. Potemra, Sean B. Cleveland, John J. Marra Jan 2026

Improved Climate Services In Hawai‘I: The Collaborative Development Of Drought-Related Decision Support Tools, Ryan J. Longman, Derek Ford, Cherryle Heu, Jennifer Geis, Abby Frazier, Christian P. Giardina, James T. Potemra, Sean B. Cleveland, John J. Marra

Geography

Rising temperatures, prolonged droughts, and increasingly variable rainfall are negatively impacting natural and cultural resources and agricultural production systems in Hawai‘i. To effectively manage resources in the face of these changes, stewards and producers now require accurate, timely, and site-specific climate data and information. However, access to such data as well as the ability to interpret available data remain limited for many sectors. In response to various needs, a team of scientists working with the Pacific Drought Knowledge Exchange (PDKE) has developed two open-source decision-support tools (DSTs) through a collaborative, user-informed process aimed at closing longstanding gaps in local climate …


Municipal Budgeting In Times Of Crisis: A Study Of Fiscal Conjunctures In Three U.S. Cities, Mark Davidson, Kevin Ward Jan 2026

Municipal Budgeting In Times Of Crisis: A Study Of Fiscal Conjunctures In Three U.S. Cities, Mark Davidson, Kevin Ward

Geography

Since the late 1950s and early 1960s, U.S. cities have been associated with various types of crises. Recent decades have been no exception, with the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) and COVID-19 pandemic being external events that severely disrupted U.S. urban fiscal governance. This disruption involves both the generation of new challenges (e.g., housing market declines, social distancing) and a worsening of longstanding urban challenges relating to, for example, housing, inequality, racism, segregation, and so on. This paper focuses on how the internal fiscal governance of three U.S. cities—Buffalo, Nashville, and San Jose—navigated the GFC and COVID-19 pandemic. We find that …


The Landless Rural Workers Movement (Mst) And New Agrarian Questions In Brazil, Estavan Coca, Gustavo Oliveira Jan 2026

The Landless Rural Workers Movement (Mst) And New Agrarian Questions In Brazil, Estavan Coca, Gustavo Oliveira

Geography

The Landless Rural Workers Movement of Brazil (MST) primarily organized occupations of large-scale farms, forcing the redistribution of land for creation of agrarian reform settlements. In the past 20 years, however, land occupations and the establishment of new agrarian reform settlements have consistently declined, while the MST shifted strategies to strengthening existing agrarian reform settlements, increasing marketing mechanisms through government purchasing programs and direct rural–urban connections, cultivating new financial instruments, advancing agroecological transformations to strengthen production and contesting space in governance and discourse about sustainability, rural development and socio-ecological wellbeing. We argue this shift represents not an abandonment of the …


Addressing Critiques Refines Global Estimates Of Reforestation Potential For Climate Change Mitigation, Kurt A. Fesenmeyer, Erin E. Poor, Drew E. Terasaki Hart, Joseph W. Veldman, Forrest Fleischman, Pooja Choksi, Sally Archibald, Mohammed Armani, Matthew E. Fagan, Evan C. Fricke, César Terrer, Natalia Hasler, Christopher A. Williams, Peter W. Ellis, Susan Cook-Patton Dec 2025

Addressing Critiques Refines Global Estimates Of Reforestation Potential For Climate Change Mitigation, Kurt A. Fesenmeyer, Erin E. Poor, Drew E. Terasaki Hart, Joseph W. Veldman, Forrest Fleischman, Pooja Choksi, Sally Archibald, Mohammed Armani, Matthew E. Fagan, Evan C. Fricke, César Terrer, Natalia Hasler, Christopher A. Williams, Peter W. Ellis, Susan Cook-Patton

Geography

Reforestation is a prominent climate change mitigation strategy, but available global maps of reforestation potential are widely criticized and highly variable, which limits their ability to provide robust estimates of both the locations and total area of opportunity. Here we develop global maps that address common critiques, build on a review of 89 reforestation maps created at multiple scales, and present eight reforestation scenarios with varying objectives, including providing ecosystem services, minimizing social conflicts, and delivering government policies. Across scenarios, we find up to 195 Mha (million hectares) are available (2225 TgCO2e (teragrams of carbon dioxide equivalent) per year total …


A Pan-Amazonian Dataset Integrating 20 Years Of Respiratory, Cardiovascular, Zoonotic And Vector-Borne Disease Cases And Landscape Changes, Julia Rodrigues Barreto, Florencia Sangermano, Ana Filipa Palmeirim, Farah Carrasco-Rueda, Benoit De Thoisy, Adrian González-Chaves, Maria Eugenia Grillet, Victoria Morpurgo-Dest, Catalina Zuluaga Rodríguez, Nerida Nadia H. Valero, Paula R. Prist Dec 2025

A Pan-Amazonian Dataset Integrating 20 Years Of Respiratory, Cardiovascular, Zoonotic And Vector-Borne Disease Cases And Landscape Changes, Julia Rodrigues Barreto, Florencia Sangermano, Ana Filipa Palmeirim, Farah Carrasco-Rueda, Benoit De Thoisy, Adrian González-Chaves, Maria Eugenia Grillet, Victoria Morpurgo-Dest, Catalina Zuluaga Rodríguez, Nerida Nadia H. Valero, Paula R. Prist

