Geospatial analysis for conservation: applications with open-source software in the Natural Parks of Barcelona
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Geospatial analysis for conservation: applications with open-source software in the Natural Parks of Barcelona Agustin Lobo & Francesc Ara & Francesc Baró & Carlos Camino
Received: 15 November 2010 / Accepted: 8 January 2012 / Published online: 27 January 2012 # Società Italiana di Fotogrammetria e Topografia (SIFET) 2012
Abstract We describe some applications of geospatial analysis in which open-source software has been prevalent, with the aim of presenting examples of operational use and discussing past and current limitations. The examples are extracted from a sequence of projects carried out in Natural Parks of the Province of Barcelona (Catalonia, NE Spain), including the use of calibrated satellite vegetation index to monitor recovery after fire, multi-criteria analysis to rank abandoned fields for restoration, generalization of vegetation maps using a double-criteria hierarchical clustering, and planning and initial evaluation of aerial campaigns with a small A. Lobo (*) Institut de Ciències de la Terra Jaume Almera (CSIC), Barcelona, Spain e-mail: [email protected] A. Lobo : F. Ara : F. Baró Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambiental, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain C. Camino Centre Tecnològic Forestal de Catalunya, Solsona, Spain Present Address: F. Ara Geodata Sistemes S.L., Barcelona, Spain Present Address: F. Baró Lavola S.A., Barcelona, Spain Present Address: C. Camino Centro de Investigaciones Atmosféricas de Izaña (AEMET), Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Spain
remote-controlled aerial vehicle. Our use of open-source software steadily increased through this sequence of projects, with the R language and environment for statistical computing occupying a central position in our set of tools, but our applications also made use of proprietary software. Keywords Remote Sensing . Satellite . GIS . Fire . Multi-criteria . UAV
Introduction Open-source software (OSS) is becoming increasingly popular for the analysis of geodata in Ecology, and Environmental and Biological Conservation. OSS is much more than just a cheap solution to disciplines that are often on a tight budget. It has become the basis for the development of a community in which cooperative support is spiced with an exciting and fruitful debate. The interface between users and developers of OSS is becoming wider and fuzzier, providing an excellent environment for scientific and technical advance. In this paper, we describe a sequence of applications of geospatial analysis in which OSS has been prevalent with the aim of presenting examples of operational use, and discuss past and current limitations of OSS in this context. All cases deal with applications of geospatial processing and analysis to conservation and management of protected areas in Catalunya (NE Spain). The four cases (monitoring vegetation recovery after fire, ranking abandoned fields for the restoration of traditional agriculture, generalization of the legend of a vegetation map, and planning and evaluating aerial campaigns) cover a wide range o
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