Spatial pattern comparison metrics for detecting environmental change

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

A recent report by the United Nations Initiative on Global Geospatial Information Management highlighted exponential growth in the creation of geographic data as a key trend that is expected to continue over the next 5-10 years. Coupled with this is increasing transformation of the natural world, through both natural and anthropogenic processes. There is therefore expanding need for human and technical capacity to manage, process, and analyze new sources of geospatial information about the earth's surface, such as high-resolution satellite imagery. A key task in handling geographic information is the ability to make inferences about spatial patterns, and increasingly, to compare spatial patterns. This might be in evaluating the fit of a spatially explicit model about the spread of an invasive species, or evaluating whether a landscape has lost significant connectivity after resource extraction has occured. While methods for detecting patterns in spatial data have blossomed, there are decidedly few tools available for comparing spatial patterns about the environment. Given the vast landscape of geographical information sources, there is a growing need for pattern comparison algorithms.