Finding Homogeneity in Heterogeneity - A New Approach to Quantifying Landscape Mosaics Developed for the Lao PDR

A key challenge for land change science in general and research on swidden agriculture in particular, is linking land cover information to human–environment interactions over larger spatial areas. In Lao PDR, a country facing rapid and multi-level land change processes, this hinders informed policy- and decision-making. Crucial information on land use types and people involved is still lacking. This article proposes an alternative approach for the description of landscape mosaics. Instead of analyzing local land use combinations, we studied land cover mosaics at a meso-level of spatial scale and interpreted these in terms of human–environmental interactions. These landscape mosaics were then overlaid with population census data. Results showed that swidden agricultural landscapes, involving 17% of the population, dominate 29% of the country, while permanent agricultural landscapes involve 74% of the population in 29% of the territory. Forests still form an important component of these landscape mosaics.

Augmenting Static Source Views in IDEs with Dynamic Metrics

Mainstream IDEs such as Eclipse support developers in managing software projects mainly by offering static views of the source code. Such a static perspective neglects any information about runtime behavior. However, object-oriented programs heavily rely on polymorphism and late-binding, which makes them difficult to understand just based on their static structure. Developers thus resort to debuggers or profilers to study the system's dynamics. However, the information provided by these tools is volatile and hence cannot be exploited to ease the navigation of the source space. In this paper we present an approach to augment the static source perspective with dynamic metrics such as precise runtime type information, or memory and object allocation statistics. Dynamic metrics can leverage the understanding for the behavior and structure of a system. We rely on dynamic data gathering based on aspects to analyze running Java systems. By solving concrete use cases we illustrate how dynamic metrics directly available in the IDE are useful. We also comprehensively report on the efficiency of our approach to gather dynamic metrics.

Senseo: Enriching Eclipse's Static Source Views with Dynamic Metrics

Maintaining object-oriented systems that use inheritance and polymorphism is difficult, since runtime information, such as which methods are actually invoked at a call site, is not visible in the static source code. We have implemented Senseo, an Eclipse plugin enhancing Eclipse's static source views with various dynamic metrics, such as runtime types, the number of objects created, or the amount of memory allocated in particular methods.

Opportunities and limits of the ecosystem services framework in capturing the cultural dimension of sustainable regional and landscape development in protected areas

With regard to protected areas, the concepts of ecosystem services and the cultural dimension of sustainable development (SD) are increasingly under debate. This contribution analyses the role of cultural aspects within the ecosystem services framework using the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment classification as a reference. The limits of the ecosystem services framework in capturing the cultural dimension are highlighted. Potential ways of strengthening the position of cultural values within this framework are discussed.