Correspondence between the large volcanic eruptions and ENSO events over AD 1525–2000

ENSO is an interannual mode which may be affected by external forcing, such as volcanic eruptions. Based on the reconstructed volcanic eruptions chronology and ENSO sequences, both 195 large volcanic eruptions(VEI≥4) and 398 ENSO(El Ni?o and La Ni?a) events were extracted from 1525 to 2000. An analysis of the correspondence between the large volcanic eruptions and ENSO events was performed by matching the large volcanic eruptions with the types and magnitudes of ENSO events present in the 0–2 years after the eruptions. The results show the following:(1) The percentages of ENSO events within the 3 years after the large eruptions had increased to 68.3% from 31.7% compared with those with no-eruptions in the previous 0–2 years. In addition, the ratio of El Ni?o to La Ni?a events turned from 2:3 to 1:1, and more El Ni?o events occurred in the 0 year after eruptions in the low-latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere and in the tropics but more La Ni?a events occurred in the 0 year after in the high-latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere and the Southern Hemisphere.(2) After the eruptions, the weak(W) El Ni?o events had increased by 8 percentage points and the very strong(VS) El Ni?o events had decreased by 10 percentage points; conversely, there was a decrease by 15 percentage points of the weak La Ni?a events and an increase by 11.4 percentage points of the very strong La Ni?a events. Specifically, the percentages of strong La Ni?a events increased to a peak at 1(+1) year after the eruptions.(3) The percentage of eruptions followed by single-year ENSO was the greatest. The percentage of ENSO events that occurred in the consecutive 2 years following an eruption was approximately equal to the percentage of events that occurred consecutively 3 years following an eruption, and both sets of ENSO magnitudes showed a decreasing trend.     

全球粮食安全格局的时空演化

Food security is the primary prerequisite for achieving other Millennium Development Goals(MDGs).Given that the MDG of“halving the proportion of hungers by 2015”was not realized as scheduled,it will be more pressing and challenging to reach the goal of zero hunger by 2030.So there is high urgency to find the pattern and mechanism of global food security from the perspective of spatio-temporal evolution.In this paper,based on the analysis of database by using a multi-index evaluation method and radar map area model,the global food security level for 172 countries from 2000 to 2014 were assessed;and then spatial autocorrelation analysis was conducted to depict the spatial patterns and changing characteristics of global food security;then,multi-nonlinear regression methods were employed to identify the factors affecting the food security patterns.The results show:1)The global food security pattern can be summarized as“high-high aggregation,low-low aggregation”.The most secure countries are mainly distributed in Western Europe,North America,Oceania and parts of East Asia.The least secure countries are mainly distributed in sub-Saharan Africa,South Asia and West Asia,and parts of Southeast Asia.2)Europe and sub-Saharan Africa are hot and cold spots of the global food security pattern respectively,while in non-aggregation areas,Haiti,North Korea,Tajikistan and Afghanistan have long-historical food insecurity problems.3)The pattern of global food security is generally stable,but the internal fluctuations in the extremely insecure groups were significant.The countries with the highest food insecurity are also the countries with the most fluctuated levels of food security.4)The annual average temperature,per capita GDP,proportion of people accessible to clean water,political stability and non-violence levels are the main factors influencing the global food security pattern.Research shows that the status of global food security has improved since the year 2000,yet there are still many challenges such as unstable global food security and acute regional food security issues.It will be difficult to understand these differences from a single factor,especially the annual average temperature and annual precipitation.The abnormal performance of the above factors indicates that appropriate natural conditions alone do not absolutely guarantee food security,while the levels of agricultural development,the purchasing power of residents,regional accessibility,as well as political and economic stability have more direct influence.     

The potential of Pléiades images with high angle of incidence for reconstructing the coastal cliff face in Normandy (France)

To monitor chalk cliff face along the Normandy coast (NW France) which is prone to erosion, we tested the potential of cliff face 3D reconstruction using pairs of images with high angle of incidence at different dates from the agile Pléiades satellites. The verticality aspect of the cliff face brings difficulties in the 3D reconstruction process. Furthermore, the studied area is challenging mainly because the cliff face is north-oriented (shadow). Pléiades images were acquired over several days (multi-date stereoscopic method) with requested incidence angles until 40°. 3D reconstructions of the cliff face were compared using two software: ASP® and ERDAS IMAGINE®. Our results are twofold. Firstly, despite ASP® provides denser point clouds than ERDAS IMAGINE® (an average of 1.60 points/m² from 40° incidence angle stereoscopic pairs on the whole cliff face of Varengeville-sur-Mer against 0.77 points/m² respectively), ERDAS IMAGINE® provides more reliable point clouds than ASP® (precision assessment on the Varengeville-sur-Mer cliff face of 0.31 m ± 2.53 and 0.39 m ± 4.24 respectively), with a better spatial distribution over the cliff face and a better representation of the cliff face shape. Secondly, the quality of 3D reconstructions depends mostly on the amount of noise from raw images and on the shadow intensity on the cliff face (radiometric quality of images).     

