Integration of reflection seismic and sediment grain-size data from Lake Khubsugul (Northern Mongolia): a reply to Prokopenko and Kendall

Prokopenko and Kendall (J Paleolimnol doi:, 2008) criticise the work presented in Fedotov et al. (J Paleolimnol 39:335–348, 2008), and instead propose an alternative interpretation for the grain-size evolution recorded in the KDP-01 core, retrieved from the central part of Lake Khubsugul. Their interpretation is based (i) on a seismic-stratigraphic re-interpretation of sparker seismic profile khub012 (which they copied from Fedotov et al. (EOS Trans 87:246–250, 2006)), (ii) on the presupposition that changes in lake level are the dominant control on facies distribution in Lake Khubsugul, and (iii) on the invalidation of our age-depth model. In this reply to their comment, we demonstrate that they interpreted seismic artefacts and geometries caused by changes in profile orientation as true stratigraphic features and that the lake-level reconstruction they derive from this interpretation is therefore incorrect. We also demonstrate that their grain-size predictions, which they consider to be predominantly driven by changes in lake level, are inconsistent with the measured sulphate concentration, which is a demonstrated proxy of lake level in Lake Khubsugul, and with the measured grain-size record. Finally, we point out that even if there would be a problem with the age-depth model, this problem would not affect the part of the sedimentary sequence discussed in Fedotov et al. (J Paleolimnol 39:335–348, 2008).     

Artificial light at night: implications for early life stages development in four temperate freshwater fish species

Flora and fauna have both evolved under a natural cycle of light and dark. But especially in urban areas, the night is now increasingly disturbed by artificial light. Many traits and behaviours in fish are triggered by a circadian clock, for example hatching and swim bladder inflation, which predominantly take place at dusk or night. As lighting becomes brighter and extends farther into rural areas, the distinction between day and night becomes increasingly blurred. Therefore, the loss of diurnal trigger by artificial light at night was hypothesized having deleterious effects on these traits and impact fish reproduction. To assess these effects, eggs of four native freshwater fishes, Eurasian perch Perca fluviatilis, roach Rutilus rutilus, bleak Alburnus alburnus and chub Leuciscus cephalus, were incubated under two different light conditions: a photoperiod of 14 h light:10 h darkness (LD) and continuous illumination (LL). The time to hatch and swim bladder inflation was recorded. The species showed inconsistent reactions to the light treatments. In roach and bleak, the time to 50% hatch was longer in LL, whereas continuous lighting had an accelerating effect in chub. Incubation in LL elongated the hatching period in perch and roach and, in perch, the onset of darkness seemed to trigger hatching. The swim bladder inflation was significantly promoted by continuous light in chub and bleak but was not affected in roach. In conclusion, nocturnal artificial illumination could have an effect on hatching and initial swim bladder filling by masking the day–night-change and thereby diminish the trigger effect. However, the reactions were species specific and the increase in variation indicated a lack of diurnal triggering, whilst a general deleterious effect of artificial light at night has not been identified on early life stages.     

Benchmarking spatial joins a la carte

Spatial joins are join operations that involve spatial data types and operators. Spatial access methods are often used to speed up the computation of spatial joins. This paper addresses the issue of benchmarking spatial join operations. For this purpose, we first present a WWW-based benchmark generator to produce sets of rectangles. Using a Web browser, experimenters can specify the number of rectangles in a sample, as well as the statistical distributions of their sizes, shapes, and locations. Second, using the generator and a well-defined set of statistical models we define several tests to compare the performance of three spatial join algorithms: nested loop, scan-and-index, and synchronized tree traversal. We also added two real-life data sets from the Sequoia 2000 storage benchmark. Our results show that the relative performance of the different techniques mainly depends on the selectivity factor of the join predicate. All of the statistical models and algorithms are available on the Web, which allows for easy verification and modification of our experiments.     

