Remotely sensed debris thickness mapping of Bara Shigri Glacier, Indian Himalaya

Despite the important role of supraglacial debris in ablation, knowledge of debris thickness on Himalayan glaciers is sparse. A recently developed method based on reanalysis data and thermal band satellite imagery has proved to be potentially suitable for debris thickness estimation without the need for detailed field data. In this study, we further develop the method and discuss possibilities and limitations arising from its application to a glacier in the Himalaya with scarce in situ data. Surface temperature patterns are consistent for 13 scenes of Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) and Landsat 7 imagery and correlate well with incoming shortwave radiation and air temperature. We use an energy-balance approach to subtract these radiation or air temperature effects, in order to estimate debris thickness patterns as a function of surface temperature. Both incoming shortwave and longwave radiation are estimated with reasonable accuracy when applying parameterizations and reanalysis data. However, the model likely underestimates debris thickness, probably due to incorrect representation of vertical debris temperature profiles, the rate of heat storage and turbulent sensible heat flux. Moreover, the uncertainty of the result was found to increase significantly with thicker debris, a promising result since ablation is enhanced by thin debris of 1-2 cm.

Techniques for spatial analysis and visualization of benthic mapping data: final report

The mapping and geospatial analysis of benthic environments are multidisciplinary tasks that have become more accessible in recent years because of advances in technology and cost reductions in survey systems. The complex relationships that exist among physical, biological, and chemical seafloor components require advanced, integrated analysis techniques to enable scientists and others to visualize patterns and, in so doing, allow inferences to be made about benthic processes. Effective mapping, analysis, and visualization of marine habitats are particularly important because the subtidal seafloor environment is not readily viewed directly by eye. Research in benthic environments relies heavily, therefore, on remote sensing techniques to collect effective data. Because many benthic scientists are not mapping professionals, they may not adequately consider the links between data collection, data analysis, and data visualization. Projects often start with clear goals, but may be hampered by the technical details and skills required for maintaining data quality through the entire process from collection through analysis and presentation. The lack of technical understanding of the entire data handling process can represent a significant impediment to success. While many benthic mapping efforts have detailed their methodology as it relates to the overall scientific goals of a project, only a few published papers and reports focus on the analysis and visualization components (Paton et al. 1997, Weihe et al. 1999, Basu and Saxena 1999, Bruce et al. 1997). In particular, the benthic mapping literature often briefly describes data collection and analysis methods, but fails to provide sufficiently detailed explanation of particular analysis techniques or display methodologies so that others can employ them. In general, such techniques are in large part guided by the data acquisition methods, which can include both aerial and water-based remote sensing methods to map the seafloor without physical disturbance, as well as physical sampling methodologies (e.g., grab or core sampling). The terms benthic mapping and benthic habitat mapping are often used synonymously to describe seafloor mapping conducted for the purpose of benthic habitat identification. There is a subtle yet important difference, however, between general benthic mapping and benthic habitat mapping. The distinction is important because it dictates the sequential analysis and visualization techniques that are employed following data collection. In this paper general seafloor mapping for identification of regional geologic features and morphology is defined as benthic mapping. Benthic habitat mapping incorporates the regional scale geologic information but also includes higher resolution surveys and analysis of biological communities to identify the biological habitats. In addition, this paper adopts the definition of habitats established by Kostylev et al. (2001) as a “spatially defined area where the physical, chemical, and biological environment is distinctly different from the surrounding environment.” (PDF contains 31 pages)

Habitat mapping effort at the Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary – Current status and future needs

With elevating interest to establish conservation efforts for groundfish stocks and continued scrutiny over the value of marine protected areas along the west coast, the importance of enhancing our knowledge of seabed characteristics through mapping activities is becoming increasingly more important, especially in a timely manner. Shortly after the inception of the Seabed Mapping Initiative instituted with the US Geological Survey (USGS), the National Marine Sanctuary Program (NMSP) assembled a panel of habitat mapping experts. They determined that the status of existing data sets and future data acquisition needs varied widely among the individual sanctuaries and that more detailed site assessments were needed to better prioritize mapping efforts and outline an overall joint strategy. To assist with that specific effort and provide pertinent information for the Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary’s (OCNMS) Management Plan Review, this report summarizes the mapping efforts that have taken place at the site to date; calculates a timeframe for completion of baseline mapping efforts when operating under current data acquisition limitations; describes an optimized survey strategy to dramatically reduce the required time to complete baseline surveying; and provides estimates for the needed vessel sea-days (DAS) to accomplish baseline survey completion within a 2, 5 and 10 year timeframe. (PDF contains 38 pages.)

