Heavy mineral distribution as related to environmental conditions for modern beach sediments from the Susanoglu (Atakent,Mersin, Turkey)

Geochemical works were conducted on anthropogenically effective lithologic unit exposing along the Susanoglu coast in Mersin, Turkey. For this purpose, beach sand sediments from 33 stations were collected and heavy metal and oxide concentrations were analyzed. To determine the source of heavy metals (natural and anthropogenic), simple and multivariate statistical analyses were applied. According to factor analysis, three factors were determined. The first factor consists of SiO₂, Al₂O₃, Na₂O, K₂O, TiO₂, Cr, Ni, Cu and Mo and total variance is explained with 27.502% and expressed as “natural process factor”. These elements (Cr, Ni, Cu, Mo) are closely associated with geogenic materials and came from same sources of ultrabasic rocks (ophiolite). The second factor consists of CaO, MgO, TiO₂, MnO, Ni, Pb, Zn and W and total variance is explained with 21.505% and expressed as “anthropogenic factor”. These elements (Pb, Zn, Cd, V, W) are anthropogenic and are mainly due to the effluent or industrial input/activities and came from different sources of pollution in the study area. The third factor consists of Pb, Cd and Sb and total variance is explained with 9.748% and expressed as “intermediate factor”. The factor analysis and the cluster analysis are in support of each other. Cr, Ni, Co, Cd, Hg and Mo concentrations are greater than Turkish acceptable values and they show toxic effect. Al, Cu, Pb, Cd and Mo concentrations in beach sand deposits in the Susanoglu coast are found as 1.44, 1.26, 1.21, 1.02 and 1.04 mg/kg and higher than those in Kızkalesi beach sands. However, all other heavy metal contents are determined in low concentrations.     

Local interpolation of coseismic displacements measured by InSAR

Coseismic displacements play a significant role in characterizing earthquake causative faults and understanding earthquake dynamics. They are typically measured from InSAR using pre- and post-earthquake images. The displacement map produced by InSAR may contain missing coseismic values due to the decorrelation of ASAR images. This study focused on interpolating missing values in the coseismic displacement map of the 2003 Bam earthquake using geostatistics with the aim of running a slip distribution model. The gaps were grouped into 23 patches. Variograms of the patches showed that the displacement data were spatially correlated. The variogram prepared for ordinary kriging (OK) indicated the presence of a trend and thus justified the use of universal kriging (UK). Accuracy assessment was performed in 3 ways. First, 11 patches of equal size and with an equal number of missing values generated artificially, were kriged and validated. Second, the four selected patches results were validated after shifting them to new locations without missing values and comparing them with the observed values. Finally, cross validation was performed for both types of patch at the original and shifted locations. UK results were better than OK in terms of kriging variance, mean error (ME) and root mean square error (RMSE). For both OK and UK, only 4 out of 23 patches (1, 5, 11 and 21) showed ME and RMSE values that were substantially larger than for the other patches. The accuracy assessment results were found to be satisfactory with ME and RMSE values close to zero. InSAR data inversion demonstrated the usefulness of interpolation of the missing coseismic values by improving a slip distribution model. It is therefore concluded that kriging serves as an effective tool for interpolating the missing values on a coseismic displacement map.     

Geostatistical estimation of signal-to-noise ratios for spectral vegetation indices

In the past 40 years, many spectral vegetation indices have been developed to quantify vegetation biophysical parameters. An ideal vegetation index should contain the maximum level of signal related to specific biophysical characteristics and the minimum level of noise such as background soil influences and atmospheric effects. However, accurate quantification of signal and noise in a vegetation index remains a challenge, because it requires a large number of field measurements or laboratory experiments. In this study, we applied a geostatistical method to estimate signal-to-noise ratio (S/N) for spectral vegetation indices. Based on the sample semivariogram of vegetation index images, we used the standardized noise to quantify the noise component of vegetation indices. In a case study in the grasslands and shrublands of the western United States, we demonstrated the geostatistical method for evaluating S/N for a series of soil-adjusted vegetation indices derived from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) sensor. The soil-adjusted vegetation indices were found to have higher S/N values than the traditional normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) and simple ratio (SR) in the sparsely vegetated areas. This study shows that the proposed geostatistical analysis can constitute an efficient technique for estimating signal and noise components in vegetation indices.     

河北省遵化平原土壤养分的时空变异特征 ——变异函数与Kriging插值分析

运用地统计学 ,结合 GIS研究了 2 0年前后河北省遵化县 (市 )土壤表层 ( 0～ 2 0 cm)速效钾、速效磷和有机质 3种养分的时空变异规律。配对样本的 t检验以及 kriging插值的结果表明 ,1 999年土壤速效钾、速效磷和有机质的含量比 1 980年有一定提高。 3种养分的空间分布特征也不同程度地发生了变化。有机质的空间分布特征变化较大 ,其块金值 ( Nugget)与基台值( Sill)之比从 1 980年的 60 %下降到 1 999年的 32 .3% ,变程也由 4.8km变为 2 .7km。速效钾和速效磷的块金值与基台值之比也有一定变化 ,但变程没有太大改变。人类的施肥、耕作措施的改变及土地利用变化是引起土壤养分变化的主要原因。     

