Structural controls on the occurrence and morphology of karstified assemblages in northeastern Vietnam: a regional perspective

Karstified assemblages occur widely in, and distinctively shape, the geological landscape of the northeastern part of Vietnam. These carbonate rocks were deposited during three major periods of basinal evolution including: (1) Late Cambrian, (2) Early Devonian to Early Carboniferous, and (3) Carboniferous to Earliest Triassic. These sedimentary units contain primary sedimentary structures and have undergone numerous post-depositional geological processes including multiple deformational events, which can be regionally correlated. Several thrusting events and associated folding have led to significant thickening of the carbonate units. The subsequent post-thrusting cross-folding events, followed by several phases of brittle faulting and fracturing further modified the spatial geometry and outcrop of these rocks. The combination and interaction of the primary structures with those formed during the long-lived and complicated deformational history is an important controlling factor in local and regional hydrogeological systems in the region. The geological structures now recorded in the carbonate units ultimately govern the formation of the unique modern surface and sub-surface geomorphology of the karstic terrains in northeastern Vietnam. These structures should be further investigated in the context of water resource assessment and natural hazard prediction and mitigation.     

Evolution of meteorological drought characteristics in Vietnam during the 1961–2007 period

The drought conditions over the seven sub-climatological regions in Vietnam are examined using three meteorological drought indices: de Martonne J, PED, and Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI). According to the seasonal probabilities of drought occurrence estimated by the de Martonne index, droughts mainly occur between November and March in all the sub-regions. The PED index and the SPI index generally show high probabilities of drought occurrence from April to August and from May to October, respectively. In the southern sub-regions of Vietnam, droughts more frequently occur in El Niño years and wet conditions are more frequently observed in La Niña years. However, such El Niño–Southern Oscillation influences are not clearly observed in the northern sub-regions. During 1961–2007, droughts significantly increased in the northern part of Vietnam. In the southern regions, PED shows increasing drought conditions while J and SPI show decreasing drought trends for almost all the stations.     

Hyper-parameter optimization of gradient boosters for flood susceptibility analysis

Properly choosing hyper-parameters improves machine learning models' performance and reduces training time and resource requirements. In this study, we investigated the uses of the Bayesian optimization algorithm for hyper-parameter searches of two classifiers, namely LightGBM and XGBoost. The models were verified with a dataset from Vietnam, including historical flood locations from satellite images and survey data, and 11 features from three groups, namely physical, hydrological, and human-related factors. The models' performance was evaluated using Area under Receiver Operating Characteristic curves (AUC-ROC). Several strategies were applied to avoid over-fitting, and the results show that two tuned Gradient boosters reached considerably high AUC values (approximately 0.98) compared with the previous study with a similar dataset. The model interpretation was also implemented using the Shapley (SHAP) values to understand better how models work and the interactions between features. The search for optimal hyper-parameters is worth investigating in the future, particularly when there is growing work for novel optimization algorithms. The verification of such an approach is scientifically sound, and the models can be used as an alternative solution for natural hazard analysis in countries prone to hazards.     

A spatial temporal downscaling approach to development of IDF relations for Perth airport region in the context of climate change

ABSTRACT

Downscaling of climate projections is the most adapted method to assess the impacts of climate change at regional and local scales. This study utilized both spatial and temporal downscaling approaches to develop intensity–duration–frequency (IDF) relations for sub-daily rainfall extremes in the Perth airport area. A multiple regression-based statistical downscaling model tool was used for spatial downscaling of daily rainfall using general circulation models (GCMs) (Hadley Centre’s GCM and Canadian Global Climate Model) climate variables. A simple scaling regime was identified for 30 minutes to 24 hours duration of observed annual maximum (AM) rainfall. Then, statistical properties of sub-daily AM rainfall were estimated by scaling an invariant model based on the generalized extreme value distribution. RMSE, Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency coefficient and percentage bias values were estimated to check the accuracy of downscaled sub-daily rainfall. This proved the capability of the proposed approach in developing a linkage between large-scale GCM daily variables and extreme sub-daily rainfall events at a given location. Finally IDF curves were developed for future periods, which show similar extreme rainfall decreasing trends for the 2020s, 2050s and 2080s for both GCMs.

Editor M.C. Acreman; Associate editor S. Kanae     

Damage identification using inverse analysis in coupled thermo‐hydro‐mechanical problems applied to masonry dams

In this paper, we propose a method to detect the damage and estimate the degree of damage by means of a multifield‐based inverse analysis. The fields being considered are displacement, temperature, and water pressure. Furthermore, the uncertainties due to the size of the damage, the errors in the measurement data, and the errors in the model parameters are also investigated. The uncertainty due to the measurements is quantified by assuming different sources of noise in the measurements. The inverse problem is solved repeatedly by a sampling process. The uncertainties in the inverse solutions can be quantified by their probability distributions. This method can be applied to identify damages in masonry dams using coupled nonlinear thermo‐hydro‐mechanical problems.     

