Investigating demographic processes using innovative combinations of remotely sensed and demographic data
- PDF / 132,048 Bytes
- 3 Pages / 439.37 x 666.142 pts Page_size
- 25 Downloads / 254 Views
Investigating demographic processes using innovative combinations of remotely sensed and demographic data Deborah Balk 1 & Kathryn Grace 2 Published online: 26 November 2019 # Springer Nature B.V. 2019
Using remote-sensed data, largely that from Earth-observing satellites, with demographic data is a relatively new strategy used to improve understanding of population processes occurring across the planet. It may at first seem surprising that a journal dedicated to population and environment interactions warrants a special issue on combining remotely sensed and demographic data to investigate population processes. While adoption of these approaches to understand spatial processes in the social sciences is on the rise, use of remote-sensing data is often a heavier lift than other spatial data or unmeasured but implicit spatial constructs. This is, to a large extent, because it usually requires that demographers or other population-oriented social scientists collaborate with physical scientists such as those in physical geography, climatology, and Earth science. It is the work of such interdisciplinary teams that we are pleased to present in this special issue. This issue begins with a paper that pays homage to People and Pixels, a National Academy of Sciences study (NRC 1998), commissioned 20 years ago. Kluger and colleagues review the analytical and data landscape with a focus on changes in the scope and scale of available remotely sensed data. They also highlight some of the approaches and applications of remotely sensed data of relevance to social scientists. They provide a primer to new data integration platforms and tools that are helpful, especially for the novice and immediate user and point towards future opportunities. As it is clear from Kluger and colleagues, many questions that intersect populationenvironment are driven not by understanding demographic outcomes but rather by Deborah Balk and Kathryn Grace contributed equally to this work.
* Deborah Balk [email protected] * Kathryn Grace [email protected]
1
CUNY Institute for Demographic Research, and Marxe School of Public and International Affairs, Baruch College, City University of New York, New York, NY, USA
2
Department of Geography, Environment and Society, Minnesota Population Center, University of Minnesota, Cities, Twin, MN, USA
72
Population and Environment (2019) 41:71–73
using demographic data to understand environmental change. Much empirical research remains to be done to fully exploit the possible uses of the data and to foster collaborations across social sciences that focus on expanding the theoretical aspects of the use and application of remotely sensed data. In addition to this broad overview article, this special issue includes papers topics well within traditional areas of demographic inquiry—topics closely allied with fertility, mortality, and migration. Two papers examine nutrition and child health in Africa and Asia. Cooper and colleagues examine child health outcomes and food security using survey data and rainfall
Data Loading...
