Estimating forest standing biomass in savanna woodlands as an indicator of forest productivity using the new generation WorldView-2 sensor

Accurate and up-to-date information on forest dendrometric traits, such as above ground biomass is important in understanding the contribution of terrestrial ecosystems to the regulation of atmsopheric carbon, especially in the face of global environmental change. Besides, dendrometric traits information is critical in assessing the healthy and the spatial planning of fragile ecosystems, such as the savanna dry forests. The aim of this work was to test whether red-edge spectral data derived from WorldView-2 multispectral imagery improve biomass estimation in savanna dry forests. The results of this study have shown that biomass estimation using all Worldview-2 raw spectral bands without the red-edge band yielded low estimation accuracies (R² of 0.67 and a RMSE-CV of 2.2 t ha^?1) when compared to when the red-edge band was included as a co-variate (R² of 0.73 and a RMSE-CV of 2.04 t ha^?1). Also, similar results were obseved when all WorldView-2 vegetation indices (without the red-edge computed ones), producing slightly low accuracies (R² of about 0.67 and a RMSE-CV of 2.20 t ha^?1), when compared to those obtained using all indices and RE-computed indices(R² of 0.76 and a RMSE-CV of 1.88 t ha^?1). Overall, the findings of this work have demontrated the potential and importance of strategically positioned bands, such as the red-edge band in the optimal estimation of indigeonus forest biomass. These results underscores the need to shift towards embracing sensors with unique and strategeically positioned bands, such as the forthcoming Sentinel 2 MSI and HysPIRI which have a global footprint.     

Global carbon dioxide removal rates from forest landscape restoration activities

Background

Forest landscape restoration (FLR) has been adopted by governments and practitioners across the globe to mitigate and adapt to climate change and restore ecological functions across degraded landscapes. However, the extent to which these activities capture CO₂ with associated climate mitigation impacts are poorly known, especially in geographies where data on biomass growth of restored forests are limited or do not exist. To fill this gap, we developed biomass accumulation rates for a set of FLR activities (natural regeneration, planted forests and woodlots, agroforestry, and mangrove restoration) across the globe and global CO₂ removal rates with corresponding confidence intervals, grouped by FLR activity and region/climate.

Results

Planted forests and woodlots were found to have the highest CO₂ removal rates, ranging from 4.5 to 40.7 t CO² ha^?1 year^?1 during the first 20 years of growth. Mangrove tree restoration was the second most efficient FLR at removing CO₂, with growth rates up to 23.1 t CO₂ ha^?1 year^?1 the first 20 years post restoration. Natural regeneration removal rates were 9.1–18.8 t CO₂ ha^?1 year^?1 during the first 20 years of forest regeneration, followed by agroforestry, the FLR category with the lowest and regionally broad removal rates (10.8–15.6 t CO₂ ha^?1 year^?1). Biomass growth data was most abundant and widely distributed across the world for planted forests and natural regeneration, representing 45% and 32% of all the data points assessed, respectively. Agroforestry studies, were only found in Africa, Asia, and the Latin America and Caribbean regions.

Conclusion

This study represents the most comprehensive review of published literature on tree growth and CO₂ removals to date, which we operationalized by constructing removal rates for specific FLR activities across the globe. These rates can easily be applied by practitioners and decision-makers seeking to better understand the positive climate mitigation impacts of existing or planned FLR actions, or by countries making restoration pledges under the Bonn Challenge Commitments or fulfilling Nationally Determined Contributions to the UNFCCC, thereby helping boost FLR efforts world-wide.

     

Establishment of background water quality conditions in the Great Zab River catchment: influence of geogenic and anthropogenic controls on developing a baseline for water quality assessment and resource management

