INVENTORY AND CHARACTERIZATION OF EROSIVE FORMS IN THE BARBANTIÑO RIVER (MIÑO BASIN, GALICIA, NW PENÍNSULA IBÉRICA)

The existence of forms sculpted by fluvial erosion is frequent in Bedrock Rivers. Since 1999, the Area of Physical Geography of the University of Vigo (Ourense Campus) has been conducting research on these rock cavities in various reaches of the middle Miño River. The exploratory study that is presented corresponds to the case of a section upstream of the Barbantiño river waterfall (Ourense, Galicia). Carried out within the framework of a research line with the objectives of inventorying, characterizing, interpreting and evaluating the erosive forms in the rocky channels of the Miño River and its tributaries, the employed methodology included phases of field work, creation of a database, and statistical analysis. From the records in the sampled sectors of the Barbantiño River, an inventory was made with 60 erosive forms, considering quantitative variables (measurements of length, width, depth) and qualitative variables (morphology of the bottom, state of the walls, and presence of deposits). The preliminary results of the exploratory analysis provide new information on the sculpted forms in bedrock, allowing comparison with previous studies. The erosive forms of the studied section are characterized by great variability in their depth (between 2 cm and 2.7 m), length (between 7 cm and 2.5 m) and width (between 4 cm and 2 m); the strong correlation between surface and bottom dimensions (Spearman's r> 0.85); and the coexistence of cavities in an incipient state, furrows and potholes. These results contribute to the advancement of knowledge of a natural legacy that is part of the geodiversity of the Miño River basin, with a complex of values associated with its condition of geomorphological heritage.

HOUSE WITH METEOROLOGICAL MESONIN, OR SOME INFORMATION FROM RELIABLE SOURCES THAT CONTRIBUTES TO COMPLETING THE HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSITY

The article deals with the history of the institutions where meteorological and geomagnetic research originated and developed in the south of Ukraine in the second half of the 19th – early 20th centuries as well as their close ties with the history of the Department of Physical Geography, Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of the Novorossiysky University. Professors of Novorossiysky University V. I. Lapshin and F. N. Shvedov were those to whom the Department of Physical Geography owed its appearance. Teaching meteorological disciplines and scientific observations were initially conducted by the staff of the Department at the meteorological station of the University. In 1894, thanks to the efforts of prof. A. V. Klosovsky a special Meteorological observatory was constructed in the area of the Small Fountain of Odessa. In 1905, geomagnetic measurements were launched. Research works at the Magnetic Meteorological Observatory were carried out under the guidance of a number of scientists-geophysicists, M. A. Aganin, S. G. Popruzhenko, I. Ya. Tochidlovsky and P. T. Pasalsky being the most famous. In 1920, the University was closed and Observatory was transformed into an independent Odessa Geophysical Observatory. As soon as the Odessa State University was restored in 1933, the Observatory was given back to its Alma mater. However, since the postwar years it has been a part of the Odessa Hydrometeorological Center of the Black and Azov Seas.

Environmental Threats and Geographical Education: Students’ Sustainability Awareness—Evaluation

Teaching geography creates an opportunity for the transfer of knowledge about environmental problems and ways of solving them. Teachers from the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Turkey, and the United Kingdom indicated strengths and weaknesses of physical geography as well as the selected geographical concepts of: Maps/Cartography, Astronomy/The Earth in the Universe, Atmosphere, Hydrosphere, Endogenic processes, Exogenic processes, and Soils and biosphere. There was a variety in how confident students were around these topic areas. The main types of difficulties identified by the study were: too little time for implementation, difficult terminology, and lack of tools for the proper transfer of knowledge. Moreover, the attractiveness of individual issues for students also varies. The research clearly shows that students lack an awareness of problems related to the environment. There are considerable differences between the level of students’ knowledge about climate change or air and water pollution (relatively high awareness of global warming) and issues related to soil and vegetation cover (low awareness of soil depletion, soil pollution, changing the boundaries of the occurrence of plant zones, etc.). To make people aware of the importance of environment, we should take care of education in relation to global challenge and sustainable development.