The use of multibeam sonar mapping techniques to refine population estimates of the endangered white abalone (Haliotis sorenseni)

Multibeam sonar mapping techniques provide detailed benthic habitat information that can be combined with the data on species-specific habitat preferences to provide highly accurate calculations of populations in a particular area. The amount of suitable habitat available for the endangered white abalone (Haliotis sorenseni) was quantified to aid in obtaining an accurate estimate of the number of remaining individuals at two offshore banks and one island site off the coast of southern California. Habitat was mapped by using multibeam sonar survey techniques and categorized by using rugosity and topographic position analysis. Abalone densities were evaluated by using a remotely operated vehicle and video transect methods. The total amount of suitable habitat at these three sites was far greater than that previously estimated. Therefore, although present estimates of white abalone densities are several orders of magnitude lower than historic estimates, the total population is likely larger than previously reported because of the additional amount of habitat surveyed in this study.

Mapping the global flow of aluminum: from liquid aluminum to end-use goods.

Demand for aluminum in final products has increased 30-fold since 1950 to 45 million tonnes per year, with forecasts predicting this exceptional growth to continue so that demand will reach 2-3 times today's levels by 2050. Aluminum production uses 3.5% of global electricity and causes 1% of global CO2 emissions, while meeting a 50% cut in emissions by 2050 against growing demand would require at least a 75% reduction in CO2 emissions per tonne of aluminum produced--a challenging prospect. In this paper we trace the global flows of aluminum from liquid metal to final products, revealing for the first time a complete map of the aluminum system and providing a basis for future study of the emissions abatement potential of material efficiency. The resulting Sankey diagram also draws attention to two key issues. First, around half of all liquid aluminum (~39 Mt) produced each year never reaches a final product, and a detailed discussion of these high yield losses shows significant opportunities for improvement. Second, aluminum recycling, which avoids the high energy costs and emissions of electrolysis, requires signification "dilution" (~ 8 Mt) and "cascade" (~ 6 Mt) flows of higher aluminum grades to make up for the shortfall in scrap supply and to obtain the desired alloy mix, increasing the energy required for recycling.

Alteration mineral mapping using masking and Crosta technique for mineral exploration in mid-vegetated areas: a case study in Areletuobie, Xinjiang (China)

Thematic Mapper (TM) and Enhanced Thematic Mapper (ETM)+ data have been successfully employed in the field of mineral exploration to identify key minerals over arid and semi-arid terrains. However, redundant vegetation and cloud may seriously interfere with the discrimination of the minerals with diagnostic features. Therefore, in this study, we use masking technique to eliminate the negative influence of vegetation and cloud and Crosta technique to identify the diagnostic features of hydroxyl-minerals, carbonate-minerals and iron oxides. Then the anomalies were endowed with special colours and overlapped with the remote-sensing and geochemical data, overlaying images as remote-sensing anomalies. The mineral exploration work was carried through by synthetic analysis of the remote-sensing images, geochemical data and structures. Finally, areas with high correlation between the occurrence of hydrothermal alteration and presence of main faults and geochemical anomalies were considered as mineral exploration targets worthy of further detailed exploration programmes.

Mapping the evolution of optically generated rotational wave packets in a room-temperature ensemble of D2

A coherent superposition of rotational states in D2 has been excited by nonresonant, ultrafast (12 fs), intense (2×1014 W cm-2) 800 nm laser pulses, leading to impulsive dynamic alignment. Field-free evolution of this rotational wave packet has been mapped to high temporal resolution by a time-delayed pulse, initiating rapid double ionization, which is highly sensitive to the angle of orientation of the molecular axis with respect to the polarization direction, . The detailed fractional revivals of the neutral D2 wave packet as a function of and evolution time have been observed and modeled theoretically.

