1,720,971 research outputs found

    Anthropogenic influences on deforestation of peat swamp forest in Northern Borneo using remote sensing and GIS

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    Aim of study: To study the anthropogenic factors that influence the fire occurrences in a peat swamp forest (PSF) in the northern part of Borneo Island. Area of study: Klias Peninsula, Sabah Borneo Island, Malaysia. Material and methods: Supervised classification using the maximum likelihood algorithm of multitemporal satellite imageries from the mid-80s to the early 20s was used to quantify the wetland vegetation change on Klias Peninsula. GISbased buffering analysis was made to generate three buffer zones with distances of 1000 m, 2000 m, and 3000 m based on each of three anthropogenic factors (settlement, agriculture, and road) that influence the fire events. Main results: The results showed that PSF, barren land, and grassland have significantly changed between 1991 and 2013. PSF plummeted by about 70% during the 19-year period. Agriculture exhibited the most significant anthropogenic factor that contributes to the deforestation of the PSF in this study area with the distance of 1001-2000 m in 1998 fire event and 0-1000 m in 2003. Additionally, the distance to settlement played an increasingly important role in the fire affected areas, as shown by the increase of weightages from 0.26 to 0.35. Research highlights: Our results indicate that agriculture is the most influential anthropogenic factor associated with the fire-affected areas. The distance to settlement played an increasingly important role in the fire affected areas and contributes to the deforestation of the PSF in these study areas

    Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis

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    The present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed

    Variations on the Author

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    “Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship

    Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis

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    We provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis

    Assessing impact of multiple fires on a tropical peat swamp forest using high and very high-resolution satellite images

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    Tropical peat swamp forests, found mainly in Southeast Asia, have been threatened by recurring El Niño fires. Repeated burnings form a complex and heterogeneous landscape comprising a mosaic of burned patches of different fire frequencies, requiring fine-scale assessment to understand their impact. We examined the impact of the El Niño fires of 1998 and 2003 on a tropical peat swamp forest in northern Borneo, with the combined use of high and very high-resolution satellite images. Object-based and pixel-based classifications were compared to classify a QuickBird image. Burned patches of different fire frequencies were derived based on unsupervised classification of the principal components of multitemporal Normalized Difference Water Index (NDWI) data. The results show that the object-based classification was more accurate than the pixel-based classification for generating a detailed land cover map. Fire frequency had a severe impact on the number of burned patches and the residual forest cover. Larger patch area retained more residual forest cover for the burned patches. Forest structure of burned-twice patches was more severely altered compared to burned-once patches. Two burned-once patches had a relatively promising recovery potential by natural regeneration due to higher residual forest cover, a vast number of large trees, and aboveground biomass. Except for the largest patch, rehabilitation seemed inevitable for burned-twice patches. This approach can be applied to assess the impact of multiple fires on other forest types for better post-fire forest management

    Estimating aboveground carbon of teak-based agroforestry systems in Sabah, Malaysia using airborne LiDAR

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    As a sustainable land use system, agroforestry can potentially mitigate climate change mitigation by sequestering carbon and reducing greenhouse gasses (GHGs) emissions. Since the implementation of the Kyoto Protocol, agroforestry has been recognized as a GHGs mitigation strategy that requires accurate estimation of the carbon storage. Focusing on teak-based agroforestry systems in Sabah, Malaysia, this study examined the use of airborne Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) data for aboveground carbon (AGC) estimation. Field inventory data were collected at the agroforestry systems with different intercropping crops to calculate the field AGC. We derived height and canopy density metrics from the LiDAR data to correlate and regress with the field AGC. Stepwise multiple linear regression analyses resulted in a multivariate model that explains 88% of the AGC variance in the agroforestry systems. With the 25th and 55th height percentiles as predictors, the model had a cross-validated root-mean-square error (RMSEcv) of 6.12 Mg C ha-1 (Relative RMSEcv: 13.45%). As teak is one of the major plantation species in Southeast Asia, accurate LiDAR-based AGC estimation could assist in developing teakbased agroforestry systems for climate change mitigation in the region

    Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts

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    We conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more sophisticated methods
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