Mihai Niculiţă

Landslide Type and Pattern in Moldavian Plateau, NE Romania

This study proposes a regional scale approach of landslide typology and patterns for the Moldavian Plateau, one of the Romanian regions most affected by mass movement processes. A regional historical landslide inventory was carried out, using remote sensing imagery, resulting a number of 24,263 polygons, which cover 18.3 % of the whole study area (24,803 km2). Preconditioning, preparatory, and triggering factors were revised and the following types of landslides were identified and attributed in the inventory: rotational, translational, lateral spread, flows, and complex landslides. The statistic interpretations of the geomorphometric variables of the polygons that define the areas affected by landslides, reveal a strong relation between the landslide phenomenon and the lithology, the morphostructure and the topography. The general pattern of landslide distribution emphasizes a repetitive model along cuesta scarp slopes; this is mainly related to the lithology dominated by limestones, sandstones, and volcanic consolidated tuffs at the upper part of the slopes, with friable clayey and sandy strata intercalations. The landslide inventory and the revealed types and patterns of landslides are an essential step for a better understanding of landslide phenomenon, landslide risk assessment, and landslide management in the Moldavian Plateau.

A Mixed Approach in Recognising Geographical Entities in Texts

The paper describes an approach for automatic identification in Romanian texts of name entities belonging to the geographical domain. The research is part of a project (MappingBooks) aimed to link mentions of entities in an e-book with external information, as found in social media, Wikipedia, or web pages containing cultural or touristic information, in order to enhance the reader’s experience. The described name entity recognizer mixes ontological information, as found in public resources, with handwritten symbolic rules. The outputs of the two component modules are compared and heuristics are used to take decisions in cases of conflict.