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ARS Home » Plains Area » Las Cruces, New Mexico » Range Management Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #320436
Title: JournalMap: Discovering location-relevant knowledge from published studies for sustainable land use, preventing degradation, and restoring landscapes

Author
item Karl, Jason
item Herrick, Jeffrey - Jeff
item GILLAN, JEFF - New Mexico State University

Submitted to: Meeting Abstract
Publication Type: Abstract Only
Publication Acceptance Date: 11/15/2014
Publication Date: 3/9/2015
Citation: Karl, J.W., Herrick, J.E., Gillan, J. 2015. JournalMap: Discovering location-relevant knowledge from published studies for sustainable land use, preventing degradation, and restoring landscapes [abstract]. UNCCD 3rd Scientific Conference Book of Abstracts. p. 199-200. http://www.unccd.int/en/programmes/Science/Conferences/Documents/3sc_unccd_book-abstracts.pdf

Interpretive Summary:

Technical Abstract: Finding relevant knowledge and information to prevent land degradation and support restoration has historically involved researchers working from their own knowledge, querying people they know, and tediously searching topical literature reviews.To address this need we created JournalMap (http://www.journalmap.org), a map-based scientific literature database and search engine (Karl et al. 2013b). JournalMap uses study area descriptions from an article not author affiliations) to map where the research was actually conducted. All articles in JournalMap are geotagged, either automatically using pattern recognition algorithms looking for geographic coordinates or manually from text-based descriptions. Article content in JournalMap comes from partnerships with publishers (e.g., Taylor & Francis, Pensoft, IOP) and research organizations, existing literature georeferencing efforts, and crowdsourcing from JournalMap’s users. JournalMap makes it easy to search for literature from specific places through a simple map interface. Results of JournalMap searches can be exported in different formats or saved as a collection with a unique URL for a spatial bibliography on a topic. For many topics, though, there has been little research done in many parts of the world. But, research conducted in areas with similar physical, environmental, cultural or political contexts can, in many cases, be relevant to these understudies regions (See Figure). JournalMap currently allows users to search for literature based on a few existing spatial layers including geology, soils, vegetation, through a simple overlay analysis of existing spatial data layers. JournalMap’s ability to search for ecological and agricultural literature thematically and geographically improves the ease of accessibility of potentially relevant research findings, promote syntheses and meta-analyses, provide mechanistic understanding to environmental patterns and causes of land degradation, facilitate evaluations of bias in ecological knowledge, and limit redundancy in conducting new studies . Additionally, through a publically available application programming interface (API) JournalMap’s geographic search capabilities and georeferenced literature database can easily be combined with other databases of land use practices (e.g., WOCAT), conservation projects, and site-based assessments of land potential (e.g., Land Potential Knowledge System).