Browsing by master's degree program "Magisterprogrammet i geografi"

Geographical accessibility to sports facilities plays an important role when choosing a sports facility. The aim of my thesis is to examine geographical accessibility for sports facilities in Helsinki and Jyväskylä. The data of my study consists of the facilities of three different types of sports in Helsinki, Jyväskylä. The chosen types of facilities are ball parks, disc golf courses and fitness centers. I also use demographic data that cover the age groups of 7-12, 20-24 and 60-64. Mapple Analytics Ltd has produced geographical accessibility data covering whole of Finland which I also use as my data. In my thesis I analyzed geographical accessibility of sports facilities and compare the results to demographic data. Both the geographical accessibility data and demographic data is in 250 x 250 m grid level. the methods I used were Local Moran’s I and Bivariate Local Moran’s I. I applied the methods so that I combined the travel-time data and demographic data. The travel-times are from Mapple Insights API. The travel modes I have used are cycling and driving because people travel to sports facilities mostly by driving or by active methods, especially cycling. The travel-times to ball parks and fitness centers are overall good in both study regions. The good geographical accessibility is caused by that the service pattern is so dense for ball parks and fitness centers. The service pattern covers almost all of the inhabited area in both study regions. However, for some postal areas seem to have not so good geographical accessibility to ball parks. In some areas in Helsinki the geographical accessibility to disc golf course can be considered to be somewhat bad. For the chosen age groups only 20-24-year-olds have unsatisfactory travel-times to disc golf course either by cycling or driving. Other age groups do not show a similar pattern because of the different service pattern of ball parks and fitness centers. Demographic variables do not explain the travel times in this context. It is important to see which postal areas have good or bad geographical accessibility to sports facilities. This helps the future planning of sports facilities. In the future it is also possible to apply non spatial methods to the data I have collected or a similar dataset. It would also be possible to which demographic variable best explains travel-times. Because of Mapple Insighs API data is in 250 x 250 m grid level many applications can be developed using the data.

The sixth wave of mass species extinction currently threatens biodiversity and life on Earth as we know it. Conservationists seeking to protect threatened species are tasked with raising awareness and achieving funding for these protections, often by appealing to the public. In modern-day conservation research, digital data holds an increasingly important role in understanding conservation goals, messaging, and impacts. The media especially is a key player in disseminating information to the public about conservation. The data for this thesis was retrieved by an automated pipeline that collects Google News articles on species in Appendix I of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) (Di Minin & Kulkarni 2021). I used a descriptive approach to assess species information and popularity online, as well as the location and temporality of that information and popularity. I supplemented the dataset with metrics from Facebook to investigate article popularity, Google to investigate species popularity, and Wikipedia to investigate temporal trends in species interest. The quantitative results show an expected bias towards large, terrestrial mammals. Large cats are cited frequently across all data metrics. Popular headlines employ emotional or political language to attract readers. Frequently used words in titles of popular articles highlight diminishing populations, new or rare species, and certain species like whales, pangolins, rhinos, and turtles. The majority of the news organizations in the dataset are based in the United States. The United States is also most frequently mentioned in the text of the articles, though India and China lead with the highest number of species with native ranges in their countries. Wikipedia pageviews reveal the fluctuations in online species interest, and possible reasons are investigated through the article titles. The results reveal that charismatic, large mammals receive the highest attention in the media, and among the public. Results also showcase the potential of the pipeline and database for further development and addressing research gaps. Overall, the investigations in this thesis provide avenues to improve conservation messaging and address conservation biases.

