Major Participants: William
L. Stefanov, CAP (workshop leader)
Anthony Brazel, CAP
Nancy Jones, CAP
Maik Netzband, CAP
Sharon Harlan, CAP
Lela Prashad, CAP
Stewart Pickett, BES
Mary Cadenasso, BES
Workshop started with approximately 15 participants, majority
of those left after workshop break. Persons listed above are those that stayed
for, and participated in, the discussion portion of the workshop.
Powerpoint presentations were given by Stefanov (general
RS intro, current sensors, software, and expertise needed for RS studies);
Harlan/Brazel (neighborhood climate study at CAP); Pickett (study of neighborhood-level
ecosystem structure using integrated natural/social variable classification
technique); Netzband (European RS land cover/land use initiatives and social
variable analysis).
Discussion Notes (as transcribed and paraphrased from noteboard
sheets):
What do social scientists need from natural scientists?
- explanations
of data: primarily technical questions about data and when particular
data is useful, i.e. “when does albedo matter?” More detailed descriptions
of data and data products are needed to help social scientists decide what
to use and when.
- appropriate
scales of data: we did not converge on any “magic scale” for doing social/natural
science investigations – each study will have its own characteristic and
appropriate scale, both temporal (varies with questions being asked) and
spatial (household and individual scales were mentioned).
- outreach
to sociologists: necessary to show them that RS offers new ways to assess
inequalities of climate, ecosystem services, environmental degradation,
etc. Sociologists can act as bridges between land use planners and geographers
(two major users of RS data), but only if they have more knowledge about
RS.
- focused
workshops: these could bring together social and natural scientists
with remote sensing experts to provide synthesis, information exchange,
and generate new ideas.
- creation
of useful indices: physical data needs to be transformed into indices
(“comfort level” for example) that are meaningful to humans – this sort
of data can then feed directly into policy.
What do natural scientists need from social scientists?
- dependant vs. independent variables: information
on human patterns and process are required to turn our biogeophysical data
into dependant variables relative to human activities and decisions. Of
course, the nature of biogeophysical data as dependant vs. independent variables
depends on the questions being asked.
- thresholds: social data might provide useful
thresholds for assessment of system behavior (i.e. human density needs to
be X before biodiversity is effected).
- extreme events: social data is needed to help
determine human response to extreme events and establishment of feedback
loops (i.e. humans are impacted by a volcanic eruption, they subsequently
try to divert lava flows, which causes new system responses in the lava
flow system).
- information of social data: natural scientists
need a better understanding of the errors, model boundaries, and historical
ranges of social data to adequately assess the potential usefulness with
multitemporal and multispatial RS
data.
- temporal RS investigations: social data provides
a needed temporal dimension to explain variance and change in multitemporal
RS studies and change analysis.
Some ideas for RS-natural-social
investigations:
Ø
study of temporal lags between extreme events and social response (may have
multitemporal response times), and resultant feedbacks to subsequent extreme
events.
Ø
study of differences in response to perturbations in different areas with
different cultural, physiographic, political “landscapes”, i.e. outbreaks
of disease.
Ø
differences in social-natural responses, lag times, etc. at local to global
scales (perhaps uniquely appropriate for RS data).
Ø
study of the compelling nature of maps and spatial information for stimulation
of new ideas and insights (sometimes in preference to more detailed statistical
studies or graphical treatments).