Landscape pattern and transition under natural and anthropogenic disturbance in an arid region of northwestern China

There is a pressing need to determine the relationships between driving variables and landscape transformations. Human activities shape landscapes and turn them into complex assemblages of highly diverse structures. Other factors, including climate and topography, also play significant roles in landscape transitions, and identifying the interactions among the variables is critical to environmental management. This study analyzed the configurations and spatial-temporal processes of landscape changes from 1998 to 2011 under different anthropogenic disturbances, identified the main variables that determine the landscape patterns and transitions, and quantified the relationships between pairs of driver sets. Landsat images of Baicheng and Tekes from 1998, 2006 and 2011 were used to classify landscapes by supervised classification. Redundancy analysis (RDA) and variation partitioning were performed to identify the main driving forces and to quantify the unique, shared, and total explained variation of the sets of variables. The results indicate that the proportions of otherwise identical landscapes in Baicheng and Tekes were very different. The area of the grassland in Tekes was much larger than that of the cropland; however, the differences between the grassland and cropland in Baicheng were not as pronounced. Much of the grassland in Tekes was located in an area that was near residents, whereas most of the grassland in Baicheng was far from residents. The slope, elevation, annual precipitation, annual temperature, and distance to the nearest resident were strong driving forces influencing the patterns and transitions of the landscapes. The results of the variation partitioning indicated complex interrelationships among all of the pairs of driver sets. All of the variable sets had significant explanatory roles, most of which had both unique and shared variations with the others. The results of this study can assist policy makers and planners in implementing sustainable landscape management and effective protection strategies.     

LN-24YSJC型实时压缩纠错系统的研制

介绍了一种适用于有线传输、无线传输的各类数字地震台及台网使用的24位地震数据采集器数据传输纠错设备。本文阐述了该仪器的工作原理、硬件结构和主要功能。     

基于稀疏表示的地面磁共振信号提取方法

在多孔隙含水层中地面磁共振（surface nuclear magnetic resonance,SNMR）信号呈现多弛豫衰减特性,常规盲源分离方法和单指数拟合方法引起信号严重失真和信息缺失等问题.本文提出了基于稀疏表示的随机噪声背景下多弛豫SNMR信号的提取方法.根据SNMR信号的衰减特征,设计了精确刻画SNMR信号且与随机噪声不相关的离散衰减余弦冗余字典.其次,针对多弛豫SNMR信号稀疏度未知的问题,通过设置合理的残差比阈值控制迭代次数,改进了广义正交匹配追踪（generalized orthogonal matching pursuit,gOMP）算法,使得该方法应用于SNMR信号的提取时,具有更好的自适应性和普适性.再次,鉴于SNMR测量数据为多次独立重复采集的结果,提出了基于数据流的SNMR信号提取策略,在提高算法鲁棒性的同时,保证了信号提取结果的唯一性.最后,通过仿真和实测数据证明了基于gOMP算法的稀疏表示方法可以显著地提升多弛豫SNMR信号的提取质量,降低随机噪声对含水层反演结果的影响,提高SNMR探测能力.     

The influence of topography and land use on water quality of Xiangxi River in Three Gorges Reservoir region

A self-organizing map (SOM) was used to cluster the water quality data of Xiangxi River in the Three Gorges Reservoir region. The results showed that 81 sampling sites could be divided into several groups representing different land use types. The forest dominated region had low concentrations of most nutrient variables except COD, whereas the agricultural region had high concentrations of NO₃N, TN, Alkalinity, and Hardness. The sites downstream of an urban area were high in NH₃N, NO₂N, PO₄P and TP. Redundancy analysis was used to identify the individual effects of topography and land use on river water quality. The results revealed that the watershed factors accounted for 61.7% variations of water quality in the Xiangxi River. Specifically, topographical characteristics explained 26.0% variations of water quality, land use explained 10.2%, and topography and land use together explained 25.5%. More than 50% of the variation in most water quality variables was explained by watershed characteristics. However, water quality variables which are strongly influenced by urban and industrial point source pollution (NH₃N, NO₂N, PO₄P and TP) were not as well correlated with watershed characteristics.     

Robust coordinated motion control of an underwater vehicle-manipulator system with minimizing restoring moments

For autonomous manipulation in water, an underwater vehicle-manipulator system (UVMS) should be able to generate trajectori9es for the vehicle and manipulators and track the planned trajectories accurately. In this paper, for trajectory generation, we suggest a performance index for redundancy resolution. This index is designed to minimize the restoring moments of the UVMS during manipulation, and it is optimized without impeding the performance of a given task. As a result, the restoring moments of the UVMS are decreased, and control efforts are also reduced. For tracking control of the UVMS, a nonlinear H_∞ optimal control with disturbance observer is proposed. This control is robust against parameter uncertainties, external disturbances, and actuator nonlinearities. Numerical simulations are presented to demonstrate the performance of the proposed coordinated motion control of the UVMS. The results show that control inputs for tracking are reduced, and the UVMS can successfully track generated trajectories.     

