Search results for "aerial photograph"

Who's better at spotting? A comparison between aerial photography and observer-based methods to monitor floating marine litter and marine mega-fauna.

2020

Pollution by marine litter is raising major concerns due to its potential impact on marine biodiversity and, above all, on endangered mega-fauna species, such as cetaceans and sea turtles. The density and distribution of marine litter and mega-fauna have been traditionally monitored through observer-based methods, yet the advent of new technologies has introduced aerial photography as an alternative monitoring method. However, to integrate results produced by different monitoring techniques and consider the photographic method a viable alternative, this ‘new’ methodology must be validated. This study aims to compare observations obtained from the concurrent application of observer-based and…

Social Lives of Monumental Walls: Hunting along the Upper Tigris

2021

On the left bank of the Tigris in northern Iraq, in an area today partially flooded by the Mosul Dam reservoir, lies an enigmatic monumental enclosure known in the literature as the “Tigris Wall.” Before its partial submersion under the waters of the modern lake, the large L-shaped embankment, about 4 × 4 km long, enclosed an area of ca. 1600 ha, overlooking the Tigris and its alluvial plain. By means of a holistic strategy that includes different levels of analysis (remote sensing, pedestrian and UAV photogrammetric surveys, excavation, and settlement pattern analysis), this paper addresses the structure, its context, and its environment. Relying on the results of this multi-disciplinary a…

Assessment of Coastal Vulnerability in South Sicily

2006

Combining long-term land cover time series and field observations for spatially explicit predictions on changes in tropical forest biodiversity

2011

Combining spatially explicit land cover data from remote-sensing and faunal data from field observations is increasingly applied for landscape-scale habitat and biodiversity assessments, but without modelling changes quantitatively over time. In a novel approach, we used a long-term time series including historical map data to predict the influence of one century of tropical forest change on keystone species or indicator groups in the Kakamega–Nandi forests, western Kenya. Four time steps of land cover data between 1912/13 and 2003, derived from Landsat satellite imagery, aerial photography and old topographic maps, formed the basis for extrapolating species abundance data on the army ant D…

Mura Pregne: una revisione dei dati archeologici e una ricostruzione virtuale del sito

2018

One of the most interesting long-term settlements in Sicily is Mura Pregne (Palermo). The site (400 m a.s.l.) is located on the northern coast of Sicily, between the last northwestern outcrops of the Madonie and the isolated relief of Monte San Calogero, in a close-up position on the Torto river valley. The earliest phases of the settlement are scarcely known and difcult to assess in their actual consistency, because a quarry has distorted the original appearance of the site. In the absence of new excavations, the purpose of this contribution is to offer a topographic description of the diferent areas, together with new archaeological considerations, based on feld survey and aerial photo an…

Contribution of environmental factors to temperature distribution at different resolution levels on the forefield of the Loven Glaciers (Svalbard)

2007

ABSTRACTThe climate and its components (temperature and precipitation) are organised according to different spatial scales that are structured hierarchically. The aim of this paper is to explore the dependence between temperature and deterministic factors at different scales on a 10 km2 study area on the northwestern coast of Svalbard. A GIS was developed which contained three sources of information: temperature, remotely sensed imagery and digital elevation models (DEM), and derived raster data layers. The first layer, temperatures, was acquired at regularly observed temporal intervals from 53 stations. The second layer comprised remotely sensed images (aerial photography and SPOT imagery)…

Evolution des paysages Sahélines au cours des six dernières décennies dans la région de Niamey : de la disparition de la brousse tigrée à l'encroutem…

2010

In the Sahel, the rapid increase of the population during the last decades and the climate variation lead to an important environmental degradation. This work aims to measure the impacts of the human pressure on ecosystem during the six last decades. A diachronic cartography of a 100 km² area close to Niamey was done with aerial photographs (1950 and 1975) and GPS measurements (2009). Results showed that the tiger bush vegetation was completely cleared between 1950 and 2009 while the fallow decreases from 7 % to 1 %. In the sandy valley, the increase of cultivated fields from 20,7 % (1950) to 69,4 % (1975) favoured wind and water erosions which allowed surface soil crusting. Between 1975 an…

Medium-term shoreline evolution of the mediterranean coast of Andalusia (SW Spain)

2015

Coastal environment is a dynamic system in which numerous natural processes are continuously actuating and interacting among them. As a result, geomorphologic, physical and biological characteristics of coastal environments are constantly changing. Such dynamic balance is nowadays seriously threatened by the strong and increasing anthropic pressure that favors erosion processes, and the associated loss of environmental, ecologic and economic aspects. Sandy beaches are the most vulnerable environments in coastal areas. The aim of this work was to reconstruct the historical evolution of the Mediterranean coastline of Andalusia, Spain. The investigated area is about 500 km in length and includ…

The Impact of Driving Forces and Protection Policies on Future Coastal Landscapes: A Case Study of Latvia

2011

Landscapes and related land cover changes are essential elements of sustainable coastal zone management in Europe and in Latvia. The issue of landscape protection, management and planning was promoted as a result of the adoption of the European Landscape Convention (2000), while the Recommendations concerning the Implementation of Integrated Coastal Zone Management were adopted by the European Community (2002) to address land use issues. The Recommendations also emphasise the need to recognise the threat to coastal zones posed by Climate Change. This paper aims to contribute to the enhancement of landscape and coastal zone management policies by addressing the changes in coastal landscapes.…

Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) Survey with Commercial-Grade Instruments: A Case Study from the Eastern Ḫabur Archaeological Survey, Iraq

2018

Low-altitude photography in archaeology is now common practice at the scale of excavations; however, landscape-scale applications are a relatively new endeavor with promising analytical potential. From 2014–2016, an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) with a mounted camera was used to document sites recorded as part of the Eastern Ḫabur Archaeological Survey (EḪAS), an archaeological reconnaissance project in western Dohuk Province, Iraqi Kurdistan. The EḪAS team documented over 70 archaeological sites with the UAV, from single-phase artifact scatters, to archaeological remains with standing architecture, to tells that cover more than 30 hectares. Representative examples from this survey are pres…