Avoiding deforestation in Panamanian protected areas: An analysis of protection effectiveness and implications for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation

Reducing greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD) is likely to be central to a post-Kyoto climate change mitigation agreement. As such, identifying conditions and factors that will shape the success or failure of a reduced deforestation scheme will provide important insights for policy planning. Given that protected areas (PAs) are a cornerstone in forest conservation, we draw on interviews and secondary data to analyze the effects of available PA resources, governance ability, the level of community involvement, and provincial deforestation rates on land-cover change in nine PAs in Panama. Our results illustrate that coupling surveillance measures with greater funding and strong governance are paramount to reducing deforestation. Alone, however, these factors are insufficient for forest protection. We argue that conservation approaches that complement effective surveillance with community participation and equitable benefit sharing will address the wider issues of leakage and permanence.     

Long-term stability of planetary orbits between Jupiter and Saturn

We extend our two previous studies on the existence of stable orbits in the Solar System by examining the domain between Jupiter and Saturn. We place (1) a massless object, (2) a Moon-mass object, (3) a Mars-mass object, (4) an Earth-mass object, and (5) a Uranus-mass object in the said region. Note that these objects are considered separately in the framework of our simulations. Our goal is to explore the orbital stability of those objects. We employ the Lie-integration method, which is fast and well established, allowing us to solve the respective differential equations for the $N$-body system. Hence, we consider the celestial bodies spanning from Jupiter to Neptune, including the aforementioned test object, the main focus for our model simulations. The integrations indicate that in some models the test objects placed in the region between Jupiter and Saturn reside in that region for more than 600 Myr. Between 5 and 10 au, mean-motion resonances (MMRs) take place acting upon the test objects akin to simulations of Paper I and II. Our models indicate relatively small differences for the long-term stability of the five test objects notwithstanding their vastly different masses. Generally, it is found that between $a_{\text{ini}}=7.04$ and 7.13 au the orbits become unstable mostly within 5 million years and further out, that is, up to $a_{\text{ini}}=7.29$ au, the duration of stability lengthens to up to hundreds of millions of years.     

Solar protons on closed magnetospheric field lines after an interplanetary flux decrease

Particle measurements from the low altitude polar-orbiting satellite GRS-A/Azur and from Explorer 41 in the magnetosheath during a time period after the sudden commencement at 14:30 UT on 8 March 1970, have been used in order to study the access mode of solar particles into the closed field line region of the magnetosphere. A particle decrease in the magnetosheath and over the central polar cap but not in the stable trapping region indicates that solar particles are temporarily trapped and can complete several drifts around the Earth. A single loss cone distribution ～2° inside of the stable trapping region cannot be explained by strong pitch angle scattering but is probably due to non-adiabatic particle motion.     

Generation and evaluation of multitemporal digital terrain models of the Mt. Everest area from different optical sensors

Multitemporal digital terrain models (DTM) are an important source for many purposes such as the detection of areas, which are susceptible to natural hazards such as landslides and glacial lake outburst floods, or for the examination of changes in glacier thickness. To exploit the potential of stereo satellite and aerial imagery for time series analysis, the employed methodology and software can be critical. A statistical analysis based on quartiles is presented to eliminate the influence of registration and elevation errors in DTMs. For our analysis, we used multi-temporal airborne and spaceborne stereoscopic images. The oldest images were recorded in the 1960s by the US American reconnaissance satellite Corona, while the most recent imagery are 2007 Cartosat-1 stereo scenes, along with one ASTER stereo pair. Complex panoramic distortion and limited spatial resolution resulted in the Corona and ASTER DTMs having the highest RMSEz. Due to differing acquisition techniques, applied software packages and temporal differences DTMs will never be identical. Therefore, we propose a relative vertical accuracy assessment with a master DTM. We chose the Cartosat-1 DTM as it showed the highest absolute accuracy. Inaccuracies between the master and the slave DTMs were adjusted by means of trend surfaces and outliers were successfully eliminated applying the interquartile range.     

Assimilation of Earth rotation parameters into a global ocean model: length of day excitation

Changes in the oceanic current system and in the oceanic mass distribution alter, together with other processes, the state of the Earth’s rotation. This state is characterized by the length of day (LOD) and the tilt of the pole-to-pole axis. The aim of our study was to derive the respective governing physical mechanisms in the ocean. Therefore, Earth rotation observations were assimilated into a global circulation model of the ocean. Although assimilation is a well-established tool in climate science, the assimilation of Earth rotation observations into a global ocean model was done here for the first time. Prior to the assimilation, the Earth rotation observations were projected onto the angular momentum of the ocean. Non-oceanic contributions were removed. The result of the subsequent assimilation procedure is a time varying ocean model state that reproduces the projected Earth rotation observations well. This solution was studied to understand the oceanic generation of Earth rotation deviations and to identify governing physical mechanisms. This paper focuses on LOD anomalies although polar motion was assimilated simultaneously. Our results indicate that changes in the oceanic LOD excitation are mostly attributed to changes in total ocean mass. Changes in the spatial distribution of ocean mass turned out to have a minor contribution to the LOD deviations. The same applies to changes in the current system.     

Buildings in GI: How to deal with building models in the GIS domain

Digital building information is important during a building's lifecycle, it is needed from first design until demolition. The two domains that mainly contribute are AEC (architecture, engineering, and construction) during design, construction, and operation, and GIS as a supporting discipline for analysis and further integration of the building's environment. However, there is a challenge in information exchange between the two domains, resulting in the remodeling of digital building information in GIS. In this article, we identify three major data sources from the AEC domain and show transformation processes to enable the integration of such models into the geographical environment in the form of one transition model. Furthermore, we show that this model can either be used directly or exported in the form of de facto standards that allow for further analysis.     

Whole-bird models for the magnetic cleansing of oiled feathers

Iron powder, a promising dry-cleansing agent for oiled feathers where both the contaminant and the cleansing agent may be harvested magnetically, has been tested on the plumage of whole-bird models. The breast and back plumage of Mallard Duck (Anas platyrhynchos) and Little Penguin (Eudyptula minor) carcasses were patch-contaminated with commercial-grade engine oil, three different crude oils, and an oil/seawater emulsion. The plumage was then subjected to a magnetic cleansing protocol. The contaminant removal was assessed gravimetrically and was found to reflect the outcomes for a previously reported in vitro study using feather clusters. Between 92-98% of the contaminants, and effectively all of the cleansing agent, were removed from the feathers.