Assimilating data into open ocean tidal models

The problem of deriving tidal fields from observations by reason of incompleteness and imperfectness of every data set practically available has an infinitely large number of allowable solutions fitting the data within measurement errors and hence can be treated as ill-posed. Therefore, interpolating the data always relies on some a priori assumptions concerning the tides, which provide a rule of sampling or, in other words, a regularization of the ill-posed problem. Data assimilation procedures used in large scale tide modeling are viewed in a common mathematical framework as such regularizations. It is shown that they all (basis functions expansion, parameter estimation, nudging, objective analysis, general inversion, and extended general inversion), including those (objective analysis and general inversion) originally formulated in stochastic terms, may be considered as utilizations of one of the three general methods suggested by the theory of ill-posed problems. The problem of grid refinement critical for inverse methods and nudging is discussed.     

Geoeffective Disturbances in the Solar Wind near the Solar Activity Minimum according to the Data of a Two-year Series of Observations of Interplanetary Scintillations with the BSA LPI Radio Telescope

Astronomy Reports - A joint analysis of the monitoring data of interplanetary scintillations with solar and geophysical data showed that at the descending phase of the 24 solar activity cycle, the...     

Forest land use change at Trans-Boundary Laos-China Biodiversity Conservation Area

This paper analyzed forest land use change in Trans-Boundary Laos–China Biodiversity Conservation Area which is called Namha National Biodiversity Conservation Areas (Namha NBCAs), with 1992 and 2002 TM (ETM). Based on GIS and statistical methods, the intensity, state index of land use change and transfer matrix were used to study spatio- temporal land use change in the region. The results showed that the area of forest land decreased greatly, also the area of bamboo and grassland decreased. The other way round, the area of unstocked forest, slash and burn and rice paddy land increased. As a whole, the intensity of forest land change was higher, but others were lower. From the transfer matrix, most of the forest land changed into unstocked forest and urban area, some to slash and burn. The grassland and bamboo were mainly transferred to forest and unstocked forest. The unstocked forest land mostly came from forest land and grassland. It was showed there were three main causes of the land use change namely: opium poppy cultivation, rubber plantation and also ecotourism activities and finally some policies were developed in order to address the land use change in the study areas.     

A crustal suture and lineament in North Africa

A possible suture between an old craton in West Africa and the Arabian—Nubian shield is marked by a persistent zone of Phanerozoic weakness. This zone extends between the Nile and Niger deltas and passes through the Qattara embayment, along the Bahariya fault, through the Kufra basin, between the Tibesti and Jabal al Uwaynat massifs, through the Bahr el Ghazal and Lake Chad areas, and along the Benoue trough.     

Diurnal atmospheric forcing and temporal variations of the nutation amplitudes

A 29-year time-series of four-times-daily atmospheric effective angular momentum (EAM) estimates is used to study the atmospheric influence on nutation. The most important atmospheric contributions are found for the prograde annual (77 μas), retrograde annual (53 as), prograde semiannual (45 as), and for the constant offset of the pole (δψsinɛ₀=−86 as, δɛ=77 as). Among them only the prograde semiannual component is driven mostly by the wind term of the EAM function, while in all other cases the pressure term is dominant. These are nonnegligible quantities which should be taken into account in the new theory of nutation. Comparison with the VLBI corrections to the IAU 1980 nutation model taking into account the ocean tide contribution yields good agreement for the prograde annual and semiannual nutations. We also investigated time variability of the atmospheric contribution to the nutation amplitudes by performing the sliding-window least-squares analysis of both the atmospheric excitation and VLBI nutation data. Almost all detected variations of atmospheric origin can be attributed to the pressure term, the biggest being the in-phase annual prograde component (about 30 as) and the retrograde one (as much as 100200 as). These variations, if physical, limit the precision of classical modeling of nutation to the level of 0.1 mas. Comparison with the VLBI data shows significant correlation for the retrograde annual nutation after 1989, while for the prograde annual term there is a high correlation in shape but the size of the atmospherically driven variations is about three times less than deduced from the VLBI data. This discrepancy in size can be attributed either to inaccuracy of the theoretical transfer function or the frequency-dependent ocean response to the pressure variations. Our comparison also yields a considerably better agreement with the VLBI nutation data when using the EAM function without the IB correction for ocean response, which indicates that this correction is not adequate for nearly diurnal variations. Received: 10 September 1997 / Accepted: 5 March 1998     

