Use of cartographic images by expert and novice field geologists in planning fieldwork routes

Topographic maps and aerial photographs are particularly useful when geoscientists are faced with fieldwork tasks such as selecting paths for observation, establishing sampling schemes, or defining field regions. These types of images are crucial in bedrock geologic mapping, a cognitively complex field-based problem-solving task. Geologic mapping requires the geologist to correctly identify rock types and three-dimensional bedrock structures from often partial or poor-quality outcrop data while navigating through unfamiliar terrain. This paper compares the walked routes of novice to expert geologists working in the field (n = 66) with the results of a route planning and navigation survey of a similar population of geologists (n = 77). Results show clearly that those geologists with previous mapping experience make quick and decisive determinations about field areas from available imagery and maps, regardless of whether they are or not physically present in the field area. Recognition of geologic features enabled experts to form and verbalize a specific plan for travel through a landscape based on those features. Novices were less likely to develop specific travel route plans and were less likely to identify critical landscape cues from aerial photographs.     

IDENTIFYING AND ASSESSING PROBLEM AREAS IN SOIL EROSION SURVEYS USING AERIAL PHOTOGRAPHS

Gully erosion has for many years been a problem in Rhodesia1s Tribal Trust Lands. This paper describes how Soil Conservation Service staff, with no previous ground knowledge of these areas, used good quality 1/25,000 scale aerial photographs to measure the extent of the gully erosion and to pinpoint erosion “black spots.” This enabled quick and reliable estimates of the cost of reclamation work to be made without the need for time-consuming field survey. The survey method discussed is capable of wide application wherever gully erosion occurs and needs to be brought under control.     

Surface gravitational field and topography changes induced by the Earth’s fluid core motions

Using a Love number formalism, the elastic deformations of the mantle and the mass redistribution gravitational potential within the Earth induced by the fluid pressure acting at the core–mantle boundary (CMB) are computed. This pressure field changes at a decadal time scale and may be estimated from observations of the surface magnetic field and its secular variation. First, using a spherical harmonic expansion, the poloidal and toroidal part of the fluid velocity field at the CMB for the last 40 years is computed, under the hypothesis of tangential geostrophy. Then the associated geostrophic pressure, whose order of magnitude is about 1000 Pa, is computed. The surface topography induced by this pressure field is computed using Love numbers, and is a few millimetres. The mass redistribution gravitational potential induced by these deformations and, in particular, the zonal components of the related surface gravitational potential perturbation (J₂, J₃ and J₄ coefficients), are calculated. Overall perturbations for the J₂ coefficient of about 10^–10, for J₃ of about 10^–11 and for J₄ are found of about 0.3×10^–11. Finally, these theoretical results are compared with recent observations of the decadal variation of J₂ from satellite laser ranging. Results concerning J₂ can be described as follows: first, they are one order of magnitude too small to explain the observed decadal variation of J₂ and, second, they show a significant linear trend over the last 40 years, whose rate of decrease amounts to 7% of the observed value.     

Seismic hazard monitoring in Kamchatka and its applications to the M = 6.6 earthquake of 6 October 1987

The earthquake of 6 October 1987 (M = 6.6), which occurred near the Shipunsky Cape, Kamchatka, was the largest crustal event in the vicinity of the main city of Kamchatka — Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky — during the last three decades. It was followed by numerous aftershocks. This earthquake allowed us to test the effectiveness of the seismic hazard monitoring in Kamchatka, including the seismological, geodetic and hydrogeochemical surveys. The seismic survey provided the location and source nature of the main shock and aftershocks and the seismic environment of the main shock. The geodetic and hydrogeochemical surveys have yielded data on the response to earthquakes of the Earth's surface deformations, water level, and chemical elements concentration in the underground water. As a result, the following data were obtained:

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The earthquake of 6 October had a seismic moment 4–10 E18 Nm, thrust type of faulting and the source volume of 20 × 20 × 10 km³. The maximum intensity was VI–VII (MSK-64 scale) and maximum acceleration 88 cm/s².

Before this event, a relative increase in the number of the upper mantle (depth more than 100 km) moderate magnitude earthquakes during 5 years and a one-year period of seismic quiescence for small shallow earthquakes, were recognized. Significant anomalies in HCO₃ and H₃BO₃ concentrations in the underground waters were observed in the wells a week before the main shock.

