Classifying the land surface into climate types provides means of diagnosing relations between Earth’s physical and biological systems and the climate. Global climate classifications are also used to visualize climate change. Clustering climate datasets provides a natural approach to climate classification, but the rule-based Köppen–Geiger classification (KGC) is the one most widely used. Here, a comprehensive approach to the clustering-based classification of climates is presented. Local climate is defined as a multivariate time series of mean monthly climatic variables and the authors propose to use dynamic time warping (DTW) as a measure of dissimilarity between local climates. Also discussed are the choice of climatic variables, the importance of their proper normalization, and the advantage of using distance-based clustering algorithms. Using the WorldClim global climate dataset and different combinations of clustering parameters, 32 different clustering-based classifications are calculated. These classifications are compared between themselves and to the KGC using the information-theoretic V measure. It is found that the best classifications are obtained using three climate variables (temperature, precipitation, and temperature range), a data normalization that takes into account the skewed distribution of precipitation values, and the partitioning around medoids clustering algorithm. Two such classifications are compared in detail between each other and to the KGC. About half of the climate types found by clustering can be matched to the familiar KGC classes, but the rest differ in their climatic character and spatial distribution. Finally, it is demonstrated that clustering-based classification results in climate types that are internally more homogeneous and externally more distinct than climate types in the KGC.

There is a keen interest in calculating spatial associations between two variables spanning the same study area. Many methods for calculating such associations have been proposed, but the case when both variables are categorical is underdeveloped despite the fact that many datasets of interest are in the form of either regionalizations or thematic maps. In this paper, we advance this case by adapting the so-called -measure method from its original information-theoretical formulation to the analysis of variance formulation which provides more insight for spatial analysis. We present a step-by-step derivation of the -measure from the perspective of the analysis of variance. The method produces three indices of global association and two sets of local association indicators which could be mapped to indicate spatial distribution of association strength. The open-source software for calculating all indices from vector datasets accompanies the paper. To showcase the utility of the -measure, we identified three different application contexts: comparative, associative, and derivative, and present an example of each of them. The -measure method has several advantages over the widely used Mapcurves method, it has clear interpretations in terms of mutual information as well as in terms of analysis of variance, it provides more precise assessment of association, it is ready-to-use through the accompanying software, and the examples given in the paper serves as a guide to the gamut of its possible applications. Two specific contributions stemming from our re-analysis of the -measure are the finding of the conceptual flaw in the Geographical Detector—a method to quantify associations between numerical and categorical spatial variables, and a proposal for the new, cartographically based algorithm for finding an optimal number of regions in clustering-derived regionalizations.

Road intersection data have been used across a range of geospatial analyses. However, many datasets dating from before the advent of GIS are only available as historical printed maps. To be analyzed by GIS software, they need to be scanned and transformed into a usable (vector-based) format. Because the number of scanned historical maps is voluminous, automated methods of digitization and transformation are needed. Frequently, these processes are based on computer vision algorithms. However, the key challenges to this are (1) the low conversion accuracy for low quality and visually complex maps, and (2) the selection of optimal parameters. In this paper, we used a region-based deep convolutional neural network-based framework (RCNN) for object detection, in order to automatically identify road intersections in historical maps of several cities in the United States of America. We found that the RCNN approach is more accurate than traditional computer vision algorithms for double-line cartographic representation of the roads, though its accuracy does not surpass all traditional methods used for single-line symbols. The results suggest that the number of errors in the outputs is sensitive to complexity and blurriness of the maps, and to the number of distinct red-green-blue (RGB) combinations within them.

We present a pattern-based regionalization of the conterminous US – a partitioning of the country into a number of mutually exclusive and exhaustive regions that maximizes the intra-region stationarity of land cover patterns and inter-region disparity between those patterns. The result is a discretization of the land surface into a number of landscape pattern types (LPTs) – spatial units each containing a unique quasi-stationary pattern of land cover classes. To achieve this goal, we use a recently developed method which utilizes machine vision techniques. First, the entire National Land Cover Dataset (NLCD) is partitioned into a grid of square-size blocks of cells, called motifels. The size of a motifel defines the spatial scale of a local landscape. The land cover classes of cells within a motifel form a local landscape pattern which is mathematically represented by a histogram of co-occurrence features. Using the Jensen–Shannon divergence as a dissimilarity function between patterns we group the motifels into several LPTs. The grouping procedure consists of two phases. First, the grid of motifels is partitioned spatially using a region-growing segmentation algorithm. Then, the resulting segments of this grid, each represented by its medoid, are clustered using a hierarchical algorithm with Ward’s linkage. The broad-extent maps of progressively more generalized LPTs resulting from this procedure are shown and discussed. Our delineated LPTs agree well with the perceptual patterns seen in the NLCD map.

The United States is increasingly becoming a multi-racial society. To understand multiple consequences of this overall trend to our neighborhoods we need a methodology capable of spatio-temporal analysis of racial diversity at the local level but also across the entire U.S. Furthermore, such methodology should be accessible to stakeholders ranging from analysts to decision makers. In this paper we present a comprehensive framework for visualizing and analyzing diversity data that fulfills such requirements. The first component of our framework is a U.S.-wide, multi-year database of race sub-population grids which is freely available for download. These 30 m resolution grids have being developed using dasymetric modeling and are available for 1990-2000-2010. We summarize numerous advantages of gridded population data over commonly used Census tract-aggregated data. Using these grids frees analysts from constructing their own and allows them to focus on diversity analysis. The second component of our framework is a set of U.S.-wide, multi-year diversity maps at 30 m resolution. A diversity map is our product that classifies the gridded population into 39 communities based on their degrees of diversity, dominant race, and population density. It provides spatial information on diversity in a single, easy-to-understand map that can be utilized by analysts and end users alike. Maps based on subsequent Censuses provide information about spatio-temporal dynamics of diversity. Diversity maps are accessible through the GeoWeb application SocScape (http://sil.uc.edu/webapps/socscape_usa/) for an immediate online exploration. The third component of our framework is a proposal to quantitatively analyze diversity maps using a set of landscape metrics. Because of its form, a grid-based diversity map could be thought of as a diversity “landscape” and analyzed quantitatively using landscape metrics. We give a brief summary of most pertinent metrics and demonstrate how they can be applied to diversity maps.