An ancient olive tree in the garden. Mapping the deep history of land use from a single image

Landscapes with a deep history of land use are the legacy of millennial interactions between ecological, social and cultural elements, which can be investigated to obtain new knowledge about our present-day ecosystems. This paper presents the application of a supervised contextual post-classificatio...

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Main Authors: Vincenza Ferrara, Anders Wästfelt
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Taylor & Francis Group 2025-12-01
Series:Geocarto International
Subjects:
Online Access:https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/10.1080/10106049.2025.2471090
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author Vincenza Ferrara
Anders Wästfelt
author_facet Vincenza Ferrara
Anders Wästfelt
author_sort Vincenza Ferrara
collection DOAJ
description Landscapes with a deep history of land use are the legacy of millennial interactions between ecological, social and cultural elements, which can be investigated to obtain new knowledge about our present-day ecosystems. This paper presents the application of a supervised contextual post-classification technique to extract, from a single orthoimage, geospatial objects (classes) representing different temporalities of the same land use in a historical landscape. With a rural area of Sicily as case study and its century-old olive trees as geospatial ‘control points’, we analyse the degree of category similarity between historica lly contingent classes of the same land use. We map and interpret from present space their dynamics of change and persistence over time, cross-validating our results with evidence from local plant microfossils (phytoliths) analysis. We demonstrate how Earth observation products and contextual geospatial analysis are multidimensional sources of information enriching our understanding of past-present landscapes and their biocultural heritage.
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series Geocarto International
spelling doaj-art-7bbb566fbdce4a489d9d10efaebb875c2025-08-20T03:12:09ZengTaylor & Francis GroupGeocarto International1010-60491752-07622025-12-0140110.1080/10106049.2025.2471090An ancient olive tree in the garden. Mapping the deep history of land use from a single imageVincenza Ferrara0Anders Wästfelt1Department of Archaeology and Ancient History, Uppsala University, Uppsala, SwedenDepartment of Human Geography, Stockholm University, Stockholm, SwedenLandscapes with a deep history of land use are the legacy of millennial interactions between ecological, social and cultural elements, which can be investigated to obtain new knowledge about our present-day ecosystems. This paper presents the application of a supervised contextual post-classification technique to extract, from a single orthoimage, geospatial objects (classes) representing different temporalities of the same land use in a historical landscape. With a rural area of Sicily as case study and its century-old olive trees as geospatial ‘control points’, we analyse the degree of category similarity between historica lly contingent classes of the same land use. We map and interpret from present space their dynamics of change and persistence over time, cross-validating our results with evidence from local plant microfossils (phytoliths) analysis. We demonstrate how Earth observation products and contextual geospatial analysis are multidimensional sources of information enriching our understanding of past-present landscapes and their biocultural heritage.https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/10.1080/10106049.2025.2471090Conceptual spacesland usecontextsemantic similarity
spellingShingle Vincenza Ferrara
Anders Wästfelt
An ancient olive tree in the garden. Mapping the deep history of land use from a single image
Geocarto International
Conceptual spaces
land use
context
semantic similarity
title An ancient olive tree in the garden. Mapping the deep history of land use from a single image
title_full An ancient olive tree in the garden. Mapping the deep history of land use from a single image
title_fullStr An ancient olive tree in the garden. Mapping the deep history of land use from a single image
title_full_unstemmed An ancient olive tree in the garden. Mapping the deep history of land use from a single image
title_short An ancient olive tree in the garden. Mapping the deep history of land use from a single image
title_sort ancient olive tree in the garden mapping the deep history of land use from a single image
topic Conceptual spaces
land use
context
semantic similarity
url https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/10.1080/10106049.2025.2471090
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