Biomass is an important parameter for crop monitoring and management, as well as for assessing carbon cycle. In the field, allometric models can be used for non-destructive biomass assessment, whereas remote sensing is a convenient method for upscaling the biomass estimations over large areas. This study assessed the dry leaf biomass of Agave sisalana (sisal), a perennial crop whose leaves are grown for fibre and biofuel production in tropical and subtropical regions. First, an allometric model was developed for predicting the leaf biomass. Then, Sentinel-2 multispectral satellite imagery was used to model the leaf biomass at 8851 ha plantation in South-Eastern Kenya. For the allometric model 38 leaves were sampled and measured. Plant height and leaf maximum diameter were combined into a volume approximation and the relation to biomass was formalised with linear regression. A strong log-log linear relation was found and leave-one-out cross-validation for the model showed good prediction accuracy (R2 = 0.96, RMSE = 7.69g). The model was used to predict biomass for 58 field plots, which constituted a sample for modelling the biomass with Sentinel-2 data. Generalised additive models were then used to explore how well biomass was explained by various spectral vegetation indices (VIs). The highest performance (D2 = 74%, RMSE = 4.96 Mg/ha) was achieved with VIs based on the red-edge (R740 and R783), near-infrared (R865) and green (R560) spectral bands. Highly heterogeneous growing conditions, mainly variation in the understory vegetation seemed to be the main factor limiting the model performance. The best performing VI (R740/R783) was used to predict the biomass at plantation level. The leaf biomass ranged from 0 to 45.1 Mg/ha, with mean at 9.9 Mg/ha. This research resulted a newly established allometric equation that can be used as an accurate tool for predicting the leaf biomass of sisal. Further research is required to account for other parts of the plant, such as the stem and the roots. The biomass-VI modelling results showed that multispectral data is suitable for assessing sisal leaf biomass over large areas, but the heterogeneity of the understory vegetation limits the model performance. Future research should address this by investigating the background effects of understory and by looking into complementary data sources. The carbon stored in the leaf biomass at the plantation corresponds to that in the woody aboveground biomass of natural bushlands in the area. Future research is needed on soil carbon sequestration and soil and plant carbon fluxes, to fully understand the carbon cycle at sisal plantation.

The African savanna elephant (Loxodonta africana) as a renowned “ecosystem engineer” modifies its habitat by sometimes destroying woody vegetation. Their destructive effect intensifies during the dry seasons, when they form larger herds and seek to consume woody plants, especially near permanent water sources. If this happens season after season in a restricted area, such as a wildlife reserve, the tree cover is reduced. Since elephants tend to make smaller trees to fall more easily than the larger ones, this “elephant problem” harms the regeneration ability of the ecosystem in a long run, even turning savannas into grasslands. With less and less trees available, elephants and other fauna in conservation areas could end up being at a fatal risk. Multi-scale vegetation structure can be studied with airborne (ALS) and terrestrial laser scanning (TLS). Although both types of LiDAR have been applied in studies on trees, most of the ALS studies concern biomass and none of the TLS research cover elephants. Tree structure on the individual tree level can be modelled using TreeQSM modelling that has not yet been applied in savanna vegetation. This study can be considered pioneering as it attempts to provide answers to these two study questions: (1) How does tree density derived from airborne laser scanning data correlate with elephant density, elephant path proximity, and river proximity? (2) How do tree architecture metrics derived from terrestrial laser scanning data correlate with elephant path proximity and river proximity? The study area is Taita Hills Wildlife Sanctuary, a small privately-owned wildlife conservancy in southeastern Kenya that falls within an area scanned with ALS in 2014. The vegetation of the reserve has been changing for many decades, and the latest changes in the vegetation cover are visible from satellite images. The “elephant problem” near the area was scientifically discussed already in 1960’s, so their damage may have been taking place for a long time. There are two datasets from the area for estimating elephant occurrence (elephant density based on elephant observation points and elephant track proximity based on elephant tracks) and one for the proximity to the river. Tree density was calculated based on detected treetops from the ALS point cloud and its correlations between the elephant predictors and the river proximity was analyzed. TLS measurements of 72 individual trees of Vachellia tortilis and Newtonia hildebrandtii were made in January and February 2020 in Taita Hills Wildlife Sanctuary. 53 were successfully modelled with TreeQSM. The correlations between the tree structure metrics and elephant density, elephant track proximity, and the river proximity were analyzed. The values for crown ratio, the metric that correlated significantly with the elephant track proximity were predicted to assess the meaning of the results in practice. The overall findings from both analyses (ALS and TLS) may suggest that trees in Taita Hills Wildlife Sanctuary may have suffered from elephant damage, since lower tree density correlates with both the elephant density estimates and the elephant track proximity. The trees scanned with TLS seem to be somewhat larger in closer proximities to the elephant tracks, while smaller trees are more able to survive in areas further away. Quantifying elephant damage in more detail, such as torn or hanging branches, was still not achieved by this study. Regardless, it can be concluded that there is enough foundation for further research on the important issue, the phenomenon that can turn dangerous to many species that were supposed to be protected.

