二维Delaunay三角网局部更新:点插入与点删除

二维Delaunay三角网的局部更新在地学分析、道路CAD、城市规划等领域有着广泛的用途,点插入和点删除则是其中最重要、最基本的操作。该文针对原有逐点插入法和凸耳权值点删除算法存在的不足,利用动态包围三角形和特征三角形分别对其进行改进,在设计的具有拓扑关系Delaunay的三角网数据结构基础上,实现Delaunay三角网的快速局部更新,且使之满足Delaunay特性。最后通过模拟实验验证了算法的正确性和高效性。     

基于强约束Delaunay-TIN的三维地学模拟与可视化

该文以煤层为例,在分析地层底板空间信息特征的基础上,以地层底板等高线为数据源,基于强约束Delau－nay三角形研究含量断层约束的三维地学模拟的数据组织方法,设计地层底板要素的数据结构,并讨论底板各要素的拓扑关系。进而以Delphi和OPGL编程,在CeoMo^3D系统中开发插件,实现了地层底板的3D可视化和基于Voronoi图的地层体积与矿层的储量计算。     

基于线性和岛屿约束的Delaunay三角网构建算法研究

针对基于线性和岛屿约束的Delaunay三角网构建算法的不足,从减少算法计算机实现步骤出发,研究改进了线段相交判断、首三角形确定等影响域多边形搜索相关算法;在分析当前存在的多边形三角剖分算法基础上,给出了存在重复点(悬边)的多边形三角剖分算法;在影响域多边形搜索阶段充分利用多边形间的拓扑关系信息,消除了岛屿约束内部三角形删除时需遍历三角形数据的不足.算法涵盖线性和岛屿约束的构建,综合性强,效率高且易于实现.     

Modern dust storms in China: an overview

This paper discusses the sources, spatial distribution, frequency and trend of dust storms in China. Most dust storms in China originate from one of three geographic areas: the Hexi (River West) Corridor and western Inner Mongolia Plateau, the Taklimakan Desert, and the central Inner Mongolia Plateau. Dust is most likely from deteriorated grasslands, Gobi, alluvial, lacustrine sediments and wadis at the outer edge of deserts. But deserts themselves contribute only slightly to the dust storm directly. Two geographic areas frequently have dust storms: one is in the western Tarim Basin, a ground surface of deteriorated land and wadi, but it only affects its neighboring areas, and the other one is in the western Inner Mongolia Plateau, a ground surface of Gobi, alluvial and lacustrine sediments, but it causes most of the dust storms in north China. Generally speaking, dust storms have reduced in most regions of China from the 1950 to 2000. Dust storms are highly correlated with human activities and climate changes.     

Lacustrine and palustrine carbonate petrography: an overview

Lacustrine limestones were formerly identified by their faunistic (limnea, planorbis) and floristic (Charophytes) content. For 30 years, indications of pedogenesis have been found in many lacustrine deposits, and consequently the concept of palustrine limestone was defined.Lacustrine fabrics are not that numerous: varved, laminated, homogeneous, peloidal, brecciated, gravelly, bioturbated (burrows), bioclastic, algal, and stromatolitic. Detrital beds are sometimes present and are interpreted as bottomset deposits. Palustrine fabrics result from exposure and pedogenesis of lacustrine mud. The main processes involved in this evolution are: cracking, with planar, curved, craze and skew planes, colonization by plants resulting in root traces, marmorization (redistribution of iron due to water table fluctuation), and redistribution of carbonates (needles, subspherical or cylindrical vertical nodules, carbonate coatings, early and late diagenetic crystals, Microcodium). Carbonate palustrine features can be associated with other minerals: palygorskite, gypsum, or silica. Alternation of lacustrine sedimentation and exposure/pedogenesis leads to the pseudo-microkarst facies resulting from enlargement of the complex network of root traces and horizontal cracks. The voids in the pseudo-microkarst facies are infilled with a polyphased internal sediment composed of carbonate and vadose silt and phreatic and vadose cements. Traces of exposure and pedogenesis are less in evidence in lacustrine bioclastic sands and algal-stromatolitic limestones. Finally, under certain conditions, the surficial laminar horizon and its associated perlitic crust (ooids) develops on palustrine muds and form a desert stromatolite.     

