Uncertainty in floodplain delineation: expression of flood hazard and risk in a Gulf Coast watershed

This paper investigates the development of flood hazard and flood risk delineations that account for uncertainty as improvements to standard floodplain maps for coastal watersheds. Current regulatory floodplain maps for the Gulf Coastal United States present 1% flood hazards as polygon features developed using deterministic, steady‐state models that do not consider data uncertainty or natural variability of input parameters. Using the techniques presented here, a standard binary deterministic floodplain delineation is replaced with a flood inundation map showing the underlying flood hazard structure. Additionally, the hazard uncertainty is further transformed to show flood risk as a spatially distributed probable flood depth using concepts familiar to practicing engineers and software tools accepted and understood by regulators. A case study of the proposed hazard and risk assessment methodology is presented for a Gulf Coast watershed, which suggests that storm duration and stage boundary conditions are important variable parameters, whereas rainfall distribution, storm movement, and roughness coefficients contribute less variability. The floodplain with uncertainty for this coastal watershed showed the highest variability in the tidally influenced reaches and showed little variability in the inland riverine reaches. Additionally, comparison of flood hazard maps to flood risk maps shows that they are not directly correlated, as areas of high hazard do not always represent high risk. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Estimating Preferential Flow in Karstic Aquifers Using Statistical Mixed Models

Karst aquifers are highly productive groundwater systems often associated with conduit flow. These systems can be highly vulnerable to contamination, resulting in a high potential for contaminant exposure to humans and ecosystems. This work develops statistical models to spatially characterize flow and transport patterns in karstified limestone and determines the effect of aquifer flow rates on these patterns. A laboratory‐scale Geo‐HydroBed model is used to simulate flow and transport processes in a karstic limestone unit. The model consists of stainless steel tanks containing a karstified limestone block collected from a karst aquifer formation in northern Puerto Rico. Experimental work involves making a series of flow and tracer injections, while monitoring hydraulic and tracer response spatially and temporally. Statistical mixed models (SMMs) are applied to hydraulic data to determine likely pathways of preferential flow in the limestone units. The models indicate a highly heterogeneous system with dominant, flow‐dependent preferential flow regions. Results indicate that regions of preferential flow tend to expand at higher groundwater flow rates, suggesting a greater volume of the system being flushed by flowing water at higher rates. Spatial and temporal distribution of tracer concentrations indicates the presence of conduit‐like and diffuse flow transport in the system, supporting the notion of both combined transport mechanisms in the limestone unit. The temporal response of tracer concentrations at different locations in the model coincide with, and confirms the preferential flow distribution generated with the SMMs used in the study.     

Optical and infrared photometry of new very low‐mass stars and brown dwarfs in the σ Orionis cluster

We present an RI photometric survey covering an area of 430 arcmin² around the multiple star σ Orionis. The observations were conducted with the 0.8 m IAC‐80 Telescope at the Teide Observatory. The survey limiting R and I magnitudes are 22.5 and 21, and completeness magnitudes 21 and 20, respectively. We have selected 53 candidates from the I vs. R–I colour‐magnitude diagram (I = 14–20) that follow the previously known photometric sequence of the cluster. Adopting an age of 2–4 Myr for the cluster, we find that these objects span a mass range from 0.35 M_⊙ to 0.015 M_⊙. We have performed J‐band photometry of 52 candidates and K_s photometry for 12 of them, with the result that 50 follow the expected infrared sequence for the cluster, thus confirming with great confidence that the majority of the candidates are bona fide members. JHK_s photometry from the Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS) is available for 50 of the candidates and are in good agreement with our data. Out of 48 candidates, which have photometric accuracies better than 0.1 mag in all bands, only three appear to show near‐infrared excesses. (© 2004 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

The Substellar Population in the Young σ Orionis Cluster, Spatial Distribution

We review different surveys, in the optical and infrared, conducted in the very young (age 1–8 Myr), nearby (d ～ 350 pc) σ Orionis cluster aimed to characterize the substellar population. We describe spectral characteristics of very low mass stars, brown dwarfs and planetary mass objects in the cluster with spectral types from K7 to T6. We study the spatial distribution of the substellar population detected in a IZJ survey covering an area of 1.12 deg.² We find that the radial distribution of substellar objects can be well fitted by an exponential law (ρ = ρ_o e ^?r/ro ), with a central density (ρ _o ) of 0.26 ± 0.03 objects/arcmin² and a characteristic radius (r _o) of 8.8 arcmin ± 0.6 (equivalent to 0.90 ± 0.06 pc at the distance of the cluster). We discuss the presence of possible inhomogeneities in this distribution due to the existence of subclustering. We also compare the spatial distribution of the substellar population with previously known stars in the cluster. We report the initial mass spectrum in the substellar domain.     