Evaluation of Asian summer precipitation in different configurations of a high-resolution general circulation model in a range of decision-relevant spatial scales

High-resolution general circulation models (GCMs) can provide new insights into the simulated distribution of global precipitation. We evaluate how summer precipitation is represented over Asia in global simulations with a grid length of 14 km. Three simulations were performed: one with a convection parametrization, one with convection represented explicitly by the model's dynamics, and a hybrid simulation with only shallow and mid-level convection parametrized. We evaluate the mean simulated precipitation and the diurnal cycle of the amount, frequency, and intensity of the precipitation against satellite observations of precipitation from the Climate Prediction Center morphing method (CMORPH). We also compare the high-resolution simulations with coarser simulations that use parametrized convection. The simulated and observed precipitation is averaged over spatial scales defined by the hydrological catchment basins; these provide a natural spatial scale for performing decision-relevant analysis that is tied to the underlying regional physical geography. By selecting basins of different sizes, we evaluate the simulations as a function of the spatial scale. A new BAsin-Scale Model Assessment ToolkIt (BASMATI) is described, which facilitates this analysis. We find that there are strong wet biases (locally up to 72 mm d−1 at small spatial scales) in the mean precipitation over mountainous regions such as the Himalayas. The explicit convection simulation worsens existing wet and dry biases compared to the parametrized convection simulation. When the analysis is performed at different basin scales, the precipitation bias decreases as the spatial scales increase for all the simulations; the lowest-resolution simulation has the smallest root mean squared error compared to CMORPH. In the simulations, a positive mean precipitation bias over China is primarily found to be due to too frequent precipitation for the parametrized convection simulation and too intense precipitation for the explicit convection simulation. The simulated diurnal cycle of precipitation is strongly affected by the representation of convection: parametrized convection produces a peak in precipitation too close to midday over land, whereas explicit convection produces a peak that is closer to the late afternoon peak seen in observations. At increasing spatial scale, the representation of the diurnal cycle in the explicit and hybrid convection simulations improves when compared to CMORPH; this is not true for any of the parametrized simulations. Some of the strengths and weaknesses of simulated precipitation in a high-resolution GCM are found: the diurnal cycle is improved at all spatial scales with convection parametrization disabled, the interaction of the flow with orography exacerbates existing biases for mean precipitation in the high-resolution simulations, and parametrized simulations produce similar diurnal cycles regardless of their resolution. The need for tuning the high-resolution simulations is made clear. Our approach for evaluating simulated precipitation across a range of scales is widely applicable to other GCMs.

Quantitative Analysis of a Spatial Distribution and Driving Factors of the Urban Heat Island Effect: A Case Study of Fuzhou Central Area, China

Land surface temperature (LST) is a joint product of physical geography and socio-economics. It is important to clarify the spatial heterogeneity and binding factors of the LST for mitigating the surface heat island effect (SUHI). In this study, the spatial pattern of UHI in Fuzhou central area, China, was elucidated by Moran’s I and hot-spot analysis. In addition, the study divided the drivers into two categories, including physical geographic factors (soil wetness, soil brightness, normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) and modified normalized difference water index (MNDWI), water density, and vegetation density) and socio-economic factors (normalized difference built-up index (NDBI), population density, road density, nighttime light, park density). The influence analysis of single factor on LST and the factor interaction analysis were conducted via Geodetector software. The results indicated that the LST presented a gradient layer structure with high temperature in the southeast and low temperature in the northwest, which had a significant spatial association with industry zones. Especially, LST was spatially repulsive to urban green space and water body. Furthermore, the four factors with the greatest influence (q-Value) on LST were soil moisture (influence = 0.792) > NDBI (influence = 0.732) > MNDWI (influence = 0.618) > NDVI (influence = 0.604). The superposition explanation degree (influence (Xi ∩ Xj)) is stronger than the independent explanation degree (influence (Xi)). The highest and the lowest interaction existed in ”soil wetness ∩ MNDWI” (influence = 0.864) and “nighttime light ∩ population density” (influence = 0.273), respectively. The spatial distribution of SUHI and its driving mechanism were also demonstrated, providing theoretical guidance for urban planners to build thermal environment friendly cities.

Realism in Data-Based Terrain Synthesis

<p>The landscapes on Earth are varied and complex, having been created by innumerous physical processes over millions of years. The creation of artificial terrain that replicates the realism of landscapes on Earth has been a major challenge for computer graphics. Many different approaches have been taken, including approximating the terrain with fractals and splines, simulating the terrain using models from the physical geography, and reconstructing terrain from elements of real-world data. A primary issue in the field of terrain synthesis is the lack of, and evaluation of, realism in synthesized terrain. This thesis identifies and discusses the flaws of existing data-based methods based on example-based texture synthesis methods. It provides improvements to an existing data-based method using algorithms from the field of geographic information science, and presents a novel algorithm, ``terrain-optimization'', based on the example-based texture synthesis technique of texture-optimization. Finally, it discusses a new approach to the experimental evaluation of terrain realism, with the largest experiment conducted to date. The results of this show that each of the tested methods is indistinguishable from reality in certain circumstances and that those circumstances differ for each method tested, and that subjects with a high level of expertise in physical geography are the most qualified for identifying real terrain from synthesized terrain. Overall, the thesis provides substantial analysis and evidence about the challenges of data-based terrain synthesis while also developing new approaches in the field that perform as well as existing state-of-the-art methods.</p>

