Soil property variation mapping through data mining of soil category maps

Spatial information on soil properties is an important input to hydrological models. In current hydrological modelling practices, soil property information is often derived from soil category maps by the linking method in which a representative soil property value is linked to each soil polygon. Limited by the area‐class nature of soil category maps, the derived soil property variation is discontinuous and less detailed than high resolution digital terrain or remote sensing data. This research proposed dmSoil, a data‐mining‐based approach to derive continuous and spatially detailed soil property information from soil category maps. First, the soil–environment relationships are extracted through data mining of a soil map. The similarity of the soil at each location to different soil types in the soil map is then estimated using the mined relationships. Prediction of soil property values at each location is made by combining the similarities of the soil at that location to different soil types and the representative soil property values of these soil types. The new approach was applied in the Raffelson Watershed and Pleasant Valley in the Driftless Area of Wisconsin, United States to map soil A horizon texture (in both areas) and depth to soil C horizon (in Pleasant Valley). The property maps from the dmSoil approach capture the spatial gradation and details of soil properties better than those from the linking method. The new approach also shows consistent accuracy improvement at validation points. In addition to the improved performances, the inputs for the dmSoil approach are easy to prepare, and the approach itself is simple to deploy. It provides an effective way to derive better soil property information from soil category maps for hydrological modelling. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A microscale model for air pollutant dispersion simulation in urban areas: Presentation of the model and performance over a single building

A microscale air pollutant dispersion model system is developed for emergency response purposes. The model includes a diagnostic wind field model to simulate the wind field and a random-walk air pollutant dispersion model to simulate the pollutant concentration through consideration of the influence of urban buildings. Numerical experiments are designed to evaluate the model's performance, using CEDVAL(Compilation of Experimental Data for Validation of Microscale Dispersion Models) wind tunnel experiment data, including wind fields and air pollutant dispersion around a single building. The results show that the wind model can reproduce the vortexes triggered by urban buildings and the dispersion model simulates the pollutant concentration around buildings well. Typically, the simulation errors come from the determination of the key zones around a building or building cluster. This model has the potential for multiple applications; for example, the prediction of air pollutant dispersion and the evaluation of environmental impacts in emergency situations; urban planning scenarios;and the assessment of microscale air quality in urban areas.     

Review on Montane Forest Eco-hydrology in Arid Area

Since the forest eco-hydrology of arid area shows a well sensitivity of the global climate change, the relationship between forest and water and the hydrological function has attracted the attention of academic communites and management departments. This paper expounds the research progress in arid mountain forest eco-hydrology, and analyses the formation and stable mechanism of forest patch pattern, the relationship between forest and water yield and the response of forest eco-hydrology to climate change from three aspects: Forest spatial pattern, hydrological process and its response to climate change. In addition, combined with the current research progress, the research emphases in the future are put forward: Strengthening the research on the coupling of vegetation pattern and hydrological process; solving the scale problem by using remote sensing technique and model; enhancing the understanding towards the hydrological function of forest; determining the suitable forest scale which can balance the relationship of ecology and hydrological effect.     

Application of ICTs in Airspace Management and Collaborative Decision-Making—Analyzing the Risk Avoidance in the Condition of Risky Weather as an Example

The application of ICTs makes structural change of the development and effective utilization of airspace. Next generation air transportation system (NextGen) includes new automation concepts with automated information to support the traffic control decision-making. As a result, in the field of academia and industry, air traffic controllers integrate information automatically while making decisions to change the previous manually integrated and decided pattern. The safety ability of airspace is reduced and airspace system is endangered under risky weather conditions of airspace. So there is an urgent demand for new information and communication technologies. The paper is an overview of the information constitution and support of NextGen and provides the study of the development of technique of airspace collaborative decision-makings to confirm the new features based on ICTs. It contains basic application-the input of data and output of the routes of airspace management and collaborative decision-making, and general application-the choose of probability nets of avoiding risky weather, and special application-the affection in the management of the air routes, which are made up of position and direction. The research shows the accurate schedule characteristics of airspace management and collaborative decision-making based on ICTs, which made the space accurate by time accurate. Second, the visualization of airspace management and collaborative decision-making based on ICTs made the maps of flight path under mobile data quickly generated. This could make the fully development and utilization of national airspace, ensure safety, and reduce air traffic controllers’ workload and the costs in delaying and operating in risky weather.     

Characterizing groundwater/surface-water interactions in the interior of Jianghan Plain,central China

Hydrogeology Journal - Quantifying groundwater/surface-water interactions is essential for managing water resources and revealing contaminant fate. There has been little concern on the exchange...     

Prediction of open stope hangingwall stability using random forests

Natural Hazards - The prediction of open stope hangingwall (HW) stability is a crucial task for underground mines. In this paper, a relatively novel technique, the random forest (RF) algorithm, is...