     

Sedimentation on the Ionian active margin (Hellenic arc) — Provenance of sediments and mechanisms of deposition

Lithological, sedimentological, mineralogical and faunal analyses of twenty cores from the western Peloponnesus margin and adjacent Matapan Trench permit the origin of the sediments and the processes of sedimentation to be defined in some detail.Except for the ash layers derived from the Ischian Province, the major part of the sediment is local in origin (Peloponnesus). Analyses of heavy, light and clay minerals enable three main provinces to be distinguished. Each of these provinces includes one or more slope basins and a portion of trench, without lateral connection between them and mixing of inputs.The diversity and complexity of sedimentary structures, the granulometric characters, the mixed fauna (molluscs and ostracods) and the variability of rates of sedimentation all testify to the prevalence of reworking phenomena and gravitative processes.These data confirm and elaborate on the model of sedimentation deduced from seismic studies in which sediments are successively trapped, released by the slope basins and transferred via channels and canyons towards the underlying trench basins. This “cascade feeding” appears characteristics of this subductive sedimentary environment.     

Resourcesat (IRS-P6) value added data products

Remote sensing data products need to meet stringent geodetic and geometric accuracy specifications irrespective of intended user applications. Georeferencing is the basic processing step towards achieving this goal. Having known the imaging geometry and mechanism, the mathematical models built with the use of orbit and attitude information of the spacecraft can correct the remote sensing data for its geometric degradations only up to system level accuracy (IRS-P6 DP Team, 2000). The uncertainties in the orbit and attitude information will not allow the geometric correction model to generate products of accuracy that can meet user requirements unless Ground Control Points (GCP) are used as reference geo-location landmarks. IRS-P6 data processing team has been entrusted with developing a software system to generate data products that will have desired geodetic and geometric accuracies with known limitations. The intended software system is called the Value Added Data Products System (VADS). Precision corrected, Template Registered, Merged and Ortho Rectified products are the value added products planned with VADS.     

Low-low satellite-to-satellite tracking: a comparison between analytical linear orbit perturbation theory and numerical integration

Low-low satellite-to-satellite tracking (ll-SST) range-rate observations have been predicted by two methods: one based on a linear perturbation theory in combination with the Hill equations, and one based on solving the equations of motion of two low-flying satellites by numerical integration. The two methods produce almost equivalent Fourier spectra of the range-rate observations after properly taking into account a few resonant terms. For a typical GRACE-type configuration, where the two satellites trail each other at a distance of 300 km at an altitude of 460 km, and in the presence of the EGM96 gravity field model, complete to spherical harmonic degree and order 70, the agreement between the Fourier spectra is about 1 mm/s compared to a root-mean-square (RMS) value of more than 220 mm/s for the range-rate signal. The discrepancy of 1 mm/s can be reduced significantly when not taking into account perturbations caused by the J₂ term. Excluding the J₂ term, the agreement between the two methods improves to 0.4 mm/s compared to a RMS value of 6 mm/s for the range-rate signal. These values are 0.01 and 2.3 mm/s when ignoring the spectrum for frequencies below two cycles per orbital revolution, reducing the discrepancy even further to about 0.5% of the signal. The selected linear perturbation theory is thus capable of modeling gravity field induced range-rate observations with very high precision for a large part of the spectrum.     

Spaceborne gravitational field determination by means of locally supported wavelets

In space-borne gravitational field determination, two challenges are inherent. First, the continuation of the data down to the surface of the Earth is an ill-posed problem, requiring therefore regularization techniques. Second huge data sets result requiring efficient numerical methods. In this paper, we show how locally supported wavelets on the sphere can be developed by means of a spherical version of the so-called up function. By construction, the corresponding scaling functions and wavelets are infinitely smooth, so that they can be used for regularization purposes. In particular, we show how the ill-posed pseudo-differential equations coming from satellite missions can be regularized by efficient numerical schemes using locally supported wavelets. These methods seem in particular to be interesting for regional gravity field modelling.     

Accuracy of differential shift estimation by correlation and split-bandwidth interferometry for wideband and delta-k SAR systems

Estimation of differential shift of image elements between two synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images is the basis for many applications, like digital elevation model generation or ground motion mapping. The shift measurement can be done nonambiguously on the macro scale at an accuracy depending on the range resolution of the system or on the micro scale by employing interferometric methods. The latter suffers from phase cycle ambiguities and requires phase unwrapping. Modern wideband high-resolution SAR systems boast resolutions as small as a few tens of a wavelength. If sufficiently many samples are used for macro-scale shift estimation, the accuracy can be increased to a small fraction of a resolution cell and even in the order of a wavelength. Then, accurate absolute ranging becomes precise enough to support phase unwrapping or even make it obsolete. This letter establishes a few fundamental equations on the accuracy bounds of shift estimation accuracy for several algorithms: coherent speckle correlation, incoherent speckle correlation, split-band interferometry, a multifrequency approach, and correlation of point scatterers in clutter. It is shown that the performance of split-band interferometry is close to the Crame/spl acute/r-Rao bound for a broad variety of bandwidth ratios. Based on these findings, Delta-k systems are proposed to best take advantage of the available radar bandwidth.