THE USE OF FOREST STRUCTURE AND FUNCTION FOR INTERPRETING VEGETATION-ENVIRONMENT RELATIONSHIPS

Species structural and functional characteristics are used in concert with forest composition to examine links between the physical environment and vegetation along an elevational transect of thirty forest stands in Yosemite National Park, California. The structural/functional approach promotes communication by allowing direct analysis and presentation of ecologically significant information. Patterns of leaf persistence, shade tolerance/twig thickness, and windthrow susceptibility are related to changes along the altitudinal gradient as an illustration of the interpretive capabilities of the technique.     

A Regularized Image Restoration Algorithm for Lossy Compression in Astronomy

Astronomical images currently provide large amounts of data. Lossy compression algorithms have recently been developed for high compression ratios. These compression technique introduce distortion in the compressed images and for high compression ratios, a blocking effect appears. We propose a modified compression algorithm based on the hcompress scheme, and we introduce a new decompression method based on the regularization theory The image is restored scale by scale in a multiresolution scheme and the information lost during the compression is recovered by applying a Tikhonov regularization constraint. The experimental results show that the blocking effect is reduced and some measurements made on a simulated image show that the astrometric and the photometric properties of the restored images are improved.     

Penetration calculations and measurements for a layered soil target

A tow-dimensional finite difference wave propagation code was used to analyse the impact of a rigid, ogival-nosed penetrator with a target consisting of thin alternating layers of silt, sand, and clay. The response of the idealized target was described with an elastic-plastic constitutive model depending upon two stress invariants and the history of plastic deformation. Interfacial friction between the penetrator and target was assumed to be negligible. Comparisons are made of calculated results and those of nominally similar experiments conducted at the Watching Hill test site in Alberta, Canada. Analysis of these comparisons reveals that numerical methods like the one employed in this study can yield insight into penomena, as well as suggesting possible improvements in the calculation technique.     

Litho-structural conditioning in the exploration of fractured aquifers: a case study in the Crystalline Basement Aquifer System of Brazil

Hydrogeology Journal - Productive regions in the Crystalline Basement Aquifer System (CBAS) in Paraná state, Brazil, were identified qualitatively and quantitatively through spatial...     

Waterflooding optimization with the INSIM-FT data-driven model

In a recent paper, we developed a physics-based data-driven model referred to as INSIM-FT and showed that it can be used for history matching and future reservoir performance predictions even when no prior geological model is available. The model requires no prior knowledge of petrophysical properties. In this work, we explore the possibility of using INSIM-FT in place of a reservoir simulation model when estimating the well controls that optimize water flooding performance where we use the net present value (NPV) of life-cycle production as our cost (objective) function. The well controls are either the flowing bottom-hole pressure (BHP) or total liquid rates at injectors and producers on the time intervals which represent the prescribed control steps. The optimal well controls that maximize NPV are estimated with an ensemble-based optimization algorithm using the history-matched INSIM-FT model as the forward model. We compare the optimal NPV obtained using INSIM-FT as the forward model with the estimate of the optimal NPV obtained using the correct full-scale reservoir simulation model when performing waterflooding optimization.     

Paleoseismology of the 2016 MW 6.1 Petermann earthquake source: Implications for intraplate earthquake behaviour and the geomorphic longevity of bedrock fault scarps in a low strain-rate cratonic region

