scholarly journals Spatial distribution of vegetation cover in Erbil city districts using high-resolution Pléiades satellite image

2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 10-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shwan O. Hussein ◽  
Ferenc Kovács ◽  
Zalán Tobak ◽  
Haidi J. Abdullah

Green spaces are playing an essential role for ecological balance and for human health in the city as well.They play a fundamental role in providing opportunities for relaxation and enjoying the beauty of naturefor the urban population. Therefore, it is important to produce detailed vegetation maps to assist plannersin designing strategies for the optimisation of urban ecosystem services and to provide a suitable planfor climate change adaptation in one fast growing city. Hence, this research is an investigation using 0.5m high-resolution multispectral Pléiades data integrated with GIS data and techniques to detect andevaluate the spatial distribution of vegetation cover in Erbil City. A supervised classification was usedto classify different land cover types, and a normalised difference vegetation index (NDVI) was usedto retrieve it for the city districts. Moreover, to evaluate the accessibility of green space based on theirdistance and size, a buffer zone criterion was used. The results indicate that the built-up land coverageis 69% and vegetation land cover is 14%. Regarding NDVI results, the spatial distribution of vegetationcover was various and, in general, the lowest NDVI values were found in the districts located in the citycentre. On the other hand, the spatial distribution of vegetation land cover regarding the city districts wasnon-equal and non-concentric. The newly built districts and the districts far from the Central BusinessDistrict (CBD) recorded the lowest vegetation cover compared with the older constructed districts.Furthermore, most of the districts have a lack of access to green spaces based on their distance and size.Distance and accessibility of green areas throughout the city are not equally distributed. The majority ofthe city districts have access to green areas within radius buffer of two kilometres, whereas the lowestaccessibility observed for those districts located in the northeast of the city in particular (Xanzad,Brayate, Setaqan and Raperin). Our study is one of the first investigations of decision-making supportof the spatial planning in a fast-growing city in Iraq and will have a utilitarian impact on developmentprocesses and local and regional planning for Erbil City in the future.

ILUMINURAS ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 17 (42) ◽  
Author(s):  
Flávio Leonel Abreu da Silveira

O artigo propõe uma discussão teórica acerca das paisagens coexistenciais interespecíficas na urbe, voltando-se especialmente à morada humana. Esta é percebida como o lugar da convivência entre humanos e não-humanos – também se considera o seu entorno, onde aparecem os quintais/pomares e os espaços verdes habitados pela fauna silvestre urbana. A coexistência interespecífica contribui para a diversidade na conformação das paisagens citadinas, sendo que as ambiências domésticas – a localidade do espaço habitado/lócus da experiência íntima – permitem a humanos e não-humanos o compartilhamento de uma vida juntos a partir de diferentes formas de interações simbólico-práticas. As áreas verdes revelam-se lugares de interações interespecíficas diversas na urbe, figurando enquanto espaços de contato. Para as reflexões que proponho realizar, parto de minha experiência de coabitação com gatos domésticos e de meu ofício de etnógrafo que pesquisa as relações entre humanos e não-humanos em uma área verde na cidade de Belém (PA) na Amazônia.Palavras-chave: Paisagens. Cidade. Habitat. Animais. Áreas verdes. Interespécies.The Coexistent and Interspecific Landscapes or About Humans and Nonhumans Sharing Domestics Places in an Amazonian City  AbstractThe paper proposes a theoretical discussion about the coexistent and interspecific landscapes at the urbis, regarding, specially, the human shelter. This is perceived as a place of coexistence between humans and nonhumans – its surroundings where there are yards/orchards and green spaces inhabited by urban wildlife is also considered. The interspecific coexistence contributes to the diversity in shaping cityscapes and the domestic ambiences - the location of the living space/locus of intimate experience - allow human and nonhuman sharing a life together, founded on different forms of symbolic and practical interactions. The green areas turn up in places of diverse and interspecific interactions at the urbis, constituting spaces of contact. Aiming at these reflections, I consider my own coexistence experience with domestic cats and my work as an ethnographer who studies the relationships between human and nonhumans in a green area in the city of Belém (PA) in Amazon.Key words: Landscapes. City. Habitat. Animals. Green areas. Interspecies.


Author(s):  
H. Rastiveis ◽  
E. Hosseini-Zirdoo ◽  
F. Eslamizade

In 2010, an earthquake in the city of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, happened quite by chance an accident and killed over 300000 people. According to historical data such an earthquake has not occurred in the area. Unpredictability of earthquakes has necessitated the need for comprehensive mitigation efforts to minimize deaths and injuries. Blocked roads, caused by debris of destroyed buildings, may increase the difficulty of rescue activities. In this case, a damage map, which specifies blocked and unblocked roads, can be definitely helpful for a rescue team. <br><br> In this paper, a novel method for providing destruction map based on pre-event vector map and high resolution world view II satellite images after earthquake, is presented. For this purpose, firstly in pre-processing step, image quality improvement and co-coordination of image and map are performed. Then, after extraction of texture descriptor from the image after quake and SVM classification, different terrains are detected in the image. Finally, considering the classification results, specifically objects belong to “debris” class, damage analysis are performed to estimate the damage percentage. In this case, in addition to the area objects in the “debris” class their shape should also be counted. The aforementioned process are performed on all the roads in the road layer.In this research, pre-event digital vector map and post-event high resolution satellite image, acquired by Worldview-2, of the city of Port-au-Prince, Haiti's capital, were used to evaluate the proposed method. The algorithm was executed on 1200×800 m2 of the data set, including 60 roads, and all the roads were labelled correctly. The visual examination have authenticated the abilities of this method for damage assessment of urban roads network after an earthquake.