Suomen aluekehityksen myötä maaseutualueet hiljenevät ihmisten keskittyessä suuriin kaupunkeihin ja kehyskuntiin. Matkailulla on pyritty monilla maaseutualueilla parantamaan elinvoimaa ja taloudellista kehitystä. Matkailun myötä syntyy uusia palveluja sekä työpaikkoja. Matkailun kehittämisen ja onnistumisen kannalta on tärkeää, että paikalliset asukkaat suhatutuvat siihen positiivisesti ja tukevat sen kehittämistä. Tutkimukseni kohdistuu Rantasalmen kuntaan, joka on maaseutumainen kunta Etelä-Savossa. Matkailu on Rantasalmella kasvattanut taloudellista merkitystään tasaisesti ja sen matkailukohteet ovat saanet näkyvyyttä myös eri medioissa. Vaikka Suomessa kotimaanmatkailu on merkittävä matkailualan kannalta, COVID-19 pandemian myötä kasvanut kotimaanmatkailu on vaikuttanut matkustajamääriin Suomen sisällä. Tämän tutkielman tarkoituksena on selvittää mitä mieltä Rantasalmen asukkaat ovat kuntaan kohdistuvasta matkailusta ja miten he kokevat matkailun vaikuttavan kunnan kehitykseen. Ihmisten suhatutumista matkailuun tutkin sosiaalisen vaihdon teorian avulla. Tutkimusaineistona on internetissä jaetun kyselylomakkeen vastaukset, jotka analysoin laadullisen sisällönanalyysin keinoin. Tutkimuksen tulosten perusteella vastaajilla on yleisesti ottaen positiivinen suhtautuminen Rantasalmelle kohdistuvaan matkailuun. Matkailu koetaan taloudellisesti merkittävänä ja sen kehittämiseen suhtaudutaan positiivisesti. Matkailijoita toivotaan saapuvan enemmän ja matkailun laajenevan kunnan alueella nykyistä laajemmalle alueelle. On kuitenkin myös negatiivisia asioita, kuten matkailusta aiheutuneet haitat ympäristölle. Kunnan kehityksen suhteen matkailun koetaan olevan hyvin merkittävässä roolissa kunnan taloudellisen selviytymisen suhteen. Tämän tutkielman perusteella Rantasalmella vastaajat suhtautuvat matkailuun pääosin positiivisesti, mutta huolenaiheitakin on. Huolenaiheet tulisi ottaa huomioon matkailualaa kehitettäessä. Matkailua ollaan valmiita kehittämään tulevaisuudessa lisää ja matkailun koetaan olevan kunnan kehityksen kannalta hyvin merkityksellinen. Matkailua halutaan kehittää yhteistyön voimalla sellaiseksi, että se hyödyttää laajemmin koko kuntaa ja eri toimijoita.

In the current trajectory of human induced global warming, the domains of climate change mitigation and adaptation remain fundamental to the future of human and natural systems. Mitigating the global warming is not only vital but coping with the unavoidable impacts of the global temperature rise will be less disastrous. In terms of the realities of climate change impacts, the climate policies must be implemented. However, the success of mitigation and adaptation efforts might be dependent on how the people and communities are encountered in climate policies. Thus, it is not only crucial how the distribution of climate change burdens and benefits continues, but as important to recognize the multiple entry points to just transition. This thesis contributes to the emerging field of scientific climate justice debate that raises questions of just adaptation and in which ways it is addressed in climate change adaptation policies under the agenda of just transition. The focus of the thesis is particularly on European climate change adaptation dialogue, in the platform of a public consultation organized by the European Commission. With an interpretive approach, the study explores the perceptions of just adaptation in a number of 22 position papers contributed by European and international civic organizations. The analysis is guided by the (1.) the addressment of adaptation injustices and (2.) just adaptation as a transformative pathway. In the prism of environmental and climate justice concerns, and transformative features of adaptation, the results are discussed under the geo-graphy of Carriers of Just Transition. The civic organizations who contributed to the public consultation consider adaptation and just transition important to achieve. At the same time, the civic organizations seem to have adopted a strategy of no-regrets: they actively reclaim on adaptation measures to prepare for the medium and long-term climate impacts while considering that the mitigation efforts of today seem to be failing. At the same time, just adaptation is considered as a way of conserving the present state, while the agenda of just transition seems to be adopted as the desired pathway of fair adaptation. The European adaptation policy dialogue nests in the carriers of just transition – the systemic pathways of consolidating the current European state rather than transformational change.

