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Representative Landscapes in the Forested Area of Canada
Canada is a large nation with forested ecosystems that occupy over 60% of the national land base, and knowledge of the patterns of Canada’s land cover is important to proper environmental management of this vast resource. To this end, a circa 2000 Landsat-derived land cover map of the forested ecosy...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Springer-Verlag
2011
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3249557/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22109729 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00267-011-9785-2 |
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author | Cardille, Jeffrey A. White, Joanne C. Wulder, Mike A. Holland, Tara |
author_facet | Cardille, Jeffrey A. White, Joanne C. Wulder, Mike A. Holland, Tara |
author_sort | Cardille, Jeffrey A. |
collection | PubMed |
description | Canada is a large nation with forested ecosystems that occupy over 60% of the national land base, and knowledge of the patterns of Canada’s land cover is important to proper environmental management of this vast resource. To this end, a circa 2000 Landsat-derived land cover map of the forested ecosystems of Canada has created a new window into understanding the composition and configuration of land cover patterns in forested Canada. Strategies for summarizing such large expanses of land cover are increasingly important, as land managers work to study and preserve distinctive areas, as well as to identify representative examples of current land-cover and land-use assemblages. Meanwhile, the development of extremely efficient clustering algorithms has become increasingly important in the world of computer science, in which billions of pieces of information on the internet are continually sifted for meaning for a vast variety of applications. One recently developed clustering algorithm quickly groups large numbers of items of any type in a given data set while simultaneously selecting a representative—or “exemplar”—from each cluster. In this context, the availability of both advanced data processing methods and a nationally available set of landscape metrics presents an opportunity to identify sets of representative landscapes to better understand landscape pattern, variation, and distribution across the forested area of Canada. In this research, we first identify and provide context for a small, interpretable set of exemplar landscapes that objectively represent land cover in each of Canada’s ten forested ecozones. Then, we demonstrate how this approach can be used to identify flagship and satellite long-term study areas inside and outside protected areas in the province of Ontario. These applications aid our understanding of Canada’s forest while augmenting its management toolbox, and may signal a broad range of applications for this versatile approach. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-3249557 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2011 |
publisher | Springer-Verlag |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-32495572012-01-11 Representative Landscapes in the Forested Area of Canada Cardille, Jeffrey A. White, Joanne C. Wulder, Mike A. Holland, Tara Environ Manage Article Canada is a large nation with forested ecosystems that occupy over 60% of the national land base, and knowledge of the patterns of Canada’s land cover is important to proper environmental management of this vast resource. To this end, a circa 2000 Landsat-derived land cover map of the forested ecosystems of Canada has created a new window into understanding the composition and configuration of land cover patterns in forested Canada. Strategies for summarizing such large expanses of land cover are increasingly important, as land managers work to study and preserve distinctive areas, as well as to identify representative examples of current land-cover and land-use assemblages. Meanwhile, the development of extremely efficient clustering algorithms has become increasingly important in the world of computer science, in which billions of pieces of information on the internet are continually sifted for meaning for a vast variety of applications. One recently developed clustering algorithm quickly groups large numbers of items of any type in a given data set while simultaneously selecting a representative—or “exemplar”—from each cluster. In this context, the availability of both advanced data processing methods and a nationally available set of landscape metrics presents an opportunity to identify sets of representative landscapes to better understand landscape pattern, variation, and distribution across the forested area of Canada. In this research, we first identify and provide context for a small, interpretable set of exemplar landscapes that objectively represent land cover in each of Canada’s ten forested ecozones. Then, we demonstrate how this approach can be used to identify flagship and satellite long-term study areas inside and outside protected areas in the province of Ontario. These applications aid our understanding of Canada’s forest while augmenting its management toolbox, and may signal a broad range of applications for this versatile approach. Springer-Verlag 2011-11-23 2012 /pmc/articles/PMC3249557/ /pubmed/22109729 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00267-011-9785-2 Text en © The Author(s) 2011 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial License which permits any noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited. |
spellingShingle | Article Cardille, Jeffrey A. White, Joanne C. Wulder, Mike A. Holland, Tara Representative Landscapes in the Forested Area of Canada |
title | Representative Landscapes in the Forested Area of Canada |
title_full | Representative Landscapes in the Forested Area of Canada |
title_fullStr | Representative Landscapes in the Forested Area of Canada |
title_full_unstemmed | Representative Landscapes in the Forested Area of Canada |
title_short | Representative Landscapes in the Forested Area of Canada |
title_sort | representative landscapes in the forested area of canada |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3249557/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22109729 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00267-011-9785-2 |
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