Comparison of spatial interpolation methods for gridded bias removal in surface temperature forecasts

All numerical weather prediction (NWP) models inherently have substantial biases, especially in the forecast of near-surface weather variables. Statistical methods can be used to remove the systematic error based on historical bias data at observation stations. However, many end users of weather forecasts need bias corrected forecasts at locations that scarcely have any historical bias data. To circumvent this limitation, the bias of surface temperature forecasts on a regular grid covering Iran is removed, by using the information available at observation stations in the vicinity of any given grid point. To this end, the running mean error method is first used to correct the forecasts at observation stations, then four interpolation methods including inverse distance squared weighting with constant lapse rate (IDSW-CLR), Kriging with constant lapse rate (Kriging-CLR), gradient inverse distance squared with linear lapse rate (GIDS-LR), and gradient inverse distance squared with lapse rate determined by classification and regression tree (GIDS-CART), are employed to interpolate the bias corrected forecasts at neighboring observation stations to any given location. The results show that all four interpolation methods used do reduce the model error significantly, but Kriging-CLR has better performance than the other methods. For Kriging-CLR, root mean square error (RMSE) and mean absolute error (MAE) were decreased by 26% and 29%, respectively, as compared to the raw forecasts. It is found also, that after applying any of the proposed methods, unlike the raw forecasts, the bias corrected forecasts do not show spatial or temporal dependency.     

Seismic isolation effect of lined circular tunnels with damping treatments

The Havriliak-Negami model for dynamic viscoelastic material behavior and Biot＇s theory of poroelasticity are employed to develop an exact solution for three-dimensional scattering effect of harmonic plane P-SV waves from a circular cavity lined with a multilayered fluid-filled shell of infinite length containing viscoelastic damping materials and embedded within a fluid-saturated permeable surrounding soil medium. The analytical results are illustrated with numerical examples where the effects of liner/coating structural arrangement, viscoelastic material properties, liner-soil interface bonding condition, seismic excitation frequency, and angle of incidence on the induced dynamic stress concentrations are evaluated and discussed to obtain representative values of the parameters that characterize the system. It is demonstrated that incorporating viscoelastic damping materials with a low shear modulus in the constrained layer configuration is an efficient means of enhancing the overall seismic isolation performance, especially for near-normally incident seismic shear waves where the amplitudes of induced dynamic stresses may be reduced by up to one-third of those without isolation in a relatively wide frequency range. Some additional cases are considered and good agreements with solutions available in the literature are obtained.     

Surface load dynamic solution of saturated transversely isotropic multilayer half-space

This paper treats the dynamic response of a multilayered transversely isotropic fluid saturated poroelastic half-space under surface time-harmonic traction. The governing system of partial differential equations is uncoupled with the use of a set of physically meaningful and complete potential functions that decompose different body waves in a saturated poroelastic transversely isotropic medium. After expressing the equations in the Hankel-Fourier domain, a proper algebraic factorization is applied to generate reflection and transmission matrices for decomposed waves. All responses including displacements, stresses, and pore fluid pressure for both general patch load and point load are presented in the form of semi-infinite line integrals. The verification of the method is confirmed with the degeneration of the solutions presented here to the existing solutions for dried both homogeneous and multilayered elastic half-spaces as well as poroelastic half-space. Selected numerical results are depicted to investigate the effects of layering and pore pressure on responses of a transversely isotropic poroelastic medium. The load distribution effects are studied by comparison of the patch and point load responses. Also, resonance notion and effective parameters on this phenomenon such as layering system and anisotropy contrast are discussed. Significant influence of materials and layering configuration on number and amplitude of resonances depicted through the numerical evaluation.     

Dynamic response of an eccentrically lined circular tunnel in poroelastic soil under seismic excitation

An exact analysis for two-dimensional dynamic interaction of monochromatic progressive plane compressional and shear seismic waves with a permeable circular tunnel lining of circumferentially varying wall thickness buried in a boundless porous elastic fluid-saturated formation is presented. The novel features of Biot dynamic theory of poroelasticity in conjunction with the translational addition theorems for cylindrical wave functions, along with the appropriate wave field expansions and the pertinent boundary conditions are employed to develop a closed-form solution in form of infinite series. The analytical results are illustrated with numerical examples in which an air-filled and water-saturated permeable tunnel lining of variable wall thickness, embedded within water-saturated surrounding formations of distinct frame properties (soft, stiff, and stiff viscoelastic soil), is insonified by fast compressional or shear waves at selected angles of incidence. The effects of liner eccentricity, interface permeability, formation material type, incident wave frequency, and angle of incidence on the hoop stress amplitude are evaluated and discussed for representative values of the parameters characterizing the system. Limiting cases are considered and good agreements with the solutions available in the literature are obtained.     