Seasonal changes in vertical distribution of zooplankton in an oligotrophic, subarctic lake (Lake Takvatn, Norway)

Zooplankton vertical distribution was studied in Lake Takvatn (69°07′ N) by discrete sampling of the water column during the open water season. Attention was focused on predation risk and competition to understand when, where and to what degree a given species should aggregate along the water column. Temperature profiles and phytoplankton abundance and composition were recorded to assess degree of heterogeneity and food availability in the pelagic zone. Vertical segregation was evident during thermal stratification. Rotifers partitioned the water column, with species less susceptible to predation (e.g. Conochilus unicornis) in the epilimnion, where they overlapped with the predators Asplanchna priodonta and Polyphemus pediculus, and species more vulnerable to these predators (e.g. Keratella cochlearis) in the hypolimnion. Cladocerans remained in the epilimnion, in a year when predation by fish was limited. The copepodites of Eudiaptomus graciloides and Cyclops scutifer maintained different depths staying respectively near surface and in the meta-hypolimnion. A broader distribution with increasing density was evident among rotifers and C. scutifer nauplii. Density-dependent habitat selection behaviour is considered as a mechanism explaining the observed distribution of predators and competing prey and promoting species coexistence.     

Validation of recent geopotential models in Tierra Del Fuego

This work presents a validation study of global geopotential models (GGM) in the region of Fagnano Lake, located in the southern Andes. This is an excellent area for this type of validation because it is surrounded by the Andes Mountains, and there is no terrestrial gravity or GNSS/levelling data. However, there are mean lake level (MLL) observations, and its surface is assumed to be almost equipotential. Furthermore, in this article, we propose improved geoid solutions through the Residual Terrain Modelling (RTM) approach. Using a global geopotential model, the results achieved allow us to conclude that it is possible to use this technique to extend an existing geoid model to those regions that lack any information (neither gravimetric nor GNSS/levelling observations). As GGMs have evolved, our results have improved progressively. While the validation of EGM2008 with MLL data shows a standard deviation of 35 cm, GOCO05C shows a deviation of 13 cm, similar to the results obtained on land.     

Identifying Environmental and Human Factors Associated With Tick Bites using Volunteered Reports and Frequent Pattern Mining

Tick populations and tick‐borne diseases like Lyme borreliosis have been steadily increasing since the mid‐1990s. Realizing the threat that ticks pose to public health, two Dutch citizen science projects have collected tick bite reports since 2006. This unique volunteered geographical dataset, which currently has nearly 35,000 reports, was used to identify environmental and other circumstantial factors associated with tick bites. For this, we first enriched the tick bite reports with temperature, precipitation, vegetation and volunteered data associated with the location of the tick bite. Using this enriched dataset, we then derived a series of features to characterize the environmental and volunteer‐related conditions in which each tick bite occurred. Next, we discretized these features using the Jenks Natural Breaks algorithm and, after that, we mined frequent environmental patterns associated with tick bites using the AprioriClose algorithm. Finally, we checked that these patterns are specifically associated with the tick bites by comparing them with the frequent patterns mined from pseudo‐random locations. The frequent patterns were visualized using heat maps and ring maps and two representative patterns associated with tick bites were projected into geographic space to study their spatio‐temporal distribution. Our results show that factors linked to human activity are more relevant to model tick bites than seasonal accumulations of temperature, vegetation or precipitation. In particular, the number of warm and dry days per season are present in a significant number of patterns and the majority of tick bites are produced within a distance of half a kilometer of a forest, recreational or built‐up area. The study of patterns in the time‐series revealed that there are several persistent patterns consistently occurring each year and the validation process showed that the volunteer tick bites collection is capturing environmental conditions associated with tick bites, suggesting that these reports have a high scientific value. These results support the creation of a Dutch tick bite risk map that, in turn, will open the door to the design of public health interventions to reduce the incidence of Lyme disease.