Author(s):  
Román Alejandro Canul-Turriza ◽  
Francisco Javier Barrera-Lao ◽  
Gabriela Patricia Aldana Narváez

This paper presents the identification of heat islands in the city of San Francisco de Campeche, period 1990 - 2020 and their relationship with changes in the vegetation cover areas. To identify the heat islands in the city, 6 Landsat 5 (TM), 7 (TM) and 8 (OIL) images were obtained from the USGS database (http://earthexplorer.usgs.gov/). In geographic information software, soil temperature was calculated from a mathematical algorithm applied to thermal infrared bands 6 and 10, in addition, the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) was calculated, in order to find a relationship between changes in temperature and vegetation cover. It was found that the green areas have reduced their surface by more than 50% and the soil temperature has increased up to 7 ° C


Author(s):  
Olga N. Bliankinshyein ◽  
◽  
Natalya A. Popkova ◽  

One of the criteria for a comfortable ecologically clean urban environment is access to green spaces, their number and quality in any given city. Public green spaces play an important socio-cultural role in the context of active and passive recreation of citizens, various types of recreational activities. The relevance of this study is due to increased attention to the formation of open public spaces in the city of Krasnoyarsk. The purpose of this work is to trace the evolution and identify the social and cultural significance of the green public spaces in Krasnoyarsk. The objectives of the research are to study the green spaces of Krasnoyarsk in a historical retrospective, analyze the green spaces of Krasnoyarsk from the point of view of their ecological significance, recreational use. Research methods included literature review on the topic, analysis of historical data, field survey of the territory, long-term observation, photographic recording, comparative retrospective analysis, and graphic-analytical method. The study captures the most common types of public green spaces and their role in creating a comfortable urban environment. It traces in the most detail the evolution and cultural significance of the most important historical green spaces in Krasnoyarsk: the City Garden (now the Central Park), Yudinsky Garden, Krutovsky Garden. These examples show that gardens and parks can be formed both on the basis of the natural environment of urban forests, and artificially created by the efforts of citizens, that over time they can undergo various quantitative and qualitative, planning and functional transformations. Despite the transformations that have taken place, all the studied historical objects still exist and are used for their intended purpose. In addition to these historical green areas, we examine the newly organized public green spaces with a cultural and recreational component over the past decades: Tatyshev Park, All-season Fun-Park Bobrovy Log, Flora and Fauna Park Roev Ruchey, Dream Gardens and others. The article notes the importance of municipal, public and private initiatives in the organization of local green areas. The analysis allows us to assert that there is a certain system of public green spaces in Krasnoyarsk. It has disadvantages, such as an uneven distribution of green areas throughout the city, lack of interconnections between individual elements, aging of certain areas of greenery, and the complete destruction of some. Nevertheless, the city authorities, architects, designers and the general public make great effort to create a green framework for Krasnoyarsk destined to have an important recreational and cultural role.


2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 95 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jordi Inglada ◽  
Arthur Vincent ◽  
Marcela Arias ◽  
Benjamin Tardy ◽  
David Morin ◽  
...  

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 83-92
Author(s):  
Aigul SERGEYEVA ◽  
Altynbek KHAMIT ◽  
Asima КOSHIM ◽  
Murat MAKHAMBETOV

The rapid pace of urban development triggers complex problems mostly related to urban environment pollution, and shortcomings of city’s improvement. The modern city is characterized by the highest man-made pressure on the natural environment, the main problems being overcrowding, lack of open-access green areas, as well as the decrease of vegetation areas, fact that does not create comfortable living conditions for urban residents. At present, remote sensing methods are some of the priority tools used in vegetation state assessment, particularly, the calculation of vegetation index (NDVI). But often, obtaining the necessary information is limited only to the analysis of satellite data, without geobotanical field surveys, which considerably increase the reliability of the detected results. In addition, the definition of dependencies when using an integrated approach of different man-affected surfaces with a different type of overgrowth within the city remains insufficiently studied. The purpose of this study is to assess the ecological condition of the green area (parks and squares) in Aktobe city. A comprehensive processing of satellite images including the calculation of NDVI index, mapping of green areas and data statistical analysis, was carried out. We learned that the average value of NDVI for green spaces in Aktobe ranges from 0,11 µm to 0,47 µm, which allows for the categorization of planted areas by levels of photosynthetic activity, from “unsatisfactory” to “good”, yet, with 59% of them in an unsatisfactory condition. This means that the city is underdeveloped in terms of modern landscape and infrastructure. The obtained results make it possible to assess the current situation, determine the dynamics of urban green spaces and optimize spatial planning measures for green space management.


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