Assessment of agri-spillways as a soil erosion protection measure in Mediterranean sloping vineyards

Suitable vineyard soils enhance soil stability and biodiversity which in turn protects roots against erosion and nutrient losses. There is a lack of information related to inexpensive and suitable methods and tools to protect the soil in Mediterranean sloping vineyards(25° of slope inclination). In the vineyards of the Montes de Málaga(southern Spain), a sustainable land management practice that controls soil erosion is actually achieved by tilling rills in the down-slope direction to canalize water and sediments. Because of their design and use, we call them agri-spillways. In this research, we assessed two agri-spillways(between 10 m and 15 m length, and slopes between 25.8° and 35°) by performing runoff experiments under extreme conditions(a motor driven pump that discharged water flows up to 1.33 l s~(-1) for 12 to 15 minutes: ≈1000 l). The final results showed: i) a great capacity by these rills to canalize large amounts of water and sediments; and, ii) higher water flow speeds(between 0.16 m s-1 and 0.28 m s~(-1)) and sediment concentrationrates(up to 1538.6 g l~(-1)) than typically found in other Mediterranean areas and land uses(such as badlands, rangelands or extensive crops of olives and almonds). The speed of water flow and the sediment concentration were much higher in the shorter and steeper rill. We concluded that agri-spillways, given correct planning and maintenance, can be a potential solution as an inexpensive method to protect the soil in sloping Mediterranean vineyards.     

300年来中国森林的变化

Based on historical documents, modern survey and statistics, as well as the result of predecessor studies, the trend and main process of forest dynamics are recognized. The forest area and forest coverage rates for each province of China from 1700 to 1949 are estimated backward by every 50 years. Linking the result with modern National Forest Inventory data, the spatial-temporal dynamics of Chinese forest in recent 300 years （AD 1700-1998） is quantitatively analyzed. The study shows that in recent 300 years, the forest area in current territory of China has declined by 0.95×10^8 hm^2 （or 9.2% of the coverage rate） in total, with a trend of decrease and recovery. Before the 1960s, there was a trend of accelerated descending. The forest area was reduced by 1.66×10^8 hm^2 （or 17% of the coverage rate） in 260 years. While after the 1960s, there has been a rapid increase. The forest area increased by 0.7×10^8 hm^2 （or 8% of the coverage rate） in 40 years. The study also shows that there is a significant spatial difference in the dynamics of forest. The amplitudes of increasing and decreasing in western China are both smaller than the ones in eastern China. During the rapid declining period from 1700 to 1949, the most serious decrease appeared in the Northeast, the Southwest and the Southeast, where the coverage rate in most provinces dropped over 20%. In Heilongjiang Province, the coverage rate dropped by 50%. In Jilin Province, it dropped by 36%. In Sichuan Province and Chongqing Municipality, it dropped by 42%. In Yunnan Province, it dropped by 35%. During the recovery period 1949-1998, the western provinces, municipality and autonomous regions, including Ningxia, Gansu, Inner Mongolia, Sichuan-Chongqing, Yunnan, Tibet, Xinjiang and Qinghai, etc, the increase rates are all below 5%, while the eastern provinces, municipality and autonomous regions （except Heilongjiang, Hubei, Jiangsu-Shanghai） have achieved an increase over 5%, among which the Guangdong-Hainan, Guangxi, Anhui, Beijing-Tianjin-H     

A terrain openness index for the extraction of karst Fenglin and Fengcong landform units from DEMs

The Fenglin and Fengcong landform units are considered to be an important representation for defining the degree of development of Karst landforms. However, these terrain features have been proven difficult to delineate and extract automatically because of their complex morphology. In this paper, a new method for identifying the Fenglin and Fengcong landform units is proposed. This method consists of two steps: (1) terrain openness calculation and (2) toe line extraction. The proposed method is applied and validated in the Karst case area of Guilin by using ASTER GDEM with one arc-second resolution. The openness of both the positive and negative terrain and a threshold were used to extract toe lines for segmenting depressions and pinnacles in Fenglin and Fengcong landforms. A comparison between the extracted Fenglin and Fengcong landform units and their real units from high resolution images was carried out to evaluate the capability of the proposed method. Results show the proposed method can effectively extract the Fenglin and Fengcong landform units, and has an overall accuracy of 93.28%. The proposed method is simple and easy to implement and is expected to play an important role in the automatic extraction of similar landform units in the Karst area.     

