scholarly journals Experience and prospects of environmental mapping of Kharkiv region

The purpose of this article is to acquaint a wide range of specialists in the field of ecology and nature protection with the achievements of scientists at the Department of physical geography and cartography of V.N. Karazin Kharkiv National University in the field of environmental mapping and search for reasons to reduce the number of cartographic works on this topic. Main material. The system of regional environmental and nature protection cartographic works of Kharkiv region includes 24 units of finished cartographic products, supplemented by hundreds of primary auxiliary maps serving as the basis for creating the resulting maps. The authors reveal the history of the creation of the first regional series of environmental maps in the USSR, published with the DSP stamp, the Directions of their use-in the process of planning environmental activities in the region until 1990 and their further use as a visual educational material. The structure and content of a separate environmental map, three series of maps and four environmental atlases are described. A separate comprehensive map provides an overview of the environmental conditions and nature protection in the region and is intended as a demonstration tool for regional organizations and as a reference guide for educational institutions. The basic series of maps provides an overall assessment of the ecological state and nature protection. A series of maps of dynamic and depositing components of the natural environment characterize deteriorating quality of atmospheric air and water, their environmental condition and protection measures. The maps provide information about the eco-environmental assessment of soils, vegetation and wildlife. Environmental and nature protection atlases of the region fully disclose the features of interaction in the “nature-society” system and are intended for specialists in the field of ecology and nature protection for educational purposes, promoting environmental knowledge. The development of interactive cartographic products on environmental issues, such as nature protection maps of Kharkiv region on the GeoMixer web GIS platform, is considered as a promising direction for the development of environmental cartography in the region. Conclusions and further research. The developed cartographic works are used in fragments l, not systematically. Today, the activity of creating maps and atlases on this topic has significantly decreased mainly due to the lack of unifying objective, ideological, state-oriented structures, lack of funds and lack of interest of local authorities in obtaining visual information about the region’s environment.

2014 ◽  
pp. 99-122
Author(s):  
M. Levin ◽  
K. Matrosova

The paper considers monitoring of environmental change as the central element of environmental regulation. Monitoring, as each kind of principalagent relations, easily gives rise to corruptive behavior. In the paper we analyze economic models of environmental monitoring with high costs, incomplete information and corruption. These models should be the elements of environmental economics and are needed to create an effective system of nature protection measures.


2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 82-93
Author(s):  
Gugulethu Shamaine Nkala ◽  
Rodreck David

Knowledge presented by Oral History (OH) is unique in that it shares the tacit perspective, thoughts, opinions and understanding of the interviewee in its primary form. While teachers, lecturers and other education specialists have at their disposal a wide range of primary, secondary and tertiary sources upon which to relate and share or impart knowledge, OH presents a rich source of information that can improve the learning and knowledge impartation experience. The uniqueness of OH is presented in the following advantages of its use: it allows one to learn about the perspectives of individuals who might not otherwise appear in the historical record; it allows one to compensate for the digital age; one can learn different kinds of information; it provides historical actors with an opportunity to tell their own stories in their own words; and it offers a rich opportunity for human interaction. This article discusses the placement of oral history in the classroom set-up by investigating its use as a source of learning material presented by the National Archives of Zimbabwe to students in the Department of Records and Archives Management at the National University of Science and Technology (NUST). Interviews and a group discussion were used to gather data from an archivist at the National Archives of Zimbabwe, lecturers and students in the Department of Records and Archives Management at NUST, respectively. These groups were approached on the usability, uniqueness and other characteristics that support this type of knowledge about OH in a tertiary learning experience. The findings indicate several qualities that reflect the richness of OH as a teaching source material in a classroom set-up. It further points to weak areas that may be addressed where the source is considered a viable strategy for knowledge sharing and learning. The researchers present a possible model that can be used to champion the use of this rich knowledge source in classroom education at this university and in similar set-ups. 


Water ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 458
Author(s):  
Drew C. Baird ◽  
Benjamin Abban ◽  
S. Michael Scurlock ◽  
Steven B. Abt ◽  
Christopher I. Thornton

While there are a wide range of design recommendations for using rock vanes and bendway weirs as streambank protection measures, no comprehensive, standard approach is currently available for design engineers to evaluate their hydraulic performance before construction. This study investigates using 2D numerical modeling as an option for predicting the hydraulic performance of rock vane and bendway weir structure designs for streambank protection. We used the Sedimentation and River Hydraulics (SRH)-2D depth-averaged numerical model to simulate flows around rock vane and bendway weir installations that were previously examined as part of a physical model study and that had water surface elevation and velocity observations. Overall, SRH-2D predicted the same general flow patterns as the physical model, but over- and underpredicted the flow velocity in some areas. These over- and underpredictions could be primarily attributed to the assumption of negligible vertical velocities. Nonetheless, the point differences between the predicted and observed velocities generally ranged from 15 to 25%, with some exceptions. The results showed that 2D numerical models could provide adequate insight into the hydraulic performance of rock vanes and bendway weirs. Accordingly, design guidance and implications of the study results are presented for design engineers.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (8) ◽  
pp. 3397
Author(s):  
Gustavo Assunção ◽  
Nuno Gonçalves ◽  
Paulo Menezes