Geography

As anthropogenic pressures continue to impact the environment, human health is expected to be subsequently affected. This dataset provides a comprehensive view of the trends and burden of infectious diseases, along with environmental metrics, across the Amazon biome between 2000 and 2019. The dataset includes health indicators for respiratory, cardiovascular, and major zoonotic and vector-borne diseases (Chagas disease, hantavirus, cutaneous leishmaniasis, visceral Leishmaniasis, rickettsial diseases, and malaria), compiled as annual case counts at the municipal level. The innovation of this dataset lies in its unprecedented assembly of data for this transboundary biome—much of it requiring ground-level collection beyond available in …


Real-Time Malaria Detection In The Amazon Rainforest Via Drone-Collected Edna And Portable Qpcr, Yin Cheong Aden Ip, Luca Montemartini, Jia Jin Marc Chang, Andrea Desiderato, Nicolás D. Franco-Sierra, Christian Geckeler, Mailyn Adriana Gonzalez Herrera, Michele Gregorini, Meret Jucker, Steffen Kirchgeorg, Martina Lüthi, Elvira Mächler, Frederik Bendix Thostrup, Guglielmo Murari, Marina Mura, Paola Pulido-Santacruz, Florencia Sangermano, Tobias Schindler, Claus Melvad, Stefano Mintchev, Kristy Deiner Dec 2025

Real-Time Malaria Detection In The Amazon Rainforest Via Drone-Collected Edna And Portable Qpcr, Yin Cheong Aden Ip, Luca Montemartini, Jia Jin Marc Chang, Andrea Desiderato, Nicolás D. Franco-Sierra, Christian Geckeler, Mailyn Adriana Gonzalez Herrera, Michele Gregorini, Meret Jucker, Steffen Kirchgeorg, Martina Lüthi, Elvira Mächler, Frederik Bendix Thostrup, Guglielmo Murari, Marina Mura, Paola Pulido-Santacruz, Florencia Sangermano, Tobias Schindler, Claus Melvad, Stefano Mintchev, Kristy Deiner

Geography

Zoonotic malaria risk at human-wildlife-environment interfaces requires surveillance that integrates signals from reservoirs, vectors and the environment. We coupled a drone-based environmental DNA (eDNA) canopy swabbing approach with portable quantitative PCR (qPCR) to detect Plasmodium DNA in situ during a 24-h field exercise in the Amazon rainforest. Drone-lowered sterile swabs into the canopy, which were then extracted and subjected to a multiplex pan-Plasmodium assay targeting five human-infecting Plasmodium species (limit of detection 0.2 parasites μL−1). Of 12 samples (10 canopy swabs, 2 field blanks; 13 total runs including repeats), one canopy swab amplified in duplicate (Ct = 28.7 and 29.23), …


A Gis Method To Analyze Trajectories Of Gross Changes Through Multiple Temporal Resolutions With An Application To Brazilian Soybean Cultivation, Thomas Mumuni Bilintoh, Robert Gilmore Pontius, Gustavo Oliveira, Julia Shimbo Dec 2025

A Gis Method To Analyze Trajectories Of Gross Changes Through Multiple Temporal Resolutions With An Application To Brazilian Soybean Cultivation, Thomas Mumuni Bilintoh, Robert Gilmore Pontius, Gustavo Oliveira, Julia Shimbo

Geography

Our manuscript presents Trajectory Analysis, which is a novel method to characterize patterns of gross changes during a time series of raster maps. This manuscript is our first article to elaborate on concepts and features of Trajectory Analysis that are necessary to analyze more than two time intervals. The method computes up to eight trajectories and three components of change: Quantity, Exchange, and Alternation. Quantity is the absolute net change between the two time points that bound the temporal extent. Exchange is the additional gross change between the same two time points. Alternation is the additional gross change that derives …


Optimizing Future Cropland Allocation In A Biodiverse Savanna By Integrating Agricultural Benefits And Ecological Costs, Lei Song, Amy Frazier, Christopher L. Crawford, Anna B. Estes, Lyndon Estes Nov 2025

Optimizing Future Cropland Allocation In A Biodiverse Savanna By Integrating Agricultural Benefits And Ecological Costs, Lei Song, Amy Frazier, Christopher L. Crawford, Anna B. Estes, Lyndon Estes

Geography

Context: Producing sufficient food to meet a growing population while minimizing the ecological impacts of agricultural expansion is a major global challenge, particularly in biodiverse regions where cropland development threatens ecological integrity. Tanzania exemplifies this tension, as efforts to meet food security goals often conflict with the conservation of its rich ecosystems. Objectives: We aimed to optimize the spatial allocation of future cropland to balance agricultural productivity with key ecological objectives. Additionally, we evaluated alternative strategies for meeting future food demands, such as increasing cropland usage intensity and expanding high-yield crops, to reduce pressure for further cropland expansion. Methods: We …


