Comparisons of deep-sea sediments and overlying water collected using Multiple Corer and Box Corer

Sediments and overlying water collected using Multiple Corer (MC) and Box Corer (BC) at three stations in Suruga Bay were compared from the view points of meiobenthic and chemical characteristics. Dissolved oxygen, pH, ammonium and nitrite concentrations of the overlying waters were lower, whereas nitrate and phosphate concentrations were higher constantly in the samples collected by MC than those by BC, suggesting contamination of surface seawater in the BC samples. Sediments were sliced into 0–1, 1–2 and 2–3 cm layers, and water content and Eh, and abundance of meiofauna were analyzed. Water content in MC samples was always higher than BC ones. For the whole meiobenthos, MC collected significantly more individuals than BC at only one out of three stations, whereas for harpacticoid copepods, which aggregated to the surface layer of the sediment, MC constantly collected significantly more individuals than BC. In the vertical profiles of both water content and meiofaunal density, data of 0–1, and 1–2 cm layers in the BC samples were similar to those of 1–2 and 2–3 cm layers in the MC samples, respectively. These results suggested only MC can collect the real sediment surface (so called fluffy layer), which was lost due to bow wave effects in the BC samples.     

Further evaluation of the Sim-ReSET model for ET estimation driven by only satellite inputs

Abstract

A simple remote sensing evapotranspiration (ET) model (Sim-ReSET) has been proposed but only tested using field measurements at a site with a semi-arid climate. Its performance for mapping ET using only satellite data remained unknown. In this study, the Sim-ReSET model was further evaluated for ET estimation driven by only MODIS data products. The estimated ET rates were compared with ground-based observational data from a variety of ecosystems and climates across China. The results show that MODIS-based ET estimates are consistent with both the ET measurements from eddy covariance flux towers and those from the Penman-Monteith method combined with micrometeorological data. Evaporation fraction (EF) is indicative of land surface moisture. The derivative EF maps demonstrate that the proposed ET data set obtained from the Sim-ReSET model and MODIS data is capable of capturing the spatio-temporal pattern of land surface moisture for different land covers with different climates.

Editor Z.W. Kundzewicz

Citation Sun, Z.G., Wang, Q.X., Matsushita, B., Fukushima, T., Ouyang, Z., Watanabe, M., and Gebremichael, M., 2013. Further evaluation of the Sim-ReSET model for ET estimation driven by only satellite inputs. Hydrological Sciences Journal, 58 (5), 994–1012.     

Fast computation of Jacobian elliptic functions and incomplete elliptic integrals for constant values of elliptic parameter and elliptic characteristic

In order to accelerate the numerical evaluation of torque-free rotation of triaxial rigid bodies, we present a fast method to compute various kinds of elliptic functions for a series of the elliptic argument when the elliptic parameter and the elliptic characteristic are fixed. The functions we evaluate are the Jacobian elliptic functions and the incomplete elliptic integral of the second and third kinds regarded as a function of that of the first kind. The key technique is the utilization of the Maclaurin series expansion and the addition theorems with respect to the elliptic argument. The new method is around 25 times faster than the method using the incomplete elliptic integral of general kind and around 70 times faster than the method using mathematical libraries given in the latest version of Numerical Recipes.     

Generation of unsaturated and aromatic hydrocarbons by thermal alteration of young kerogen

Monounsaturated, monoaromatic and polyaromatic hydrocarbons generated by artificial thermal alteration of young marine (Tanner basin, offshore California) kerogen were studied by computerized GC-MS. Their relative amounts changed with temperature (150–410°C) and time (5–120 hr) of heating as follows: Monounsaturates → Monoaromatics → Polyaromatics. Distribution of alkyl homologs of phenanthrene also changed with increasing degree of thermal alteration. These results are in agreement with those observed for crude oils and shales.     

A VLBI Delay Model for Radio Sources at a Finite Distance

A relativistic delay model for Earth-based very long baseline interferometry (VLBI) observation of sources at finite distances is derived. The model directly provides the VLBI delay in the scale of terrestrial time. The effect of the curved wave front is represented by using a pseudo source vector K = (R ₁ + R ₂)/(R ₁ + R ₂), and the variation of the baseline vector due to the difference of arrival time is taken into account up to the second-order by using Halley’s method. The precision of the new VLBI delay model is 1 ps for all radio sources above 100 km altitude from the Earth’s surface in Earth-based VLBI observation. Simple correction terms (parallax effect) are obtained, which can also adopt the consensus model (e.g. International Earth Rotation and Reference Frames Service conventions) to finite-distance radio source at R > 10 pc with the same precision. The new model may enable estimation of distance to the radio source directly with VLBI delay data.     

Transformation from Cartesian to Geodetic Coordinates Accelerated by Halley’s Method

By using Halley’s third-order formula to find the root of a non-linear equation, we develop a new iterative procedure to solve an irrational form of the “latitude equation”, the equation to determine the geodetic latitude for given Cartesian coordinates. With a limit to one iteration, starting from zero height, and minimizing the number of divisions by means of the rational form representation of Halley’s formula, we obtain a new non-iterative method to transform Cartesian coordinates to geodetic ones. The new method is sufficiently precise in the sense that the maximum error of the latitude and the relative height is less than 6 micro-arcseconds for the range of height, −10 km ≤ h ≤ 30,000 km. The new method is around 50% faster than our previous method, roughly twice as fast as the well-known Bowring’s method, and much faster than the recently developed methods of Borkowski, Laskowski, Lin and Wang, Jones, Pollard, and Vermeille.     

