Spatial and Seasonal Patterns of Salinity in a Large and Shallow Tropical Estuary of the Western Caribbean

Salinity profiles and meteorological data were analyzed during February, May, and September 2006 in Chetumal Bay, a large, shallow estuary of the Western Caribbean. Local meteorological conditions revealed three seasons: (1) a dry season (March–May); (2) a wet season (June–October); and (3) the nortes season, with northerly wind events (October–February). During the nortes and wet seasons, salinity ranged between 13 and 16 psu, and salinity was highest in the dry season, ranging between 18 and 22 psu over most of the area; a strong stratification and a significant contribution of salty water characterized this season. Strong horizontal gradients were observed near Rio Hondo during the three seasons. Deep and narrow peculiar bathymetric features called the pozas showed a strong stratification and a relatively high salinity. The northern part of Chetumal Bay and probably the entire system are far from being homogeneous.     

Performance enhancement of a GIS-based facility location problem using desktop grid infrastructure

This paper presents the integration of desktop grid infrastructure with GIS technologies, by proposing a parallel resolution method in a generic distributed environment. A case study focused on a discrete facility location problem, in the biomass area, exemplifies the high amount of computing resources (CPU, memory, HDD) required to solve the spatial problem. A comprehensive analysis is undertaken in order to analyse the behaviour of the grid-enabled GIS system. This analysis, consisting of a set of the experiments on the case study, concludes that the desktop grid infrastructure is able to use a commercial GIS system to solve the spatial problem achieving high speedup and computational resource utilization. Particularly, the results of the experiments showed an increase in speedup of fourteen times using sixteen computers and a computational efficiency greater than 87 % compared with the sequential procedure.     

Thermal radiation from cloudless skies in Granada

Summary Data on thermal radiation from clear skies obtained at Granada from May to November 1983 were utilized to carry out a detailed comparison between measured and calculated values of longwave radiation with several analytical and empirical equations. The goal of this work is to check the aplicability of these equations to Granada conditions. The results obtained for all the equations are quite satisfactory. Nevertheless, Idso's formula significantly overestimates our experimental results, probably as a consequence of the differences in atmospheric dust conditions between our test area and the location for which that equation was originally derived. A reduction in the independent coefficient, in accordance with previous results of other authors, provides a better fit to our data set and clearly shows the climatological dependence of the constants in the estimation equations.

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Zusammenfassung Die von Mai bis November 1983 in Granada gesammelten Daten über Wärmestrahlung bei klarem Himmel wurden dazu verwendet, um einen detaillierten Vergleich zwischen gemessenen und errechneten Werten der langwelligen Strahlung aus verschiedenen analytischen und empirischen Gleichungen durchzuführen. Das Ziel dieser Arbeit ist es, die Anwendbarkeit dieser Gleichungen auf die Verhältnisse in Granada zu überprüfen. Die gewonnenen Ergebnisse sind für alle diese Gleichungen ganz zufriedenstellend. Idsos Formel überschätzt jedoch deutlich unsere experimentellen Ergebnisse, möglicherweise als Folge der unterschiedlichen atmosphärischen Staubbedingungen in unserem Testgebiet und dem Standort, für den die Gleichung ursprünglich abgeleitet wurde. Eine Reduktion des unabhängigen Koeffizienten, in Übereinstimmung mit früheren Ergebnissen anderer Autoren, bietet eine bessere Anpassung an unseren Datensatz und zeigt deutlich die klimatologische Abhängigkeit der Konstanten in Schätzungsgleichungen.

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With 3 Figures     

Groundwater contamination: risk management and assessment for landfills in Mar del Plata, Argentina

 This study presents a program for risk management in the contamination of groundwater resulting from leachate in landfills at Mar del Plata (Argentina). The program includes prediction, prevention, monitory observation and mitigation as actions that must be taken prior to, during, and after contamination occurs. This routine aids in the identification of weak points and failures of the program for those who are in charge of making decisions, and will allow better use of limited financial and technical resources based on planning, thus minimizing disconnected determinations. Results of the prediction stage were confirmed through monitoring. The presence of a plume of contamination more than 100 m from the landfill was shown, thus proving that implementation of a monitoring plan to follow the development of the contaminated plume must be implemented, particularly in populated areas which depend on residential wells for their water supply. Received: 8 May 2000 · Accepted: 14 August 2000     

A Combined Biophysical and Economic GIS Framework to Assess Sugarcane Cropping Potential in Brazil

Recently, the increasing demand for biofuels triggered a new phase for the sugar‐alcohol sector. In Brazil, as well as in other tropical countries, this process raised worries regarding the possible direct and indirect effects of the crop's expansion on the conversion of native vegetation coverings. Therefore, the modeling of spatial‐economic surfaces, representing the potential rent variation in its spatial component, for economic activities, may be a useful tool in the decision‐making process. Hence, here we propose and present the results of a combined framework composed of two modules using the modeling platform Dinamica EGO. The first module simulates sugarcane's growth, calculating the daily response of the crop to environmental conditions during the stages of the plant's development. The second module estimates rents for sugarcane cultivation in Brazil, identifying areas where this activity would bring higher economic return, looking at simulated productivity, production costs and selling prices in a way that is spatially explicit for Brazil. Two different scenarios for production costs were tested, and results ranged from negative values to maxima of R$/ha 929 and R$/ha 1176 for standard and efficient costs of production, respectively. The model successfully indicated non‐profitable and profitable areas, and regions where high expected economic return overlaps endangered ecosystems.