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Publications

NIBIOs employees contribute to several hundred scientific articles and research reports every year. You can browse or search in our collection which contains references and links to these publications as well as other research and dissemination activities. The collection is continously updated with new and historical material.

2022

Abstract

When you care about data integrity of spatial data you need to know about the limitations/weaknesses of using simple feature datatype in your database. For instance https://land.copernicus.eu/pan-european/corine-land-cover/clc2018 contains 2,377,772 simple features among which we find 852 overlaps and 1420 invalid polygons. For this test I used “ESRI FGDB” file and gdal for import to postgis. We find such minor overlaps and gaps quite often, which might not be visible for the human eye. The problem here is that it covers up for real errors and makes difficult to enforce database integrity constraints for this. Close parallel lines also seems to cause Topology Exception in many spatial libraries. A core problem with simple features is that they don't contain information about the relation they have with neighbor features, so integrity of such relations is hard to constraint. Another problem is mixing of old and new data in the payload from the client. This makes it hard and expensive to create clients, because you will need a full stack of spatial libraries and maybe a complete locked exact snapshot of your database on the client side. Another thing is that a common line may differ from client to client depending on spatial lib, snapTo usage, tolerance values and transport formats. In 2022 many system are depending on live updates also for spatial data. So it’s big advantage to be able to provide a simple and “secure” API’s with fast server side integrity constraints checks that can be used from a standard web browser. When we have this checks on server side we will secure the equal rules across different clients. Is there alternatives that can secure data integrity in a better way? Yes, for instance Postgis Topology. The big difference is that Postgis Topology has more open structure that is realized by using standard database relational features. This lower the complexity of the client and secures data integrity. In the talk “Use Postgis Topology to secure data integrity, simple API and clean up messy simple feature datasets.” we will dive more into the details off Postgis Topology Building an API for clients may be possible using simple features, but it would require expensive computations to ensure topological integrity but to solve problem with mixing of new and old borders parts can not be solved without breaking the polygon up into logical parts. Another thing is attribute handling, like if you place surface partly overlapping with another surface should that have an influence on the attributes on the new surface. We need to focus more on data integrity and the complexity and cost of creating clients when using simple feature, because the demands for spatial data updated in real time from many different clients in a secure and consistent way will increase. This will be main focus in this talk. https://www.slideshare.net/laopsahl/dataintegrityriskswhenusingsimplefeaturepdf

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Abstract

European beech (Fagus sylvatica L.) forests provide multiple essential ecosystem goods and services. The projected climatic conditions for the current century will significantly affect the vitality of European beech. The expected impact of climate change on forest ecosystems will be potentially stronger in southeast Europe than on the rest of the continent. Therefore, our aim was to use the long-term monitoring data of crown vitality indicators in Croatia to identify long-term trends, and to investigate the influence of current and previous year climate conditions and available site factors using defoliation (DEF) and defoliation change (DDEF) as response variables. The results reveal an increasing trend of DEF during the study period from 1996 to 2017. In contrast, no significant trend in annual DDEF was observed. The applied linear mixed effects models indicate a very strong influence of previous year drought on DDEF, while climate conditions have a weak or insignificant effect on DEF. The results suggest that site factors explain 25 to 30% DEF variance, while similar values of conditional and marginal R2 show a uniform influence of drought on DDEF. These results suggest that DEF represents the accumulated impact of location-specific stressful environmental conditions on tree vitality, while DDEF reflects intense stress and represents the current or recent status of tree vitality that could be more appropriate for analysing the effect of climate conditions on forest trees.

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Abstract

Democratizing learning is essential for environmental sustainability. Less privileged areas are crucial in this regard. Informal education has great such potential, but often fails to reach the less privileged, and to document learning. With the objective to identify and counter these issues, we here report on EDU-ARCTIC, an informal open schooling course in environmental science, aimed at European teachers with teenage pupils. Of the 1,181 teachers who enrolled, 73% were females and 43% were from less privileged nations (according to UN Human Development Index). This is a higher share of less privileged (females) than is the case for the general population of Europe. Teachers from less privileged nations also participated in more project activities than did those from more privileged nations, apart from in urban areas. For the project period, the teachers reported a significant increase in all the three categories of aspired learning outcomes for their pupils. We conclude that courses like ours can increase teenagers’ literacy and engagement in science and environmental issues, not the least in less privileged areas. Deliberate efforts are required to reach these target groups, who may be less inclined to join on their own.

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Abstract

The preservation of the functionality of forest soil is a key aspect in planning mechanized harvesting operations. Therefore, knowledge and information about stand and soil characteristics are vital to the planning process. In this respect, depth-to-water (DTW) maps were reviewed with regard to their potential use as a prediction tool for wheel ruts. To test the applicability of open source DTW maps for prediction of rutting, the ground surface conditions of 20 clear-cut sites were recorded post harvesting, using an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). In total, 80 km of machine tracks were categorized by the severity of occurring rut-formations to investigate whether: i) operators intuitively avoid areas with low DTW values, ii) a correlation exists between decreasing DTW values and increasing rut severity, and iii) DTW maps can serve as reliable decision-making tool in minimizing the environmental effects of big machinery deployment. While the machine operators did not have access to these predictions (DTW maps) during the operations, there was no visual evidence that driving through these areas was actively avoided, resulting in a higher density of severe rutting within areas with DTW values <1 m. A logistic regression analysis confirmed that the probability of severe rutting rapidly increases with decreasing DTW values. However, significant differences between sites exist which might be attributed to a series of other factors such as soil type, weather conditions, number of passes and load capacity. Monitoring these factors is hence highly recommended in any further follow-up studies on soil trafficability.

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Abstract

Parts of the limited agricultural land area in Norway are taken up by buildings, roads, and other permanent changes every year. A method that detects such changes immediately after they have taken place is required in order to monitor the agricultural areas closely. To that end, Sentinel-2 satellite image time series (SITS) acquired during the summer of 2019 were used to detect the agricultural areas taken up by permanent changes such as buildings and roads. A deep-learning algorithm using 1D convolutional neural network (CNN), with the convolution in the temporal dimension, was applied to the SITS data. The training data was collected from the building footprints dataset filtered using a mono-temporal image aided with the areal resource map (AR5). The deep-learning model was trained and evaluated before being used for prediction in two regions of Norway. Procedures to reduce overfitting of the model to the training data were also implemented. The trained model showed a high level of accuracy and robustness when evaluated based on a test dataset kept out of the training process. The trained model was then used to predict new built-up areas in agricultural fields in two Sentinel-2 tiles. The prediction was able to detect areas taken by new buildings, roads, parking areas and other similar changes. The prediction was then evaluated with respect to the existing building footprints after a few post-processing procedures. A high percentage of the buildings were detected by the method, except for small buildings. The details of the methods and the results obtained, together with brief discussion, are presented in this paper.