Modelling ecological values in heterogeneous and dynamic landscapes with geospatial data

Our surrounding landscape is in a constantly dynamic state, but recently the rate of changes and their effects on the environment have considerably increased. In terms of the impact on nature, this development has not been entirely positive, but has rather caused a decline in valuable species, habitats, and general biodiversity. Regardless of recognizing the problem and its high importance, plans and actions of how to stop the detrimental development are largely lacking. This partly originates from a lack of genuine will, but is also due to difficulties in detecting many valuable landscape components and their consequent neglect. To support knowledge extraction, various digital environmental data sources may be of substantial help, but only if all the relevant background factors are known and the data is processed in a suitable way. This dissertation concentrates on detecting ecologically valuable landscape components by using geospatial data sources, and applies this knowledge to support spatial planning and management activities. In other words, the focus is on observing regionally valuable species, habitats, and biotopes with GIS and remote sensing data, using suitable methods for their analysis. Primary emphasis is given to the hemiboreal vegetation zone and the drastic decline in its semi-natural grasslands, which were created by a long trajectory of traditional grazing and management activities. However, the applied perspective is largely methodological, and allows for the application of the obtained results in various contexts. Models based on statistical dependencies and correlations of multiple variables, which are able to extract desired properties from a large mass of initial data, are emphasized in the dissertation. In addition, the papers included combine several data sets from different sources and dates together, with the aim of detecting a wider range of environmental characteristics, as well as pointing out their temporal dynamics. The results of the dissertation emphasise the multidimensionality and dynamics of landscapes, which need to be understood in order to be able to recognise their ecologically valuable components. This not only requires knowledge about the emergence of these components and an understanding of the used data, but also the need to focus the observations on minute details that are able to indicate the existence of fragmented and partly overlapping landscape targets. In addition, this pinpoints the fact that most of the existing classifications are too generalised as such to provide all the required details, but they can be utilized at various steps along a longer processing chain. The dissertation also emphases the importance of landscape history as an important factor, which both creates and preserves ecological values, and which sets an essential standpoint for understanding the present landscape characteristics. The obtained results are significant both in terms of preserving semi-natural grasslands, as well as general methodological development, giving support to science-based framework in order to evaluate ecological values and guide spatial planning.

Library vs publisher vs archive: managing the UK geospatial record

Presentation at Open Repositories 2014, Helsinki, Finland, June 9-13, 2014