Due to the harsh conditions in high latitude alpine and arctic regions, climate or land use changes make them very vulnerable. Thus, it is vital to study the habitats of these regions and increase our understanding of what factors impact species distributions. Species distribution modelling can be used to predict possible habitats for species and further inspect the relationships between different environmental variables and species. Generally, these species distribution models have been created using variables describing the topographical and climatic conditions of the study area. Recently there has been more evidence supporting the inclusion of biotic variables to species distribution models at all scales. Including biotic variables can be difficult, as these relationships can be challenging to quantify. This study uses the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) as a surrogate for plant biomass, thus representing biotic interactions. This study aims to answer what are the relationships between environmental variables and the predicted distributions and will including a biotic variable improve the species distribution models. The study data includes observational data from 683 arctic and alpine plant species from Norway, Sweden, and Finland. The observation data were collected from the three national databanks of Norway, Sweden and Finland and completed with observations from the Global Biodiversity Information Facility and observation data collected by the BioGeoClimate Modelling Lab. The cohesive study area was outlined with the biogeographical regions defined by the European Environment Agency. Overall, six environmental variables are used in this study: annual mean temperature, the maximum temperature of the warmest month, annual precipitation, elevation difference in a cell, bedrock class, and NDVI. The NDVI data was gathered by NASA’s MODIS sensors. The observations and the environmental variables were projected into a grid consisting of 1 x 1 km cells covering the whole study area. This study uses the ensemble modelling technique with four individual modelling methods: generalized linear models (GLM), generalized additive models (GAM), generalized boosted models (GBM) and random forests (RF). The modelling process consisted of two modelling rounds so that the impact of NDVI could be evaluated. The first modelling round included all the environmental variables except NDVI (the topoclimate model) and the second modelling round included all the environmental variables (the full model). The two temperature variables, annual mean temperature and the maximum temperature of the warmest month, had the highest mean variable importance values. With the topoclimate model, annual precipitation ranked third with the rest of the climate variables, but when NDVI was added to the models, it rose above annual precipitation. Overall, among the studied arctic and alpine species, the variable importance values of both the edaphic and topographical variables were low. In general, both the topoclimate models and full models performed very well. The mean AUC- and TSS-values were all higher for the full models, indicating that including a biotic variable improved the models. When the binary predictions of both modelling rounds were compared, it was clear that NDVI refined the projected distributions for most species. The results from this study confirm the discovery that including a biotic variable, such as NDVI, has the potential to increase the predictive power of species distribution models. One of the main problems with including biotic variables in species distribution models has been the difficulty of quantifying biotic interactions. NDVI can thus be a promising tool to overcome these difficulties, as it is one of the most direct variables to describe ecosystem productivity, can be acquired at various scales, and as remotely sensed data, it can also cover areas that are difficult to access.

Urban environments are constantly changing and expanding. They grow, evolve, and adapt to society and residents’ needs. Environmental changes have an impact also on urban green such as trees. This is because the increase of building stock and expanding cityscape will target these green spaces. However, the significance of those green spaces is understood as they have a positive impact on the residents’ well-being and health. For example, urban trees are known to improve the air quality and to provide mentally relaxing environments for residents. As this importance is emphasized, changes in the areas must be monitored, which increases the importance of the change detection studies. Change detection is a comparison of two or more datasets from the same area but at different times. Principally, changes have been detected with various remote sensing methods, such as aerial- and satellite images, but as airborne laser scanning technology and multi-temporal laser scanning datasets have become more common, the use of laser scanning data has also increased. The advantage of the laser scanning method is especially in its ability to produce three-dimensional information of the area. Therefore, also vertical properties can be studied. The method’s advantage is its ability to detect changes in urban tree cover as well as in tree height. The aim of this study was to investigate how tree cover and especially canopy height have changed in the Kuninkaantammi area in Helsinki during 2008‒2015, 2015‒2017, 2017‒2020, and 2008‒2020 from multi-temporal laser scanning data. One of the starting points of this study was to find out how airborne laser scanning datasets with different sensors and survey parameters are suitable for change detection. Also, what kind of problems the differences between datasets will raise and how to reduce those problems. The study used laser scanning data from the National Land Survey of Finland and from the city of Helsinki for four different years. The canopy height models were produced of each dataset and changes were calculated as the difference of each canopy height model. The results show that multi-temporal laser scanning data require a lot of manual processing to create datasets comparable. The greatest problems were differences in point density and in classification of the data. The sparse data from the National Land Survey of Finland affected how changes were managed to be studied. Therefore, changes were detected only in general level. In addition, each dataset was classified differently which affected the usability of the classes in the datasets. The problems encountered were reduced by manual work like digitizing or by masking non-vegetation objects. The results showed that the change in the Kuninkaantammi area has been relatively large at the time of the study. Between 2008 and 2015, 12.1% of the tree cover was lost, 9.9% between 2015 and 2017, and 13.2% between 2017 and 2020. In addition, an increase in canopy height was detected. Between 2008 and 2015, 44.2% of the area had greater than 2 m increase in canopy height. Similarly, increase occurred in 11.1% and 3.5% of the area in 2015‒2017 and in 2017‒2020, respectively. Although the changes were observed at a general level, it can be concluded that the used datasets can provide valuable information about the changes in urban green that have taken place in the area.