Fate and tidal transport of butyltin and mercury compounds in the waters of the tropical Bach Dang Estuary (Haiphong, Vietnam)

In this work, two field campaigns were performed in July 2008 (wet season) and March 2009 (dry season) to produce original data on the concentration, partition and distribution of mercury and butyltin compounds along the tropical Bach Dang Estuary located in North Vietnam (Haiphong, Red River Delta). The results demonstrate that mercury and butyltin speciation in the surface waters of this type of tropical estuary is greatly affected by the drastic changes in the seasonal conditions. During high river discharge in the wet season, there was a large estuarine input of total Hg and tributyltin, while the longer residence time of the waters during the dry season promotes increasing MMHg formation and TBT degradation. Although most of the Hg and TBT is transported into the estuary from upstream sources, tidal cycle measurements demonstrate that this estuary is a significant source of TBT and MMHg during the wet (～3kgTBT/day) and dry (～3gMMHg/day) seasons.     

镉诱导长江华溪蟹(Sinopotamon yangtsekiense)心肌细胞凋亡的研究

采用急性毒性实验方法,研究了不同浓度氯化镉(0、7.25、14.50、29.00、58.00和116.00mg/L)处理不同时间(1d、3d、5d和7d)对长江华溪蟹心肌细胞凋亡的影响。结果表明,低浓度组及染毒时间较短时镉对心肌的影响不明显,但随着染毒浓度的增加和时间的延长,心肌出现空泡变性、玻璃样变性、炎细胞浸润等病理现象,在染毒7d虽然观察到疑似的凋亡细胞,但凋亡率较低;荧光显微镜未观察到心肌细胞典型的凋亡细胞核形态学变化;琼脂糖凝胶电泳图谱未出现凋亡细胞所特有的梯状条带;流式细胞术检测结果显示镉处理组细胞凋亡率增加,但与对照组相比,无统计学意义(P>0.05);Caspase-3活性也没有显著性变化(P>0.05)。因此,在本实验所选取的浓度和时间范围内,镉未诱导长江华溪蟹心肌细胞发生细胞凋亡,这与本课题组前期研究中观察到的肝胰腺、精巢组织在染毒2d、7d发生细胞凋亡的情况明显不同,这可能与心脏组织的特殊性、不同组织对镉的积累量不同有关。     

Tracing carbon transfer and assimilation by invertebrates and fish across a tropical mangrove ecosystem using stable isotopes

Mangroves are highly productive ecosystems that exhibit a diverse range of habitats, including tidal creeks and flats, forest gaps and interior forest with varying understory light intensity, tidal dynamics, geomorphological settings, and overall biological production. Within mangrove ecosystems, invertebrates and fish feed on heterogeneous food sources, the occurrence of which is unevenly distributed across the system. This provides a basis for testing models of carbon transfer across mangrove ecosystems. We hypothesized that the carbon transfer and assimilation by fish and invertebrates will vary across the different mangrove habitats and that such variations can be predicted by their stable isotope compositions. We analysed δ¹³C and δ¹⁵N signatures of consumers and their potential organic carbon sources across a tropical mangrove ecosystem in Vietnam. The δ¹³C values of crabs and snails significantly decreased from the tidal flat to interior forest, indicating that variations in carbon transfer and assimilation occurred at small scales <30 m. Reduced variation in δ¹³C of suspension‐feeding bivalves suggested that tidal water was a vector for large‐scale transport of carbon across the mangrove ecosystem. An analysis of co‐variance using habitat as a fixed factor and feeding habit and movement capacity of consumers as co‐variates indicated that habitat and feeding types were major features that affected the δ¹³C values of invertebrates and fish. The findings demonstrate that carbon transfer and assimilation across mangrove ecosystems occur as a diverse combination of small (<30 m) and large (>30 m) scale processes.     

Disintegration of linear edge waves

It is demonstrated that offshore wavenumbers of edge waves change from imaginary wavenumbers in deep water to real wavenumbers in shallow water. This finding indicates that edge waves in the offshore direction exist as evanescent waves in deep water and as propagating waves in shallow water. Since evanescent waves can stably exist in a limited region while propagating waves cannot, energy should be released from nearshore regions. In the present study, the instability region is predicted based on both the full water wave solution and the shallow-water wave approximation.     

GIS在移动蜂窝网络中的应用研究

GIS在移动蜂窝网络规划中有重要应用,本文旨在研究以最低的投资和维护费用,确定GIS最佳解决方案用以改善蜂窝网络的传播质量。本文利用GIS能将蜂窝网络数据库中空间与非空间数据相结合的优势,提供必要的参数,更准确地预测蜂窝网络的覆盖范围。本文研究对象为越南胡志明市的部分区域,实验成功开发出预测移动蜂窝网络覆盖范围的基础地理信息系统模型,实现了预测信号强度的可视化,分析了场强覆盖范围,并显示了研究区域中每个小区站的可能切换区域。实验结果表明,GIS模型在移动通信尤其对小区站覆盖范围预测是非常有用的。