Remote sensing techniques for monitoring and managing irrigated lands

Agriculture in semi-arid tracts of the world depends on water to sustain its irrigation systems. Such agricultural systems either derive from government investments in the control of surface flow or they have been developed through the exploitation of groundwater sometimes by a large community of unsupervised individuals seeking to maximise their own advantage without concern for the resource upon which they depend in the medium and long term. In both cases government agencies need data on the area irrigated and the volume of water used. In countries with highly developed scientific and agricultural institutions the contribution of remote sensing, though significant, may only provide between five and ten per cent of the data required to guide regional and national managers. In countries without such institutions the proportion contributed by remote sensing can be very much higher, as shown in a recent study in North Africa. The paper will emphasise the importance of carefully structured sampling procedures, both to improve the areal estimates from satellite imagery and the estimates of water use based upon them. The role of satellite imagery in providing information on the status of water resources, on trends in water use and in the implementation of policies to extend or diminish irrigated land are discussed.     

Satellites for the study of ocean primary productivity

Estimates of global marine primary productivity are currently based upon the ¹⁴C method for determining rates of plankton photosynthesis and upon the relatively sparse data available using shipboard sampling techniques. With recent advances in remote sensing and in multiplatform (ship, aircraft, and satellite) sampling strategies, it is now possible to significantly lower the variance in estimates of phytoplankton abundance and of population growth rates.Multiplatform sampling strategies are essential to assess the mean and variance of phytoplankton biomass on a regional or on a global basis. The relative errors associated with shipboard and satellite estimates of phytoplankton biomass and primary productivity, as well as the increased statistical accuracy now possible from the utilization of contemporaneous data from both sampling platforms, are discussed. It is shown that one of the more exciting and potentially useful aspects of oceanographic research today is our new ability to view large areas of the ocean synoptically.     

Canadian Landsat studies for monitoring agricultural intensification and urbanization: A summary

This report summarizes a major paper reviewing the progression of work using Landsat for land use and agricultural monitoring in Canada since 1973. From the launch of Landsat to the present, the focus has moved from using simple visual techniques for interpretation of photographic products to the use of conceptually simple methods which now employ the power of special-purpose image analysis hardware and the standard geometrically corrected products available in Canada. Outlined in the major paper are studies on urban growth, large area land use mapping, crop studies (related to both crop area estimates and erosion potential), assessment of changes in vegetation vigour and clearing of land in areas which were devoted to both dry land farming and forestry. This report emphasizes developments in land use studies.     

In situ and remote sensing of thermospheric winds during the energy budget campaign

This paper summarizes the dynamical information obtained in the lower thermosphere during the Energy Budget Campaign, by three experimental techniques: rocket-borne falling spheres instrumented with accelerometers and Tri-Methyl-Aluminium (TMA) trails, and from a ground-based Fabry-Perot interferometer. Winds of 200–400 m/sec, accelerated by the momentum and energy inputs from the magnetosphere, were observed during the ‘B’ and ‘A2’ salvos (15/16 Nov 1980 and 30 Nov/1 Dec resp.), with perturbations as low as 100 km altitude during the ‘B’ salvo. A global model has been used to simulate the wide-scale consequences of these disturbances, and to aid estimation of the integrated energy and momentum inputs.     

Evaluation of GPM sampling error over major basins in Indian subcontinent using bootstrap technique

The study investigates the evaluation and comparison of sampling error for the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission orbital data products by implementing a bootstrap technique over the two major basins in the Indian subcontinent i.e the Ganga and the Mahanadi basin. The relative sampling error evaluated over both the Ganges and Mahanadi basins showed commendable results thus giving the confidence to adopt the bootstrap technique to evaluate the sampling error. The region over India with large seasonal rainfall seems to have less sampling uncertainty and vice versa with some regions showing exceptions which might be due to the difference in precipitation variability and space-time correlation length. The scale dependence was verified for four grid sizes along with seasonal time scale. Results indicate that the relative sampling error estimates are inversely proportional to the scale of the grid size. The comparative study of evaluation of sampling uncertainty to different precipitation types resulted to have maximum sampling error in GPM Microwave Imager (GMI) in comparison to Dual Precipitation Radar (DPR) convective and DPR total precipitation. Thus, the comparable results of sampling uncertainty between the major basins in the Indian sub-continent provides the user a decision making criteria before utilizing the GPM orbital products in any applications.     