Estimating the starting time and identifying the type of urbanization based on dense time series of landsat-derived Vegetation-Impervious-Soil (V-I-S) maps – A case study of North Taiwan from 1990 to 2015

Land cover and land use change (LCLUC) is a global phenomenon, and LCLUC in urbanizing regions has substantial impacts on humans and their environments. In this paper, a semi-automatic approach to identifying the type and starting time of urbanization was developed and tested based on dense time series of Vegetation-Impervious-Soil (V-I-S) maps derived from Landsat surface reflectance imagery. The accuracy of modeled V-I-S fractions and the estimated time of initial change in impervious cover were assessed. North Taiwan, one of the regions of the island of Taiwan that experienced the greatest urban LCLUC, was chosen as a test area, and the study period is 1990 to 2015, a period of substantial urbanization. In total, 295 dates of Landsat imagery were used to create 295 V-I-S fraction maps that were used to construct fractional cover time series for each pixel. Root Mean Square Error (RMSE)s for the modeled Vegetation, Impervious, and Soil were 25 %, 22 %, 24 % respectively. The time of Urban Expansion is estimated by logistic regression applied to Impervious cover time series, while the time of change for Urban Renewal is determined by the period of brief Soil exposure. The identified location and estimated time for newly urbanized lands were generally accurate, with 80% of Urban Expansion estimated within ±2.4 years. However, the accuracy of identified Urban Renewal was relatively low. Our approach to identifying Urban Expansion with dense time series of Landsat imagery is shown to be reliable, while Urban Renewal identification is not.     

Accuracy assessment of NLCD 2011 percent impervious cover for selected USA metropolitan areas

The emergence of high-resolution land cover data has created the opportunity to assess the accuracy of impervious cover (IC) provided by the National Land Cover Database (NLCD). We assessed the accuracy of the 900 m² NLCD2011 %IC for 18 metropolitan areas throughout the conterminous United States using reference data from 1 m² land cover data developed as part of the United States Environmental Protection Agency’s EnviroAtlas project. Agreement was assessed from two perspectives: 1) sensitivity to the size of the assessment unit used for the comparison, and 2) utility of NLCD %IC to serve as a proxy for high-resolution IC. The former perspective was considered because statistical relationships can be sensitive to assessment unit size and shape, and the latter perspective was considered because high resolution (reference) %IC data are not available nationwide. The utility of NLCD %IC as a proxy for the high resolution data was assessed for seven lattice (square) cell sizes ranging from 1 ha to 200 ha using four EnviroAtlas IC indicators: 1) %IC per 100 ha (1 km²); 2) %IC by Census block group; 3) %IC within a 15 m (radius) of the riparian zone, and; 4) %IC within a 50 m (radius) of the riparian zone. Agreement was quantified as per assessment unit deviation (NLCD %IC – reference %IC) and summarized as Mean Absolute Deviation (MAD) and Mean Deviation (MD) both within and across the 18 metropolitan areas. Ordinary least squares (OLS) regression (y = reference %IC and x = NLCD %IC) was also used to evaluate the quality of the NLCD %IC data. MAD was ≤ 5% for six of the seven lattice cell sizes. MAD was also ≤ 5% for Census block groups > 100 ha and for both riparian units. These results suggest that uncertainty attributable to the measurement of %IC was no greater than the uncertainty related to the effect of IC on aquatic resources that have been derived from studies of aquatic condition (e.g., benthic fauna) over a range of %IC. Overall, agreement was variable from one metropolitan area to the next. Agreement improved as assessment unit size increased and declined as the level of urbanization (NLCD %IC) increased. NLCD %IC tended to underestimate reference %IC overall, but NLCD %IC was sometimes greater than reference %IC in urbanized settings.     

Integration of remote sensing,county-level census,and machine learning for century-long regional cropland distribution data reconstruction

