Ecoinformatics

This chapter presents a broad view of an ecological science in search of new paradigms for tackling the ecological challenges of the Anthropocene. In a first part, I introduce the concept of ‘ecological novelty’ to characterise ongoing environmental change. The environmental change that brings about ecological novelty can be characterised by at least six attributes: it is 1) man-made, 2) large, 3) very fast, 4) multi-dimensional, 5) variable, unknown and unpredictable and 6) of global extent and even affecting remote wilderness areas. In the second and third parts, I focus on two fundamental challenges that ecological novelty poses for ecological research: (i) distinguishing between nature and culture as separate realms of scientific investigation becomes obsolete; and (ii) understanding how ecological systems change requires embracing the complexities of ecosystems un-der real-world conditions (as opposed to controlled experimental settings) result-ing from open system boundaries, contingencies and historicity. Ecology has long explored the transition zone between the natural and social sciences, and can sig-nificantly contribute to an interdisciplinary understanding of societal adaptation, whether to climate or more generally to environmental change.

The floristic inventory of Wadi Hagul, Eastern Desert of Egypt is being changed at an alarming rate due to recent human disturbance. The present study provides a description of the current status of the floristic data and prevailing plant clusters in the wadi in relation to soil and anthropogenic factors. Floristic sampling was carried out in 30 stands along the wadi and data on soil factors were measured, whereas the anthropogenic threats were scaled for each stand. A total of 98 plant species belonging to 85 genera and 28 families were recorded. On the basis of their conservation status, the collected 98 species categorized into 79 native (45 common, 34 threatened) and 19 introduced species. TWINSAPN classification allowed to identify the four plant clusters: (I) Launaea spinosa, (II) Zilla spinosa, (III) Zygophyllum coccineum and (IV) Pan-icum turgidum. Over-collection, urbanization, over-grazing , introduced species, military activities, moisture content, organic matter, electrical conductivity, pH, chlorides , sodium and potassium were identified as the most significant factors controlling distribution of plant clusters by canonical correspondence analysis. The variance partitioning revealed that 48% of the total variability was explained by both soil and anthropogenic factors, only anthropogenic variables explained 18%, while soil factors explained 7%, whereas the combined shared effect was 23%. The information in this study will help us to formulate an efficient conservation strategy to prevent further losses of plant diversity along desert wadis.

Publishing raw data as Linked Open Data gives an opportunity of data reusability and data understandability for the computer machines. Today, the air pollution problem is one of the biggest in the whole world. Republic of Macedonia, especially its capital Skopje, has big problems with the PM2.5 and PM10 particles in the air approved by several measurement stations positioned on several locations in Skopje. In this paper, we demonstrate the process of centralizing of all the data collected from different measurement stations in one database. Also, we enable interpolation of collected data providing information about the current air quality state in the area between the measurement stations using previously implemented eco models. Interpolated data is saved in the same database providing interfaces that transform saved data into four-star and five-star data, by reusing the existing ontologies from the domain and linking them to the physical places where the measurements were taken and the interpolations were calculated. As a use case scenario, we provide and heat map about the values from various pollutants in the areas in Skopje providing information about the regions that have problems with air pollution.

Publishing raw data as Linked Open Data gives an opportunity of data reusability and data understandability for the computer machines. Today, the air pollution problem is one of the biggest in the whole world. Republic of Macedonia, especially its capital Skopje, has big problems with the PM2.5 and PM10 particles in the air approved by several measurement stations positioned on several locations in Skopje. In this paper, we demonstrate the process of centralizing of all the data collected from different measurement stations in one database. Also, we enable interpolation of collected data providing information about the current air quality state in the area between the measurement stations using previously implemented eco models. Interpolated data is saved in the same database providing interfaces that transform saved data into four-star and five-star data, by reusing the existing ontologies from the domain and linking them to the physical places where the measurements were taken and...

The Linked Data best practices provide ways for easier data representation, while at the same time raise the quality of the information that comes with it. The idea behind these best practices is to interlink datasets from various sources which are distributed over different locations and publish the data in an open, machine-readable format so that it would be easier to retrieve and process it by software agents, thus providing opportunities that many new use-cases can be created, which otherwise would not be possible in isolated datasets. With this, the value of the data itself rises to a whole new level. Environmental care is one of the most important issues on a global level, which means that great effort and resources are being spent, to help researchers find new and innovative ways of preserving our world and also to raise awareness of the problem itself. CO 2 emissions from vehicles became a large problem in the past few decades, since the number of vehicles exponentially increases, and also people are be-coming more mobile than ever, having to commute and travel on a regular basis. In this paper, we describe the process of transformation one-, two-and three-star data about CO 2 emissions from vehicles published by the European Environment Agency and various other sources, into five-star Linked Open Da-ta. In addition to that, we developed the Vehicle Emissions Ontology (VEO) to be able to describe the transformed data. We also provide use-case scenarios to show the benefits of using the Linked Data and Open Data concepts in these fields, and provide a public SPARQL endpoint as an entry point for accessing and using the data.

Abstract. — Early informatics initiatives focused primarily on the application of technology and computer science to a specific domain; modern informatics has broadened to encompass human and knowledge dimensions. Application of technology is but one aspect of informatics. Understanding domain members’ issues, priorities, knowledge, abilities, interactions, tasks, and work environments is another aspect, one that directly impacts application success. Involving domain members in the design and development of technology in their domain is a key factor in bridging the gap between technology and science. This user-centered design (UCD) approach in informatics is presented via an ecoinformatics case study in three areas: collaboration, usability, and education and training.

Biodiversity represents a great ecological, economic and aesthetic heritage to the world. Most of the knowledge about this heritage could be found in thousands of documents that describe valuable information obtained over centuries. Projects which try to gather and structure all this information, even for very specific topics, may take years. In addition to this, keeping a project updated is difficult because new knowledge is continuously being published. Therefore, there is a necessity to use automatic methods to extract relevant information efficiently. In this article we describe the first stage of a software project, that aims to build a complete library to apply Natural Language Processing techniques on documents about biodiversity in Spanish.