A comparison of neighbourhood relations based on ordinary Delaunay diagrams and area Delaunay diagrams: an application to define the neighbourhood relations of buildings

ABSTRACT

The aim of this article is to describe a convenient but robust method for defining neighbourhood relations among buildings based on ordinary Delaunay diagrams (ODDs) and area Delaunay diagrams (ADDs). ODDs and ADDs are defined as a set of edges connecting the generators of adjacent ordinary Voronoi cells (points representing centroids of building polygons) and a set of edges connecting two centroids of building polygons, which are the generators of adjacent area Voronoi cells, respectively. Although ADDs are more robust than ODDs, computation time of ODDs is shorter than that of ADDs (the order of their computation time complexity is O(nlogn)). If ODDs can approximate ADDs with a certain degree of accuracy, the former can be used as an alternative. Therefore, we computed the ratio of the number of ADD edges to that of ODD edges overlapping ADDs at building and regional scales. The results indicate that: (1) for approximately 60% of all buildings, ODDs can exactly overlap ADDs with extra ODD edges; (2) at a regional scale, ODDs can overlap approximately 90% of ADDs with 10% extra ODD edges; and (3) focusing on judging errors, although ADDs are more accurate than ODDs, the difference is only approximately 1%.     

Seabirds and fronts: a brief overview

Oceanographic fronts are the sites of enhanced physical and biological activity, including locally concentrated feeding by marine birds. Two general hypotheses relating marine birds to fronts have been developed. The first is that enhanced primary production at fronts increases prey supply through increased animal growth, reproduction, or immigration. The second is that prey patches develop at fronts either through behavioural responses of prey to thermal or salinity gradients, or through interaction between prey behaviour and circulatory patterns. Several recent studies support the second hypothesis. The first hypothesis, that birds benefit from enhanced primary production at fronts, has yet to be evaluated. We need a better understanding of trophic mechanisms at fronts in order to determine (1) the proportion of daily energy requirements extracted by predators at fronts; (2) the proportion of natural mortality of prey populations at fronts; and (3) the probability of contact between seabirds and point source pollutants.     

Research progress in monitoring and simulating stem radius growth: an overview

Traditional dendroclimatology research is based on the statistical correlation between tree-ring chronology and modern observation data, but lacks consideration of the mechanisms of tree-ring growth. In order to reconstruct past climatic conditions more reliably, the response of stem radius growth dynamics should be studied in detail. At present, in international researches, monitoring and simulation methods are generally treated as two separate approaches. The monitoring method generally consists of dendrometer measurements, micro-coring, and pinning. Here, we present the research progress of stem radius growth dynamics studies derived from these methods, and provide prospects for future study.     

Snow research in Svalbard–an overview

This paper summarizes the most significant snow-related research that has been conducted in Svalbard. Most of the research has been performed during the 1990s and includes investigations of snow distribution, snow-melt, snow pack characteristics, remote sensing of snow and biological studies where snow conditions play an important role. For example, studies have shown regional trends with about 50% higher amounts of snow accumulation at the east coast of Spitsbergen compared to the west coast. Further, the accumulation rates are about twice as high in the south compared to the north. On average, the increase in accumulation with elevation is 97 mm water equivalents per 100 m increase in elevation. Several researchers reported melt rates, which are primarily driven by incoming short-wave radiation, in the range of 10-20 mm/day during spring. Maximum melt rates close to 70 mm/day have been measured. In addition to presenting an overview of research activities, we discuss new, unpublished results in areas where considerable progress is being made. These are i) modelling of snow distribution, ii) modelling of snowmelt runoff and iii) monitoring of snow coverage by satellite imagery. We also identify some weaknesses in current research activities. They are lacks of i) integration between various studies, ii) comparative studies with other Arctic regions, iii) applying local field studies in models that can be used to study larger areas of Svalbard and, finally, iv) using satellite remote sensing data for operational monitoring purposes.     

