This work presents a segmentation method based on a region growing approach. It has been implemented in the geographic information and image processing system (SPRING) which has been developed at INPE. The technique is applied to segment images which are being used to assess land use changes in the Amazon region. Segmented Landsat-TM images are shown to illustrate the technique.

In this paper, we describe the design and initial implementation of a geographic search engine prototype for Germany, based on a large crawl of the de domain. Geographic search engines provide a flexible interface to the Web that allows users to constrain and order search results in an intuitive manner, by focusing a query on a particular geographic region. Geographic search technology has rece...

Accurately representing geographic space in a digital environment continues to confound and challenge researchers. Carrying out spatial analysis in a setting where geographic representation is subject to change poses problems to be addressed. In this paper we examine spatial representation in the context of coverage-based location modeling. A geographic region can be represented in a variety of...

We investigate the influence of culture and identity (geographic location) on the constitution of a specific research field. Using as case study the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) project in the Astronomy field, we analyzed texts from bibliographic records of publications along three cultural and geographic axes: US only publications, non-US publications and international collaboration. Using ...

Rates of alcohol use and alcohol use disorder (AUD) vary with geographic location. Research on risks for AUD associated with living in a rural versus urban setting is complicated by the varied systems used to classify geographic location. Studies comparing the prevalence of heavier or binge drinking and AUD based on a dichotomous urban/rural classification have mixed findings when compared with...

We present TAPAS-Z, which is an agent-based freight transport analysis model for simulation of decision-making and transport activities. TAPAS-Z is a further development of a simulation model called TAPAS, and it has improved support for simulation of transport in large geographical regions. It is based on the principles that shipments are simulated for chosen supplier-consumer relations in a g...

Landmarks play crucial roles in human geographic knowledge. There has been much work focusing on the extraction of landmarks from geographic information systems (GIS) or 3D city models. The extraction of landmarks from digital documents, however, has not been fully explored. The World Wide Web provides a rich source of region related information based on our understanding of geographic space. W...

—The subfamily Equinae in the Great Plains region of North America underwent a dramatic radiation and subsequent decline as climate changed from warm and humid in the middle Miocene to cooler and more arid conditions during the late Miocene. Here we use ecological niche modeling (ENM), specifically the GARP (Genetic Algorithm using Rule-set Prediction) modeling system, to reconstruct the geogra...

Factors shaping the geographic range of a species can be identified when phylogeographic patterns are combined with data on contemporary and historical geographic distribution, range-wide abundance, habitat/food availability, and through comparisons with codistributed taxa. Here, we evaluate range dynamism and phylogeography of the rocky intertidal gastropod Mexacanthina lugubris lugubris acros...

Cacao trees have been cultivated in Mesoamerica for at least 4,000 years. In this study, we analyzed sequence variation in the chloroplast DNA trnH-psbA intergenic spacer from 28 cacao trees from different farms in the Soconusco region in southern Mexico. Genetic relationships were established by two analysis approaches based on geographic origin (five populations) and genetic origin (based on ...