The Great Zab River catchment is a major left-bank tributary of the River Tigris and drains a substantial part of the Kurdistan Region, an autonomous region of Northern Iraq. Within Kurdistan, the water resources of the Great Zab River catchment are under pressure from population increase and are utilized for potable, domestic and agricultural and industrial supply. As with many parts of the world, effective management of water resources within Kurdistan is hindered by a lack of water quality data and established background concentrations. This study therefore represents the first regional survey of river water chemistry for the Great Zab River catchment and presents data on the spatial and temporal trends in concentrations of As, Ba, Ca, Cd, Co, Cr, Cu, Fe, Hg, Li, Mn, Mo, Ni, Pb, Sr, Zn, NO₃^?, SO₄^2?, F^?, Cl^? and PO₄^3?, in addition to pH, electrical conductivity, dissolved oxygen and turbidity. As a tool for underpinning the management and monitoring of water quality, background concentrations were defined for the Great Zab catchment using three methods. The influences of geogenic and anthropogenic controls upon spatial and temporal trends in water chemistry are also evaluated. The influence of geogenic loading from underlying bedrock was identifiable within the observed spatial trends, with the most notable differences found between waters sampled from the relatively more volcanic-rich Zagros zone to the north and those sampled from the lower catchment underlain by younger clay-, sand- and siltstones. The greatest anthropogenic influence, identifiable through elements such as Cl^? and NO₃^?, is present in the more highly populated lower catchment. The background concentrations identified in the Great Zab catchment would be those expected as a result of geogenic loading with some anthropogenic influence and represent a more conservative value when compared to those such as the World Health Organization Maximum Admissible Concentration. However, background concentrations represent a powerful tool for identifying potential anthropogenic impacts on water quality and informing management of such occurrences.     

Multiscale formulation for coupled flow-heat equations arising from single-phase flow in fractured geothermal reservoirs

Efficient heat exploitation strategies from geothermal systems demand for accurate and efficient simulation of coupled flow-heat equations on large-scale heterogeneous fractured formations. While the accuracy depends on honouring high-resolution discrete fractures and rock heterogeneities, specially avoiding excessive upscaled quantities, the efficiency can be maintained if scalable model-reduction computational frameworks are developed. Addressing both aspects, this work presents a multiscale formulation for geothermal reservoirs. To this end, the nonlinear time-dependent (transient) multiscale coarse-scale system is obtained, for both pressure and temperature unknowns, based on elliptic locally solved basis functions. These basis functions account for fine-scale heterogeneity and discrete fractures, leading to accurate and efficient simulation strategies. The flow-heat coupling is treated in a sequential implicit loop, where in each stage, the multiscale stage is complemented by an ILU(0) smoother stage to guarantee convergence to any desired accuracy. Numerical results are presented in 2D to systematically analyze the multiscale approximate solutions compared with the fine scale ones for many challenging cases, including the outcrop-based geological fractured field. These results show that the developed multiscale formulation casts a promising framework for the real-field enhanced geothermal formations.     

The impact of AIRS atmospheric temperature and moisture profiles on hurricane forecasts: Ike (2008) and Irene (2011)

Atmospheric Infra Red Sounder(AIRS) measurements are a valuable supplement to current observational data, especially over the oceans where conventional data are sparse. In this study, two types of AIRS-retrieved temperature and moisture profiles, the AIRS Science Team product(Sci Sup) and the single field-of-view(SFOV) research product, were evaluated with European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts(ECMWF) analysis data over the Atlantic Ocean during Hurricane Ike(2008) and Hurricane Irene(2011). The evaluation results showed that both types of AIRS profiles agreed well with the ECMWF analysis, especially between 200 h Pa and 700 h Pa. The average standard deviation of both temperature profiles was approximately 1 K under 200 h Pa, where the mean AIRS temperature profile from the AIRS Sci Sup retrievals was slightly colder than that from the AIRS SFOV retrievals. The mean Sci Sup moisture profile was slightly drier than that from the SFOV in the mid troposphere. A series of data assimilation and forecast experiments was then conducted with the Advanced Research version of the Weather Research and Forecasting(WRF) model and its three-dimensional variational(3DVAR) data assimilation system for hurricanes Ike and Irene. The results showed an improvement in the hurricane track due to the assimilation of AIRS clear-sky temperature profiles in the hurricane environment. In terms of total precipitable water and rainfall forecasts, the hurricane moisture environment was found to be affected by the AIRS sounding assimilation.Meanwhile, improving hurricane intensity forecasts through assimilating AIRS profiles remains a challenge for further study.     