Apatite fission track thermochronology: an overview of its potential and limitations in geomorphology

The specific time window of apatite fission track thermochronology (AFTT) places it in a unique position to offer continuous time–temperature baseline histories for relatively stable shield, rift and passive margin environments, spanning several geological eras. Fission tracks anneal partially at temperatures between ≈110 °C and ≈60 °C and thereby provide information on residence times within specific levels of the crust. Most samples collected from these terrains, however, are usually found to have cooled out of the apatite partial annealing zone (APAZ) by the mid‐Cenozoic at the latest. Owing to the stability, at geological timescales, of tracks at temperatures <60 °C (i.e. within depths of 0–2.5 km at normal geothermal gradients), a significant loss of resolution must therefore be reckoned with at shallow, although geomorphologically crucial, crustal depths. Indeed, the Neogene and Quaternary are understood to have been most influential in generating the scenery of today, and a use of radiometric and stratigraphic techniques in a nested, multisystem approach can assist in bridging the resolution gap. This paper examines and illustrates, mostly with original examples, the uses and limitations of AFTT in addressing the response of Earth surface systems to event patterns in global tectonics, the controls of lithology and structure on denudation rates, the origin and evolution of passive margin escarpments, the mass‐balanced reconstruction of palaeoelief, the use of apatites as tracers for understanding provenance in sediment routing systems, and the tempo (or episodicity) of denudation as postulated by W. M. Davis’ canons of the ‘geographical cycle’. Alongside efforts towards standardizing the supply of analytically robust AFT results in the laboratory, a more standardized geoscientific interpretation of AFT data is also desirable in order to build a consistent world base of geomorphic rates which can be made available to – and used with confidence by – non‐AFTT specialists.     

The new Russian minorities: a statistical overview

The author "presents a succinct review of the newly constituted Russian minorities situated in the former Soviet republics. Based on census data series (1897 to 1989) and original computations, the paper covers location (highest proportion of Russians in Kazakhstan, Latvia, and Estonia), concentration (predominantly urban), occupational structure (largely in industry and science), and related data on issues such as language affinities and migration."     

Paleolimnology and recent environmental change in Lake Baikal: an introduction and overview of interrelated concurrent studies

Recent environmental change research in Lake Baikal is introduced together with an overview of several interrelated papers published concurrently in this issue of Journal of Paleolimnology. Five themes are tackled by analysis of recent Baikal sediment cores, dating, geochemistry, particulate pollutants, magnetism and diatoms. The concurrent papers focus on the first four themes in some detail and summary results of diatom analysis (from Mackay et al., 1998) are given here. Taken together these studies provide a time-space framework for recent environmental change in Lake Baikal not previously available.There are significant shifts in species composition of the endemic planktonic diatom assemblages in uppermost sediments collected from throughout the lake. However, these changes usually precede the sediment record of low level but widespread contamination by industrial products. The most clear sign of industrial contamination is the presence of particles from fossil fuel combustion in sediment post dating the 1930s.Although evidence for widespread biostratigraphic changes by pollution is lacking, radionuclide, diatom, lithostratigraphic and magnetic stratigraphies indicate two main features, (i) it is possible to make stratigraphic correlations within and between basins using recent sediment cores, (ii) that turbidite deposits, from several to tens of cm thick, are frequently encountered in recent sediments.Turbidite deposits occur in ²¹⁰Pb dated and pre-²¹⁰Pb sediment core sections and are undoubtedly a major macro-disturbance feature in many deep water locations in Lake Baikal. If profiles are to be used as direct proxy records of climate variability, then screening of cores for turbidites is a pre-requisite for quality assurance in future paleoenvironmental studies.On-going international research including Swiss, Russian and British joint paleoenvironmental studies on the distribution and biological formation of recent sediments will hopefully lead to better interpretation of Holocene and pre-Holocene sediment records in Lake Baikal.     

SPLITAREA: an algorithm for weighted splitting of faces in the context of a planar partition

Geographic data themes modelled as planar partitions are found in many GIS applications (e.g. topographic data, land cover, zoning plans, etc.). When generalizing this kind of 2D map, this specific nature has to be respected and generalization operations should be carefully designed. This paper presents a design and implementation of an algorithm to perform a split operation of faces (polygonal areas).

The result of the split operation has to fit in with the topological data structure supporting variable-scale data. The algorithm, termed SPLITAREA, obtains the skeleton of a face using a constrained Delaunay triangulation. The new split operator is especially relevant in urban areas with many infrastructural objects such as roads. The contribution of this work is twofold: (1) the quality of the split operation is formally assessed by comparing the results on actual test data sets with a goal/metric we defined beforehand for the ‘balanced’ split and (2) the algorithm allows a weighted split, where different neighbours have different weights due to different compatibility. With the weighted split, the special case of unmovable boundaries is also explicitly addressed.

The developed split algorithm can also be used outside the generalization context in other settings. For example, to make two cross-border data sets fit, the algorithm could be applied to allow splitting of slivers.     

