Urban Countryside Biogeography: a decade of comparing the avifauna of a Sydney suburb and reserve

2007 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 69 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul R. Ehrlich
Keyword(s):  
Urban Areas ◽  
Urban Environments ◽  
The Other ◽  
Natural Areas ◽  
Quarter Century ◽  
The Past ◽  
Countryside Biogeography ◽  
Rural Environments ◽  
Rural And Urban ◽  
Human Enterprise

As the human enterprise expands, the task of preserving biodiversity increasingly must be carried out in areas heavily modified by humanity ? the domain of countryside biogeography (Daily 2001; Daily et al. 2001). Countrysides normally are thought of as rural environments. The dividing line between rural and urban is often blurred by suburbs; urban environments represent the expanding end of a continuum of disturbance, the other end of which is the shrinking domain of relatively undisturbed natural areas and wilderness. Because of the growing preponderance of urbanization, ecologists over the past quarter century have increasingly turned their attention to conservation in urban areas.

Damage assessment mapping of rural environments; integration of SAR and Optical data

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shiran Havivi ◽  
Stanley R. Rotman ◽  
Dan G. Blumberg ◽  
Shimrit Maman
Keyword(s):  
Natural Disaster ◽  
Rural Areas ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Damage Assessment ◽  
Vegetation Index ◽  
Urban Environments ◽  
Optical Data ◽  
Damage Level ◽  
Rural Environments ◽  
Rural And Urban

<p>The damage caused by a natural disaster in rural areas differs in nature, extent, landscape and in structure, from the damage in urban environments. Previous and current studies focus mainly on mapping damaged structures in urban areas after catastrophe events such as an earthquake or tsunami. Yet, research focusing on the damage level or its distribution in rural areas is absent. In order to apply an emergency response and for effective disaster management, it is necessary to understand and characterize the nature of the damage in each different environment. </p><p>Havivi et al. (2018), published a damage assessment algorithm that makes use of SAR images combined with optical data, for rapid mapping and compiling a damage assessment map following a natural disaster. The affected areas are analyzed using interferometric SAR (InSAR) coherence. To overcome the loss of coherence caused by changes in vegetation, optical images are used to produce a mask by computing the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and removing the vegetated area from the scene. Due to the differences in geomorphological settings and landuse\landcover between rural and urban settlements, the above algorithm is modified and adjusted by inserting the Modified Normalized Difference Water Index (MNDWI) to better suit rural environments and their unique response after a disaster. MNDWI is used for detection, identification and extraction of waterbodies (such as irrigation canals, streams, rivers, lakes, etc.), allowing their removal which causes lack of coherence at the post stage of the event. Furthermore, it is used as an indicator for highlighting prone regions that might be severely affected pre disaster event. Thresholds are determined for the co-event coherence map (≤ 0.5), the NDVI (≥ 0.4) and the MNDWI (≥ 0), and the three layers are combined into one. Based on the combined map, a damage assessment map is generated. </p><p>As a case study, this algorithm was applied to the areas affected by multi-hazard event, following the Sulawesi earthquake and subsequent tsunami in Palu, Indonesia, which occurred on September 28th, 2018. High-resolution COSMO-SkyMed images pre and post the event, alongside a Sentinel-2 image pre- event are used as inputs. The output damage assessment map provides a quantitative assessment and spatial distribution of the damage in both the rural and urban environments. The results highlight the applicability of the algorithm for a variety of disaster events and sensors. In addition, the results enhance the contribution of the water component to the analysis pre and post the event in rural areas. Thus, while in urban regions the spatial extent of the damage will occur in its proximity to the coastline or the fault, rural regions, even in significant distance will experience extensive damage due secondary hazards as liquefaction processes.     </p>

scholarly journals Parasitic infections of digestive tract of dogs in territory of Branicevo District