Investigating the soil removal characteristics of flexible tube coring method for lunar exploration

Compared with other technical solutions, sampling the planetary soil and returning it back to Earth may be the most direct method to seek the evidence of extraterrestrial life. To keep sample’s stratification for further analyzing, a novel sampling method called flexible tube coring has been adopted for China future lunar explorations. Given the uncertain physical properties of lunar regolith, proper drilling parameters should be adjusted immediately in piercing process. Otherwise, only a small amount of core could be sampled and overload drilling faults could occur correspondingly. Due to the fact that the removed soil is inevitably connected with the cored soil, soil removal characteristics may have a great influence on both drilling loads and coring results. To comprehend the soil removal characteristics, a non-contact measurement was proposed and verified to acquire the coring and removal results accurately. Herein, further more experiments in one homogenous lunar regolith simulant were conducted, revealing that there exists a sudden core failure during the sampling process and the final coring results are determined by the penetration per revolution index. Due to the core failure, both drilling loads and soil’s removal states are also affected thereby.     

Estimates of vertical land motion along the southwestern coasts of Turkey from coastal altimetry and tide gauge data

The differences between coastal altimetry and sea level time series of tide gauges in between March 1993 and December 2009 are used to estimate the rates of vertical land motion at three tide gauge locations along the southwestern coasts of Turkey. The CTOH/LEGOS along-track coastal altimetry retrieves altimetric sea level anomalies closer to the coast than the standard along-track altimetry products. However, the use of altimetry very close to the coast is not found to improve the results. On the contrary, the gridded and interpolated AVISO merged product exhibits the best agreement with tide gauge data as it provides the smoothest variability both in space and time compared with along track altimetry data. The Antalya gauge to the south (in the Mediterranean Sea) and the Mentes/Izmir gauge to the west (in the Aegean Sea) both show subsidence while the Bodrum tide gauge to the south (in the Aegean Sea) shows no significant vertical land motion. The results are compared and assessed with three independent geophysical vertical land motion estimates like from GPS. The GIA effect in the region is negligible. The VLM estimates from altimetry and tide gauge data are in good agreement both with GPS derived vertical velocity estimates and those inferred from geological and archaeological investigations.     

基于轨迹方法的AFDX网络路由配置算法

针对航空电子全双工交换式以太网(AFDX,Avionics Full Duplex Switched Ethernet)的网络关键技术——虚拟链路(VL,Virtual Link)的静态路由算法,提出了一种基于AFDX轨迹方法的VL路由配置算法——TRJ算法,保证配置VL的端端确定性最大延迟满足给定的时延约束.TRJ算法计算每条VL基于轨迹方法得到的初始延时约束比,按照延时约束比从小到大的顺序结合轨迹方法进行VL静态路由配置.在AFDX网络典型配置下,将该路由算法与最小跳路由和均衡路由算法进行比较,结果表明最小跳路由算法用了最少的资源,均衡路由算法平衡了网络流量,但只有该算法保证了所有VL的端端最大延迟满足时延约束,证明该算法的有效性.     

Measurements of the energy spectra of charged particles within the vertical-10 rocket experiment

On December 21-st, 1981, at 18.35 hours UT from the territory of the USSR (coordinates - 49°N/L 2/) in implementation of scientific objectives and in accordance with the ‘INTERCOSMOS’ Programme, there was launched the heavy geophysical rocket ‘VERTICAL-10’. The scientific payload included a low-energy two-channel spectrometer for measuring the differential flows of electrons and protons within the energy range 0.1 to 10 keV, covered by 15 exponentially distributed energy levels.     

Land use and cover change (LUCC) impacts on Earth’s eco-environments: Research progress and prospects

Land use and cover change (LUCC) is one of the key variables dominating land–atmosphere interactions and strongly affects the Earth’s eco-environments by altering surface properties. Numerous studies have been carried out to assess the impact of LUCC. However, the Earth is a large, open and complex system characterized by complex interactions between its eco-environments and drivers. This study aimed to summarize previous studies of the impact of LUCC on the Earth’s eco-environments and discuss the progress and limitations in suggesting future directions. Previous studies have confirmed that LUCC has a wide range of impacts on the Earth’s eco-environments, which are represented by the alternation of climate (temperature, precipitation, wind, and humidity), hydrology (soil moisture, runoff, and evapotranspiration), ecology and environmental (air, water, and soil) pollution. Physically, the impacts were mainly attributed to the disturbance of the surface radiation budget and matter conservation caused by LUCC. Although great achievements have been made, several challenges remain because of the unavoidable uncertainties in data sources and methodologies and the complexity of eco-environmental evolution. Therefore, data assimilation, physical-based investigations, contribution isolation, and full-process analysis are required to overcome these challenges in future research. The results of this study helped to capture the impact of LUCC and its physical mechanisms, which provide useful clues for future research and support the relative land use management for sustainable development.     