Assessment of grazing effect on sheep fescue (Festuca valesiaca) dominated steppe rangelands, in the semi-arid Central Anatolian region of Turkey

In the semi-arid steppe rangelands of Central Turkey, Festuca valesiaca and Thymus sipyleus ssp rosulans have become the dominant species on degraded pastures. We hypothesized that decreases in species richness and abundance are correlated with increasing prevalence of these two species. Therefore, our objectives were to determine whether there are patterns in examined vegetation; how dominant species contribute to these patterns; and how patterns differ between grazed and ungrazed vegetation. We determined that protection from grazing increased species richness. Grazing significantly changed composition through decreasing total plant, forb, grass and F. valesiaca covers, while substantially increasing T. sipyleus cover. Topography, soil and grazing appear to impact the dominance of plant communities where F. valesiaca and T. sipyleus prevail. These two dominant species had a significant effect in shaping vegetation patterns. Based on regression analysis, alterations in species richness with changes in cover of forbs and shrubs were evident, and spatial heterogeneity of F. valesiaca and T. sipyleus indicated unstable vegetative patterns in heavily grazed pastures and successional changes in protected pastures. Our study results identify F. valesiaca and T. sipyleus as indicator species of vegetation suppression in condition assessments of degraded steppe rangelands.     

A statistical approach to disentangle environmental forcings in a lacustrine record: the Lago Chungará case (Chilean Altiplano)

A high resolution multiproxy study (magnetic susceptibility, X-ray diffraction, XRF scanner, gray-colour values, Total Organic Carbon, Total Inorganic Carbon, Total Carbon and Total Biogenic Silica) of the sedimentary infill of Lago Chungará (northern Chilean Altiplano) was undertaken to unravel the environmental forcings controlling its evolution using a number of different multivariate statistical techniques. Redundancy analyses enabled us to identify the main provenance of the studied proxies whereas stratigraphically unconstrained cluster analyses allowed us to distinguish the “outsiders” as result of anomalous XRF scanner acquisitions. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) was employed to identify and isolate the main underlying environmental gradients that characterize the sedimentary infill of Lago Chungará. The first eigenvector of the PCA could be interpreted as an indicator of changes in the input of volcaniclastic material, whereas the second one would indicate changes in water availability. The chronological model of this sedimentary sequence was constructed using 17 AMS ¹⁴C and 1 ²³⁸U/²³⁰Th dates in order to characterize the volcaniclastic input and the changes in water availability in the last 12,300 cal years BP. Comparison of the reconstructed volcaniclastic input of Lago Chungará with the dust particle record from the Nevado Sajama ice core suggested that the Parinacota volcano eruptions were the main source of dust during the mid and Late Holocene rather than the dry out lakes as has previously been pointed out. The comparison of the water availability reconstruction of Lago Chungará with three of the most detailed paleoenvironmental records of the region (Paco Cocha, Lake Titicaca and Salar Uyuni) showed an heterogeneous (and sometimes contradictory) temporal and spatial pattern distribution of moisture. Although the four reconstructions showed a good correlation, each lacustrine ecosystem responded differently to the moisture oscillations that affected this region. The variations in the paleoenvironmental records could be attributed to the dating uncertainities, lake size, lake morphology, catchment size and lacustrine ecosystem responses to the abrupt arid events.     

Reliability and redundancy of the internal stability of reinforced soil walls

In the present study, a new methodology for reliability assessment of the internal stability of reinforced soil walls, taking into account the highly strength-redundant character of these structures, is suggested. Internal stability is probabilistically modeled as a series configuration and as an r-out-of-m configuration. Consideration of redundancy is formulated based on transitional probabilities and Markov stochastic processes. Following the suggested framework, the updated reliability of the structure, as failure propagates among the different layers of reinforcement, can be quantified. As an illustration of the developed methodology, an example of a reinforced soil wall is analyzed and results are discussed.     

Decomposition of deformation primitives of horizontal geodetic networks: application to Taiwan’s GPS network

The contribution to each component of the deformation vector due to a marginally undetected blunder in an observation is split into two parts, and so are the deformation measures at a point. The first part, called the local component (or self component), signifies the contribution due to the redundancy-related multiplier belonging to the observation itself, while the second part, called the complementary component, shows the contribution due to the non-redundancy-related multipliers belonging to the observation. A larger redundancy results in a smaller local component for each component of the deformation vector. However, robustness due to an observation at a point is correlated with redundancy to a significant extent. The first-order global positioning system (GPS)-geodetic network of Taiwan was examined for its robustness. The experiments seem to indicate that: (1) large deformations tend to be found at points where the group redundancies are small; (2) the local components monopolize deformation measures at the perimeter stations of the network where very small redundancy numbers are found; (3) the largest deformation at a point may be due to an observation not directly tied to the point of interest; and (4) except for local twisting, deformation measures and mean positional precisions at individual points are highly correlated.Acknowledgement The authors thank Drs. A.A. Simkooei, M. Schmidt, and M.R. Craymer greatly for their constructive comments and suggestions, which improved the quality of the paper. This research was supported by National Science Council of Taiwan (contract number NSC-91-2211- E-002-085).