Comparing data-driven landslide susceptibility models based on participatory landslide inventory mapping in Purwosari area,Yogyakarta, Java

There are different approaches and techniques for landslide susceptibility mapping. However, no agreement has been reached in both the procedure and the use of specific controlling factors employed in the landslide susceptibility mapping. Each model has its own assumption, and the result may differ from place to place. Different landslide controlling factors and the completeness of landslide inventory may also affect the different result. Incomplete landslide inventory may produce significance error in the interpretation of the relationship between landslide and controlling factor. Comparing landslide susceptibility models using complete inventory is essential in order to identify the most realistic landslide susceptibility approach applied typically in the tropical region Indonesia. Purwosari area, Java, which has total 182 landslides occurred from 1979 to 2011, was selected as study area to evaluate three data-driven landslide susceptibility models, i.e., weight of evidence, logistic regression, and artificial neural network. Landslide in the study area is usually affected by rainfall and anthropogenic activities. The landslide typology consists of shallow translational and rotational slide. The elevation, slope, aspect, plan curvature, profile curvature, stream power index, topographic wetness index, distance to river, land use, and distance to road were selected as landslide controlling factors for the analysis. Considering the accuracy and the precision evaluations, the weight of evidence represents considerably the most realistic prediction capacities (79%) when comparing with the logistic regression (72%) and artificial neural network (71%). The linear model shows more powerful result than the nonlinear models because it fits to the area where complete landslide inventory is available, the landscape is not varied, and the occurence of landslide is evenly distributed to the class of controlling factor.     

A fine-granularity scheduling algorithm for parallel XDraw viewshed analysis

Viewshed analysis is widely used in many terrain applications such as siting problem, path planning problem, and etc. But viewshed computation is very time-consuming, in particular for applications with large-scale terrain data. Parallel computing as a mainstream technique with the tremendous potential has been introduced to enhance the computation performance of viewshed analysis. This paper presents a revised parallel viewshed computation approach based on the existing serial XDraw algorithm in a distributed parallel computing environment. A layered data-dependent model for processing data dependency in the XDraw algorithm is built to explore scheduling strategy so that a fine-granularity scheduling strategy on the process-level and thread-level parallel computing model can be accepted to improve the efficiency of the viewshed computation. And a parallel computing algorithm, XDraw-L, is designed and implemented taken into account this scheduling strategy. The experimental results demonstrate a distinct improvement of computation performance of the XDraw-L algorithm in this paper compared with the coarse-partition algorithm, like XDraw-E which is presented by Song et al. (Earth Sci Inf 10(5):511–523, 2016), and XDraw-B that is the basic algorithm of serial XDraw. Our fine-granularity scheduling algorithm can greatly improve the scheduling performance of the grid cells between the layers within a triangle region.     

Stability study on the northern batter of MBC Open Pit using Plaxis 3D

Cracks appeared on the northern batter at Maddingley Brown Coal Open Pit Mine, Victoria, Australia, on 8 November 2013 and a 2-day rainfall event happened 5 days later. This study models the stability of the northern batter considering the effect of the rainfall event and an emergency buttress using finite element method (FEM) encoded in Plaxis 3D. It is found that the batter tended to lead to block sliding after overburden removal. The observed vertical crack would be a combined action of the overburden removal and groundwater flow. The simulated location of cracks agrees well with the actual location, and the simulated heave of the coal seam is in good agreement with the experience in Victoria brown coal open pit mining. The rainfall accelerated the development of the cracks. With the construction of the emergency buttress, the batter became stable that is in good agreement with the monitored data.     

Preliminary study on development characteristics of planation surface in Liaodong Peninsula