Impacts of Climatic Factors on Runoff Coefficients in Source Regions of the Huanghe River

Runoff coefficients of the source regions of the Huanghe River in 1956–2000 were analyzed in this paper. In the 1990s runoff of Tangnaihai Hydrologic Station of the Huanghe River experienced a serious decrease, which had at- tracted considerable attention. Climate changes have important impact on the water resources availability. From the view of water cycling, runoff coefficients are important indexes of water resources in a particular catchment. Kalinin baseflow separation technique was improved based on the characteristics of precipitation and streamflow. After the separation of runoff coefficient (R/P), baseflow coefficient (Br/P) and direct runoff coefficient (Dr/P) were estimated. Statistic analyses were applied to assessing the impact of precipitation and temperature on runoff coefficients (including Dr/P, Br/P and R/P). The results show that in the source regions of the Huanghe River, mean annual baseflow coefficient was higher than mean annual direct runoff coefficient. Annual runoff coefficients were in direct proportion to annual pre- cipitation and in inverse proportion to annual mean temperature. The decrease of runoff coefficients in the 1990s was closely related to the decrease in precipitation and increase in temperature in the same period. Over different sub-basins of the source regions of the Huanghe River, runoff coefficients responded differently to precipitation and temperature. In the area above Jimai Hydrologic Station where annual mean temperature is –3.9oC, temperature is the main factor in- fluencing the runoff coefficients. Runoff coefficients were in inverse relation to temperature, and precipitation had nearly no impact on runoff coefficients. In subbasin between Jimai and Maqu Hydrologic Station Dr/P was mainly affected by precipitation while R/P and Br/P were both significantly influenced by precipitation and temperature. In the area be-tween Maqu and Tangnaihai hydrologic stations all the three runoff coefficients increased with the rising of annual precipitation, while direct runoff coefficient was inversely proportional to temperature. In the source regions of the Huanghe River with the increase of average annual temperature, the impacts of temperature on runoff coefficients be-come insignificant.     

Near-source noise suppression of AMT by compressive sensing and mathematical morphology filtering

In deep mineral exploration, the acquisition of audio magnetotelluric (AMT) data is severely affected by ambient noise near the observation sites; This near-field noise restricts investigation depths. Mathematical morphological filtering (MMF) proved effective in suppressing large-scale strong and variably shaped noise, typically low-frequency noise, but can not deal with pulse noise of AMT data. We combine compressive sensing and MMF. First, we use MMF to suppress the large-scale strong ambient noise; second, we use the improved orthogonal match pursuit (IOMP) algorithm to remove the residual pulse noise. To remove the noise and protect the useful AMT signal, a redundant dictionary that matches with spikes and is insensitive to the useful signal is designed. Synthetic and field data from the Luzong field suggest that the proposed method suppresses the near-source noise and preserves the signal well; thus, better results are obtained that improve the output of either MMF or IOMP.     

The Upper Middle Rhine Valley as a risk area

The Upper Middle Rhine Valley, granted the status of a World Heritage site, is well known for its unique inner narrow valley of Quaternary age with its historical legacy of numerous medieval castles and old towns. Less known is that this has always been a risk area of floods and gravitative mass movements. Up to the recent past, mainly ice floods caused enormous damage. The inhabitants of the valley were well aware that they lived in a risk area, but they had learned to handle the flood hazard. With the demise of ice floods over the last 40 years, due to climate change and because of the additional heating of the river water by power plants, the awareness of flood hazards has been much diminished, in contrast to that of potential damage by rockfalls and landslides which were also much feared in the past, though at the local level only. Still in the people’s memory is the Kaub catastrophe of March 10, 1876, when 28 persons were killed by a landslide. Nowadays, even minor rockfalls are a major threat, as they will affect the much-used traffic lines on both banks of the river, in particular the railroads. Therefore, since 2002, on behalf of German Rail (Deutsche Bahn, DB), all problematic slopes have been protected by costly steel-ring nets, although they are an aesthetic problem by UNESCO standards. The feeling of absolute safety created among the public is only subjective, though, as planners are well aware of. Moreover, the impact of modern climate change on slope stability is nearly unknown. Therefore, it is still necessary to develop a risk map for the narrow valley, with emphasis on gravitational hazards.     

Automated Segmentation of Resistivity Image Logs Using Wavelet Transform

We describe a wavelet-transform-based method for automated segmentation of resistivity image logs that takes into account the apparent dip in the data and addresses the problem of discriminating lithofacies boundaries from noise and intrafacies variations. Our method can be applied to borehole measurements in general, but might have an advantage when applied to resistivity image logs as it addresses explicitly the large variability in facies segments recorded with a high-resolution multiple-sensor tool. We have developed an algorithm based on this method that might outperform other existing segmentation methods in the cases of low to moderate dip. We made a detailed comparison of the segmentation from our method with the one done by a geologist to delineate different lithofacies blocks in a well drilled in a deepwater depositional environment. Our results show considerable success rates in reproducing the geologically defined lithofacies boundaries, and the generality of our procedure suggests it could also be applied to other depositional environments.     

