scholarly journals Managing fisheries from space: Google Earth improves estimates of distant fish catches

2013 ◽  
Vol 71 (3) ◽  
pp. 450-454 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dalal Al-Abdulrazzak ◽  
Daniel Pauly

Abstract Global fisheries are overexploited worldwide, yet crucial catch statistics reported to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) by member countries remain unreliable. Recent advances in remote-sensing technology allow us to view fishing practices from space and mitigate gaps in catch reporting. Here, we use Google Earth to count intertidal fishing weirs off the coast of six countries in the Persian Gulf, otherwise known as the Arabian Gulf. Although the name of this body of water remains contentious, we use the name used in Google Earth. Combining, in a Monte Carlo procedure, the number of weirs (after correcting for poor resolution and imagery availability) with assumptions about daily catch and fishing season lengths, we estimate that 1900 (±79) weirs contribute to a regional catch up to six times higher than the officially reported catches of 5260 t. These results, which speak to the unreliability of officially reported fisheries statistics, provide the first example of fisheries catch estimates from space, and point to the potential for remote-sensing approaches to validate catch statistics and fisheries operations in general.

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (13) ◽  
pp. 5911
Author(s):  
Vanesa Martos ◽  
Ali Ahmad ◽  
Pedro Cartujo ◽  
Javier Ordoñez

Timely and reliable information about crop management, production, and yield is considered of great utility by stakeholders (e.g., national and international authorities, farmers, commercial units, etc.) to ensure food safety and security. By 2050, according to Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates, around 70% more production of agricultural products will be needed to fulfil the demands of the world population. Likewise, to meet the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), especially the second goal of “zero hunger”, potential technologies like remote sensing (RS) need to be efficiently integrated into agriculture. The application of RS is indispensable today for a highly productive and sustainable agriculture. Therefore, the present study draws a general overview of RS technology with a special focus on the principal platforms of this technology, i.e., satellites and remotely piloted aircrafts (RPAs), and the sensors used, in relation to the 5th industrial revolution. Nevertheless, since 1957, RS technology has found applications, through the use of satellite imagery, in agriculture, which was later enriched by the incorporation of remotely piloted aircrafts (RPAs), which is further pushing the boundaries of proficiency through the upgrading of sensors capable of higher spectral, spatial, and temporal resolutions. More prominently, wireless sensor technologies (WST) have streamlined real time information acquisition and programming for respective measures. Improved algorithms and sensors can, not only add significant value to crop data acquisition, but can also devise simulations on yield, harvesting and irrigation periods, metrological data, etc., by making use of cloud computing. The RS technology generates huge sets of data that necessitate the incorporation of artificial intelligence (AI) and big data to extract useful products, thereby augmenting the adeptness and efficiency of agriculture to ensure its sustainability. These technologies have made the orientation of current research towards the estimation of plant physiological traits rather than the structural parameters possible. Futuristic approaches for benefiting from these cutting-edge technologies are discussed in this study. This study can be helpful for researchers, academics, and young students aspiring to play a role in the achievement of sustainable agriculture.


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (21) ◽  
pp. 2474 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jaafar Jotheri ◽  
Michelle de Gruchy ◽  
Rola Almaliki ◽  
Malath Feadha

This study presents the results of the first remote sensing survey of hollow ways in Southern Mesopotamia between Baghdad and the Persian Gulf, primarily using the imagery in Google Earth. For archaeologists, hollow ways are important trace fossils of past human movement that inform about how people travelled in the past and what considerations were important to them as they moved through the landscape. In this study, remotely sensed hollow ways were ground-truthed and dated by association with both palaeochannels and known archaeological sites. Contextual and morphological evidence of the hollow ways indicate that they are likely the archaeological manifestation of ethnographically attested “water channels” formed through the dense reeds of marshlands in southern Iraq, not formed by traction overland like other known hollow ways. The map itself documents the first known hollow ways preserved underwater and one of the best-preserved landscapes of past human movement in the Near East.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pawan Thapa ◽  
Narayan Thapa

Abstract Background: The impact of flooding rises due to unplanned settlements, especially in developing and underdeveloped countries. This study tries to address these issues by mapping flood risk places and assessing their impact on population and household.Methods: This study used the dataset available in Google Earth Engine (GEE), Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), Central Bureau Statistics (CBS), Earth Data for preparing slope, drainage density, digital elevation model, rainfall, land use map, and soil map. These maps create using GEE and QGIS through overlay analysis that has two factors. The one is influence and other slopes, and it has provided high and low value according to its role on flooding.Results: The risk assessment shows around twenty-four percent population is at higher risk, whereas more than three thousand settlements are prone to flooding. It depicts a significant increasing trend of floods in the Morang district.Conclusion: This settlement risk map can help determine the flood safe and very high-risk areas in the Morang district. It will support residential places' planning by the local government, urban planners, and community people to reduce flooding risk.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pawan Thapa ◽  
Narayan Thapa