Planation surface is one that is associated with long-term stable tectonic environment of large scale landscape. The planation surface with the weathering crust as a whole to study is the main stream of modern planation surface research. The red weathering crust mainly is outcropped in the east and west of Liaodong Peninsula,and its thickness is around 4 m. In order to explore the properties,environment and development characteristics of the planation surface in Liaodong Peninsula,chemical elements and particle size characteristics of red weathering crust in this area were studied. The test results showed that the average value of CIA of the red weathering crust in the study area is 82.70,the average value of ba((Na₂O+K₂O+CaO+MgO)/Al₂O₃)is 0.39,the average value of S/A(SiO₂/Al₂O₃)is 4.86,and the average value of clay content is 8.31%. Compared with the red weathering crust of the karst area in the south of China,it has the characteristics of low leaching rate of salt base,low aluminization degree and weak viscosification. According to the regional geomorphologic features,the development of red weathering crust in the study area mainly went through four stages: (1)karst process was carried out in the whole rock mass above the base level of ancient erosion,and the geomorphologic fluctuation gradually increased;(2)geomorphologic fluctuation reached the maximum,and covered karst and gray weathering crust began to develop;(3)karst double-layer planation surface basically formed;(4)the development of gray weathering crust nearly stopped. With the tectonic movement,the gray weathering crust,which was originally located below the base level of ancient erosion,was all elevated above the base level of modern erosion to form red weathering crust. Therefore,the planation surface in the study area is ancient planation surface,and the development stage is lateralization stage. The results can provide a preliminary basis for revealing the neotectonic movement and sea level change in the Liaodong Peninsula from the Neogene to present.     

Factors driving riverbed scouring and sedimentation in the Bayangaole to Toudaoguai reaches of the Upper Yellow River

The Inner Mongolia reaches of the Yellow River face problems of severe sedimentation caused by a variety of complex factors. The sedimentation process in those reaches has been characterized using the sediment balance method, and the key factors affecting the process have been analyzed using the correlation analysis method. The results show that during the period 1952–2012 the Bayangaole (Bayan Gol) to Toudaoguai reaches in Inner Mongolia have undergone successive processes of accumulative sedimentation, then relative balance, and then accumulative sedimentation once again. The total annual sedimentation is 12.0341×10⁸ m³, of which accumulations from July to October account for 95.1% and the reaches from Sanhuhekou to Toudaoguai account for 98.5%. The main factor affecting scouring and sedimentation of the Bayangaole to Sanhuhekou reaches is the combined water and sediment condition. The critical conditions for equilibrium are an incoming sediment coefficient < 0.007 kg·s·m^–6 and a flow discharge > 700 m³·s^–1. The main factor affecting scouring and sedimentation of the Sanhuhekou to Toudaoguai reaches is the incoming sediment from the tributaries on the south bank and the combined water and sediment condition of the main stream. The critical conditions of the main stream for maintaining equilibrium status are a flow discharge of the main stream exceeding 800 m³·s^–1 and a comprehensive incoming sediment coefficient < 0.005 kg·s·m^–6. The incoming sediment from the tributaries has little impact on the main stream when the annual sediment load is less than 0.1×10⁸ t. The incoming sediment coefficient of the main stream and the incoming sediment from the tributaries both play vital roles in the riverbed evolution of the Inner Mongolia reaches, but the latter contributes the most.     

A review of the NEMURO and NEMURO.FISH models and their application to marine ecosystem investigations

The evolution of the North Pacific Ecosystem Model for Understanding Regional Oceanography (NEMURO) family of models to study marine ecosystems is reviewed. Applications throughout the North Pacific have shown the models to be robust and to be able to reproduce 1D, 2D and 3D components of nutrient, carbon cycle and biogeochemical cycles as well as aspects of the lower trophic levels ecosystem (phyto- and zooplankton). NEMURO For Including Saury and Herring, an extension that includes higher trophic levels, can be run uncoupled or coupled to NEMURO. In the uncoupled mode, the growth and weight of an individual fish is computed using plankton densities simulated by NEMURO but with no feedback between fish consumption and plankton mortality. In the coupled mode, the feeding, growth and weight of a representative fish are computed, and prey removals due to feeding by fish appear as mortality terms on the prey. The NEMURO family of models continues to evolve, including effects of the microbial loop and iron limitation at lower trophic levels, and full life cycle, multi-species and multi-generational simulations at higher trophic levels. We outline perspectives for future end-to-end modeling efforts that can be used to study marine ecosystems in response to global environmental change.     

Position-domain integrity risk-based ambiguity validation for the integer bootstrap estimator

Integrity monitoring for ambiguity resolution is of significance for utilizing the high-precision carrier phase differential positioning for safety–critical navigational applications. The integer bootstrap estimator can provide an analytical probability density function, which enables the precise evaluation of the integrity risk for ambiguity validation. In order to monitor the effect of unknown ambiguity bias on the integer bootstrap estimator, the position-domain integrity risk of the integer bootstrapped baseline is evaluated under the complete failure modes by using the worst-case protection principle. Furthermore, a partial ambiguity resolution method is developed in order to satisfy the predefined integrity risk requirement. Static and kinematic experiments are carried out to test the proposed method by comparing with the traditional ratio test method and the protection level-based method. The static experimental result has shown that the proposed method can achieve a significant global availability improvement by 51% at most. The kinematic result reveals that the proposed method obtains the best balance between the positioning accuracy and the continuity performance.     