Human beings have developed fantastic abilities to integrate information from various sensory sources exploring their inherent complementarity. Perceptual capabilities are therefore heightened, enabling, for instance, the well-known "cocktail party" and McGurk effects, i.e., speech disambiguation from a panoply of sound signals. This fusion ability is also key in refining the perception of sound source location, as in distinguishing whose voice is being heard in a group conversation. Furthermore, neuroscience has successfully identified the superior colliculus region in the brain as the one responsible for this modality fusion, with a handful of biological models having been proposed to approach its underlying neurophysiological process. Deriving inspiration from one of these models, this paper presents a methodology for effectively fusing correlated auditory and visual information for active speaker detection. Such an ability can have a wide range of applications, from teleconferencing systems to social robotics. The detection approach initially routes auditory and visual information through two specialized neural network structures. The resulting embeddings are fused via a novel layer based on the superior colliculus, whose topological structure emulates spatial neuron cross-mapping of unimodal perceptual fields. The validation process employed two publicly available datasets, with achieved results confirming and greatly surpassing initial expectations.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1329878X2110055
Author(s):  
Karen Lee ◽  
Derek Wilding

This article applies principles from the Department of Communications’ policy review of telecommunications consumer protection to broadcasting co-regulation. The Consumer Safeguards Review establishes six principles for good regulation, including that rule-making processes should ‘enable a wide range of views to be considered’. It notes that processes for developing telecommunications codes of practice are likely to lead to ‘sub-optimal’ consumer protection measures. The article draws on original empirical research to assess development of commercial television and commercial radio codes of practice, with particular emphasis on public engagement in co-regulation. It finds the broadcasting codes of practice fail to meet the principles adopted by the Department for good co-regulation. It concludes by arguing there is a pressing need for a more holistic review of communications co-regulation, as broadcasting legislation is similar to the telecommunications legislation, and there is a risk that ‘sub-optimal’ practices could be applied in attempts to regulate digital platforms.


Author(s):  
Alimaa A. ◽  
◽  
Tseveendorj D. ◽  

The social priorities of literature are the tribune of environmental idiology. Today, in the Mongolian literature, the direction of ecocriticism has been established. This article makes an analysis in traditional Mongolian poetry and modern poetry on the topic of nature conservation and ecology. In Mongolian folklore praise the purity of nature and the motherland. His idol of pure nature is praise and praise. But each species has its own color. The topic of nature protection in Mongolian folklore (Orthodoxy, Magtaal-praise, Tuul-epic, du-folk songs and myth) is that a person should not control and control nature but understand and convert to nature as a living creature; means that people will have a natural relationship, a balanced and safe life. Probably, there is not a single poet of Mongolia who does not address the topic of “man and nature”. Each in its own way perceives nature, and each in its own way revealing to the reader the world of nature and himself in this world. The space of the “Mongolian spirit” created by the poet is filled with natural landscapes, people, and historical memory. His ancestors and descendants, the dead and living, are called upon to preserve this space and believing that nature and civilization can exist in equal harmony, he would like to reconcile them among themselves. Therefore, the poems of Mongolian poets writing about nature sound like a distress signal, like a cry for help to nature. This is a feature. That is why Mongolian writers have initiated environmental protection measures. They stopped the construction of a chemical plant on Lake Hubsgul. The lake is the main freshwater reservoir in the world. Mongolian writers also warned that the pine forest “Tuzin Nars” was destroyed in nature every year billions of tons of waste. With such an attitude of man to nature on Earth there will soon be nothing left. There are examples of the writer C. Galsan, who planted 360 thousand trees. In this article we propose that we do not limit the observation and conclusions about the mastery of writers to the nature of the writings, but take into account personal, mental and social changes in the environment.


1998 ◽  
Vol 78 (2) ◽  
pp. 467-485 ◽  
Author(s):  
CHARLES D. GILBERT

Gilbert, Charles D. Adult Cortical Dynamics. Physiol. Rev. 78: 467–485, 1998. — There are many influences on our perception of local features. What we see is not strictly a reflection of the physical characteristics of a scene but instead is highly dependent on the processes by which our brain attempts to interpret the scene. As a result, our percepts are shaped by the context within which local features are presented, by our previous visual experiences, operating over a wide range of time scales, and by our expectation of what is before us. The substrate for these influences is likely to be found in the lateral interactions operating within individual areas of the cerebral cortex and in the feedback from higher to lower order cortical areas. Even at early stages in the visual pathway, cells are far more flexible in their functional properties than previously thought. It had long been assumed that cells in primary visual cortex had fixed properties, passing along the product of a stereotyped operation to the next stage in the visual pathway. Any plasticity dependent on visual experience was thought to be restricted to a period early in the life of the animal, the critical period. Furthermore, the assembly of contours and surfaces into unified percepts was assumed to take place at high levels in the visual pathway, whereas the receptive fields of cells in primary visual cortex represented very small windows on the visual scene. These concepts of spatial integration and plasticity have been radically modified in the past few years. The emerging view is that even at the earliest stages in the cortical processing of visual information, cells are highly mutable in their functional properties and are capable of integrating information over a much larger part of visual space than originally believed.


