Validation of TRMM 3B42 V6 for estimation of mean annual rainfall over ungauged area in semiarid climate

This research compares data from the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission 3B42 V6 with data obtained from 19 synoptic rain gauges during the period 1998–2010 over the semiarid climate of Khorasan Razavi, Iran. Validation was performed using three spatial extents, including 1 TRMM grid face from the synoptic station (1PTRM), 3 TRMM points surrounding the synoptic station (3PTRM) and 5 TRMM points surrounding the synoptic station (5PTRM), using ArcGIS 10.2 software. The perfect and poor r were obtained at stations S08 and S19, with values of 0.92 and 0.26, respectively. According to the Nash–Sutcliffe efficiency coefficient, the TRMM satellite can predict the spatial variation of the mean annual rainfall by 0.23, 0.43 and 0.38 for 1PTRM, 3PTRM and 5PTRM, respectively, at 19 stations. The agreement significantly increases by 0.88, 0.83 and 0.80 for 1PTRM, 3PTRM and 5PTRM, respectively, when gauges S05, S07, S11 and S13 are excluded from the dataset, which may be associated with orographic or instrumental error at the stations.     

Seismotectonics and consequences of the 1930s large earthquakes in eastern Mazandaran,north of Iran

Early in the 1930s,two relatively large earthquakes (Kosout,magnitude 6.8,and Talarrud,magnitude 5.8) shook the eastern Mazandaran,northern Iran.Despite the his...     

Dynamics of charged dust particles in protoplanetary discs

We study the effect of an imposed magnetic field on the motion of charged dust particles in magnetically active regions of a protoplanetary disc. Assuming a power law structure for the vertical and the toroidal components of the magnetic field for the regions beyond magnetically dead region of the disc, the radial and the vertical velocities of the charged particles, in the asymptotic case of small particles, are calculated analytically. While grains with radii smaller than a critical radius significantly are affected by the magnetic force, motion of the particles with larger radii is independent of the magnetic field. The critical radius depends on the magnetic geometry and the charge of the grains. Assuming that a grain particle has one elementary charge and the physical properties of the disc correspond to a minimum-mass solar nebula, we show that only micron-sized grains are affected by the magnetic force. Also, charge polarity determines direction of the radial velocity. For such small particles, both the radial and the vertical velocities increase due to the magnetic force.     

Anthropogenic Decline of Ancient,Sustainable Water Systems: Qanats

Qanat is an ancient underground structure to abstract groundwater without the need for external energy. A recognized world heritage, Qanat has enabled civilization in arid and semi-arid regions that lack perennial surface water resources. These important structures, however, have faced significant challenges in recent decades due to increasing anthropogenic pressures. This study uses remote sensing to investigate land-use changes and the loss of 15,983 Qanat shafts in the Mashhad plain, northeast of Iran, during the past six decades. This entails obtaining a rare aerial imagery from 1961, as well as recent satellite imagery, over a region with the highest density of Qanats in Iran, the birthplace of Qanat. Results showed that only 5.59% of the Qanat shafts in 1961 remained intact in 2021. The most prominent Qanat-impacting land-use changes were agriculture and urban areas, that accounted for 42.93 and 31.81% Qanat shaft destruction in the study area, respectively. This study also showed that groundwater table decline, demographic changes, and reduction in the appeal of working in the Qanat maintenance and construction industry among the new generation are existential threats to Qanats, and may result in the demise of these ancient structures in the future. Findings of this study can be used for urban planning in arid and semi-arid areas with the aim of protecting these historic water structures.     

Ground-motion models for average spectral acceleration in a period range: direct and indirect methods

Average spectral acceleration, AvgSA, is defined as the geometric mean of spectral acceleration values over a range of periods and it is a ground motion intensity measure used for structural response prediction. One of its advantages stands on the assumption that its distribution is computable from the available GMPEs for spectral acceleration, GMPE-SA, (called here indirect method) without the need for deriving new specific GMPEs for AvgSA, GMPE-AvgSA, (called here direct method). To what extent this assumption is valid, however, has never been verified. As such, we derived an empirical GMPE-AvgSA based on RESORCE ground motion dataset and we compared its predicted values with those from a GMPE-SA via the indirect approach. As expected, the results show that the indirect approach yields median AvgSA estimates that are identical to those of the direct approach. However, the estimates of AvgSA variance of the two methods are identical only if both the GMPE-SA and their empirical correlation coefficients among different SA ordinates are derived from the same record dataset.     

Rayleigh wave separation using high-resolution time-frequency polarization filter

Obtaining geological information from seismic data motivates researchers to innovate and improve seismic wave processing tools. Polarization-based methods have received much attention regarding their ability to discriminate between different phases of the seismic wave based on polarity. Combining the intuitive definition of polarity in the frequency domain (monochromatic waves) with the non-stationary properties provided by time-domain methods, time-frequency approaches are attracting widespread interest because they localize the information extracted from the seismic waves in the joint time and frequency domains. Due to the lack of high-resolution time-frequency maps, the time-frequency polarization approach was not able to resolve specific temporal polarity changes in the seismic signal. The main objective of this study was to devise a robust time-frequency-based polarization filtering method using high-resolution polarization attributes obtained directly from the sparse time-frequency map without using Eigen analysis or analytic signals. The method proposed here utilizes a computationally effective sparsity-based adaptive S-transform to obtain a high-resolution polarization map of an inherently non-stationary seismogram for the entire frequency content of the signal at different times. The superiority of the proposed method over the S-transform method was verified using synthetic and real data sets to calculate the polarization attributes in the time-frequency domain and separate the Rayleigh waves from the seismogram.     

A simple two-step method for spatio-temporal design-based balanced sampling

We introduce a two-step method to perform spatio-temporal balanced sampling in a design-based approach. For populations with spatio-temporal trends and with anisotropic effects in the variable of interest, the prediction can be further improved by selecting samples that are well spread over the entire population in space and time. We control the spread of the sample over the population by using the volume of the corresponding three-dimensional Voronoi tessellation. Indeed, spatio-temporal design-based balanced sampling is even more efficient under the presence of a trend and anisotropic effects. We present an intensive simulation study comparing our method to other available methods for spatio-temporal sampling. Finally, we analyze real data by sampling from a population of temperature stations over six European countries.     

Pulse-like versus non-pulse-like ground motion records: Spectral shape comparisons and record selection strategies

Pulse-like records are well recognized for their potential to impose higher demands on structures when compared with ordinary records. The increased severity of the structural response usually caused by pulse-like records is commonly attributed to the spectral increment around the pulse period. By comparing the building response to sets of spectrally equivalent pulse-like and ordinary records, we show that there are characteristics of pulse-like records beyond the shape of the acceleration response spectrum that affect the results of nonlinear dynamic analysis. Nevertheless, spectral shape together with the ratio of pulse period to the first-mode structural period, T_p/T₁, are confirmed as “sufficient” predictors for deformation and acceleration response metrics in a building, conditioned on the seismic intensity. Furthermore, the average spectral acceleration over a period range, AvgSA, is shown to incorporate to a good proxy for spectral shape, and together with T_p/T₁, form an efficient and sufficient intensity measure for response prediction to pulse-like ground motions. Following this latter route, we propose a record selection scheme that maintains the consistency of T_p with the hazard of the site but uses AvgSA to account for the response sensitivity to spectral shape.