GeoTxt: A scalable geoparsing system for unstructured text geolocation

In this article we present GeoTxt, a scalable geoparsing system for the recognition and geolocation of place names in unstructured text. GeoTxt offers six named entity recognition (NER) algorithms for place name recognition, and utilizes an enterprise search engine for the indexing, ranking, and retrieval of toponyms, enabling scalable geoparsing for streaming text. GeoTxt offers a flexible application programming interface (API), allowing for customized attribute and/or spatial ranking of retrieved toponyms. We evaluate the system on a corpus of manually geo‐annotated tweets. First, we benchmark the performance of the six NERs that GeoTxt provides access to. Second, we assess GeoTxt toponym resolution accuracy incrementally, demonstrating improvements in toponym resolution achieved (or not achieved) by adding specific heuristics and disambiguation methods. Compared to using the GeoNames web service, GeoTxt's toponym resolution demonstrates a 20% accuracy gain. Our results show that places mentioned in the same tweet do not tend to be geographically proximate.     

First Record of Sexual Dimorphism in Toxasterid Echinoid Heteraster from the Early Cretaceous Deposits of the Kopet-Dagh Basin,NE Iran

Spatangoid echinoids belonging to Heteraster found in the Lower Cretaceous limestones and calcareous deposits of the Tirgan and Sarcheshmeh formations(Barremian–Aptian) in the Bahman jan-Bala stratigraphic section on the northern flank of the Borouj syncline, situated in the eastern Kopet-Dagh Basin, northeastern Iran are assessed as a sexually dimorphic species. Sexual dimorphism is a common feature in echinoids and, in this study of Heteraster renngarteni Poretzkaja, 1961, sexual dimorphism ha...     

A new approach to plane failure of rock slope stability based on water flow velocity in discontinuities for the Latian dam reservoir landslide

The stability of slopes is always of great concern in the field of rock engineering. The geometry and orientation of pre-existing discontinuities show a larger impact on the behavior of slopes that is often used to describe the measurement of the steepness, incline, gradient, or grade of a straight line. One of the structurally controlled modes of failure in jointed rock slopes is plane failure. There are numerous analytical methods for the rock slope stability including limit equilibrium, stress analysis and stereographic methods. The limiting equilibrium methods for slopes under various conditions against plane failure have been previously proposed by several investigators. However, these methods do not involve water pressure on sliding surfaces assessments due to water velocity and have not yet been validated by case study results. This paper has tried to explore the effects of forces due to water pressure on discontinuity surfaces in plane failure through applying the improved equations. It has studied the effect of water flow velocity on sliding surfaces in safety factor, as well. New equations for considering water velocity (fluid dynamics) are presented. To check the validity of the suggested equations, safety factor for a case study has been determined. Results show that velocity of water flow had significant effect on the amount of safety factor. Also, the suggested equations have higher validity rate compared to the current equations.     

Block size selection with the objective of minimizing the discrepancy in real and estimated block grade

The valuation of a mining project depends upon the accuracy of geological block model. Sampling density, estimation method, and proper block size mainly affect the accuracy of estimated block. This paper aims to answer three questions: (1) which estimation method is more accurate, (2) what is the relation between sampling density and block size, and (3) what the optimum block size is. Conditional Gaussian simulation (CGS) was used to generate a hypothetical deposit, considered as a real block model. A range of different block dimensions were estimated by ordinary kriging, inverse squared distance, and nearest neighbor methods based on tow-simulated drilling grids database. The comparison of estimated and real block grades reveals that increasing the sampling density results the similar outcomes of geostatistics and deterministic interpolation methods. Furthermore, it was deduced that sampling density could not be a viable alternative in choosing appropriate block dimension and the variogram rang a was suggested as an affective parameter in block size selection. Then a geometrical formula was developed to obtain the block size based on the variogram range. The increment in project value that a mine planner can expected from the additional information of the dense drilling grid was also calculated and it was concluded that the block size obtained based on the suggested formula results acceptable information value. Finally, the database of Chador Malu iron ore mine which is located in 180 km northeast of Yazd city in the central part of Iran were used to validate the suggested formula.     

A late Pleistocene long pollen record from Lake Urmia, NW Iran

A palynological study based on two 100-m long cores from Lake Urmia in northwestern Iran provides a vegetation record spanning 200 ka, the longest pollen record for the continental interior of the Near East. During both penultimate and last glaciations, a steppe of Artemisia and Poaceae dominated the upland vegetation with a high proportion of Chenopodiaceae in both upland and lowland saline ecosystems. While Juniperus and deciduous Quercus trees were extremely rare and restricted to some refugia, Hippophaë rhamnoides constituted an important phanerophyte, particularly during the late last glacial period. A pronounced expansion in Ephedra shrub-steppe occurred at the end of the penultimate late-glacial period but was followed by extreme aridity that favoured an Artemisia steppe. Very high lake levels, registered by both pollen and sedimentary markers, occurred during the middle of the last glaciation and late part of the penultimate glaciation. The late-glacial to early Holocene transition is represented by a succession of Hippophaë, Ephedra, Betula, Pistacia and finally Juniperus and Quercus. The last interglacial period (Eemian), slightly warmer and moister than the Holocene, was followed by two interstadial phases similar in pattern to those recorded in the marine isotope record and southern European pollen sequences.