The 20 May 2016 M_W 6.1 Petermann earthquake in central Australia generated a 21 km surface rupture with 0.1 to 1 m vertical displacements across a low-relief landscape. No paleo-scarps or potentially analogous topographic features are evident in pre-earthquake Worldview-1 and Worldview-2 satellite data. Two excavations across the surface rupture expose near-surface fault geometry and mixed aeolian-sheetwash sediment faulted only in the 2016 earthquake. A 10.6 ± 0.4 ka optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) age of sheetwash sediment provides a minimum estimate for the period of quiescence prior to 2016 rupture. Seven cosmogenic beryllium-10 (¹⁰Be) bedrock erosion rates are derived for samples < 5 km distance from the surface rupture on the hanging-wall and foot-wall, and three from samples 19 to 50 km from the surface rupture. No distinction is found between fault proximal rates (1.3 ± 0.1 to 2.6 ± 0.2 m Myr⁻¹) and distal samples (1.4 ± 0.1 to 2.3 ± 0.2 m Myr⁻¹). The thickness of rock fragments (2–5 cm) coseismically displaced in the Petermann earthquake perturbs the steady-state bedrock erosion rate by only 1 to 3%, less than the erosion rate uncertainty estimated for each sample (7–12%). Using ¹⁰Be erosion rates and scarp height measurements we estimate approximately 0.5 to 1 Myr of differential erosion is required to return to pre-earthquake topography. By inference any pre-2016 fault-related topography likely required a similar time for removal. We conclude that the Petermann earthquake was the first on this fault in the last ca. 0.5–1 Myr. Extrapolating single nuclide erosion rates across this timescale introduces large uncertainties, and we cannot resolve whether 2016 represents the first ever surface rupture on this fault, or a > 1 Myr interseismic period. Either option reinforces the importance of including distributed earthquake sources in fault displacement and seismic hazard analyses.     

A comparison of hillslope drainage area estimation methods using high-resolution DEMs with implications for topographic studies of gullies

Topographic models provide a useful tool for understanding gully occurrence in the landscape but require reliable estimates of gully head drainage areas. Modern high-resolution topography data (collected using structure from motion photogrammetry or light detection and ranging) is increasingly used for topographic studies of gullies, but little work has been done to assess the variability of gully head drainage area estimates using different methods. This study evaluated alternative approaches to using high-resolution digital elevation models (DEMs) so that gully topographic models can be more readily applied to any area with suitably high-resolution data. Specifically, we investigated the impact of single- or multiple-direction flow routing algorithms, DEM hydrologic-enforcement procedures and spatial resolution on gully head drainage area estimation. We tested these methods on a 40 km² site centred on Weany Creek, a low-relief semi-arid landscape draining towards the Great Barrier Reef, Australia. Using a subroutine to separate gully heads into those with divergent or convergent flow patterns upslope, we found that divergent flow conditions occurred at half of 484 studied gullies. Drainage areas estimated by different flow routing algorithms were more variable in these divergent cases than for convergent cases. This variation caused a significant difference between topographic threshold parameters (slope b and intercept k) derived from single- or multiple-direction flow routing algorithms, respectively. Different methods of hydrologic enforcement (filling or breaching) also affected threshold analysis, resulting in estimates of the exponent b being ~188% higher if the DEM was filled than if breached. The testing of the methods to date indicates that a finer resolution (≤2 m) DEM and a multiple-direction flow routing algorithm achieve the most realistic drainage area estimates in low-relief landscapes. For Weany Creek we estimated threshold parameters k = 0.033 and b = 0.189, indicating that it is highly susceptible to gully erosion.     

Investigation of the sampling performance of ensemble-based methods with a simple reservoir model

The application of the ensemble Kalman filter (EnKF) for history matching petroleum reservoir models has been the subject of intense investigation during the past 10 years. Unfortunately, EnKF often fails to provide reasonable data matches for highly nonlinear problems. This fact motivated the development of several iterative ensemble-based methods in the last few years. However, there exists no study comparing the performance of these methods in the literature, especially in terms of their ability to quantify uncertainty correctly. In this paper, we compare the performance of nine ensemble-based methods in terms of the quality of the data matches, quantification of uncertainty, and computational cost. For this purpose, we use a small but highly nonlinear reservoir model so that we can generate the reference posterior distribution of reservoir properties using a very long chain generated by a Markov chain Monte Carlo sampling algorithm. We also consider one adjoint-based implementation of the randomized maximum likelihood method in the comparisons.