Business representation and the UK regions: mapping institutional change

Political devolution in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and the developing regional agenda in England are prompting changes in the organization of business interest representation within the devolved and decentralized territories. In this paper we seek to describe the realignment of business interest representation at the 'regional' scale, first through a detailed review of changes underway across specific business associations and representative fora, and secondly through an initial attempt to compare and 'map' the patterns of institutional change recorded in the various territories. In broad terms the overall scale, operation and degree of formalization of the new political arrangements for business representation tend broadly to reflect the established institutional and political contexts of the respective nations and regions and the level of devolution ceded to the territories. However, there are important variations in a complex process of uneven development. In the concluding section we present some initial thoughts on the nature of the changes observed in the institutional framework for business representation. A key argument is that to date such changes suggest a reconfiguration of business political activity rather than a step-change in the institutional foundation for sub-national business interest representation in the UK. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Mapping patterns of multiple deprivation using self-organising maps: An application to EU-SILC data for Ireland

The development of conceptual frameworks for the analysis of social exclusion has somewhat out-stripped related methodological developments. This paper seeks to contribute to filling this gap through the application of self-organising maps (SOMs) to the analysis of a detailed set of material deprivation indicators relating to the Irish case. The SOM approach allows us to offer a differentiated and interpretable picture of the structure of multiple deprivation in contemporary Ireland. Employing this approach, we identify 16 clusters characterised by distinct profiles across 42 deprivation indicators. Exploratory analyses demonstrate that, controlling for equivalised household income, SOM cluster membership adds substantially to our ability to predict subjective economic stress. Moreover, in comparison with an analogous latent class approach, the SOM analysis offers considerable additional discriminatory power in relation to individuals' experience of their economic circumstances. The results suggest that the SOM approach could prove a valuable addition to a 'methodological platform' for analysing the shape and form of social exclusion. (c) 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

REMA: A computer-based mapping tool for analysis of restriction sites in multiple DNA sequences

REMA is an interactive web-based program which predicts endonuclease cut sites in DNA sequences. It analyses Multiple sequences simultaneously and predicts the number and size of fragments as well as provides restriction maps. The users can select single or paired combinations of all commercially available enzymes. Additionally, REMA permits prediction of multiple sequence terminal fragment sizes and suggests suitable restriction enzymes for maximally discriminatory results. REMA is an easy to use, web based program which will have a wide application in molecular biology research. Availability: REMA is written in Perl and is freely available for non-commercial use. Detailed information on installation can be obtained from Jan Szubert (jan.szubert@gmail.com) and the web based application is accessible on the internet at the URL http://www.macaulay.ac.uk/rema. Contact: b.singh@macaulay.ac.uk. (C) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Using geostatistical Bayesian Updating to integrate airborne radiometrics and soil geochemistry to improve mapping for mineral exploration

Mineral exploration programmes around the world use data from remote sensing, geophysics and direct sampling. On a regional scale, the combination of airborne geophysics and ground-based geochemical sampling can aid geological mapping and economic minerals exploration. The fact that airborne geophysical and traditional soil-sampling data are generated at different spatial resolutions means that they are not immediately comparable due to their different sampling density. Several geostatistical techniques, including indicator cokriging and collocated cokriging, can be used to integrate different types of data into a geostatistical model. With increasing numbers of variables the inference of the cross-covariance model required for cokriging can be demanding in terms of effort and computational time. In this paper a Gaussian-based Bayesian updating approach is applied to integrate airborne radiometric data and ground-sampled geochemical soil data to maximise information generated from the soil survey, to enable more accurate geological interpretation for the exploration and development of natural resources. The Bayesian updating technique decomposes the collocated estimate into a production of two models: prior and likelihood models. The prior model is built from primary information and the likelihood model is built from secondary information. The prior model is then updated with the likelihood model to build the final model. The approach allows multiple secondary variables to be simultaneously integrated into the mapping of the primary variable. The Bayesian updating approach is demonstrated using a case study from Northern Ireland where the history of mineral prospecting for precious and base metals dates from the 18th century. Vein-hosted, strata-bound and volcanogenic occurrences of mineralisation are found. The geostatistical technique was used to improve the resolution of soil geochemistry, collected one sample per 2 km2, by integrating more closely measured airborne geophysical data from the GSNI Tellus Survey, measured over a footprint of 65 x 200 m. The directly measured geochemistry data were considered as primary data in the Bayesian approach and the airborne radiometric data were used as secondary data. The approach produced more detailed updated maps and in particular maximized information on mapped estimates of zinc, copper and lead. Greater delineation of an elongated northwest/southeast trending zone in the updated maps strengthened the potential to investigate stratabound base metal deposits.

