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In general Uganda receives enough rainfall to rain-feed crops and pasture but as climate is changing the seasonal patterns are expected to become more extreme. This influences how the land can be used, and has a strong impact on the farmers who depend on their land for economic income and food security. This report has two aims. The first is to identify the farmer’s experiences of climate change a
Exposed, well-drained and nutrient poor areas on Spitsbergen are mainly covered by a plant alliance typical for Svalbard, the Caricion nardinae. Caricion nardinae is a circum-polar alliance, which is dominated by the creeping, ever-green dwarf-shrub Dryas octopetala. On the beach flats of western Spitsbergen, Jonas Åkerman (1983) observed in 1979 the plant Dryas octopetala growing in an unusual pa
Temperature recordings from a moving vehicle are frequently used in microclimatological research. This work aims at investigating three aspects of the quality and the representability of mobile-recorded temperature data: the displacement of air near the car's front; the inertia of the sensors which hinders the accurate recording of fast fluctuations, and how good temperature profiles obtained
Biodiversity, and in particular plant species diversity decline is linked to landscape fragmentation and habitats loss due to land use transformations but also to decreasing dispersal vectors in the landscape. During the last 200 years the landscape has undergone dramatic changes in its structure and its habitats diversity. Among the different habitats that constitute rural landscape there are thr
Transboundary river basins provide inhabitance and water resources to millions of people around the globe and they are a source of dispute among neighbor countries also. This thesis focuses on the snow melt and runoff modeling of a small transboundary river, Talas; using a physically distributed rainfall-runoff model, TOPKAPI-ETH. Investigation on the use of remotely sensed precipitation estimates
The main goal of this research was the development of GIS and Remote Sensing based methodology for environmental monitoring of bio- restoration activities of disturbed vegetation cover along oil pipeline corridor. For the achievement of the main goal, high – resolution multispectral IKONOS and FORMOSAT satellite images acquired during vegetation peak seasons in 2007 and 2008 were processed by poly
The majority of approaches for mass appraisal are based on global statistical models that take into account property characteristics, and, in developing countries, location variables are not often explicitly considered. The present study uses Geographic Information Systems (GIS) as an analytical tool to develop a number of location variables and to analyze their impact in the value of properties.
Popular summary: Air quality data mart built in this study consists of historical air pollutant data for cities across Ontario. This data is available at the Ontario ministry of environment website from 2000-2007 for most of the cities. There is missing data for some of the cities and some pollutants as well. It is because the monitoring of those specific pollutants did not commence in or before 2
Spatial and temporal variations in malaria transmission are naturally associated with prevailing climatic and environmental factors, for example rainfall, humidity, temperature and human activities. These factors influence malaria transmission mainly in non-deterministic ways, making them less appropriate for accurate geographical mapping of malaria risk. One distinctive phenomenon, ‘photosyntheti
This master thesis aims to investigate the visual characteristics of Late Bronze Age tholos tombs in the region of Messenia, Greece by comparing tholos tombs from two study areas: the Pylian hinterlands and the Soulima Valley. The study utilises cost surfaces and viewsheds created in a GIS-environment as heuristic devices to do so. With the common assumption that the tholos tombs were erected as v
Popular Summary Native forests are one of the most important natural resources in Chile and cover 13.6 million ha in Chile (18% of the country area). These forests provide a wide range of ecosystem services but have been negatively affected by drastic land-use changes. Taking into account that future climate and land-use changes will affect these ecosystems, it is important to have efficient tools
Popular science Boreal forests play an important role within the global climatic system, since they generally act as a carbon sink. However, contrary to expectations, measurements have shown that the boreal forest at the Norunda research site in Central Sweden is acting as a carbon source, i.e. emitting more of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2) as taking up. Soil CO2 efflux plays an importan
Linné glacier has retreated approximately 1.8 km since 1936 and 1 km between 1995 and 2019. Linné glacier is following the same trend as other glaciers around Svalbard. Linné glacier is a well-monitored glacier with a time series of air temperature, incoming solar radiation and snow height data since 2003. Annual recordings of the glacier margin from 2007, allows for an accurate reconstruction of
Diversity is an important part of the health of our planet’s ecosystems and processes. Anthropogenic factors like urbanization and agriculture have altered the landscape and in turn had a negative effect on diversity. Efforts to maintain and preserve diversity for long term ecological strength, have led to more holistic approaches by handling many types of diversity under the same field of “landsc
Emerging technologies have the potential to bring numerous new opportunities and solutions to the existing challenges, including addressing sustainable development goals (SDGs). Particular hopes are given to areas of the life that require our urgent action, these include but are not limited to medicine and food security. Scientists investigate how these technological advances can be applied for th
The rate of global urbanization in the 21st century has been unprecedented especially in the African and the Asian continents. Urbanization typically causes a removal of natural vegetation and replacement of same with impervious and non-evaporative urban materials with high heat capacity and low solar reflectivity. The alteration of the natural land cover due to urbanization causes a change in the
In a GIS system, the need to encode geospatial data without standardized cartographic representations, such as population data, weather information, etc., on top of a map is common. This can be done with a layer on top of a base map, with the effect that the base map is partially or fully hidden. Reducing the opacity (or its equivalent - increasing the transparency) of this overlay data layer is a
Forest fires in mainland Portugal are becoming more extreme, resulting in increasingly larger burnt areas and tragic human fatalities, as was shown by the 2017 fires. Research shows that there are many natural factors contributing to such fire vulnerability conditions, such as climate, fuel continuity, forest structure, tree species types, amongst others, that are intertwined with anthropic factor
This thesis presents the design and implementation of a Geographic Information System (GIS) for the Naoussa Municipality Water and Sewer Company for better water utility management. The methodology contained field data collection like the valves, sewer manholes, hydrometers, and hydrants in two ways, UAV photogrammetry, and traditional surveying, the georeferencing process, photogrammetric proces
Why are women more vulnerable to climate change? What factors explain womens’ position of vulnerability regarding climate change? How are the daily lives of women affected by the consequences of climate change? Do they understand climate change as violence? These are only a few of the questions that will be addressed throughout this paper. My frustration regarding the fact that many people are bei