A Gis Method To Summarize Changes Among Classes During A Time Series With An Application To Land Cover In Western Bahia, Brazil, Robert Gilmore Pontius, Antonio Victor Galvão Da Fonseca Nov 2025

A Gis Method To Summarize Changes Among Classes During A Time Series With An Application To Land Cover In Western Bahia, Brazil, Robert Gilmore Pontius, Antonio Victor Galvão Da Fonseca

Geography

Petabytes of raster maps exist that show numerous classes across a series of many time points. Scientists need new methods to summarize the temporal changes so scientists can understand broad patterns and have guidance for how to look deeper into particular places, trajectories, classes, and time intervals. Our manuscript addresses this need by presenting an innovative method that summarizes the temporal changes in terms of a map of four trajectories and bar charts of five components: quantity, allocation exchange, allocation shift, alternation exchange, and alternation shift. An application illustrates the method using 16 land cover classes at 7 time points …


Aedes Aegypti In The City Of Córdoba: Spatial Distribution And Habitat Suitability Drivers, Elisabet M. Benitez, Florencia Sangermano, Francisco F. Ludueña-Almeida, Walter R. Almirón, Elizabet L. Estallo Sep 2025

Aedes Aegypti In The City Of Córdoba: Spatial Distribution And Habitat Suitability Drivers, Elisabet M. Benitez, Florencia Sangermano, Francisco F. Ludueña-Almeida, Walter R. Almirón, Elizabet L. Estallo

Geography

Background: According to the World Health Organization, dengue is among the top ten global health threats. The invasion of new sites by Aedes aegypti and their permanence depends on environmental characteristics of the site. Therefore, the objective was to understand the environmental characteristics that affect Ae. aegypti distribution in Córdoba city, Argentina. Methods: This evaluation was carried out through species distribution models, using maximum entropy modeling technique, incorporating a set of environmental variables known to influence the presence and suitability of Ae. aegypti habitats. The factors evaluated included both meteorological variables, such as minimum and maximum temperature and average precipitation, …


From The Great Recession To The Post-Covid 19 Pandemic U.S. Municipal Fiscal Condition: “Austerity Urbanism,” “Pragmatic Municipalism” And On-Going Explanatory Challenges, Mark Davidson, Kevin Ward Sep 2025

From The Great Recession To The Post-Covid 19 Pandemic U.S. Municipal Fiscal Condition: “Austerity Urbanism,” “Pragmatic Municipalism” And On-Going Explanatory Challenges, Mark Davidson, Kevin Ward

Geography

How much did the Great Recession change U.S. municipal budgetary and fiscal governance? According to an academic literature that subsequently emerged, the period saw a combination of both change and continuity. The work offered two distinct ways to explain and understand the emerging context: austerity urbanism and pragmatic municipalism. This paper reviews these explanations with the goal of showing how and why they developed contrasting conceptualizations. We argue differing epistemological approaches underpin the two competing approaches. Understanding these differences is, we argue, critical for moving forward. The COVID 19 pandemic saw another round of changes to U.S. municipal budgetary and …


A Multi-Scale Approach For Integrating Species Distribution Models With Landscape Connectivity To Identify Critical Linkage Zones For African Savanna Elephants (Loxodonta Africana), Lei Song, Amy E. Frazier, Anna Bond Estes, Lyndon Despard Estes Aug 2025

A Multi-Scale Approach For Integrating Species Distribution Models With Landscape Connectivity To Identify Critical Linkage Zones For African Savanna Elephants (Loxodonta Africana), Lei Song, Amy E. Frazier, Anna Bond Estes, Lyndon Despard Estes

Geography

The populations of African savanna elephants have declined by an estimated 60 % since the 1970s, which can be attributed to a mixture of poaching and habitat loss. Human activities and environmental changes have caused unprecedented loss and fragmentation of elephant natural habitats, resulting in the isolation of elephant populations. Preserving habitat connectivity is thus increasingly important to conserve remaining elephants' populations and maintain ecological functions. A major challenge in large-scale connectivity modeling is data availability constraints. To tackle this issue, we developed an integrated modeling approach that leverages multiple, publicly available occurrence datasets, which vary in format and quality, …


Dynamicpatch: Method And Software For Spatially Explicit Dynamic Patch Transition Characterization, Aiyin Zhang, Robert Gilmore Pontius, Thomas Mumuni Bilintoh, Florencia Sangermano, John Rogan Jul 2025

Dynamicpatch: Method And Software For Spatially Explicit Dynamic Patch Transition Characterization, Aiyin Zhang, Robert Gilmore Pontius, Thomas Mumuni Bilintoh, Florencia Sangermano, John Rogan

Geography

Context: Decades of research have used spatial pattern metrics at time points, such as those in FRAGSTATS, to measure the net change of landscape configuration and composition during time intervals. However, metrics at time points fail to quantify a time interval’s gross change, which can be substantially larger than net change between two time points. The field of landscape ecology has lacked a conceptual framework and accompanying software to characterize patterns of gross change during time intervals in terms of patches that are spatially explicit with a typology that is mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive.

Objectives: We present a new …