The effects of disproportional load contributions on quantifying vegetated filter strip sediment trapping efficiencies

Vegetated filter strips (VFSs) are a best management practice (BMP) commonly implemented adjacent to row-cropped fields to trap overland transport of sediment and other constituents present in agricultural runoff. Although they have been widely adopted, insufficient data exist to understand their short and long-term effectiveness. High inter-event variability in performance has been observed, yet the majority of studies report average removal efficiencies over observed or simulated events, ignoring the disproportional effects of loads into and out of VFSs over longer periods of time. We argue that due to positively correlated sediment concentration-discharge relationships, disproportional contribution of runoff events transporting sediment over the course of a year (i.e., temporal inequality), decreased performance with increasing flow rates, and effects of antecedent moisture condition, VFS removal efficiencies over annual time scales may be significantly lower than reported per-event averages. By applying a stochastic approach, we investigated the extent of disparity between reporting average efficiencies from each runoff event over the course of 1 year versus the total annual load reduction. Additionally, we examined the effects of soil texture, concentration-discharge relationship, and VFS slope in contributing to this disparity, with the goal of revealing potential errors that may be incurred by ignoring the effects of temporal inequality in quantifying VFS performance. Simulation results suggest that ignoring temporal inequality can lead to overestimation of annual performance by as little as < 2% and to as much as > 20%, with the greatest disparities observed for soils with high clay content.     

Green’s function of multi-layered poroelastic half-space for models of ground vibration due to railway traffic

This study proposes a Green’s function,an essential representation of water-saturated ground under moving excitation,to simulate ground borne vibration from trains.First,general solutions to the governing equations of poroelastic medium are derived by means of integral transform.Secondly,the transmission and reflection matrix approach is used to formulate the relationship between displacement and stress of the stratified ground,which results in the matrix of the Green’s function.Then the Green’s function is combined into a train-track-ground model,and is verified by typical examples and a field test.Additional simulations show that the computed ground vibration attenuates faster in the immediate vicinity of the track than in the surrounding area.The wavelength of wheel-rail unevenness has a notable effect on computed displacement and pore pressure.The variation of vibration intensity with the depth of ground is significantly influenced by the layering of the strata soil.When the train speed is equal to the velocity of the Rayleigh wave,the Mach cone appears in the simulated wave field.The proposed Green’s function is an appropriate representation for a layered ground with shallow ground water table,and will be helpful to understand the dynamic responses of the ground to complicated moving excitation.     

Seismic analysis of a curved bridge considering deck‐abutment pounding interaction: an analytical investigation on the post‐impact response

Horizontal curved bridges are very common at intersections and at the changing angle of bridge alignment. Almost in every previous earthquake report, it can be seen that the columns of a curved segment experience torsional damage, and the curved decks are unseated from the abutment support. The main reason behind that phenomenon is the in‐plane deck rotation which results because of the complex dynamic coupling between two longitudinal directional vibrations. The curved decks are susceptible to deck rotation because in a curved segment, the centre of mass and the centre of stiffness generally lie outside the bridge deck and are not located at the same point. The pounding with the abutment often increases the rotational tendency of the deck. In this paper, a classical mechanics‐based approach is adopted to analytically estimate the deck rotation potential of curved bridge considering the deck‐abutment pounding interaction. The deck‐abutment pounding is modelled using non‐smooth techniques considering the Newton's impact law in the normal and Coulomb's friction in the tangential direction. Within the scope of this paper, a parametric study is performed to get the ideal combination of the column and bent arrangement and the gap distance. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Estimating growing-season root zone soil moisture from vegetation index-based evapotranspiration fraction and soil properties in the Northwest Mountain region,USA

A soil moisture retrieval method is proposed, in the absence of ground-based auxiliary measurements, by deriving the soil moisture content relationship from the satellite vegetation index-based evapotranspiration fraction and soil moisture physical properties of a soil type. A temperature–vegetation dryness index threshold value is also proposed to identify water bodies and underlying saturated areas. Verification of the retrieved growing season soil moisture was performed by comparative analysis of soil moisture obtained by observed conventional in situ point measurements at the 239-km² Reynolds Creek Experimental Watershed, Idaho, USA (2006–2009), and at the US Climate Reference Network (USCRN) soil moisture measurement sites in Sundance, Wyoming (2012–2015), and Lewistown, Montana (2014–2015). The proposed method best represented the effective root zone soil moisture condition, at a depth between 50 and 100 cm, with an overall average R² value of 0.72 and average root mean square error (RMSE) of 0.042.     

An integrated study of geospatial information technologies for surface runoff estimation in an agricultural watershed,India

Runoff is one of the important hydrologic variables used in most of the water resources applications. The Soil Conservation Service-Curve Number (SCS-CN) method is adopted for the estimation of surface runoff in the Mehadrigedda watershed area, Visakhapatnam district, India using multispectral remote sensing data, curve number approach and normal rainfall data. The main source of water in the Mehadrigedda watershed area is by rain, most of it drains off and only a little percolates into ground. The weighted curve number is determined based on antecedent moisture condition (AMC)-II with an integration of hydrologic soil groups (HSGs) and land use/land cover LULC categories. An integrated approach is applied to delineate the land use/land cover information as adopted from NRSA classification. The recording of daily rainfall data during the years 1997–2006 is collected from Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) rainguage center at Kottavalasa. It is observed that the annual rainfall-runoff relationship during 1997–2006, which is indicating that the overall increase in runoff with the rainfall of the watershed area. Integration of remote sensing (RS) and geographical infomation system (GIS) techniques provide reliable, accurate and up-to-date information on land and water resources.     