Subsidence associated with the LUSI mud eruption,East Java,investigated by SAR interferometry

A mud volcano LUSI initiated its eruption on 29 May 2006, adjacent to a hydrocarbon exploration well in East Java. Ground subsidence in the vicinity of the LUSI eruptive vent was well recorded by a Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) PALSAR onboard the Japanese ALOS satellite. We apply an Interferometric SAR (InSAR) technique on ten PALSAR data scenes, acquired between 19 May 2006 and 21 May 2007, in order to obtain continuous maps of ground displacements around LUSI. Although the displacements in the area closest to the eruptive vent (spatial extension of about 1.5 km) are not detectable because of the erupted mud, all the processed interferograms indicate subsidence in an ellipsoidal area of approximately 4 km (north–south) × 3 km (east–west), centered at the main eruptive vent. In particular, interferograms spanning the first four months until 4 Oct. 2006 and the subsequent 46 days between 4 Oct. 2006 and 19 Nov. 2006 show at least about 70 cm and 80 cm of displacements away from the satellite, respectively. Possible causes of the subsidence, i.e., 1) loading effect of the erupted mud, 2) creation of a cylindrical mud conduit, and 3) pressure decrease and depletion of materials at depth, are investigated. The effects of the first two causes are found to be insufficient to explain the total amount of subsidence observed in the first six months. The third possibility is quantitatively examined using a boundary element approach by modeling the source of deformation as a deflating oblate spheroid. The spheroid is estimated to lie at depths of a few hundred to a thousand meters. The estimated depths are significantly shallower than determined from analyses of erupted mud samples; the difference is explained by presence of significant amount of inelastic deformation including compaction and downward transfer of material.     

Application of spectral decomposition algorithm for mapping water quality in a turbid lake (Lake Kasumigaura,Japan) from Landsat TM data

The remote sensing of Case 2 water has been far less successful than that of Case 1 water, due mainly to the complex interactions among optically active substances (e.g., phytoplankton, suspended sediments, colored dissolved organic matter, and water) in the former. To address this problem, we developed a spectral decomposition algorithm (SDA), based on a spectral linear mixture modeling approach. Through a tank experiment, we found that the SDA-based models were superior to conventional empirical models (e.g. using single band, band ratio, or arithmetic calculation of band) for accurate estimates of water quality parameters. In this paper, we develop a method for applying the SDA to Landsat-5 TM data on Lake Kasumigaura, a eutrophic lake in Japan characterized by high concentrations of suspended sediment, for mapping chlorophyll-a (Chl-a) and non-phytoplankton suspended sediment (NPSS) distributions. The results show that the SDA-based estimation model can be obtained by a tank experiment. Moreover, by combining this estimation model with satellite-SRSs (standard reflectance spectra: i.e., spectral end-members) derived from bio-optical modeling, we can directly apply the model to a satellite image. The same SDA-based estimation model for Chl-a concentration was applied to two Landsat-5 TM images, one acquired in April 1994 and the other in February 2006. The average Chl-a estimation error between the two was 9.9%, a result that indicates the potential robustness of the SDA-based estimation model. The average estimation error of NPSS concentration from the 2006 Landsat-5 TM image was 15.9%. The key point for successfully applying the SDA-based estimation model to satellite data is the method used to obtain a suitable satellite-SRS for each end-member.     

Development of a Neural Network Algorithm for Retrieving Concentrations of Chlorophyll, Suspended Matter and Yellow Substance from Radiance Data of the Ocean Color and Temperature Scanner

An algorithm is presented to retrieve the concentrations of chlorophyll a, suspended pariclulate matter and yellow substance from normalized water-leaving radiances of the Ocean Color and Temperature Sensor (OCTS) of the Advanced Earth Observing Satellite (ADEOS). It is based on a neural network (NN) algorithm, which is used for the rapid inversion of a radiative transfer procedure with the goal of retrieving not only the concentrations of chlorophyll a but also the two other components that determine the water-leaving radiance spectrum. The NN algorithm was tested using the NASA's SeaBAM (SeaWiFS Bio-Optical Mini-Workshop) test data set and applied to ADEOS/OCTS data of the Northwest Pacific in the region off Sanriku, Japan. The root-mean-square error between chlorophyll a concentrations derived from the SeaBAM reflectance data and the chlorophyll a measurements is 0.62. The retrieved chlorophyll a concentrations of the OCTS data were compared with the corresponding distribution obtained by the standard OCTS algorithm. The concentrations and distribution patterns from both algorithms match for open ocean areas. Since there are no standard OCTS products available for yellow substance and suspended matter and no in situ measurements available for validation, the result of the retrieval by the NN for these two variables could only be assessed by a general knowledge of their concentrations and distribution patterns. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.