Pilot points method incorporating prior information for solving the groundwater flow inverse problem

The pilot points method is often used in nonlinear geostatistical calibration. The method consists of estimating the values of the hydraulic properties at a set of arbitrary (pilot) points so as to best fit the aquifer response as measured by available indirect observations (i.e., heads or drawdowns). Though this method remains general and appealing, no prior information of the hydraulic properties is usually included in the optimization process, which constrains the number of pilot points to ensure stability. In this paper, we present a modification of the pilot points method, including prior information in the optimization process by adding a plausibility term to the objective function to be minimized. This results from formulating the inverse problem in a maximum likelihood framework. The performance of the method is tested on a synthetic example. Results show that including the plausibility term improves the identification of heterogeneity. Furthermore, this term makes the inverse problem more stable and allows the use of larger number of pilot points, thus improving the identification of the heterogeneity as well. Therefore, the use of the plausibility term is recommended.     

全球变化中土壤信息系统的研究进展

地理信息系统（GIS）支持下的土壤信息系统（SIS）在评价土地生产能力、土地退化的现状、速率和风险以及全球变化研究中具有重要意义。简述了国内外SIS的研究进展,包括FAO世界土壤图的出版和修正、数字化世界土壤资源数据库（SDB）的建立、土壤—土地数字化数据库（SOTER）在全世界的进展、世界土壤排放清单（WISE）的发展以及美国和我国的SIS进展情况。在此基础上简介了土壤属性空间变异性的研究方法———地形分析和地质统计学,并指出地质统计学与GIS的结合将是未来的发展趋势。     

Assigning land use to supply wells for the statistical characterization of regional groundwater quality: Correlating urban land use and VOC occurrence

Many national and regional groundwater studies have correlated land use “near” a well, often using a 500 m radius circle, with water quality. However, the use of a 500 m circle may seem counterintuitive given that contributing areas are expected to extend up-gradient from wells, and not be circular in shape. The objective of this study was to evaluate if a 500 m circle is adequate for assigning land use to a well for the statistical correlation between urban land use and the occurrence of volatile organic compounds (VOCs). Land use and VOC data came from 277 supply wells in four study areas in California. Land use was computed using ten different-sized circles and wedges (250 m to 10 km in radius), and three different-sized “searchlights” (1–2 km in length). We define these shapes as contributing area surrogates (CASs), recognizing that a simple shape is at best a surrogate for the actual contributing area. The presence or absence of correlation between land use and the occurrence of VOCs was evaluated using Kendall’s tau (τ). Values of τ were within 10% of one another for wedges and circles ranging in size from 500 m to 2 km, with correlations remaining statistically significant (p < 0.05) for all CAS sizes and shapes, suggesting that a 500 m circular CAS is adequate for assigning land use to a well. Additional evaluation indicated that urban land use is autocorrelated at distances ranging from 8 to 36 km. Thus, urban land use in a 500 m CAS is likely to be predictive of urban land use in the actual contributing area.     

Comparative soil CO2 flux measurements and geostatistical estimation methods on Masaya volcano, Nicaragua

We present a comparative study of soil CO₂ flux () measured by five groups (Groups 1–5) at the IAVCEI-CCVG Eighth Workshop on Volcanic Gases on Masaya volcano, Nicaragua. Groups 1–5 measured using the accumulation chamber method at 5-m spacing within a 900 m² grid during a morning (AM) period. These measurements were repeated by Groups 1–3 during an afternoon (PM) period. Measured ranged from 218 to 14,719 g m⁻² day⁻¹. The variability of the five measurements made at each grid point ranged from ±5 to 167%. However, the arithmetic means of fluxes measured over the entire grid and associated total CO₂ emission rate estimates varied between groups by only ±22%. All three groups that made PM measurements reported an 8–19% increase in total emissions over the AM results. Based on a comparison of measurements made during AM and PM times, we argue that this change is due in large part to natural temporal variability of gas flow, rather than to measurement error. In order to estimate the mean and associated CO₂ emission rate of one data set and to map the spatial distribution, we compared six geostatistical methods: arithmetic and minimum variance unbiased estimator means of uninterpolated data, and arithmetic means of data interpolated by the multiquadric radial basis function, ordinary kriging, multi-Gaussian kriging, and sequential Gaussian simulation methods. While the total CO₂ emission rates estimated using the different techniques only varied by ±4.4%, the maps showed important differences. We suggest that the sequential Gaussian simulation method yields the most realistic representation of the spatial distribution of , but a variety of geostatistical methods are appropriate to estimate the total CO₂ emission rate from a study area, which is a primary goal in volcano monitoring research.Editorial responsibility: H Shinohara     

用人工神经网络进行变差图的最优拟合

本文提出变差图最优拟合的人工神经网络方法,并选取几个实例作为研究对象,其拟合最大相对误差不超过2％,计算机CPU时间不超过80秒。结果表明,该方法性能良好,在地质统计学上有广泛的应用前景。