A conceptual beachhead: “Beaches and dunes of human-altered coasts” by Karl F. Nordstrom (1994)

Approaching 30 years since its publication in Progress in Physical Geography, Nordstrom’s work from 1994 reads like an uncannily current synopsis of grand challenges in interdisciplinary coastal science. The article is a playbook of testable hypotheses for emerging and future empirical coastal research.

Realism in Data-Based Terrain Synthesis

<p>The landscapes on Earth are varied and complex, having been created by innumerous physical processes over millions of years. The creation of artificial terrain that replicates the realism of landscapes on Earth has been a major challenge for computer graphics. Many different approaches have been taken, including approximating the terrain with fractals and splines, simulating the terrain using models from the physical geography, and reconstructing terrain from elements of real-world data. A primary issue in the field of terrain synthesis is the lack of, and evaluation of, realism in synthesized terrain. This thesis identifies and discusses the flaws of existing data-based methods based on example-based texture synthesis methods. It provides improvements to an existing data-based method using algorithms from the field of geographic information science, and presents a novel algorithm, ``terrain-optimization'', based on the example-based texture synthesis technique of texture-optimization. Finally, it discusses a new approach to the experimental evaluation of terrain realism, with the largest experiment conducted to date. The results of this show that each of the tested methods is indistinguishable from reality in certain circumstances and that those circumstances differ for each method tested, and that subjects with a high level of expertise in physical geography are the most qualified for identifying real terrain from synthesized terrain. Overall, the thesis provides substantial analysis and evidence about the challenges of data-based terrain synthesis while also developing new approaches in the field that perform as well as existing state-of-the-art methods.</p>

The Evolution of Rural Tourism in Wuhan: Complexity and Adaptability

The complex adaptation system (CAS) theory of “adaptability to produce complexity” is a new theoretical perspective for the spatio-temporal evolution of rural tourism systems. Based on the CAS theory, the theoretical framework, structural composition, formation process, and evolution mechanism of the rural tourism complex system were examined and revealed. The suburban country region of Wuhan was taken as the area of focus for empirical research. The state of the rural tourism destination system in Wuhan has gone through various periods of development: the embryonic stage of the system (before 2000), formation (2001–2007), rapid development (2008–2015), and consolidation and transformation (since 2016). Under the environments stimulating external physical geography, social economy, market demand, and emergencies, multiple agents such as government, enterprises, residents, and tourists in Wuhan have actively adapted to the environment and other agents, and the interaction intensity and complexity have gradually increased, driving the emergence of system agent types, functional structures, and spatial patterns. The agents continue to grow, differentiate, and aggregate. The tourism product has shifted from the dominance of a rural ecological scenery and leisure agriculture to diversified development, and with the main function changing from sightseeing to leisure and vacation. The rural communities have been renovated and beautified, transforming them from a provider of rural service facilities to a co-builder of a rural-imaged tourism space.

ROMAN PORTS IN THE LOWER TIBER VALLEY: COMPUTATIONAL APPROACHES TO REASSESS ROME'S PORT SYSTEM

This paper presents an innovative study of the port system of Rome in Imperial times through the application of an integrated approach to both archaeological analysis and material evidence. Specifically, it seeks to provide a more complete contextualization and understanding of the port system of Rome by focusing on the exploration of the physical geography of the river Tiber and its transformations in connection with the organization of the port system between the late first century BC and early third century AD. Methodologically, this study is based on the compilation, re-evaluation and analysis of published archaeological and geoarchaeological data and on the application of modelling and simulations techniques within a GIS environment. These foundations and means allow us to reconstruct the development of the river Tiber's historical course in antiquity and its impact on specific organizational aspects of Rome's port system. In this sense, this study provides new insights and avenues of research (applicable to other geographical areas and periods of time) to evaluate the system's changing capacity for transport and the potential existence of a signalling system, in contrast to previous hypotheses on the organization of river traffic along the Tiber.