The Lower Mississippi Alluvial Valley (LMAV) was home to about ten million hectare bottomland hardwood (BLH) forests in the Southern U.S. It experienced over 80 % area loss of the BLH forests in the past centuries and large-scale afforestation in recent decades. Due to the lack of a high-resolution cropland dataset, impacts of land use change (LUC) on the LMAV ecosystem services have not been fully understood. In this study, we developed a novel framework by integrating the machine learning algorithm, county-level agricultural census, and satellite-based cropland products to reconstruct the LMAV cropland distribution during 1850–2018 at a 30-m resolution. Results showed that the LMAV cropland area increased from 0.78 × 10⁴ km² in 1850 to 6.64 × 10⁴ km² in 1980 and then decreased to 6.16 × 10⁴ km² in 2018. Cropland expansion rate was the largest in the 1960s (749 km² yr⁻¹) but decreased rapidly thereafter, whereas cropland abandonment rate increased substantially in recent decades with the largest rate of 514 km² yr⁻¹ in the 2010s. Our dataset has three notable features: (1) the depiction of fine spatial details, (2) the integration of the county-level census, and (3) the inclusion of a machine-learning algorithm trained by satellite-based land cover product. Most importantly, our dataset well captured the continuous increasing trend in cropland area from 1930–1960, which was misrepresented by other cropland datasets reconstructed from the state-level census. Our dataset would be important to accurately evaluate the impacts of historical deforestation and recent afforestation efforts on regional ecosystem services, attribute the observed hydrological changes to anthropogenic and natural driving factors, and investigate how the socioeconomic factors control regional LUC pattern. Our framework and dataset are crucial to developing managerial and policy strategies for conserving natural resources and enhancing ecosystem services in the LMAV.     

The effect of leaf-on and leaf-off forest canopy conditions on LiDAR derived estimations of forest structural diversity

Forest structural diversity metrics describing diversity in tree size and crown shape within forest stands can be used as indicators of biodiversity. These diversity metrics can be generated using airborne laser scanning (LiDAR) data to provide a rapid and cost effective alternative to ground-based inspection. Measures of tree height derived from LiDAR can be significantly affected by the canopy conditions at the time of data collection, in particular whether the canopy is under leaf-on or leaf-off conditions, but there have been no studies of the effects on structural diversity metrics. The aim of this research is to assess whether leaf-on/leaf-off changes in canopy conditions during LiDAR data collection affect the accuracy of calculated forest structural diversity metrics. We undertook a quantitative analysis of LiDAR ground detection and return height, and return height diversity from two airborne laser scanning surveys collected under leaf-on and leaf-off conditions to assess initial dataset differences. LiDAR data were then regressed against field-derived tree size diversity measurements using diversity metrics from each LiDAR dataset in isolation and, where appropriate, a mixture of the two. Models utilising leaf-off LiDAR diversity variables described DBH diversity, crown length diversity and crown width diversity more successfully than leaf-on (leaf-on models resulted in R² values of 0.66, 0.38 and 0.16, respectively, and leaf-off models 0.67, 0.37 and 0.23, respectively). When LiDAR datasets were combined into one model to describe tree height diversity and DBH diversity the models described 75% and 69% of the variance (R² of 0.75 for tree height diversity and 0.69 for DBH diversity). The results suggest that tree height diversity models derived from airborne LiDAR, collected (and where appropriate combined) under any seasonal conditions, can be used to differentiate between simple single and diverse multiple storey forest structure with confidence.     

融合多源时空数据的城市火灾危险性评估

城市层面的火灾风险评估主要包括火灾危险性、危害性及救援能力等方面。本文选取火灾危险性评估进行针对性研究,在大数据思维的指导下,以相关关系代替因果关系,采用多源数据对评估指标权重、分值进行率定,得出福州市城区火灾危险性时空分布图。首先利用高德地图API对消防历史出警记录进行地址解析,将近万条火灾出警地址空间落点,获得福州市历史火灾空间分布;然后综合城市用地性质现状、用地开发性质、人口分布热力图等多源异构数据,探索其与历史火灾空间分布的相关性;最后以福州城区为例,初步实现具有充分数理支撑的火灾危险性评估方法,形成火灾危险性动态评估成果,为城市消防规划等提供支撑和依据。     

基于像元二分模型的地表植被覆盖度估算模块化设计与实现

地表植被覆盖度是的一种应用广泛的定量遥感产品,在水文、生态、区域变化等方面都具有重要的意义。像元二分模型是应用最多的一种遥感估算地表覆盖度的方法。目前,用遥感的方法进行地表植被覆盖度估算没有完整、系统的工具,用户只能逐步进行操作,效率低下,鉴于上述情况,本文运用IDL交互式数据语言,基于ENVI二次开发了一个植被覆盖度估算程序,取得了一定的成效,对遥感定量产品的生产、应用具有一定意义。     

基于高分遥感影像的建筑物侧面信息提取及其高度计算

本文选取成都市某一区域建筑物A、B为研究对象,采用分辨率为0.61 m的Quick bird影像,运用图像分割法和LVQ神经网络算法,提取建筑物侧面信息,根据假设法原理,构建高度计算物理模型,求取建筑物高度。对比实测数据,结合可能影响实验结果的实地因素、遥感影像因素进行精度分析与评价,探讨基于高分遥感影像的建筑物侧面信息提取和高度计算的方法。结果表明,LVQ神经网络算法在建筑物侧面提取和高度计算中有更好的应用价值,精度高达94%。