2011 ◽  
Vol 65 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 223-234 ◽  
Author(s):  
Boban Djuric ◽  
Tamara Ilic ◽  
Dragisa Trailovic ◽  
Zoran Kulisic ◽  
Sanda Dimitrijevic
Keyword(s):  
Digestive Tract ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Toxocara Canis ◽  
Urban Environments ◽  
Parasitic Infections ◽  
Wide Spread ◽  
Dipylidium Caninum ◽  
Rural Environments ◽  
Rural And Urban ◽  
Trichuris Vulpis

This paper presents the results of two-year investigations of parasitic infections of the digestive tract of dogs originating from the territories of eight municipalities of Branicevo District. Investigations were performed on 345 dogs of different breeds and age categories, originating from rural and urban environments. The investigations encompassed dogs bred in decent hygiene conditions, as well as dogs living in unhygienic conditions. Some of the dogs covered by these analyses were dewormed, but the bulk of the sampled material originated from dogs that were not treated with antihelminthics. Eight species of parasites of the digestive tract were diagnosed in the examined dogs from the territory of the Branicevo District: Toxocara canis, Ancylostoma caninum, Uncinaria stenocephala, Trichuris vulpis, coccidiae, Dipylidium caninum, Taenia spp. and Alaria alata. Today, it is still necessary to keep dogs in rural environments and isolated areas, since these animals are used to guard real estate and cattle. For quite some time now, there has also been wide-spread interest in keeping dogs in urban areas as well. It is evident on the grounds of data from big towns that the number of dogs in urban environments has been increasing constantly all over the world. However, the conditions for naturally maintaining dogs in towns have become increasingly more difficult and complicated. The amount of free space and the number of yards are constantly being reduced, so that dog owners are compelled to keep their pets in apartments. These altered living and diet conditions have resulted in more complex and varied health problems of dogs.

Literacy and Education: Fifth Release From the 1961 Census of Pakistan (Review Article)

1963 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 424-442
Author(s):  
Jamila Akhtar
Keyword(s):  
Population Growth ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Review Article ◽  
Interim Report ◽  
Educational Levels ◽  
Rural And Urban Areas ◽  
The Past ◽  
Review Articles ◽  
Rural And Urban ◽  
Age And Sex

This review of the Literacy and Education Bklletin1 of the 1961 Census is fourth in the series of review articles published in this journal2. The Bulletin under review forms a part of the interim report on the characteristics of the population of Pakistan. It gives information on the number of illiterate and literate persons by age and sex for rural and urban areas on division and district basis; illiterate and literate.population in selected cities and towns; and the educational levels attained by the literate population by age and sex for divisions and districts. Relevant statistical notes and statements precede the tables in the Bulletin. The objective of this review is to describe the meaningfulness and significance of literacy statistics. To this end, a distinction is made between formal and functional levels of literacy. Comparisons of the 1951 and 1961 census figures are undertaken to indicate the progress of literacy and education during the past decade with reference to the effect of intercensal rate of population growth on such progress. Certain questions regarding the reliability of data are raised, which emphasize the need for caution in the interpretation of literacy statistics.

Long Time Coming: Prospects for Democracy in Iraq

2009 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 115-148 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce E. Moon
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Democratic Transitions ◽  
Quarter Century ◽  
The Past ◽  
Political Experience ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Time Required ◽  
Established Democracies

Prospects for democracy in Iraq should be assessed in light of the historical precedents of nations with comparable political experiences. Saddam Hussein's Iraq was an unusually extreme autocracy, which lasted an unusually long time. Since the end of the nineteenth century, only thirty nations have experienced an autocracy as extreme as Iraq's for a period exceeding two decades. The subsequent political experience of those nations offers a pessimistic forecast for Iraq and similar nations. Only seven of the thirty are now democratic, and only two of them have become established democracies; the democratic experiments in the other five are still in progress. Among the seven, the average time required to transit the path from extreme autocracy to coherent, albeit precarious, democracy has been fifty years, and only two have managed this transition in fewer than twenty-five years. Even this sober assessment is probably too optimistic, because Iraq lacks the structural conditions that theory and evidence indicate have been necessary for successful democratic transitions in the past. Thus, the odds of Iraq achieving democracy in the next quarter century are close to zero, at best about two in thirty, but probably far less.

