November 2014 Issue

GLOBE Introduces 26 New Variables

26 new variables are now available on GLOBE for use in representativeness analyses and similarity assessments. Check out a few of our newest and most exciting variables below.

Cropland area trend: Temporal trend in cropland density over the last 50 years. The trends were calculated as the difference between the values in 2005 and 1955, so the variable describes the overall increase or decrease of the factors in the 50-year period.

NDVI mean: Mean of normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) acquired from the Global Inventory Modeling and Mapping Studies (GIMMS) available for the period 1981-2006. NDVI correlates with primary production of ecosystems and is an indicator of vegetation cover and land-use practices.

N fertilizer: The amount of nitrogen input resulting from fertilizer application and manure production.

For a full list of our newest variables, visit our blog post.

Featuring GLOBE

GLOBE was recently utilized in a peer-reviewed land change science paper by Patrick Meyfroidt entitled, “Multiple pathways of commodity crop expansion in tropical forest landscapes”. This paper utilized GLOBE’s powerful Representativeness Analysis tool. Meyfroidt used Representativeness Analysis to examine possible geographic biases in his study of commodity crop expansion in tropical forest landscapes across a suite of global variables. Meyfroidt and colleagues also used GLOBE to examine biases in their case study collection across several GLOBE variables, such as Olson biomes, world regions, percentage of tree cover in 2001, percentage of land in protected area, market access index, market influence  index, combined land sustainability class and population density in 2005.

To view Meyfroidt’s publication and more, please visit our publications page.

New Feature Now Available in GLOBE

Recently added to GLOBE is the new Case Search page. This page will allow for more dynamic searches, improved display and will better aid users in finding cases. users may now search through different metadata filters. These filters include geometry type, quality, case creator and so much more. In addition, the search page will allow users to view their collections and make changes as necessary.

For more information about the new Case Search page, please visit our documentation page.

GLOBE Team Publications

Matt Schmill, a member of the GLOBE team, has recently published an article discussing GLOBE’s representativeness. He explains how representativeness aids land change scientists in making global predictions based on their collection of cases.

To view Matt’s publication and more, please visit our publications page or, learn more about Matt, by visiting our GLOBE team page.

For more information about what is going on in GLOBE check out our forum page, blog posts and more on our main site.