• Presents state-of-the-art applications of GIS to natural environment studies
• Features an integrated approach
• Considers representation, modeling, and visualization in a single volume
• Includes contributions from recognized experts

The explosion of public interest in the natural environment can, to a large extent, be attributed to greater public awareness of the impacts of global warming and climate change. This has led to increased research interest and funding directed at studies of issues affecting sensitive, natural environments. Not surprisingly, much of this work has required the innovative application of GIS and has led to a crucial research question: How should the environment be represented, modeled, analyzed, and visualized within a GIS?

With contributions from recognized international experts, Representing, Modeling, and Visualizing the Natural Environment explores the interplay between data representation, modeling, and visualization in environmental studies. It reviews state-of-the-art GIS applications for the natural environment and presents them in the context of a range of recent studies. This focus identifies analytical challenges and illustrates broader opportunities for applying GIS within other areas of the sciences and social sciences. The integrated approach reflects the need for a single volume covering all aspects

While many texts cover aspects of GIS application within an environmental context, few of these books focus specifically on the natural environment nor do they integrate the questions that encompass the full process of enquiry associated with GIS application in studies of the environment. The thirteenth volume in the widely recognized Innovations of GIS series, this book investigates each of these questions in turn, explicitly addressing all aspects of GIS application in the natural environment.

Introduction to Representing, Modeling, and Visualizing the Natural Environment, G. Harvey, N. Mount, P. Aplin, and G. Priestnall

Representing the Natural Environment

Keynote Paper: Representation of the Natural Environment, M. Duckham

Keynote Paper: Representing Surfaces in the Natural Environment: Implications for Research and Geographical Education, N. Waters

Developing Ontologies from a Domain Expert Perspective, F. Hemsley-Flint, G. Hart, J. Lee, and S. Thompson

The Spatial Disaggregation of Great Britain and European Agricultural Land Use, C.J. McClean

Comparing Different Land Cover Data Sets for Agricultural Monitoring in Africa, S. Fritz, L. See, F. Rembold, M. Massart, T. Nègre, and C. von Hagen

Using GIS to Identify Wildland Areas in the North Pennines, S. Blair, L. See, S. Carver, and P. Samson

Representations of Environmental Data in Web-Based GIS, P. Mooney and A.C. Winstanley

Developing and Applying a Participative Web-Based GIS for Integration of Public Perceptions into Strategic Environmental Assessment, A. Gonzalez, A. Gilmer, R. Foley, J. Sweeney, and J. Fry

Modeling the Natural Environment

Keynote Paper: Challenges for Environmental Modeling, R. Aspinall

Keynote Paper: Spatial Scale and Neighborhood Size in Spatial Data Processing for Modeling the Natural Environment, A-X. Zhu

Invited Paper: Toward an Algebra for Terrain-Based Flow Analysis, D.G. Tarboton and M.E. Baker

Spatial Terrain Modeling, S. Dalyot and Y. Doytsher

Regions and Patterns of Forest Change in Brazil, A. de las Heras and I.R. Lake

GM(1,1)-Kriging Prediction of Soil Dioxin Patterns, D. Guo, R. Guo, C. Thiart, and T. Oyana

Visualizing the Natural Environment

Keynote Paper: Information Access, Depicting Geography, and Geographical Visualization Tools, W.E. Cartwright

Keynote Paper: Wiki Cartography and the Visualization of the Natural, D.Z. Sui

Invited Paper: GIS-Based Landscape Visualization: The State of the Art, A. Lovett, K. Appleton, and A. Jones

Visualizing Species Distributions, D.J. Lieske and D.J. Bender

Visualizing Risk for Hill Walkers, A. Jardine and W. Mackaness

Using Web-Based 3-D Visualization for Planning Hikes Virtually, S. Bleisch and J. Dykes

PastureSim: A Visualization Tool for Pasture Management, C.E S. Rider and F.E. Reitsma

Index