Optical design of visible emission line coronagraph on Indian space solar mission Aditya-L1

The ground based observations of the coronal emission lines using a coronagraph are affected by the short duration of clear sky and varying sky transparency. These conditions do not permit to study small amplitude variations in the coronal emission reliably necessary to investigate the process or processes involved in heating the coronal plasma and dynamics of solar corona. The proposed Visible Emission Line Coronagraph (VELC) over comes these limitations and will provide continuous observation 24 h a day needed for detailed studies of solar corona and drivers for space weather predictions. VELC payload onboard India’s Aditya-L1 space mission is an internally occulted solar coronagraph for studying the temperature, velocity, density and heating of solar corona. To achieve the proposed science goals, an instrument which is capable of carrying out simultaneous imaging, spectroscopy and spectro-polarimetric observations of the solar corona close to the solar limb is required. VELC is designed with salient features of (a) Imaging solar corona at 500 nm with an angular resolution of 5 arcsec over a FOV of 1.05Ro to 3Ro (Ro:Solar radius) (b) Simultaneous multi-slit spectroscopy at 530.3 nm [Fe XIV],789.2 nm [Fe XI] and 1074.7 nm [Fe XIII] with spectral dispersion of 28mÅ, 31mÅ and 202mÅ per pixel respectively, over a FOV of 1.05Ro to 1.5Ro. (c) Multi-slit dual beam spectro-polarimetry at 1074.7 nm. All the components of instrument have been optimized in view of the scientific objectives and requirements of space payloads. In this paper we present the details of optical configuration and the expected performance of the payload.     

基于遥感影像的甘达基流域博卡拉和巴拉普尔的土地利用变化及其驱动力研究（英文）

城市扩张是反映经济增长的重要指标,但随意的城市扩张也带来了严重的社会经济问题、环境问题以及城市土地管理问题。在这个背景下,理解城市扩张的过程对于指导城市的可持续增长具有重要意义。本研究采用基于遥感影像的监督分类方法,分析了甘达基流域内的两个大城市—博卡拉和巴拉普尔1990–2018年的城市用地变化。结果表明:在过去的28年,博卡拉和巴拉普尔的城市面积分别显著扩张了300%和近500%。人口增长、城市基础设施和便利的生活方式引起周边地区向城市的人口迁移,是造成本研究区城市扩张的主要原因。除此之外,不断变化的城市定义和城市边界的扩张是造成城市快速扩张的关键因素。由于上述两个城市拥有高水平的商业活动以及现代化的设施,未来城市规模可能继续扩大。应当通过城市规划和政策减少随意的城市扩张,从而实现城市的可持续发展。     

Numerical modeling of neotectonic movements and state of stresses in the central Seismic Gap region,Garhwal Himalaya

This paper presents finite element modeling （FEM） to simulate the present-day stress field and crustal deformation using NE-SW structural section in the central Seismic Gap region of the Garhwal Himalaya. Our study deals with the effect of geometrical characteristics and rock layer parameters on the upper crust. Modeling results show that two types of tectonic regimes developed in the central Seismic Gap region： the geotectonics of the northern part has been controlled by regional compression, whereas southern part is characterized by regional extension. Correspondingly, thrust faults are induced in the northern part and normal faults are extensively developed in the southern front. Those evidences noticeably indicate that the compressive tectonic environment of the Himalaya becomes change into the extensional tectonic regime in its front. The computed shear stress accumulation along the northern fiat of Main Himalayan Thrust （MHT） implies that considerable amount of interseismic stress is building up along the MHT system in the Himalaya, which ultimately release through the possible future great Himalayan earthquake （M 〉 8）. The comparison between our modeled stress field, faulting pattern and horizontal shortening rate with the distribution of the microseismic events, focal mechanism solutions, active faulting and GPS data in the central Seismic Gap region shows good agreement.     

Assimilation of TOPEX Altimeter Data in a Reduced-Gravity Model of the Northwestern Indian Ocean

This study deals with the assimilation of TOPEX altimeter-derived sea level variability in a reduced-gravity model of the northwestern Indian Ocean. The assimilation has been done using variational assimilation method with adjoint technique. A cost function representing the misfit between the model and the data is minimized with the model equations acting as constraints. The initial conditions of the model are used as control parameters and the best-fit initial conditions are determined as a result of minimization carried out using a variable-storage quasi-Newton method. Experiment has been done with 10 days' cycle-averaged data of TOPEX. Assimilation for 10 days and 20 days has been performed and it has been seen that 20 days' assimilation of satellite data provides better results.