1,720,989 research outputs found
A Spatial Multi-criteria Decision Support System for Stress Recovery-Oriented Forest Management
Get PDFA solution to cope with chaotic urban settlements and frenetic everyday life is refuging in nature as a way to reduce stress. In general—in recent years—it has been scientifically demonstrated how natural areas are an important environment for psycho-physiological health. As a consequence, it is important to plan dedicated spaces for stress recovery in order to increase the well-being of people. With respect to forests, there is a growing interest in understanding the marketing and tourist potential of forest-therapy activities and policies. This paper develops a decision support system (DSS) for decision makers, based on geographic information system to define the suitability of forest areas to improve psychological and physiological human well-being. Innovative technologies such as electroencephalography (EEG) and virtual reality (VR) are applied to test human status. The DSS combines four sets of indicators in a multi-attribute decision analysis and identifies the areas with the largest stress-recovery potential. Two multi-attribute model—one in summer and one in winter—are elaborated to obtain a dynamic evaluation of suitability. Results show significant differences among forest type, forest management, altitude range, and season in terms of stand suitability. EEG and VR seem to be promising technologies in this research area. Strengths and weaknesses of the approach, as well as potential future improvement and implications for territorial marketing, are suggested
Health benefits derived from forest: A review
Get PDFIn this paper the scientific literature on the association between forests, stress relief and relaxation is reviewed with the purpose to understand common patterns of research, the main techniques used for analysis, findings relevant to forest-therapy-oriented management, and knowledge gaps. The database of studies was collected with a keyword search on the Web, which returned a set of 32 studies that were included in the analysis. The main findings and patterns were identified with a text mining analysis of the abstract to search for keyword patterns across studies. The analysis indicates that most studies compared rest and relaxation performances across urban and forest environments and used a combination of self-reported measure of stress or rest collected with validate scales, e.g., the Profile of Mood of States (POMS) and the Restoration Outcome Scale (ROS), and a minority-only set of these two groups of indicators. Results of this review indicate that primary studies identified a positive association between forest exposure and mental well-being, in particular when compared to urban environments, thus suggesting that forest are effective in lowering stress levels. This study found that, to date, the characteristics of forests and characteristics of the visit are little investigated in the literature. For this reason, more research with a focus on forest variables such as tree species composition, tree density and other variables affecting forest landscape should be further investigated to inform forest management. Similarly, the characteristics of the visits (e.g., length of visit and frequency) should be further explored to provide robust forest therapy guidelines
Prevention of erosion in mountain basins: A spatial-based tool to support payments for forest ecosystem services
Get PDFThis paper presents a spatial-based decision support system (DSS) to assist public and private forest managers in the analysis of potential feasibility in payments for forest ecosystem services (PES) for the prevention of soil erosion. The model quantifies the maximum willingness to pay (WTP) of managers of a reservoir to prevent soil loss. The minimum willingness to accept (WTA) of forest owners for the activation of a private market is also computed. The comparison of WTP and WTA identifies the forest area where PES are ideally feasible with additional potential for compensation to enable the schemes. The DSS highlights forest idiosyncrasies as well as local socio-economic and geomorphological characteristics influencing PES suitability at a geographic level. The potential applications and future improvements of the model are also discussed
Application of stated-preferences methods and neuroscience for the valuation of dynamicity in forest cultural ecosystem services
No full textIn this study, we combined virtual reality and electroencephalogram (EEG) methods in a lab setting to evaluate the restorative effects of forests on the mental state. In doing so, we compared forests in different vegetative seasons, varying types of forest stands, and forest densities. Twenty participants were exposed to videos of forests with different tree species compositions and cover densities across two seasons. At the same time, participants were monitored with an EEG device that recorded brain waves associated with the emotional mental state to understand varying levels of restoration associated with the different forest species. The EEG analysis was coupled with a self-rated measure of restoration, collected using the Restoration Outcome Scale and visual indexes of greenness. The results indicated that restorative effects were higher in summer season with high-density cover of forests composed of black pine. It was also found that restoration was affected by the degree of greenness, as suggested by its correlation with brain waves. These results, integrated with future suggestions for improvement, can be useful for forest management and territorial marketing to design dedicated forested areas for the purposes of restoration and the enhancement of mood state
A spatial-based tool for the analysis of payments for forest ecosystem services related to hydrogeological protection
No full textThis paper presents a decision support based on spatial analysis for the evaluation of payments for forest ecosystem services (PES). A focus on the payment range for protective services for shallow landslide is described. The maximum willingness to pay by real estate owners and the minimum willingness to accept by forest owners are computed. The model quantifies the economic risk of real estate depending on the loss probability due to landslide and the presence and protection efficiency of forest. The potential compensation to forest managers considers the difference of the forest expected value from current practices (business as usual – BAU – scenario) to the intervention optimized for PES. A geostatistical approach is applied to quantify the uncertainty of the output. The results indicate relevant differences from BAU to PES in term of an increased protection efficiency and reduced uncertainty. The suitability of protective forest for PES activation is approximately 46 % of the total surface in the study area (Municipality Union of Sieve and Arno Valleys, Tuscany – central Italy). The output also highlights the strong influence of the tree species composition on the value of the PES scenario and indicates that Turkey oak and mixed broadleaved forests are more likely to fall under a PES scheme. Spatial analysis is useful for determining the influence of site-specific characteristics
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe 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
Get PDF“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
Get PDFWe 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
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe 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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