The extension of the parametrization of the radio source coordinates in geodetic VLBI and its impact on the time series analysis

The radio sources within the most recent celestial reference frame (CRF) catalog ICRF2 are represented by a single, time-invariant coordinate pair. The datum sources were chosen mainly according to certain statistical properties of their position time series. Yet, such statistics are not applicable unconditionally, and also ambiguous. However, ignoring systematics in the source positions of the datum sources inevitably leads to a degradation of the quality of the frame and, therefore, also of the derived quantities such as the Earth orientation parameters. One possible approach to overcome these deficiencies is to extend the parametrization of the source positions, similarly to what is done for the station positions. We decided to use the multivariate adaptive regression splines algorithm to parametrize the source coordinates. It allows a great deal of automation, by combining recursive partitioning and spline fitting in an optimal way. The algorithm finds the ideal knot positions for the splines and, thus, the best number of polynomial pieces to fit the data autonomously. With that we can correct the ICRF2 a priori coordinates for our analysis and eliminate the systematics in the position estimates. This allows us to introduce also special handling sources into the datum definition, leading to on average 30 % more sources in the datum. We find that not only the CPO can be improved by more than 10 % due to the improved geometry, but also the station positions, especially in the early years of VLBI, can benefit greatly.     

Sandbank occurrence on the Dutch continental shelf in the North Sea

Sandbanks, the largest of bed patterns in shallow sandy seas, pose a potential risk to shipping. They are also valuable elements of natural coastal protection, dissipating the energy of waves. In the Southern Bight of the North Sea, several sandbank areas have been reported in the literature. However, based on an objective crest–trough analysis of the bathymetry of the Dutch continental shelf, the present study shows that sandbanks are more widespread than commonly considered. These banks are relatively low, presumably explaining why they have not been documented before. This widespread occurrence of sandbanks in the North Sea is in agreement with theoretical predictions based on stability analysis techniques. The possible interference between large-scale human activity and low-amplitude open-shelf ridges implies that one should be careful not to overlook these patterns if none should appear in a preliminary (visual) assessment. The only part of the Southern Bight in which no ridges can be seen is a circular area with a diameter of about 50 km near the mouth of the river Rhine. Here, freshwater outflow affects the direction of tidal ellipses and residual flow, and suppresses the formation of open ridges.     

A high-resolution geophysical investigation of sediment distribution controlled by catchment size and tides in a multi-basin turbid outwash fjord: Simpson Bay,Prince William Sound,Alaska

Surficial sediment distribution within Simpson Bay is a function of antecedent bedrock and recently deposited glacial geology, as well as active physical processes both within Simpson Bay and Prince William Sound (PWS). Simpson Bay is a turbid, outwash fjord located in northeastern PWS, Alaska. Freshwater from heavy precipitation, and the melting of high alpine glaciers enter the bay through bay head rivers and small shoreline creeks. The catchment has a high watershed/basin surface area ratio (∼8:1), and easily erodible bedrock that contribute to high sediment loads. The system can be divided into three discrete basins, each with specific morphologic and circulatory characters. Side scan sonar, swath bathymetry, and seismic profiles reveal that bathymetric highs are areas of outcropping glacial surfaces. High backscatter coupled with surface grab samples reveal these surfaces to be composed of coarse sediment and bedrock outcrops. Bathymetric lows are areas of low backscatter, and grab samples reveal these areas to be ponded deposits of organic-rich estuarine muds. The data provide evidence of terminal morainal bank systems, and glacial grounding line deposits at the mouth of the bay and rocky outcrops were identified as subsurface extensions of aerial rocky promontories. Radioisotope analyses of short cores reveal that the bay has an average accumulation rate of approx. 0.5 cm year⁻¹, but that this varies in function of the watershed/basin surface area ratios of the different basins. The interaction of tidal currents and sediment source drives sediment distribution in Simpson Bay. Hydrographic data reveal high spatial variability in surface and bottom currents throughout the bay. Subsurface currents are tide dominated, but generally weak (5–20 cm s⁻¹), while faster currents are found along shorelines, outcrops, and bathymetric highs. Bathymetric data reveal steep slopes with little to no modern sediment throughout the bay, suggesting lack of deposition due to tidal currents.