scholarly journals Evidence and theory for lower rates of depression in larger US urban areas

2021 ◽  
Vol 118 (31) ◽  
pp. e2022472118
Author(s):  
Andrew J. Stier ◽  
Kathryn E. Schertz ◽  
Nak Won Rim ◽  
Carlos Cardenas-Iniguez ◽  
Benjamin B. Lahey ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Social Networks ◽  
Social Determinants ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Urban Environments ◽  
City Size ◽  
Built Environments ◽  
Rural And Urban ◽  
Us Cities ◽  
Systematic Framework

It is commonly assumed that cities are detrimental to mental health. However, the evidence remains inconsistent and at most, makes the case for differences between rural and urban environments as a whole. Here, we propose a model of depression driven by an individual’s accumulated experience mediated by social networks. The connection between observed systematic variations in socioeconomic networks and built environments with city size provides a link between urbanization and mental health. Surprisingly, this model predicts lower depression rates in larger cities. We confirm this prediction for US cities using four independent datasets. These results are consistent with other behaviors associated with denser socioeconomic networks and suggest that larger cities provide a buffer against depression. This approach introduces a systematic framework for conceptualizing and modeling mental health in complex physical and social networks, producing testable predictions for environmental and social determinants of mental health also applicable to other psychopathologies.

A comparison of foraging by Eptesicus fuscus (Chiroptera: Vespertilionidae) in urban and rural environments

1985 ◽  
Vol 63 (2) ◽  
pp. 263-266 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. F. Geggie ◽  
M. B. Fenton
Keyword(s):  
Rural Areas ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Eptesicus Fuscus ◽  
Urban Setting ◽  
Foraging Activity ◽  
Radio Tracking ◽  
Urban Habitats ◽  
Rural Environments ◽  
Rural And Urban ◽  
Time Away

We compared the foraging activity of populations of Eptesicus fuscus in rural and urban settings in eastern Ontario and western Quebec by monitoring their echolocation calls and by radio tracking individuals during the summer of 1980. Foraging was detected in all of the rural and urban habitats we monitored. There were no significant differences in the levels of foraging activity over different urban habitats, but the overall foraging rates were significantly higher in the rural than in the urban areas. Foraging in rural areas was significantly higher in residential zones and over water and was less common in parkland and farmland. Bats in rural areas foraged among aggregations of insects at lights, a pattern of behaviour not seen among urban bats. Differences in foraging rates and the fact that rural bats spent significantly less time away from their roosts suggest that prey density was lower in the urban setting. Although urban habitats appear to provide E. fuscus with a wealth of roosting sites, food supplies are lower there.

scholarly journals Rethinking Depression in Cities: Evidence and Theory for Lower Rates in Larger Urban Areas

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew J Stier ◽  
Marc G Berman ◽  
Luis M.A. Bettencourt ◽  
Kathryn E Schertz ◽  
Nak Won Rim ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Social Networks ◽  
Social Determinants ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Urban Environments ◽  
City Size ◽  
Built Environments ◽  
Rural And Urban ◽  
Us Cities ◽  
Systematic Framework

It is commonly assumed that cities are detrimental to mental health. However, the evidence remains inconsistent and, at most, makes the case for differences between rural and urban environments as a whole. Here, we propose a model of depression driven by an individual's accumulated experience mediated by social networks. The connection between observed systematic variations in socioeconomic networks and built environments with city size provides a link between urbanization and mental health. Surprisingly, this model predicts lower depression rates in larger cities. We confirm this prediction for US cities using three independent datasets. These results are consistent with other behaviors associated with denser socioeconomic networks and suggest that larger cities provide a buffer against depression. This approach introduces a systematic framework for conceptualizing and modeling mental health in complex physical and social networks, producing testable predictions for environmental and social determinants of mental health also applicable to other psychopathologies.