Airborne gravimetry used in precise geoid computations by ring integration

Two detailed geoids have been computed in the region of North Jutland. The first computation used marine data in the offshore areas. For the second computation the marine data set was replaced by the sparser airborne gravity data resulting from the AGMASCO campaign of September 1996. The results of comparisons of the geoid heights at on-shore geometric control showed that the geoid heights computed from the airborne gravity data matched in precision those computed using the marine data, supporting the view that airborne techniques have enormous potential for mapping those unsurveyed areas between the land-based data and the off-shore marine or altimetrically derived data. Received: 7 July 1997 / Accepted: 22 April 1998     

Generalized inverses of nonlinear mappings and the nonlinear geodetic datum problem

Motivated by the existing theory of the geometric characteristics of linear generalized inverses of linear mappings, an attempt is made to establish a corresponding mathematical theory for nonlinear generalized inverses of nonlinear mappings in finite- dimensional spaces. The theory relies on the concept of fiberings consisting of disjoint manifolds (fibers) in which the domain and range spaces of the mappings are partitioned. Fiberings replace the quotient spaces generated by some characteristic subspaces in the linear case. In addition to the simple generalized inverse, the minimum-distance and the x ₀-nearest generalized inverse are introduced and characterized, in analogy with the least-squares and the minimum-norm generalized inverses of the linear case. The theory is specialized to the geodetic mapping from network coordinates to observables and the nonlinear transformations (Baarda's S-transformations) between different solutions are defined with the help of transformation parameters obtained from the solution of nonlinear equations. In particular, the transformations from any solution to an x ₀-nearest solution (corresponding to Meissl's inner solution) are given for two- and three-dimensional networks for both the similarity and the rigid transformation case. Finally the nonlinear theory is specialized to the linear case with the help of the singular-value decomposition and algebraic expressions with specific geometric meaning are given for all possible types of generalized inverses. Received: 11 April 1996 / Accepted: 19 April 1997     

Space orientation and geodetic azimuths of long lines from observations of the ANNA Satellite

The space orientation and geodetic azimuths of lines ranging from 300 km to 1400 km have been determined from simultaneous optical observations of the ANNA Flashing Satellite. The results of this test prove that the azimuth and the space direction between two stations can be achieved to an accuracy of 0.5″ and 0.8″ second respectively with only a limited amount of data. The reason for the high accuracy is attributed to two factors: [1] the metric quality of the PC-1000's stellar cameras, and [2] the “perfect” simultaneity in the observations provided by the ANNA flashing light. Much of this work was accomplished by the writer while employed by the Geodesy and Gravity Branch of Cambridge Research Laboratories.     

Automatic Selection of Landmarks for Navigation Guidance

Although current navigation services provide significant benefits to people's mobility, the turn‐by‐turn instructions they provide are sometimes ineffective. These instructions require people to maintain a high level of attention and cognitive workload while performing distance or angle measurements on their own mental map. To overcome this problem, landmarks have been identified as playing a major role in turn‐by‐turn instructions. This requires the availability of landmarks in navigation databases. Landmarks are commonly selected manually, which involves time‐consuming and tedious tasks. Automatic selection of landmarks has recently gained the attention of researchers but currently there are only a few techniques that can select appropriate landmarks. In this article, we present a technique based on a neural network model, where both static and dynamic features are used for selecting landmarks automatically. To train and test this model, two labeling approaches, manual labeling and rule‐based labeling, are also discussed. Experiments on the developed technique were conducted and the results show that rule‐based labeling has a precision of approximately 90%, which makes the technique suitable and reliable for automatic selection of landmarks.