Anders Wästfelt

Assessing Village Authenticity with Satellite Images: A Method to Identify Intact Cultural Landscapes in Europe

Abstract The village with its characteristic zones of different land use from the center to the periphery is a basic unit of Europes cultural landscapes. However, loss of the authentic pre-industrial village structure characterized by a fine-grained structure of arable land and wooded grasslands is a threat to both cultural heritage and biodiversity in many rural landscapes. Therefore, it is important that the extent and rate of change of such authentic villages in a landscape can be monitored. We studied to what extent loss of authenticity with increasing time after abandonment can be assessed by quantitative analysis and visual interpretation of satellite images. The study was carried out in the Bieszczady Mountains, SE Poland in 1999. Using Landsat Thematic Mapper data from 1998, both the grain size of landscape elements (size of fields) and land-cover composition (encroachment of shrub and forest) were quantitatively described 6 type villages representing different stages of deterioration of the authentic village structure. Historical maps were used to delineate the border of the villages and the former extension of forest and open land was measured. The present land use and the degree of abandonment expressed as grain size and forest encroachment were mapped using satellite data. Deterioration occurred along 2 transformation paths: abandonment and ultimately becoming forest, or intensified agriculture, respectively. To validate these results we classified 22 other villages in a 1000 km2 area by visual interpretation of the original satellite images into 1 of 4 types. We then collected historical data on human population changes over the past six decades. The classification of village authenticity was clearly related to the rate of human population decline. We address the importance of validating and applying this approach for rapid assessment of the authenticity of cultural landscapes in European regions being subject to ongoing as well as expected future change, related to expansion of the European Union. Finally, we argue that the village represents a scale at which integration of natural and social sciences is possible.

Land use qualities identified in remotely-sensed images

Land use can be defined as the intentional use of a specific piece of land resulting in patterns of ecological responses that are visible in land cover and landscape. The responses to land use often result in a heterogeneous combination of classes of land cover. Existing methods used in the classification of satellite imagery are limited in their capacity to handle categories consisting of heterogeneous or multiple land cover classes. Accordingly, a spatial relational post‐classification (SRPC) method has been developed which uses a spatial relational post‐classification of land cover classes based on the incorporation of information about identified land use qualities. This paper explains how this method works, and presents the results from a case study of the surroundings of Sötåsa village located in southern Sweden. Different land cover classes were aggregated semantically into two land use quality classes. In conclusion, it is argued that it is possible to make the semantic shift from reflectance to land use qualities using the developed method on satellite data, and that this provides considerable scope for the future analysis of land use.

Formalized interpretation of compound land use objects – Mapping historical summer farms from a single satellite image

Notions of land cover relating to physical landscape characters are readily captured by satellite imagery. Land use on the other hand relates more to the societal aspects of a landscape. We argue that much of the spatial configuration of landscape characters is related to land use and that satellite data can be used to represent and investigate interpretations of land use. We propose and demonstrate the joint use of a novel SRPC procedure for satellite imagery together with an explicit representation of category semantics. We use these two mechanisms to identify a collection of conceptual spaces related to land use on Swedish historic summer farms. We also outline a framework for analysis of the relations between two separate ways of knowing: the machine-based knowledge and the human, mental knowledge. An evaluation demonstrates that satellite images can be used to identify land use processes as a mixture of land cover objects occurring in particular spatial contextual relationships closely tied to the land use category semantics. This opens up an unexplored possibility for research on vague spatial ontologies and questions on how to formally articulate different interpretations of space, land use, and other branches of spatial social science.

Next Generation of Geospatial Information from Digital Image Analysis to Spatiotemporal Databases by PEGGY AGOURIS AND ARIE CROITORU

Next Generation of Geospatial Information from Digital Image Analysis to Spatiotemporal Databases by PEGGY AGOURIS AND ARIE CROITORU

Reclaiming Position : Using Local Context to Visualise Interpretations of Satellite Images in Humanities and Social Science

Reclaiming Position : Using Local Context to Visualise Interpretations of Satellite Images in Humanities and Social Science