Timing of Late Cretaceous shortening and basin development,Little Hatchet Mountains,southwestern New Mexico,USA – implications for regional Laramide tectonics

Laser ablation‐multi collector‐inductively coupled mass spectrometry U‐Pb geochronology, detailed field mapping and stratigraphic data offer improved insights into the timing and style of Laramide deformation and basin development in the Little Hatchet Mountains, southwestern New Mexico, USA, a key locality in the ‘southern Laramide province.’ The Laramide synorogenic section in the northern Little Hatchet Mountains comprises upper Campanian to Maastrichtian strata consisting of the Ringbone and Skunk Ranch formations, with a preserved maximum thickness of >2400 m, and the correlative Hidalgo Formation with a total thickness >1700 m. The Ringbone Formation and superjacent Skunk Ranch Formation are each generally composed of (1) a basal conglomerate member; (2) a middle member consisting of lacustrine shale, limestone, sandstone, and interbedded ash‐fall tuffs; and (3) an upper sandstone and conglomerate member. Basaltic andesite flows are intercalated with the upper member of the Ringbone Formation and the middle member of the Skunk Ranch Formation. The Hidalgo Formation, which crops out in the northern part of the range, is dominantly composed of basaltic andesite breccias and flows equivalent to those of the Ringbone and Skunk Ranch formations. The Laramide section was deposited in an intermontane basin partitioned across intrabasinal thrust structures, which controlled growth‐stratal development. U‐Pb zircon ages from five tuffs indicate that the age range of the Laramide sedimentary succession is ca. 75–70 Ma. U‐Pb detrital‐zircon age data (n = 356 analyses) from the Ringbone Formation and a Lower Cretaceous unit indicate sediment contribution from uplifted Lower and Upper Cretaceous rocks adjacent to the basin and the contemporary Tarahumara magmatic arc in nearby northern Sonora, Mexico. The new ages, combined with published data, indicate that uplift, basin development, and magmatism in the region proceeded diachronously northeastwards as the subducting Farallon slab flattened under northern Mexico and southern New Mexico from Campanian to Palaeogene time.     

Quantifying uncertainties in fault slip distribution during the Tōhoku tsunami using polynomial chaos

An efficient method for inferring Manning’s n coefficients using water surface elevation data was presented in Sraj et al. (Ocean Modell 83:82–97 2014a) focusing on a test case based on data collected during the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami. Polynomial chaos (PC) expansions were used to build an inexpensive surrogate for the numerical model GeoClaw, which were then used to perform a sensitivity analysis in addition to the inversion. In this paper, a new analysis is performed with the goal of inferring the fault slip distribution of the Tōhoku earthquake using a similar problem setup. The same approach to constructing the PC surrogate did not lead to a converging expansion; however, an alternative approach based on basis pursuit denoising was found to be suitable. Our result shows that the fault slip distribution can be inferred using water surface elevation data whereas the inferred values minimize the error between observations and the numerical model. The numerical approach and the resulting inversion are presented in this work.     

Erosion processes and landform evolution on agricultural land — new perspectives from caesium-137 measurements and topographic-based erosion modelling

Despite growing interest in soil erosion on agricultural land, relatively little attention has been paid to the influence of erosion processes on the pattern of contemporary landform evolution. This in part reflects the problems associated with up-scaling the results of short-term process studies to temporal and spatial scales relevant to the study of landform evolution. This paper presents a new approach to examining the influence of erosion processes on landform evolution on agricultural land which employs: caesium-137 (¹³⁷Cs) measurements to provide medium-term (c. 40 years) estimates of rates of landform change; experimental data and a topographic-based model to simulate soil redistribution by tillage; a mass-balance model of ¹³⁷Cs redistribution to separate the water erosion and tillage components of the ¹³⁷Cs ‘signatures’; and field observations of water erosion for validation. This approach is used to examine the relative importance of water erosion and tillage processes for contemporary landform evolution at contrasting sites near Leuven, in Belgium, and near Yanan, in Shaanxi Province, China. This application of the approach provides good agreement between the derived water erosion rates and field observations, and hitherto unobtainable insights into medium-term patterns and rates of contemporary landform evolution. At Huldenberg in Belgium, despite rill incision of slope concavities and ephemeral gully incision of the valley floor, contemporary landform evolution is dominated by infilling of slope and valley concavities (rates >0.5 mm a⁻¹) and gradual lowering of slope angles as a result of tillage. In contrast, at Ansai (near Yanan) the slope is characterized by increase in slope angle over most of the length, recession of the steepest section at a rate >5 mm a⁻¹ and by increasing planform curvature. At this site, contemporary landform evolution is dominated by water erosion. The constraints on the approach are examined, with particular attention being given to limitations on extrapolation of the results and to the sensitivity of the models to parameter variation. © 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.