Mapping protein-DNA interactions using ChIP-sequencing

Chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) allows enrichment of genomic regions which are associated with specific transcription factors, histone modifications, and indeed any other epitopes which are present on chromatin. The original ChIP methods used site-specific PCR and Southern blotting to confirm which regions of the genome were enriched, on a candidate basis. The combination of ChIP with genomic tiling arrays (ChIP-chip) allowed a more unbiased approach to map ChIP-enriched sites. However, limitations of microarray probe design and probe number have a detrimental impact on the coverage, resolution, sensitivity, and cost of whole-genome tiling microarray sets for higher eukaryotes with large genomes. The combination of ChIP with high-throughput sequencing technology has allowed more comprehensive surveys of genome occupancy, greater resolution, and lower cost for whole genome coverage. Herein, we provide a comparison of high-throughput sequencing platforms and a survey of ChIP-seq analysis tools, discuss experimental design, and describe a detailed ChIP-seq method.Chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) allows enrichment of genomic regions which are associated with specific transcription factors, histone modifications, and indeed any other epitopes which are present on chromatin. The original ChIP methods used site-specific PCR and Southern blotting to confirm which regions of the genome were enriched, on a candidate basis. The combination of ChIP with genomic tiling arrays (ChIP-chip) allowed a more unbiased approach to map ChIP-enriched sites. However, limitations of microarray probe design and probe number have a detrimental impact on the coverage, resolution, sensitivity, and cost of whole-genome tiling microarray sets for higher eukaryotes with large genomes. The combination of ChIP with high-throughput sequencing technology has allowed more comprehensive surveys of genome occupancy, greater resolution, and lower cost for whole genome coverage. Herein, we provide a comparison of high-throughput sequencing platforms and a survey of ChIP-seq analysis tools, discuss experimental design, and describe a detailed ChIP-seq method.

Wind resource mapping using landscape roughness and spatial interpolation methods

Energy saving, reduction of greenhouse gasses and increased use of renewables are key policies to achieve the European 2020 targets. In particular, distributed renewable energy sources, integrated with spatial planning, require novel methods to optimise supply and demand. In contrast with large scale wind turbines, small and medium wind turbines (SMWTs) have a less extensive impact on the use of space and the power system, nevertheless, a significant spatial footprint is still present and the need for good spatial planning is a necessity. To optimise the location of SMWTs, detailed knowledge of the spatial distribution of the average wind speed is essential, hence, in this article, wind measurements and roughness maps were used to create a reliable annual mean wind speed map of Flanders at 10 m above the Earth’s surface. Via roughness transformation, the surface wind speed measurements were converted into meso- and macroscale wind data. The data were further processed by using seven different spatial interpolation methods in order to develop regional wind resource maps. Based on statistical analysis, it was found that the transformation into mesoscale wind, in combination with Simple Kriging, was the most adequate method to create reliable maps for decision-making on optimal production sites for SMWTs in Flanders.

Mapping multi-species habitat use for marine conservation planning

Tese de Doutoramento, Ciências do Mar (Biologia Marinha)

Mapping the cytoskeletal prestress

Park CY, Tambe D, Alencar AM, Trepat X, Zhou EH, Millet E, Butler JP, Fredberg JJ. Mapping the cytoskeletal prestress. Am J Physiol Cell Physiol 298: C1245-C1252, 2010. First published February 17, 2010; doi: 10.1152/ajpcell.00417.2009.-Cell mechanical properties on a whole cell basis have been widely studied, whereas local intracellular variations have been less well characterized and are poorly understood. To fill this gap, here we provide detailed intracellular maps of regional cytoskeleton (CSK) stiffness, loss tangent, and rate of structural rearrangements, as well as their relationships to the underlying regional F-actin density and the local cytoskeletal prestress. In the human airway smooth muscle cell, we used micropatterning to minimize geometric variation. We measured the local cell stiffness and loss tangent with optical magnetic twisting cytometry and the local rate of CSK remodeling with spontaneous displacements of a CSK-bound bead. We also measured traction distributions with traction microscopy and cell geometry with atomic force microscopy. On the basis of these experimental observations, we used finite element methods to map for the first time the regional distribution of intracellular prestress. Compared with the cell center or edges, cell corners were systematically stiffer and more fluidlike and supported higher traction forces, and at the same time had slower remodeling dynamics. Local remodeling dynamics had a close inverse relationship with local cell stiffness. The principal finding, however, is that systematic regional variations of CSK stiffness correlated only poorly with regional F-actin density but strongly and linearly with the regional prestress. Taken together, these findings in the intact cell comprise the most comprehensive characterization to date of regional variations of cytoskeletal mechanical properties and their determinants.