The low energy gamma-ray experiments on GRO in perspective

The NASA Gamma-Ray Observatory, GRO, will carry two instruments for low energy gamma-ray astronomy. The ‘Oriented Scintillation Spectrometer Experiment - OSSE’ represents the latest step in the evolution of collimated detectors. A large detection area, simultaneous source and background observation and rigorous control over systematic errors yield significant improvements in sensitivity over earlier instruments. The ‘Imaging Compton Telescope - COMPTEL’ brings the proven concept of the Compton telescope to the state of the art level. Position sensitive scintillation detectors make it possible to generate sky images with a resolution of about 2° over a f.o.v. of about 1 sr. The complementary nature of these two experiments promises a first in-depth exploration of the sky in a wavelength range which covers the transition from the X-ray sky to the apparently unrelated high energy gamma-ray sky. Possible directions of further evolution of these experiments will be discussed.     

Non-linear methods in remotely sensed multispectral data classification

The aim of this research is to develop an effective approach being able to deal with the stochastic nature of remote sensing data. In order to achieve this objective it is necessary to structure the methodological knowledge in the area of data mining and reveal the most suitable methods for the prediction and decision support based on large amounts of multispectral data. The idea is to establish a framework by decomposing the task into functionality objectives and to allow the end-user to experiment with a set of classification methods and select the best methods for specific applications. As a first step, we compare our results from Bayesian classification based on non-parametric probability density estimates of the data to the results obtained from other classification methods. Tree scenarios are considered, making use of a small benchmark dataset, a larger dataset from Corine land cover project for Bulgaria and analyzing different features and feature selection methods. We show that the theoretically optimal Bayesian classification can also achieve optimal classification in practice and provides a realistic interpretation of the world where land cover classes intergrade gradually.     

The location and intrinsic luminosity of the hidden nucleus of NGC 1068

Two key problems on the ‘hidden’ nucleus of NGC 1068 are discussed, based on the archival Hubble Space Telescope images. First, we discuss the accurate location of the nucleus. We have found that the most probable location is only ∼ 0.″1 (∼ 7 pc) south of the UV brightest cloud. Second, we consider the intrinsic luminosity of the hidden nucleus. We show that its lower limit is as large as ∼ 2 × 10⁴⁵ erg/sec, suggesting that the luminosity is almost at the Eddington limit.     

基于降阶模型的翼型结冰冰形预测方法

翼型结冰冰形的数值模拟预测通常比较复杂耗时,为了更加快速准确地预测冰形以减少计算资源消耗,建立了基于本征正交分解（POD）和Kriging模型的冰形快速预测方法。利用CFD数值模拟结果来构建样本空间,以飞行迎角为例详述了降阶模型的冰形预测的实现手段,并结合试验设计方法,完成了多参数的结冰冰形快速预测,同时研究了先进的Blind-Kriging模型的相关方法以及对于预测结果的改进。结果表明,降阶模型预测翼型结冰冰形与CFD数值模拟结果吻合较好,表明降阶模型可以快速、精确地应用于翼型结冰冰形预测。      

Built-up land mapping capabilities of the ASTER and Landsat ETM+ sensors in coastal areas of southeastern China

Worldwide urbanization has accelerated expansion of urban built-up lands and resulted in substantial negative impacts on the global environments. Precisely measuring the urban sprawl is becoming an increasing need. Among the satellite-based earth observation systems, the Landsat and ASTER data are most suitable for mesoscale measurements of urban changes. Nevertheless, to date the difference in the capability of mapping built-up land between the two sensors is not clear. Therefore, this study compared the performances of the Landsat-7 ETM+ and ASTER sensors for built-up land mapping in the coastal areas of southeastern China. The comparison was implemented on three date-coincident image pairs and achieved by using three approaches, including per-band-based, index-based, and classification-based comparisons. The index used is the Index-based Built-up Index (IBI), while the classification algorithm employed is the Support Vector Machine (SVM). Results show that in the study areas, ETM+ and ASTER have an overall similar performance in built-up land mapping but also differ in several aspects. The IBI values determined from ASTER were consistently higher than from ETM+ by up to 45.54% according to percentage difference. The ASTER also estimates more built-up land area than ETM+ by 5.9–6.3% estimated with the IBI-based approach or 3.9–6.1% with the SVM classification. The differences in the spectral response functions and spatial resolution between relative spectral bands of the two sensors are attributed to these different performances.     