Abstract Background: The impact of flooding rises due to unplanned settlements, especially in developing countries. This study tries to address these issues by mapping flood risk places and assessing their impact on population and household.Methods: This study used the dataset available in Google Earth Engine (GEE), Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), Central Bureau Statistics (CBS), Earth Data for preparing slope, drainage density, digital elevation model, rainfall, land use map, and soil map. These maps create using GEE and QGIS through overlay analysis that has two factors. The one is influence and other slopes, and it has provided high and low value according to its role on flooding.Results: The risk assessment shows around twenty-four percent population is at higher risk, whereas more than three thousand settlements are prone to flooding. It depicts a significant increasing trend of floods in the Morang district.Conclusion: This settlement risk map can help determine the flood safe and very high-risk areas in the Morang district. It will support residential places' planning by the local government, urban planners, and community people to reduce flooding risk.


2017 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 39 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Farizki ◽  
Wenang Anurogo

Permukiman adalah bagian dari lingkungan hidup yang berfungsi sebagai lingkungan tempat tinggal. Kondisi dari suatu permukiman sangat mempengaruhi kelangsungan kehidupan dan kesejahteraan makhluk hidup di permukiman tersebut. Untuk mengetahui kualitas permukiman di Kecamatan Batam Kota dibutuhkan parameter-parameter penentu yang di interpretasi dari citra resolusi tinggi (Google Earth). Untuk membantu proses analisis dengan memanfaatkan teknologi penginderaan jauh dan untuk pemetaan menggunakan software SIG. Metode yang digunakan adalah metode pengharkatan (scoring), tumpang susun (overlay). Hasil dari overlay tersebut adalah peta kualitas permukiman di kecamatan Batam Kota, Kota Batam. Dari penelitian ini dapat diketahui bahwa permukiman di Kecamatan Batam Kota dengan kualitas baik dengan luas 476.88 Ha, kualitas sedang dengan luas 650 Ha, dan kualitas buruk dengan luas 48.89 Ha. Dari hasil tersebut permukiman di Kecamatan Batam Kota didominasi oleh permukiman dengan kualitas sedang. The neighborhood is part of the environment that serves as a neighborhood residence. The condition of a settlement extremely affects to the continuity of life and the well-being of living creatures in the neighborhood. To find out the quality of the neighborhoods in districts of Batam City required parameters in determining the interpretation of high-resolution images (Google Earth). To help the analysis process by making use of remote sensing technology for the mapping, and using software SIG. The Method is using score (scoring), and stack bundles (overlay). The result of the overlay mapped quality neighborhoods in districts of Batam city, Batam city. From this research it can be known that settlements in Batam City with good quality with extensive 476.88 Ha, better quality with an area of 650 Hectares, and bad quality with extensive 48.89 Ha. The results of the neighborhoods in districts of Batam City are dominated by the neighborhoods with better quality.


2021 ◽  
Vol 48 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jasem A Albanai ◽  

Mapping bathymetry is essential for many fields, including science, engineering, and the military, among others. Bathymetry is extremely important in the scientific field because it is linked to many physical and environmental issues such as coastal erosion, sea-level rise, and water quality. Traditionally, conventional methods, such as pre-measured cable passage, were used to estimate depths. Lately, echo-sounder assessments were used on hydrograph ships. This method is effective, but it is very costly in both economic and time terms. Remote sensing technology provides modern methods for mapping bathymetry, such as the use of active and passive remote sensing. Many satellite sensors cover multispectral bands. Some are commercial, such as IKONOS and WorldView, while others are freely available, such as Landsat 8 and Sentinel-2. In this study, Landsat 8 (15 meters spatial resolution) was used to estimate the depths of the waters of Kuwait, an Arabian Gulf country located on the Northwestern side of the gulf. Ground truthing points (GTPs) were used to build a bathymetric model of Kuwaiti territorial water (KTW) using the ratio transform algorithm (RTA) applied on Landsat 8 data. The results showed a good ability of Landsat 8 and RTA to estimate the depths of Kuwait’s waters, where the relationship between the derived model from Landsat 8 and the GTPs was positive (r2 = 0.9634). Meanwhile, the accuracy of the derived bathymetric model was evaluated by computing the Root Mean Square Error (RMSE = ± 1.66 meters) and Mean Absolute Error (MAE ± = 1.29).


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacopo Dari ◽  
Pere Quintana-Seguí ◽  
María José Escorihuela ◽  
Vivien Stefan ◽  
Renato Morbidelli ◽  
...  

