Numerical and analytical observations on long and infinite slopes

Interest in the mechanics of landslides has led to renewed evaluation of the infinite slope equations, and the need for a more general framework for estimating the factor of safety of long and infinite slopes involving non‐homogeneous soil profiles. The paper describes finite element methods that demonstrate the potential for predicting failure in long slope profiles where the critical mechanism is not necessarily at the base of the soil layer. The influence of slope angle is also examined in long slopes, leading to some counter‐intuitive conclusions about the impact of slope steepness on the factor of safety. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Temporal variation of soil erosion resistance on sloping farmland during the growth stages of maize (Zea mays L.)

Maize growth has great effects on soil properties and thus likely induces the changes in soil erosion resistance on sloping farmland. However, temporal variation of soil erosion resistance during the growth stages of maize is still unclear in the mountainous yellow soil area where maize is the dominant crop. In this study, four maize plots (MP) and four bare land plots (CK) were conducted to investigate soil erosion resistance, and multiple indicators of soil erosion resistance were measured including the total soil anti-scourability (TAS), mean weight diameter (MWD), soil erodibility K factor and soil shear strength (SH). A comprehensive soil erosion resistance index (CSERI) was employed to quantify the temporal variation of soil erosion resistance during the growth stages of maize (seedling stage, SS; jointing stage, JS; tasselling stage, TS; maturing stage, MS). The results showed that TAS, MWD, SH increased significantly with maize growth and SH decreased when at MS. But K factor decreased significantly over time. CSERI increased significantly during the growth stages of maize and the CSERI of JS, TS, MS increased on average by 74.72, 180.68 and 234.57% than that of SS. Compared to CK, CSERI of MP increased by 49.90, 66.82, 55.60 and 38.61% during the growth stages of maize. The temporal variation of soil erosion resistance was closely related to the changes in maize cover, maize roots and soil organic carbon. The findings demonstrated that it is necessary to consider the temporal variation of soil erosion resistance in the mountainous yellow soil area.     

Efficient DEM‐based overland flow routing using integrated recursive algorithms

Two primary concerns in performing watershed overland flow routing are the numerical instability and computational efficiency. The stability of executing an explicit scheme has to be maintained by observing the Courant–Friedrich–Lewy criterion, which is adopted to confirm that the numerical marching speed is larger than the wave celerity. Moreover, there is another criterion of time step devised in previous studies to avoid back‐and‐forth refluxing between adjacent grids. The situation of refluxing usually occurs on flat regions. In light of this, the selection of a small time increment to honor both restrictions simultaneously is believed to decrease the computational efficiency in performing overland flow routing. This study aims at creating a robust algorithm to relax both restrictions. The proposed algorithm was first implemented on a one‐dimensional overland plane to evaluate the accuracy of the numerical result by comparing it with an analytical solution. Then, the algorithm was further applied to a watershed for 2D runoff simulations. The results show that the proposed integrated algorithm can provide an accurate runoff simulation and achieve satisfactory performance in terms of computational speed.     

Groundwater recharge in an arid grassland as indicated by soil chloride profile and multiple tracers

Previous studies have shown that shallow groundwater in arid regions is often not in equilibrium with near‐surface boundary conditions due to human activities and climate change. This is especially the case where the unsaturated zone is thick and recharge rate is limited. Under this nonequilibrium condition, the unsaturated zone solute profile plays an important role in estimating recent diffuse recharge in arid environments. This paper combines evaluation of the thick unsaturated zone with the saturated zone to investigate the groundwater recharge of a grassland in the arid western Ordos Basin, NW China, using the soil chloride profiles and multiple tracers (²H, ¹⁸O, ¹³C, ¹⁴C, and water chemistry) of groundwater. Whereas conventional water balance and Darcy flux measurements usually involve large errors in recharge estimations for arid areas, chloride mass balance has been widely and generally successfully used. The results show that the present diffuse recharge beneath the grassland is 0.11–0.32 mm/year, based on the chloride mass balance of seven soil profiles. The chloride accumulation age is approximately 2,500 years at a depth of 13 m in the unsaturated zone. The average Cl content in soil moisture in the upper 13 m of the unsaturated zone ranges from 2,842 to 7,856 mg/L, whereas the shallow groundwater Cl content ranges from 95 to 351 mg/L. The corrected ¹⁴C age of shallow groundwater ranges from 4,327 to 29,708 years. Stable isotopes show that the shallow groundwater is unrelated to modern precipitation. The shallow groundwater was recharged during the cold and wet phases of the Late Pleistocene and Holocene humid phase based on palaeoclimate, and consequently, the groundwater resources are nonrenewable. Due to the limited recharge rate and thick unsaturated zone, the present shallow groundwater has not been in hydraulic equilibrium with near‐surface boundary conditions in the past 2,500 years.     