scholarly journals Broadening Understanding on Managing the Communication Infrastructure in Vehicular Networks: Customizing the Coverage Using the Delta Network

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cristiano Silva ◽  
Lucas Silva ◽  
Leonardo Santos ◽  
João Sarubbi ◽  
Andreas Pitsillides
Keyword(s):  
Urban Areas ◽  
Road Network ◽  
Vehicular Networks ◽  
Urban Environments ◽  
Urban Mobility ◽  
Circle Pattern ◽  
The Road ◽  
The Past ◽  
Communication Devices ◽  
Definition Of

Over the past few decades, the growth of the urban population has been remarkable. Nowadays, 50% of the population lives in urban areas, and forecasts point that by 2050 this number will reach 70%. Today, 64% of all travel made is within urban environments and the total amount of urban kilometers traveled is expected to triple by 2050. Thus, seeking novel solutions for urban mobility becomes paramount for 21st century society. In this work, we discuss the performance of vehicular networks. We consider the metric Delta Network. The Delta Network characterizes the connectivity of the vehicular network through the percentage of travel time in which vehicles are connected to roadside units. This article reviews the concept of the Delta Network and extends its study through the presentation of a general heuristic based on the definition of scores to identify the areas of the road network that should receive coverage. After defining the general heuristic, we show how small changes in the score computation can generate very distinct (and interesting) patterns of coverage, each one suited to a given scenario. In order to exemplify such behavior, we propose three deployment strategies based on simply changing the computation of scores. We compare the proposed strategies to the intuitive strategy of allocating communication units at the most popular zones of the road network. Experiments show that the strategies derived from the general heuristic provide higher coverage than the intuitive strategy when using the same number of communication devices. Moreover, the resulting pattern of coverage is very interesting, with roadside units deployed a circle pattern around the traffic epicenter.

Estimates of fertility and infant and child mortality for Lae urban area of Papua New Guinea: a comparative analysis

1987 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 139-148
Author(s):  
William K. A. Agyei
Keyword(s):  
Urban Area ◽  
Papua New Guinea ◽  
Child Mortality ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
New Guinea ◽  
Fertility Rates ◽  
Rural And Urban Areas ◽  
The Past ◽  
Rural And Urban ◽  
Infant And Child Mortality

SummaryData collected on fertility, mortality and family planning in two surveys in Papua New Guinea are presented. The first survey was conducted in rural and urban areas between November 1979 and March 1980 in eight provinces of Papua New Guinea, and the second between late June and early July 1981 in the Lae urban area. The unadjusted total fertility rates suggest that fertility is lower in the Lae urban area than in the rural and provincial urban areas. However, the adjusted rates indicate that fertility is higher in the provincial urban areas than in the rural and Lae urban areas. The results also confirm a trend towards lower infant and child mortality over the past 15 years, as well as the existence of moderate differentials between rural, provincial urban and the Lae urban areas.

Reclaiming the Past, Building a Future: Māori Identity in the Plays of Hone Kouka

2001 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Peterson
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
World War I ◽  
The Other ◽  
World War ◽  
The Past ◽  
Aotearoa New Zealand ◽  
Rural And Urban ◽  
The Future ◽  
The 1960S

Hone Kouka's historical plays Nga Tangata Toa and Waiora, created and produced in Aotearoa/New Zealand, one set in the immediate aftermath of World War I, and the other during the great Māori urban migrations of the 1960s, provide fresh insights into the way in which individual Māori responded to the tremendous social disruptions they experienced during the twentieth century. Much like the Māori orator who prefaces his formal interactions with a statement of his whakapapa (genealogy), Kouka reassembles the bones of both his ancestors, and those of other Māori, by demonstrating how the present is constructed by the past, offering a view of contemporary Māori identity that is traditional and modern, rural and urban, respectful of the past and open to the future.

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