Pervasive wetland flooding in the glacial drift prairie of North Dakota (USA)

This article describes a unique flood hazard, produced by the dramatic expansion of wetlands in Nelson County, located within the North American Prairie Pothole Region of North Dakota, USA. There has been an unprecedented increase in the number, average size, and permanence of prairie wetlands, and a significant increase in the size of a closed lake (Stump Lake) due to a decade-long wet spell that began in 1993 following a prolonged drying trend. Base-line land cover information from the 1992 USGS National Land Cover Characterization dataset, and a Landsat TM scene acquired 9 July 2001 are used to assess the growth of the closed lake and wetland pond surface areas, and to analyze the type and area of various land cover classes inundated between 1992 and 2001. The open water profile in Nelson County changed from one marked by relatively comparable coverage of closed lake and wetland pond areas in 1992, to one in which wetland open water accounted for the vast majority of total open water in 2001. The bulk of the wetland pond area expansion occurred by displacing existing wetland vegetation and agricultural cropland. Producers responded to the flood hazard by filing Federal Crop Insurance Corporation (FCIC) claims and enrolling cropland in the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), a federal land retirement program. Land taken out of agricultural production has had an enormous impact upon the agricultural sector that forms the economic base of the rural economy. In 2001 the land taken out of production due to CRP enrollment and preventive planting claims represented nearly 42% of Nelson County’s 205.2 K ha base agricultural land. The patterns obtained from this detailed study of Nelson County are likely to be the representative of the more publicized flood disaster occurring within the Devils Lake Basin of North Dakota.     

Observation of clouds and solar radiation over the Pacific Ocean as relation to global climate

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Numerical and simplified methods for the calculation of the total horizontal wave force on a perforated caisson with a top cover

The VOF method and the k–ε model, combined with the equation of state of air at constant temperature, have been used to calculate the total horizontal wave force caused by monochromatic waves acting on a perforated caisson with a top cover. From comparison of various parameters, such as the total horizontal force, the pressure difference on the front wall, the pressure on the back wall and the pressure on the top cover, between the numerical results and test data, it can be seen that the numerical results agree well with the test data. It is concluded that the method described in this paper can be utilized to calculate wave forces acting on perforated caissons with a top cover in the case of nonovertopping, nonbreaking waves. A simplified method to calculate the total horizontal force has been developed, based on test data, using a least-squares method. A comparison between the numerical results and the values calculated from the simplified equations shows good agreement. Therefore the simplified equations can be used in engineering applications to evaluate the total horizontal force on a perforated caisson with a top cover.     

Estimation of Sea Ice Thickness from SARAL/AltiKa in Drifting Orbit Phase

Abstract

Intra and inter-annual variations in the sea ice thickness are highly sensitive indicators of climatic variations undergoing in the earth’s atmosphere and oceans. This paper describes the method of estimating sea ice thickness using radar waveforms data acquired by SARAL/Altika mission during its drifting orbit phase from July 2016 onwards yielding spatially dense data coverage. Based on statistical analysis of return echoes, classification of the surface has been carried out in three different types, viz. floe, lead and mixed. Time delay correction methods were suitably selected and implemented to make corrections in altimetric range measurements and thereby freeboard. By assuming hydrostatic equilibrium, freeboard data were converted into sea ice thickness. Results show that sea ice thickness varies from 4 to 5?m near ice shelves and 1 to 2.5?m in the marginal sea ice regions. Freeboard and sea ice thickness estimates were also validated using NASA’s Operation Ice Bridge (OIB) datasets. Freeboard measurements show very high correlation (0.97) having RMSE of 0.13. Overestimation of approximately 1–2?m observed in the sea ice thickness, which could be attributed to distance between AltiKa footprint and OIB locations. Moreover, sensitivity analysis shows that snow depth and snow density over sea ice play crucial role in the estimation of sea ice thickness.     

“3S”技术在四川生态环境动态监测中的应用研究

为有效实现四川省生态环境的动态监测,运用RS、GIS和GPS技术,以2004年中巴资源卫星(CBERS-02)遥感影像数据为信息源,2000年TM遥感影像解译的数据为基础,对2004年遥感影像进行解译,修改2000年数据库;手持GPS接收机,在野外对解译成果进行验证,更新数据库;利用GIS技术的空间分析功能,提取出2000～2004年期间土地利用/覆被变化信息,得到2000～2004年期间四川省高精度的土地利用/覆被变化数据库。最后对四川省土地利用/覆被变化信息进行分析,对四川省生态环境的下一步研究指名了方向。     

A sub-pixel analysis of urbanization effect on land surface temperature and its interplay with impervious surface and vegetation coverage in Indianapolis,United States

This study developed an analytical procedure based upon a spectral unmixing model for characterizing and quantifying urban landscape changes in Indianapolis, Indiana, the United States, and for examining the environmental impact of such changes on land surface temperatures (LST). Three dates of Landsat TM/ETM+ images, acquired in 1991, 1995, and 2000, respectively, were utilized to document the historical morphological changes in impervious surface and vegetation coverage and to analyze the relationship between these changes and those occurred in LST. Three fraction endmembers, i.e., impervious surface, green vegetation, and shade, were derived with an unconstrained least-squares solution. A hybrid classification procedure, which combined maximum-likelihood and decision-tree algorithms, was developed to classify the fraction images into land use and land cover classes. Correlation analyses were conducted to investigate the changing relationships of LST with impervious surface and vegetation coverage. Results indicate that multi-temporal fraction images were effective for quantifying the dynamics of urban morphology and for deriving a reliable measurement of environmental variables such as vegetation abundance and impervious surface coverage. Urbanization created an evolved inverse relationship between impervious and vegetation coverage, and brought about new LST patterns because of LST's correlations with both impervious and vegetation coverage. Further researches should be directed to refine spectral mixture modeling by stratification, and by the use of multiple endmembers and hyperspectral imagery.     

基于MODIS数据的雪面温度遥感反演(英文)

On the basis of simplification of the Planck function in a low temperature range, this paper revises the practical split-window algorithm and presents a method for retrieving snow surface temperature （Ts） based on MODIS data in the middle-latitude region. The application of this method in Qinghai Lake region reveals that it is feasible for the retrieval of Ts. Results of correlation analysis indicate that there was strong negative relationship between Ts and altitude. By analyzing three typical areas in which land cover was relatively homogenous, this paper discusses the relationship between Ts and normalized difference snow index （NDSI） and then presents a new concept named ＂NDSI-Ts space＂.     

基于模糊神经网络的模糊空间对象生成方法研究

随着对GIS中的空间对象模型和自然地理特征表达的研究深入,模糊空间对象被提出。针对模糊空间对象表达的特点,提出了一种基于模糊神经网络的模糊空间对象生成方法。该方法将模糊技术与神经网络相结合,利用神经网络的学习能力调整模糊隶属函数和模糊规则,使系统具备自适应的特性。实验表明,这种基于模糊神经网络的生成模糊空间对象的方法比传统方法大大的提高了成果的精度。