GPS/INU/DM组合定位导航技术在ITS中的应用

 介绍了智能交通系统(ITS,Intelligent Transport Systems)的基本思想,阐述了GPS/INU/DM(Global Positioning System/Inertial Navigation Unit/Digital Map)组合定位导航技术在ITS中的应用,以及提高组合定位导航精度及可靠性的几种技术措施.该组合定位导航是将卫星定位技术、惯性导航定位技术以及计算机技术融合在一起的新型技术,具有全方位、全天候、防遮挡的功能.ITS中利用组合导航技术可实现道路交通管理"自动化"、车辆行驶"智能化",具有良好的实用价值,应用前景广泛.     

Plasma transport in the plasmasphere

The plasmasphere is filled with very low energy plasma upwelling from the topside ionosphere. The field-aligned distribution of this thermal ionospheric plasma is controlled by the gravitational and centrifugal potential distribution. There are two extreme types of hydrostatic plasma distribution in this field-aligned potential : the Diffusive Equilibrium distribution and the Exospheric Equilibrium distribution corresponding respectively to a saturated and to an almost empty magnetic flux tube. As a result of pitch angle scattering by Coulomb collisions an increasing number of ions escaping from the ionosphere are stored on trapped orbits with mirror points at high altitudes in the low density region. As a result of collisions the field-aligned density distribution gradually changes from exospheric equilibrium with a highly anisotropic pitch angle (cigar like) distribution to a diffusive equilibrium with a nearly isotropic pitch angle distribution. It is shown that the suprathermal ions become anisotropic much more slowly than ions of energies smaller than 1 eV. The Coulomb collision times have been estimated for flux tubes at different L values. A numerical simulation of the flux tube refilling process has been presented. The diurnal variation of the equatorial plasma density has been illustrated for plasma elements convected along drift paths which have a large dawn- dusk asymetry. The formation of a Light Ion Trough is discussed. Finally, evidence has also been given for the existence of a ‘plasmaspheric wind’ corresponding to a slow subsonic and continuous radial expansion of the plasma stored in the plasmasphere.     

Diurnal variation of earth radiation budget components above Africa and the neighboring Atlantic Ocean; Changes between 1983 and 1985, estimated from METEOSAT observations adjusted to ERBS data

METEOSAT observations in the thermal infrared “window” and “water vapor” channels, as well as in the visible channel, reveal diurnal variations over large areas which remain significant in the monthly means. The variations in the infrared correspond to diurnal cycles in the surface skin temperature (over land) and in cloud cover (over both land and sea) at various levels, and they must appear as a more or less significant diurnal variation in the integrated longwave emission to space of the Earth-atmosphere system. The diurnal cycle in the reflected shortwave radiation is influenced by these meteorological variations as well as by the astronomical cycle and the anisotropic reflectance. These must be taken into account in studies of Earth Radiation Budget variations. Using nearly simultaneous and spatially coincident pixel data from the ERBE scanner on ERBS and from METEOSAT in November 1984, we construct provisional transfer functions relating the narrow-band METEOSAT infrared observations to the longwave radiant exitance at the top of the atmosphere. We apply these transfer functions to the METEOSAT ISCCP B2 data sets for the summers of 1983–1985, and compare the resulting longwave radiant exitance estimates, with particular attention to the diurnal variation, which should be relatively insensitive to the inaccuracy inherent in applying the provisional (November 1984) transfer functions to the 1983–1985 data.     

Some aspects of land transformation in the western mediterranean desert of egypt

The western Mediterranean desert of Egypt has a long history of land-use. With recent development activities, land transformation is progressing at a high rate. Monitoring of changes to allow for predictions of long-term effects of these activities is viewed at three levels: (a) quantities of ecosystem components; (b) detailed distribution of patterns of land-use, vegetation and physiography; and (c) general distribution of the salient features of land. This study provides estimates at the first (a) and second (b) levels of changes in this region due to the main land-use types: grazing rain-fed farming, and irrigated farming.Grazing had little effects on soil characters, but it resulted in lower soil stability and abundance of plants and above-soil invertebrates. Irrigation resulted in water-logging and salinization, formation of calcic horizons, decrease in soil organic matter and soluble nitrogen, and in increase of above-and below-soil biota.A comparison of the distribution of vegetation and land-use in one of the sectors in 1964 and 1981, using maps based on aerial photographs and ground-truth data, indicated remarkable changes in areas of rain-fed farming, and in vegetation composition due to over-grazing.