PMODTRAN: a parallel implementation based on MODTRAN for massive remote sensing data processing

MODerate resolution atmospheric TRANsmission (MODTRAN) is a commercial remote sensing (RS) software package that has been widely used to simulate radiative transfer of electromagnetic radiation through the Earth's atmosphere and the radiation observed by a remote sensor. However, when very large RS datasets must be processed in simulation applications at a global scale, it is extremely time-consuming to operate MODTRAN on a modern workstation. Under this circumstance, the use of parallel cluster computing to speed up the process becomes vital to this time-consuming task. This paper presents PMODTRAN, an implementation of a parallel task-scheduling algorithm based on MODTRAN. PMODTRAN was able to reduce the processing time of the test cases used here from over 4.4 months on a workstation to less than a week on a local computer cluster. In addition, PMODTRAN can distribute tasks with different levels of granularity and has some extra features, such as dynamic load balancing and parameter checking.     

Selection and quality assessment of Landsat data for the North American forest dynamics forest history maps of the US

Using the NASA Earth Exchange platform, the North American Forest Dynamics (NAFD) project mapped forest history wall-to-wall, annually for the contiguous US (1986–2010) using the Vegetation Change Tracker algorithm. As with any effort to identify real changes in remotely sensed time-series, data gaps, shifts in seasonality, misregistration, inconsistent radiometry and cloud contamination can be sources of error. We discuss the NAFD image selection and processing stream (NISPS) that was designed to minimize these sources of error. The NISPS image quality assessments highlighted issues with the Landsat archive and metadata including inadequate georegistration, unreliability of the pre-2009 L5 cloud cover assessments algorithm, missing growing-season imagery and paucity of clear views. Assessment maps of Landsat 5–7 image quantities and qualities are presented that offer novel perspectives on the growing-season archive considered for this study. Over 150,000+ Landsat images were considered for the NAFD project. Optimally, one high quality cloud-free image in each year or a total of 12,152 images would be used. However, to accommodate data gaps and cloud/shadow contamination 23,338 images were needed. In 220 specific path-row image years no acceptable images were found resulting in data gaps in the annual national map products.     

华南壳幔结构与动力学的宽频地震观测研究

了解华南各岩石圈块体壳幔结构和各向异性方面的差异是揭示华南深部构造演化的基础。本文利用布设于华南的两条宽频地震测线观测数据,采用多种地震学方法对华南的地壳上地幔结构和各向异性进行了研究。接收函数结果表明,华南地区地壳厚度和岩石圈厚度都较薄,地壳厚度自东南沿海向西北内陆增厚,扬子克拉通的泊松比(波速比)低于华夏块体,表明扬子克拉通地壳较华夏块体更偏长英质。约北纬29°以北的扬子克拉通地幔转换带厚度明显增厚,可能是由地幔转换带底部停滞的冷的古太平洋板片或中生代克拉通碰撞残留造成的。层析成像结果显示华南上地幔具有很强的横向差异性,上地幔中的强烈低速异常体可能对应了晚中生代发生广泛岩浆作用时的岩浆房和岩浆通道。台湾下方的上地幔存在南北横向差异明显的高速异常,分别对应台湾南部向东俯冲的欧亚板块及台湾北部向北俯冲的菲律宾海板块。俯冲的欧亚板块在台湾南部是连续的,而在台湾中北部,由于与菲律宾海板块的相互作用,俯冲的欧亚板块被折断。剪切波分裂结果显示,以江绍断裂为界,华夏块体与扬子克拉通的岩石圈地幔各向异性存在明显的横向变化,表明两者的构造演化过程有显著差异。