**Landscape Sciences**

The eighth and final chapter takes us into the built environment and the concern with spatial variation in the landscape. Mapping of the engineered, or "built" landscape, is another important component of the ability to map and understand the spatial patterns of the human environment and their implications for humans' interactions with nature. "High-resolution Object-based Building Extraction Using PCA of LiDAR nDSM and Aerial Photos" by Alfred Cal presents a methodology by which LiDAR nDSM and aerial photos can be analyzed with principal components analysis (PCA) to generate a highly successful and highly accurate extraction of building footprints. The author demonstrates the manipulations that are needed to map human structures in a regional rural to semi-rural landscape in Belize. He demonstrates an approach that improves our capacity to assess the spatial variability of land cover and land uses in our natural environments.

It is our hope that these chapters provide interesting reading for students who are compelled by questions of spatial variability (or Geography) in the realms of diverse environments of our planet.

> **John P. Tiefenbacher** Texas State University, USA

**Davod Poreh** University of Naples Federico II, Italy

**IV**

not only for human health and welfare, but also for the security and safety of the ecological systems upon which we depend. Sulfur and nitrogen are two components of the atmospheric pollution regime that can have both human and ecological effects that are often determined by the molecular forms they take, but are also a function of concentrations, timing, and spatial distributions that effect exposure to harmful (if not toxic) levels of contamination. The authors study the phenomenon of deposition of these elements in the city of León, Mexico. They describe the methods used to compile and analyze data from regional monitoring networks and samplers. The implications of these contaminants for local and regional flora and ecosystem health is discussed. They demonstrate an approach to discerning the spatial variability of

Change in the environment poses certain hazards in certain places. The capacity to quickly and accurate assess the results of an extreme natural event is an ever-present desire. The coastal zone is one of the most dynamic environments on Earth as it is in constant flux due to the interactions between the land, the atmosphere, and the ocean. Evaluation of the impacts of storms on barrier islands presents certain challenges, but our fourth chapter, "Monitoring Storm Impacts on Sandy Coastlines with UAVs" by Alex Smith, Brianna Lunardi, Elizabeth George, and Chris Houser presents an effort to use unmanned aerial vehicles to do just that, with speed and precision as its goal. The authors describe the methods, challenges, and limitations of their new approach in the context of Prince Edward Island, Canada. Their study reveals the effectiveness of linear, aerial, and volumetric monitoring of the spatial changes of dunes after a storm using drone technology. They demonstrate an approach to

discerning the spatial variability of coastal geomorphological processes.

of the spatial variability of coastal geomorphology.

**Biological Sciences**

Similarly focused on the spatial variability of coastal geomorphology, our fifth chapter "Recent Advances in Coastal Survey Techniques: From GNSS to LiDAR and Digital Photogrammetry: Examples on the Northern Coast of France" examines the effectiveness of the technologies used to gather spatial data. Olivier Cohen and Arnaud Héquette discuss the benefits and limitations of several sensor technologies to gather land surface measurements from which digital terrain models (DTMs) can be derived. The authors employ these methods in case studies along France's northern coast. They demonstrate the implications of the selection of technologies on analysis

The sixth chapter of this volume is by João Carvalho, Manuela Magalhães, and Selma Pena and covers the analysis of forest ecology for landscape planning. In "Spatial and Temporal Variability Regarding Forest – From Tree to the Landscape," the authors discuss the ramifications of scale on the assessment of the integrity, biodiversity, and viability of forests in Portugal. An important lesson described in this chapter is that spatial variability varies with spatial scale. Or to put it differently, one could possibly not see the forest for the trees and that attention to scale is vitally important to assessment. Such mindfulness to spatial scale should guide the selection of the metrics (biodiversity, forest fire risk, disturbance, fragmentation, etc.) by which the conditions of a forest are judged. Interventions in using forested lands must focus on clearly stated management goals and those goals need to vary with spatial scale and

pollution in the lower atmosphere.

**Geological Sciences**

Section 1

Meteorological Sciences

**1**

Section 1
