Application of Remote Sensing in Flood Management with Special Reference to Monsoon Asia: A Review

The conventional means to record hydrological parameters of aflood often fail to record an extreme event. Remote sensingtechnology along with geographic information system (GIS)has become the key tool for flood monitoring in recent years.Development in this field has evolved from optical to radarremote sensing, which has provided all weather capabilitycompared to the optical sensors for the purpose of flood mapping.The central focus in this field revolves around delineation of floodzones and preparation of flood hazard maps for the vulnerable areas.In this exercise flood depth is considered crucial for flood hazardmapping and a digital elevation model (DEM) is considered to bethe most effective means to estimate flood depth from remotelysensed or hydrological data. In a flat terrain accuracy of floodestimation depends primarily on the resolution of the DEM. Riverflooding in the developing countries of monsoon Asia is very acutebecause of their heavy dependence on agriculture but any floodestimation or hazard mapping attempt in this region is handicappedby poor availability of high resolution DEMs. This paper presents areview of application of remote sensing and GIS in flood managementwith particular focus on the developing countries of Asia.     

Bound and mobile soil water isotope ratios are affected by soil texture and mineralogy,whereas extraction method influences their measurement

Questions persist about interpreting isotope ratios of bound and mobile soil water pools, particularly relative to clay content and extraction conditions. Interactions between pools and resulting extracted water isotope composition are presumably related to soil texture, yet few studies have manipulated the bound pool to understand its influence on soil water processes. Using a series of drying and spiking experiments, we effectively labelled bound and mobile water pools in soils with varying clay content. Soils were first vacuum dried to remove residual water, which was then replaced with heavy isotope-enriched water prior to oven drying and spiking with heavy isotope-depleted water. Water was extracted via centrifugation or cryogenic vacuum distillation (at four temperatures) and analysed for oxygen and hydrogen isotope ratios via isotope ratio mass spectrometry. Water from centrifuged samples fell along a mixing line between the two added waters but was more enriched in heavy isotopes than the depleted label, demonstrating that despite oven drying, a residual pool remains and mixes with the mobile water. Soils with higher clay + silt content appeared to have a larger bound pool. Water from vacuum distillation samples have a significant temperature effect, with high temperature extractions yielding progressively more heavy isotope-enriched values, suggesting that Rayleigh fractionation occurred at low temperatures in the vacuum line. By distinctly labelling bound and mobile soil water pools, we detected interactions between the two that were dependent on soil texture. Although neither extraction method appeared to completely extract the combined bound and mobile (total water) pool, centrifugation and high temperature cryogenic vacuum distillations were comparable for both δ²H and δ¹⁸O of soil water isotope ratios.     

Erodibility of low‐compaction steep‐sloped reclaimed surface mine lands in the southern Appalachian region,USA

The use of loose spoils on steep slopes for surface coal mining reclamation sites has been promoted by the US Department of Interior, Office of Surface Mining for the establishment of native forest, as prescribed by the Forest Reclamation Approach (FRA). Although low‐compaction spoils improve tree survival and growth, erodibility on steep slopes was suspected to increase. This study quantified a combined K_C factor (combining the effects of the soil erodibility K factor and cover management C) for low compaction, steep‐sloped (>20°) reclaimed mine lands in the Appalachian region, USA. The combined K_C factor was used because standard Unit Plot conditions required to separate these factors, per Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation (RUSLE) experimental protocols, were not followed explicitly. Three active coal mining sites in the Appalachian region of East Tennessee, each containing four replicate field plots, were monitored for rainfall and sediment yields during a 14‐month period beginning June 2009. Average cumulative erosivity for the study sites during the monitoring period was measured as 5248.9 MJ·mm·ha^?1·h^?1. The K_C ranged between 0.001 and 0.05 t·ha·h·ha^?1·MJ^?1·mm^?1, with the highest values occurring immediately following reclamation site construction as rills developed (June – August 2009). The K_C for two study sites with about an 18–20 mm spoil D₈₄ were above 0.01 t·ha·h·ha^?1·MJ^?1·mm^?1 during rill development, and below 0.003 t·ha·h·ha^?1·MJ^?1·mm^?1 after August 2009 for the post‐rill development period. The K_C values for one site with a 40 mm spoil D₈₄ were never above 0.008 t·ha·h·ha^?1·MJ^?1·mm^?1 and also on average were lower, being more similar to the other two sites after the rill development period. Based on an initial K_C factor (K_e) measured during the first few storm events, the average C factor (C_e) was estimated as 0.58 for the rill development period and 0.13 for the post‐rill development period. It appears that larger size fractions of spoils influence K_C and C_e factors on low‐compaction steep slopes reclamation sites. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Forest fragmentation in Massachusetts,USA: a town-level assessment using Morphological spatial pattern analysis and affinity propagation

Forest fragmentation has been studied extensively with respect to biodiversity loss, disruption of ecosystem services, and edge effects although the relationship between forest fragmentation and human activities is still not well understood. We classified the pattern of forests in Massachusetts using fragmentation indicators to address these objectives: 1) characterize the spatial pattern of forest fragmentation in Massachusetts towns using Morphological Spatial Pattern Analysis (MSPA); and (2) identify regional trends using archetypal towns in relation to town history, geography and socioeconomic characteristics. Six fragmentation indicators were calculated using MSPA for each town to represent patterns and processes of fragmentation. We then used these indicators and the proportion of forested land to group towns across Massachusetts with similar patterns of fragmentation. Six representative towns typify different types of forest fragmentation, and illustrate the commonalities and differences between different fragmentation types. The objective selection of representative towns suggests that they might be used as the target of future studies, both in retrospective studies that seek to explain current patterns and in analyses that predict future fragmentation trends.     

Parametric Study and Centrifuge-Test Verification for Amplification and Bending Moment of Clay–Pile System Subject to Earthquakes

This paper examines seismic effects on fixed-head, end-bearing piles installed through soft clay. The numerical analyses were conducted using ABAQUS with a hypoelastic constitutive model for the clay. The dimensionless parameters involving the major parameters such as pile modulus, soil modulus, slenderness ratio, natural frequencies of clay layer and pile–raft, superstructure mass, density of the soil and peak ground acceleration were obtained from the parametric studies. The relationships for the amplification of ground motions and the maximum bending moment in the pile were developed based on regression of the numerical data. The computed results from the proposed relationships were compared with the results reported in the past studies.