<p>Irrigation represents a primary source of anthropogenic water consumption, whose effects impact on the natural distribution of water on the Earth’s surface and on food production. Over anthropized basins, irrigation often represents the missing variable to properly close the hydrological balance. Despite this, detailed information on the amounts of water actually applied for irrigation is lacking worldwide. In this study, a method to estimate irrigation volumes applied over a heavily irrigated area in the North East of Spain through high-resolution (1 km) remote sensing soil moisture is presented. Two DISPATCH (DISaggregation based on Physical And Theoretical scale CHange) downscaled data sets have been used: SMAP (Soil Moisture Active Passive) and SMOS (Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity). The SMAP experiment covers the period from January 2016 to September 2017, while the SMOS experiment is referred to the time span from January 2011 to September 2017. The irrigation amounts have been retrieved through the SM2RAIN algorithm, in which the guidelines provided in the FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization) paper n.56 about the crop evapotranspiration have been implemented for a proper modeling of the crop evapotranspiration. A more detailed analysis has been performed in the context of the SMAP experiment. In fact, the spatial distribution and the temporal occurrence of the irrigation events have been investigated. Furthermore, the loss of accuracy of the irrigation estimates when using different sources for the evapotranspiration data has been assessed. In order to do this, the SMAP experiment has been repeated by forcing the SM2RAIN algorithm with several evapotranspiration data sets, both calculated and observed. Finally, the merging of the results obtained through the two experiments has produced a data set of almost 7 years of irrigation estimated from remote sensing soil moisture.</p>


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ramla Khan ◽  
Hammad Gilani

Abstract Impacts and repercussions of certain disasters could be seen immediately while other disasters like drought show their deadly effects with time. Droughts are scientifically studied with help of either a simple or a composite indices introduced by researchers and organizations like the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), World Meteorological Organization (WMO), and United Nations (UN), etc. DSI or drought severity index is a composite index with vegetation data and evapotranspiration data as input variables. The results are acquired after standardizing the final product. In this study, droughts across the globe with respect to seven continents are identified with DSI in the years 2001 to 2019.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pawan Thapa ◽  
Narayan Thapa

Abstract Background The impact of flooding rises due to unplanned settlements, especially in developing and underdeveloped countries. This study tries to address these issues by mapping flood risk places and assessing their impact on population and household. Methods This study used the dataset available in Google Earth Engine (GEE), Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), Central Bureau Statistics (CBS), Earth Data for preparing slope, drainage density, digital elevation model, rainfall, land use map, and soil map. These maps create using GEE and QGIS through overlay analysis that has two factors. The one is influence and other slopes, and it has provided high and low value according to its role on flooding. Results The risk assessment shows around twenty-four percent population is at higher risk, whereas more than three thousand settlements are prone to flooding. It depicts a significant increasing trend of floods in the Morang district. Conclusion This settlement risk map can help determine the flood safe and very high-risk areas in the Morang district. It will support residential places' planning by the local government, urban planners, and community people to reduce flooding risk.


Author(s):  
Amer Hassan Thabit

The Arab Gulf region in particular, and with it the entire Arab region in general, is witnessing multiple challenges and conflicts, escalating, in a way that reflects the presence of overlapping in the dimensions: internal, regional and international, which imposes important effects on Iraq. Iraq is part of the Arab Gulf region, and it interferes with it: historically, geographically, ethnically, and politically. It cannot be overlooked that Iraq was in historical stages that was considered the dominant force in this region, especially in the stage of the civilization’s dominance before the role of Iraq and its place in civilization declines. Today, the region is witnessing multiple challenges, which began with the escalation of regional sectarian political events associated with the event of the occupation of Iraq, with a tendency to disturb the regional balance due to the dismantling of the capabilities of Iraq, and the matter came to the loosening of regional conflicts due to what the region is going through, and the perspective of the active forces in it, which has overcome the perspective The struggle for cooperation. The entry or presence of the international worker in the regional conflicts in the Arab Gulf region caused the intensity of the conflicts to multiply instead of settling them, and Iran has presented on more than one occasion that it has the capabilities to implement the option of closing the Strait of Hormuz or impeding the freedom and safety of maritime navigation in international waters in the Arabian Gulf, And the matter was not related to the US sanctions regime on Iran in the year 2018 and beyond, but it is before it.     The Iranian threat to close the Strait of Hormuz at the very least, or any development in the regional conflict in the region, can damage the interests of Iraq and its security, for two reasons: First, most of Iraq’s trade passes through the waters of the Persian Gulf, and the second is that there is an overlap between Iraq and peoples and countries The region, and just as sectarianism moved from Iraq to the region after 2003, the Gulf conflict and tension can move into Iraq or affect Iraq’s policy. Iraq should search for political alternatives that help it in dealing with the developments of the conflict in the Arab Gulf region. Perhaps this research presents some of the options and alternatives that can help the Iraqi decision-maker, if there is an important development in the Gulf-Western conflict with Iran


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