This thesis is an ethnographic exploration into co-production evaluation. The aim of this thesis is to evaluate outcomes of a knowledge co-production workshop in the context of Finnish urban planning using a co-production evaluation framework. For the context of the research, the status of allotment gardens in urban planning was studied. Central concepts also include participation and the status of knowledge in the urban planning context. I collected my research data by participating in the workshop process as a co-facilitator and co-producer in a garden workshop held in Pähkinärinne allotment plots in June 2022. I carried out the research using qualitative research methods, participatory observation. Field notes and the material and data the garden workshop produced are the main body of data. The results show that the workshop did produce a tangible outcome, a usable concept for the Pähkinärinne allotment gardens. When situated in the Finnish urban planning context, analysis shows that implementation may be difficult due to institutional and governance barriers. Intangible impacts were produced in the form of social learning. This entailed the identification of existing social networks in and outside of the allotment plots and their development through social capital. These effects fare better in the Finnish context through self-governance and self-organization. As a conclusion, it can be said that the knowledge co-production process was a successful process but in the Finnish urban planning context bottom-up initiatives can be difficult to implement due to institutional barriers and city-led planning and participation.

Africa has recently increased its share of the global market, and the continent’s potential has been recognized globally. The continent has experienced a lot of oppression and forced changes in history, and it is currently developing its new identity with relatively young states and its fast-growing population. African Union (AU) is calling pan-African ideology to bring together the African people in their blueprint and master plan Agenda 2063, where the cultural heritage is at the core. Culture is also at the core of the creative economy, and the creative economy's share of the global economy is growing. Due to globalization and digitalization, the knowledge from other cultures is spreading rapidly, which is the basis of a cultural shift both at local and global levels. This research investigated the culture and the creative economy as builders of society in Kenya. Kenya has been very successful in the field of Information and Communications Technology (ICT), the state takes its cultural heritage seriously in its development programs and their focus is especially on the potential of the youth in the creative economy. Kenya has a vast cultural diversity in the state with its officially recognized 44 tribes. This cultural diversity plays a significant role in the creative economy. According to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD, 2020), the creative economy has no single meaning, as the concept is constantly evolving. The basic elements of the concept are from human creativity, ideas, and intellectual property, knowledge and technology. The creative industries include such as music, film, video, arts and crafts and performing arts. These elements are the basis of the creative economy, in addition, they have a significant commercial and cultural value. The research was conducted in Kenya during January and February 2021, and the data was collected from two main geographical research areas, the city of Nairobi and Taita-Taveta County. The geographical research areas were chosen by their cultural diversity, the creative economy and their urban and rural statuses. Nairobi has a classification of a creative city where the digital creative economy is booming, and the city is attracting people around East Africa. Taita-Taveta respectively is a rural county near the Kenyan coast, where the creative economy is mainly in the traditional form, for example, crafting and basket making. The research combined the elements from the ethnographical, hermeneutical and critical approaches by using unstructured, structured interviews and observation, as the methods combined qualitative methods with numerical data. The results show that the culture and the creative economy do build the society in Kenya. It is seen in each level of society, for example, among the families, tribes, counties and even the government. Each level influences and controls the way culture and the creative economy build the society in Kenya. The meaning of the community arose in culture and the creative economy shifts, as they provide help in the mitigation and adaptation into new situations. With the exponential population growth, the share of the youth is rising, culture and the creative economy have the potential to provide jobs for the youth in the future. There are challenges with culture and the creative economy in Kenya. First, to preserve the cultural diversity in Kenya among the youth. Second, to target the governmental policies to the right actions and towards the right groups, which would then support the sector itself. Due to attitude shifts, the role of the youth is a significant point to consider. Furthermore, there is a vast gap between the government and the community, which causes a lot of harm to the creative economy, as the policies do not support the creative sector. If these significant points are solved, there is a vast potential for the culture and the creative economy to continue building the society in Kenya.