Have a nice trip: an algorithm for identifying excess routes under satisfaction constraints

Analysis of potential spatial behavior in transport infrastructures is usually carried out by means of a digital network. A basic condition for such a network analysis has traditionally been the desire to find solutions to optimization problems and to achieve greater efficiency in industry. Geographic information system (GIS) tools for network analysis are overwhelmingly targeted at finding solutions to optimization problems, which include the shortest path problem and the traveling salesman problem. This article addresses the problem of the lack of tools for finding solutions to a class of constraint satisfaction problems that are of potential interest to behavioral geographers. Constraint satisfaction problems differ from optimization problems in that they lack an expression to be maximized or minimized. We describe how a constraint-based approach to network analysis can be applied to search for ‘excess routes’ that are longer or in other ways exceed single, optimal routes. Our analysis considers both round-trips and travel from A to B and defines a set of constraints that can characterize such paths. We present a labeling algorithm that can generate solutions to such excess route problems.     

Propagation of vertical and horizontal source data errors into a TIN with linear interpolation

Digital elevation models (DEMs) have been widely used for a range of applications and form the basis of many GIS-related tasks. An essential aspect of a DEM is its accuracy, which depends on a variety of factors, such as source data quality, interpolation methods, data sampling density and the surface topographical characteristics. In recent years, point measurements acquired directly from land surveying such as differential global positioning system and light detection and ranging have become increasingly popular. These topographical data points can be used as the source data for the creation of DEMs at a local or regional scale. The errors in point measurements can be estimated in some cases. The focus of this article is on how the errors in the source data propagate into DEMs. The interpolation method considered is a triangulated irregular network (TIN) with linear interpolation. Both horizontal and vertical errors in source data points are considered in this study. An analytical method is derived for the error propagation into any particular point of interest within a TIN model. The solution is validated using Monte Carlo simulations and survey data obtained from a terrestrial laser scanner.     

Climatic trend and the retreat and disintegration of ice shelves on the Antarctic Peninsula: an overview

Observation of the retreat and disintegration of ice shelves around the Antarctic Peninsula during the last three decades and associated changes in air temperature, measured at various meteorological stations on the Antarctic Peninsula, are reviewed. The climatically induced retreat of the northern Larsen Ice Shelf on the east coast and of the Wordie, George VI, and Wilkins ice shelves on the west coast amounted to about 10 000 km² since the mid-1960s. A summary is presented on the recession history of the Larsen Ice Shelf and on the collapse of those sections north of Robertson Island in early 1995. The area changes were derived from images of various satellites, dating back to a late 1963 image from the recently declassified US Argon space missions. This photograph reveals a previously unknown, minor advance of the northern Larsen Ice Shelf before 1975. During the period of retreat a consistent and pronounced warming trend was observed at the stations on both east and west coasts of the Antarctic Peninsula, but a major cause of the fast retreat and final collapse of the northernmost sections of the Larsen Ice Shelf were several unusually warm summers. Temperature records from the nearby station Marambio show that a positive mean summer temperature was reached for the first time in 1992-93. Recent observations indicate that the process of ice shelf disintegration is proceeding further south on both sides of the Antarctic Peninsula.     

The Northeast Arctic cod stock's place in the Barents Sea ecosystem in the 1980s: an overview

Just after World War II the size of the Northeast Arctic cod ( Gadus morhua ) stock was about 6 million tonnes, but at the beginning of the 1980s the stock had been reduced to 1 million tonnes, due mainly to the excessively high fishing-mortality. Nevertheless, the stock produced strong year classes at the 0-group stage in the relatively warm period 1983-1985. At the same time, individual growth in the cod stock was good, and in 1986 the stock size increased to over 1.5 million tonnes.
However, the cod preyed increasingly on the capelin ( Mallotus villosus ) present, and by the end of 1986 the capelin stock was seriously depleted. The cod compensated for the loss of capelin by preying more intensively on other food items, including smaller cod. Cannibalism increased by a factor of three from 1984 to 1986, and this is one important reason why the 1984 and 1985 year classes did not recruit to the fisheries as expected. Individual growth was dramatically reduced, and the average fish weight decreased by about 50% in most age groups. Because the quotas are in tonnes, more fish than expected were caught. This resulted in serious management problems and led to reductions both in stock size and quotas compared to the optimistic prognosis of the mid-1980s.