Relationship Between Land Cover Ratio and Urban Heat Island from Remote Sensing and Automatic Weather Stations Data

Urban heat island (UHI) effect has a close relation to land covers type. This paper investigates the relationship between land cover ratio and UHI in Guangzhou, south of China using remote sensing and automatic weather stations data. The temperature data were obtained by Automatic weather stations (AWS) of Guangzhou in October, 2004, at the same time with the CBERS remote sensing image acquired. Firstly, the hourly mean temperature was computed from hourly AWS data. Secondly, the CBERS remote sensing image was classified using support vector machine (SVM) and land covers classification were output. Thirdly, the classification result was overlapped with a round buffer with 1.5 KM radius centered on the AWS, and then the land cover ratio, Edge Density (ED) and Mean Fractal Dimension (MFRACT) of buffers were computed out. Finally, the correlation coefficient between hourly mean temperature and land cover ratio, ED and MFRACT was calculated. It concluded that UHI intensity was heavier during nighttime than daytime. Stations with higher vegetation ratio and higher ED had lower heat island effect. On the contrary, stations with higher impervious ratio and lower ED had more serious heat island effect. The positive–negative of correlation coefficient between hourly mean temperature and vegetation ratio during 11:00–17:00 h (local time) was opposite to that during other time. ED was negatively correlated with hourly mean temperature except during 11:00–17:00 h. On the contrary, MFRACT was positively correlated with hourly mean temperature. It implied that fragmentations of patches were favorable to UHI alleviation, and complexities of patch were unfavorable factors.     

Temporal and spatial dynamical simulation of groundwater characteristics in Minqin Oasis

Application scope of geostatistics has been gradually extended from original geologic field to soil science and ecological field, etc. and its successful application results have been widely demonstrated. But little information is reported as to the direct use of geostatistical method to work out the distribu- tion map of groundwater characteristics. In this paper the semivariogram of geostatistics, in combina- tion with GIS, was used to quantitatively study the spatial variation characteristics of groundwater table depth and mineralization degree and their relation to the landuse changes. F test of the used spherical model reached a very significant level, and the theoretical model can well reflect the spatial structural characteristics of groundwater table depth and mineralization degree and achieve an ideal result. This shows that the application of the method in the dynamical simulation of groundwater is feasible. And this paper also provides useful reference for the application of geostatistics in the study of the dy- namical variations of groundwater resources in the oasis.     

A Long-Term Decrease of the Mid-Size Segmentation Lengths Observed in the He <Emphasis Type="SmallCaps">ii</Emphasis> (30.4 nm) Solar EUV Emission

Power spectra of segmentation-cell length (a dominant length scale of EUV emission in the transition region) from full-disk He?ii extreme ultraviolet (EUV) images observed by the Extreme ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (EIT) onboard the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) and the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA) onboard the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) during periods of quiet-Sun conditions for a time interval from 1996 to 2015 were analyzed. The spatial power as a function of the spatial frequency from about 0.04 to 0.27 (EIT) or up to 0.48 (AIA) Mm^?1 depends on the distribution of the observed segmentation-cell dimensions – a structure of the solar EUV network. The temporal variations of the spatial power reported by Didkovsky and Gurman (Solar Phys. 289, 153, 2014) were suggested as decreases at the mid-spatial frequencies for the compared spectra when the power curves at the highest spatial frequencies of 0.5 pix^?1 were adjusted to match each other. This approach has been extended in this work to compare spectral ratios at high spatial frequencies expressed in the solar spatial frequency units of Mm^?1. A model of EIT and AIA spatial responses allowed us to directly compare spatial spectral ratios at high spatial frequencies for five years of joint operation of EIT and AIA, from 2010 to 2015. Based on this approach, we represent these ratio changes as a long-term network transformation that may be interpreted as a continuous dissipation of mid-size network structures to the smaller-size structures in the transition region. In contrast to expected cycling of the segmentation-cell dimension structures and associated spatial power in the spectra with the solar cycle, the spectra demonstrate a significant and steady change of the EUV network. The temporal trend across these structural spectra is not critically sensitive to any long-term instrumental changes, e.g. degradation of sensitivity, but to the change of the segmentation-cell dimensions of the EUV network structure.