2014 ◽  
Vol 24 (42) ◽  
pp. 139-154
Author(s):  
Lucy Ribeiro Ayach ◽  
Vitor Matheus Bacani ◽  
Jaime Ferreira Da Silva

Diante do avanço da produção econômica no Brasil e os consequentes impactos sobre os recursos naturais, a criação do Sistema Nacional de Unidades de Conservação – SNUC, Lei 9.985/2000, determina importantes normatizações e incentivo às medidas de conservação de áreas naturais dos diferentes ecossistemas brasileiros, na busca da difícil compatibilização do desenvolvimento econômico com a proteção à natureza. No estado de Mato Grosso do Sul, município de Aquidauana, as medidas de proteção ambiental são essenciais em virtude das características peculiares do ecossistema Pantanal. Com o objetivo de levantar informações acerca das condições ambientais das Unidades de Conservação no Município de Aquidauana-MS, o estudo propõe uma análise preliminar da evolução do uso da terra e cobertura vegetal das Unidades de Conservação que abrangem a área do Pantanal, referente ao período de 1987 a 2012. Os procedimentos metodológicos adotados consistiram no levantamento bibliográfico, cartográfico, iconográfico e da legislação existente, bem como análise da legislação. Os resultados indicam considerável preocupação em relação ao avanço da pecuária e consequente perda da vegetação nativa, implicando na necessidade urgente de monitoramento e  gestão ambiental para medidas de conservação do Pantanal. Palavras-Chave: Pantanal; Unidades de Conservação; Gestão ambiental AbstractAs a result of the economical advance production in Brazil and the consequent impacts on natural resources, the creation of the Conservation Units National System – SNUC, Law 9.985/2000, determinates important regulations and incentive to the conservation rules for natural areas in the different Brazilian ecosystem, seeking to have the difficult compatibility between economical development and the nature protection. In the state of Mato Grosso do Sul, municipality of Aquidauana, the environmental protection measures are essential due to the singular characteristics of the Pantanal ecosystem. Aiming to collect information about the environmental conditions of the Conservation Units in the municipality of Aquidauana-MS, the study proposes a preliminary analysis of the evolution of the land use and vegetal coverage in the Conservation Units that include the wetlands of Pantanal, referring to the periods from 1987 to 2012. The methodological procedures adopted consisted of literature, cartographical and iconographical survey as well as the existing legislation study. The results indicate considerable concern about the cattle breeding rise and eventual loss of the native vegetation, implying the urgent necessity of monitoring and environmental management for Pantanal conservation measures. Keywords: Pantanal; Conservation Units; Environmental Management. 


Iraq ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 79 ◽  
pp. 47-69 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jesse Casana ◽  
Claudia Glatz

While the Diyala (Kurdish Sirwan) River Valley is storied in Near Eastern archaeology as home to the Oriental Institute's excavations in the 1930s as well as to Robert McC. Adams’ pioneering archaeological survey, The Land Behind Baghdad, the upper reaches of the river valley remain almost unknown to modern scholarship. Yet this region, at the interface between irrigated lowland Mesopotamia and the Zagros highlands to the north and east, has long been hypothesized as central to the origins and development of complex societies. It was hotly contested by Bronze Age imperial powers, and offered one of the principle access routes connecting Mespotamia to the Iranian Plateau and beyond. This paper presents an interim report of the Sirwan Regional Project, a regional archaeological survey undertaken from 2013–2015 in a 4000 square kilometre area between the modern city of Darbandikhan and the plains south of Kalar. Encompassing a wide range of environments, from the rugged uplands of the Zagros front ranges to the rich irrigated basins of the Middle Diyala, the project has already discovered a wealth of previously unknown archaeological sites ranging in date from the Pre-Pottery Neolithic through the modern period. Following an overview of the physical geography of the Upper Diyala/Sirwan, this paper highlights key findings that are beginning to transform our understanding of this historically important but poorly known region.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anatoliy Smetanin

The formation of the modern flora and fauna of Kamchatka, paleogeography, natural ecosystems are considered. The biological diversity of the most important groups of biota is analyzed: vascular plants, mollusks, echinoderms, crustaceans, insects, fish, birds, mammals. The most prominent representatives, including economically significant ones, are highlighted. Brief information on paleodendroflora is given, a brief analysis of currently flourishing vascular plants is given. The fossil forms of extinct and currently living animals inhabiting the natural ecosystems of Kamchatka are described. A polytomic analysis of the biota was performed and its functional structure was established. For researchers in the field of ecology and nature protection, teachers and students of relevant academic disciplines, as well as for a wide range of readers in order to learn about the nature of the region and environmental education.


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