Influence of Obstacles on the Aerodynamic Roughness of the Netherlands

The aim of this study was to analyse the influence of large- and small-scale obstacles (orography, tree lines, and dikes) on the effective aerodynamic roughness of the Netherlands, a relatively flat, small-scale landscape. The roughness averaging approach was based on drag coefficients. The effective roughness was locally dominated by small-scale obstacles such as tree lines and dikes. Even at a regional scale (40,000 km2), the small-scale obstacle drag was of the same order of magnitude as the shear stress due to landuse. The neglect of those obstacles on a regional scale would result in approximately 10% overestimated averaged windspeed at 10~m above the surface. It was concluded that small-scale obstacles need to be taken into account to calculate the aerodynamic roughness of flat landscapes. Orography was of minor importance in this lowland country.     

Basin progress: active deformation analysis by tectonostratigraphic elements and geophysical methods on North Anatolian Fault System (Eastern Marmara Region,Turkey)

Natural Hazards - The Northern Branch of the North Anatolian Fault System controls and deforms the Izmit Basin and the Sapanca Lake Basin in the study area. Unlike the Sapanca Lake Basin, the...     

Characteristics of Karst Ecosystems of Vietnam and Their Vulnerability to Human Impact

Karst in Vietnam covers an area of about 60,000 km2, i.e. 18 % of the surface of the country. The country has an annual average temperature of 24@, an annual average rainfall of 2300 mm and a relative humidity of about 90%. Karst in Vietnam is typified by peak cluster-depression landscapes ranging in elevation from 200 to over 2000 m. Tower and coastal karst landscapes also exit. Because of naturally favourable conditions, karst ecosystems are diverse and very rich. Higher plants (cormophytes) are abundant. They are represented by approximately 2000 species, 908 genera, 224 families, 86 orders and 7 phyla. They form a thick vegetation cover of evergreen tropical rainforest. Knowledge about lower plants is limited. The fauna is rich and diverse. Phyla such as Protozoa, Vermes, Mollusca and Arthropoda are yet ill known. Preliminary results show that the phylum Chordata is represented by 541 species from 80 families, 40 orders and 5 classes. There exist many precious and rare mammals, in particular some en     

A Rapid, Manual Method to Map Coronal-Loop Structures of an Active Region Using Cubic Bézier Curves and Its Applications to Misalignment Angle Analysis

A rapid and flexible manual method is described that maps individual coronal loops of a 2D EUV image as Bézier curves using only four points per loop. Using the coronal loops as surrogates of magnetic-field lines, the mapping results restrict the magnetic-field models derived from extrapolations of magnetograms to those admissible and inadmissible via a fitness parameter. We outline explicitly how the coronal loops can be employed in constraining competing magnetic-field models by transforming 2D coronal-loop images into 3D field lines. The magnetic-field extrapolations must satisfy not only the lower boundary conditions of the vector field (the vector magnetogram) but also must have a set of field lines that satisfies the mapped coronal loops in the volume, analogous to an upper boundary condition. This method uses the minimization of the misalignment angles between the magnetic-field model and the best set of 3D field lines that match a set of closed coronal loops. The presented method is an important tool in determining the fitness of magnetic-field models for the solar atmosphere. The magnetic-field structure is crucial in determining the overall dynamics of the solar atmosphere.     

MERIS and the red-edge position

The Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS) is a payload component of Envisat-1. MERIS will be operated over land with a standard 15 band setting acquiring images with a 300 m spatial resolution. The red-edge position (REP) is a promising variable for deriving foliar chlorophyll concentration, which plays an important role in ecosystem processes. The objectives of this paper are: (1) to study which factors effect the REP of vegetation, (2) to study whether this REP can be derived from the MERIS standard band setting and (3) to show what REP represents at the scale of MERIS data. Two different data sets were explored for simulating the REP using MERIS bands: (1) simulated data using reflectance models and (2) airborne reflectance spectra of an agricultural area obtained by the airborne visible-infrared imaging spectrometer (AVIRIS). A “linear method”, assuming a straight slope of the reflectance spectrum around the midpoint of the slope, was a robust method for determining the REP and the MERIS bands at 665, 708.75, 753.75 and 778.75 nm could be used for applying the “linear method” for REP estimation. Results of the translation to the scale of MERIS data were very promising for applying MERIS at, for instance, the ecosystem level.