Risk Assessment Mapping of Landscape Development Based on Ecological Service and Goods in Malaysia Lowland Tropical Rainforest

Amongst the impacts of converting forest to agricultural activities are soil erosion and degradation of ecology service values and goods （ESVG）. The soil erosion can be seen as on-site impacts, such as the problems of decreasing soil fertility and also its off-site impact such as the problems of sedimentation of the nearby rivers, whilst the degradation of ESVG are more holistie in nature, These impacts can be devastating in environmental, biological, and socio-economic manners. This paper reports the study undertaken on the impacts of agricultural development in 0.8 million ha of forest dominated landscape in Pasoh Forest Region （PFR）, Malaysia, within period of 8 years from 1995 to 2003. Three folds of impacts on agricultural development examined and analysed, are： （i） relationship of total soil loss and changes in land use pattern, （ii） mapping trends of ESVG for PFR in 1995 and 2003, and （iii） risk assessment of ESVG based on simulation of converting 339,630 ha of primary forest into mass-scale oil palm plantation. Results of this study indicated that although only minor changes of about 1464 ha （about 0.2% of PFR） of primary forest was converted to agricultural activities, it have significantly increased the total soil loss from 59 to 69 million ton/ha/yr. The mean rate of soil is loss for PFR is 0.8 mil ton/ha/yr and if translated into ESVG term, the soil loss costs about US$ 4.8mil/yr. However, majority of the soil loss within all land use classes are within range of very low-low risk categories （〈10 ton/ha/yr）. ESVG for PFR were costing US$ 179 millions in 1995, declined to US$114 millions in 2003 due to 0.2% reduction of forested land. The ESVG of converting 339,630 ha primary forest into mass plantation cost less than original forest within period of 20 years examined; the 20th year of conversion, the ESVG of plantation and to-remain as forest cost US$ 963 and US$ 575 millions, respectively. However, this difference is only marginal when full attributes of ESVG are considered.

Cumulative gain and lift charts for model performance assessment in mineral potential mapping

Model performance assessment is a key procedure for mineral potential mapping, but the correspond-ing research achievements are seldom reported in literature. Cumulative gain and lift charts are well known in the data mining community specialized in marketing and sales applications and widely used in customer chum prediction for model performance assessment. In this paper, they are introduced into the field of mineral poten-tial mapping for model performance assessment. These two charts can be viewed as a graphic representation of the advantage of using a predictive model to choose mineral targets. A cumulative gain curve can represent how much a predictive model is superior to a random guess in mineral target prediction. A lift chart can express how much more likely the mineral targets predicted by a model are deposit-bearing ones than those by a random se-lection. As an illustration, the cumulative gain and lift charts are applied to measure the performance of weights of evidence, logistic regression,restricted Boltzmann machine, and multilayer perceptron in mineral potential mapping in the Altay district in northern Xinjiang in China. The results show that the cumulative gain and lift charts can visually reveal that the first three models perform well while the last one performs poorly. Thus, the cumulative gain and lift charts can serve as a graphic tool for model performance assessment in mineral potential mapping.

The comparison study of Chinese and American secondary school students’knowledge structure—an experimental research based on concept map assessment technique

A concept map is a schematic device for representing a set of concept meanings embedded in a framework of propositions.It can be used to evaluate students’knowledge structure.This article introduces the comparative study of Chinese and American secondary school students’knowledge structure.They are compared quantitatively and qualitatively in terms of mean score,individual proposition scores,proposition choice and map structure.The results indicate that students’knowledge structures in the two countries are remarkably different.Compared with American students,Chinese students’ability to take an exam is stronger and their mean score is higher.However,Chinese students need to improve their general knowledge and creativity although their basic knowledge is solid and they are better in mastering discipline knowledge and knowledge application.