Three-dimensional thermal structure of the Chinese continental crust and upper mantle

We invert S-wave velocities for the 3D upper-mantle temperatures, in which the position with a temperature crossing the 1300℃ adiabat is corresponding to the top of the seismic low velocity zone. The temperatures down to the depth of 80 km are then calculated by solving steady-state thermal conduction equation with the constraints of the inverted upper-mantle temperatures and the surface temperatures, and then surface heat flows are calculated from the crustal temperatures. The misfit between the calculated and observed surface heat flow is smaller than 20% for most regions. The result shows that, at a depth of 25 km, the crustal temperature of eastern China (500―600℃) is higher than that of western China (<500℃). At a depth of 100 km, temperatures beneath eastern and southeastern China are higher than the adiabatic temperature of 1300℃, while that beneath west China is lower. The Tarim craton and the Sichuan basin show generally low temperature. At a depth of 150 km, temperatures beneath south China, eastern Yangtze craton, North China craton and around the Qiangtang terrane are higher than the adiabatic temperature of 1300℃, but is the lowest beneath the Sichuan basin and the regions near the Indian-Eurasian collision zone. At a depth of 200 km, very low temperature occurs beneath the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and the south to the Tarim craton.     

Projections of the impacts of climate change on the water deficit and on the precipitation erosive indexes in Mantaro River Basin,Peru

Projections of climate change are essential to guide sustainable development plans in the tropical Andean countries such as Peru. This study assessed the projections of precipitation and potential evaporation, rain erosive potential, and precipitation concentration in the Mantaro River Basin, in the Peruvian Andes, which is important for agriculture and energy production in Peru. We assumed the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) A1B greenhouse gas emission scenario and simulated the global climate change by the HadCM3 global climate model. Due to the steepness of the mountain slopes and the narrowness of the river valley, this study uses the downscaling of the global model simulations by the regional Eta model down to 20-km resolution. The downscaling projections show decrease in the monthly precipitation with respect to the baseline period, especially during the rainy season, between February and April, until the end of the 21st century. Meanwhile, a progressive increase in the monthly evaporation from the baseline period is projected. The Modified Fournier Index (MFI) shows a statistically significant downward trend in the Mantaro River Basin, which suggests a possible reduction in the rain erosive potential. The Precipitation Concentration Index (PCI) shows a statistically significant increasing trend, which indicates increasingly more irregular temporal distribution of precipitation towards the end of the century. The results of this study allow us to conclude that there should be a gradual increase in water deficit and precipitation concentration. Both changes can be negative for agriculture, power generation, and water supply in the Mantaro River Basin in Peru.     

Study on the simulation of transparency of Lake Taihu under different hydrodynamic conditions

It was indicated in this study that there were negative relations between the concentrations of suspended solid (SS) and transparency according to the analysis of measured data of Lake Taihu. Their relations in pervious studies were reviewed, which showed that the changes of transparency in Lake Taihu could be reflected by simulating suspended solid concentration (SSC). Measured data showed that the changes of SSC with wind speed were similar at different water depths. SSC increased with the increasing of wind speed. Both wave and lake current of Lake Taihu had positive relations with SSC. However, wave was the main factor affecting sediment suspension, while flow took the second place. In this study, a numerical model coupling lake current, wave and SSC of Lake Taihu was developed. In the SS model, the combined effects of wave and current were included. The amounts of suspended and deposited sediments near the lake bed surface layer were treated separately. The stochastic characteristics of turbulent flow pulsation near lake beds were also considered, and the start-up conditions of sediment suspension were introduced to the model. The model elucidated the mutual exchange processes between sediment particles in SS and active sediments within and on the bed surface layer. Simulated results showed that lake current had relatively significant effects on the SSC at littoral areas of Lake Taihu, while SSC at the central area of the lake was mainly influenced by wave. The changes of transparency with SSC were simulated for Lake Taihu using this model. Calculated results were validated by measured data with good fitness, which indicated that the model is basically suitable for the simulation and prediction of transparency of Lake Taihu.     

A method of alternating characteristics with application to advection-dominated environmental systems

We present a numerical method for solving a class of systems of partial differential equations (PDEs) that arises in modeling environmental processes undergoing advection and biogeochemical reactions. The salient feature of these PDEs is that all partial derivatives appear in linear expressions. As a result, the system can be viewed as a set of ordinary differential equations (ODEs), albeit each one along a different characteristic. The method then consists of alternating between equations and integrating each one step-wise along its own characteristic, thus creating a customized grid on which solutions are computed. Since the solutions of such PDEs are generally smoother along their characteristics, the method offers the potential of using larger time steps while maintaining accuracy and reducing numerical dispersion. The advantages in efficiency and accuracy of the proposed method are demonstrated in two illustrative examples that simulate depth-resolved reactive transport and soil carbon cycling.