In many arid ecosystems, vegetation frequently occurs in high-cover patches interspersed in a matrix of low plant cover. However, theoretical explanations for shrub patch pattern dynamics along climate gradients remain unclear on a large scale. This context aimed to assess the variance of the Reaumuria soongorica patch structure along the precipitation gradient and the factors that affect patch structure formation in the middle and lower Heihe River Basin (HRB). Field investigations on vegetation patterns and heterogeneity in soil properties were conducted during 2014 and 2015. The results showed that patch height, size and plant-to-patch distance were smaller in high precipitation habitats than in low precipitation sites. Climate, soil and vegetation explained 82.5% of the variance in patch structure. Spatially, R. soongorica shifted from a clumped to a random pattern on the landscape towards the MAP gradient, and heterogeneity in the surface soil properties (the ratio of biological soil crust (BSC) to bare gravels (BG)) determined the R. soongorica population distribution pattern in the middle and lower HRB. A conceptual model, which integrated water availability and plant facilitation and competition effects, was revealed that R. soongorica changed from a flexible water use strategy in high precipitation regions to a consistent water use strategy in low precipitation areas. Our study provides a comprehensive quantification of the variance in shrub patch structure along a precipitation gradient and may improve our understanding of vegetation pattern dynamics in the Gobi Desert under future climate change.
Classification of fine-grained soils is typically conducted using plasticity charts. The typically used plasticity chart proposed by Casagrande was questioned by Polidori proposing different classification criterion in separating clayey and silty soils. Using natural clayey and silty soils sampled from four different coastal sites in Korea, applicability of both Casagrande’s and Polidori’s plasticity charts was evaluated. Classification results of Korean natural soils based on the Casagrande’s and Polidori’s plasticity charts did not match well with those based on the soils’ behavior reported in the previous publication. The disagreement in classification of Korean natural fine-grained soils may result from disregard of considerable silt fraction effect on plastic and liquid limits for Polidori’s chart. Consequently, revised proposal of Polidori’s plasticity chart was tentatively made for further classification of fine-grained soils suitable for Korean natural soils by accounting the effect of silt fraction on soil classification. 相似文献
New Earth observation missions and technologies are delivering large amounts of data. Processing this data requires developing and evaluating novel dimensionality reduction approaches to identify the most informative features for classification and regression tasks. Here we present an exhaustive evaluation of Guided Regularized Random Forest (GRRF), a feature selection method based on Random Forest. GRRF does not require fixing a priori the number of features to be selected or setting a threshold of the feature importance. Moreover, the use of regularization ensures that features selected by GRRF are non-redundant and representative. Our experiments based on various kinds of remote sensing images, show that GRRF selected features provides similar results to those obtained when using all the available features. However, the comparison between GRRF and standard random forest features shows substantial differences: in classification, the mean overall accuracy increases by almost 6% and, in regression, the decrease in RMSE almost reaches 2%. These results demonstrate the potential of GRRF for remote sensing image classification and regression. Especially in the context of increasingly large geodatabases that challenge the application of traditional methods. 相似文献
The Atlantic inflow in the Fram Strait(78°50′N) has synoptic scale variability based on an array of moorings over the period of 1998–2010. The synoptic scale variability of Atlantic inflow, whose significant cycle is 3–16 d, occurs mainly in winter and spring(from January to April) and is related with polar lows in the Barents Sea. On the synoptic scale, the enhancement(weakening) of Atlantic inflow in the Fram Strait is accompanied by less(more)polar lows in the Barents Sea. Wind stress curl induced by polar lows in the Barents Sea causes Ekman-transport,leads to decrease of sea surface height in the Barents Sea, due to geostrophic adjustment, further induces a cyclonic circulation anomaly around the Barents Sea, and causes the weakening of the Atlantic inflow in the Fram Strait. Our results highlight the importance of polar lows in forcing the Atlantic inflow in the Fram Strait and can help us to further understand the effect of Atlantic warm water on the change of the Arctic Ocean. 相似文献