Uncertainties in estimates of cropland area in China: a comparison between an AVHRR-derived dataset and a Landsat TM-derived dataset

The large uncertainties in estimates of cropland area in China may have significant implications for major cross-cutting themes of global environmental change-food production and trade, water resources, and the carbon and nitrogen cycles. Many earlier studies have indicated significant under-reporting of cropland area in China from official agricultural census statistics datasets. Space-borne remote sensing analyses provide an alternative and independent approach for estimating cropland area in China. In this study, we report estimates of cropland area from the National Land Cover Dataset (NLCD-96) at the 1:100,000 scale, which was generated by a multi-year National Land Cover Project in China through visual interpretation and digitization of Landsat TM images acquired mostly in 1995 and 1996. We compared the NLCD-96 dataset to another land cover dataset at I-km spatial resolution (the IGBP DIScover dataset version 2.0), which was generated from monthly Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR)-derived Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) from April, 1992 to March, 1993. The data comparison highlighted the limitation and uncertainty of cropland area estimates from the DIScover dataset. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

Validating MODIS-derived land surface evapotranspiration with in situ measurements at two AmeriFlux sites in a semiarid region

Reducing uncertainties in the estimation of land surface evapotranspiration (ET) from remote-sensing data is essential to better understand earth-atmosphere interactions. This paper demonstrates the applicability of temperature-vegetation index triangle (T-s-VI) method in estimating regional ET and evaporative fraction (EF, defined as the ratio of latent heat flux to surface available energy) from MODIS/Terra and MODIS/Aqua products in a semiarid region. We have compared the satellite-based estimates of ET and EF with eddy covariance measurements made over 4 years at two semiarid grassland sites: Audubon Ranch (AR) and Kendall Grassland (KG). The lack of closure in the eddy covariance measured surface energy components is shown to be more serious at MODIS/Aqua overpass time than that at MODIS/Terra overpass time for both AR and KG sites. The T-s-VI-derived EF could reproduce in situ EF reasonably well with BIAS and root-mean-square difference (RMSD) of less than 0.07 and 0.13, respectively. Surface net radiation has been shown to be systematically overestimated by as large as about 60 W/m(2). Satisfactory validation results of the T-s-VI-derived sensible and latent heat fluxes have been obtained with RMSD within 54 W/m(2). The simplicity and yet easy use of the T-s-VI triangle method show a great potential in estimating regional ET with highly acceptable accuracy that is of critical significance in better understanding water and energy budgets on the Earth. Nevertheless, more validation work should be carried out over various climatic regions and under other different land use/land cover conditions in the future.

Natural Anthraquinone Derivatives from a Marine Mangrove Plant-Derived Endophytic Fungus Eurotium rubrum: Structural Elucidation and DPPH Radical Scavenging Activity

There is considerable interest in the isolation of potent radical scavenging compounds from natural resources to treat diseases involving oxidative stress. In this report, four new fungal metabolites including one new bisdihydroanthracenone derivative (1, eurorubrin), two new seco-anthraquinone derivatives [3, 2-O-methyl-9-dehydroxyeurotinone and 4, 2-O-methyl4-O-(alpha-D-ribofuranosyl)-9-dehydroxyeurotinone], and one new anthraquinone glycoside [6,3-O-(alpha-D-ribofuranosyl)questin], were isolated and identified from Eurotium rubrum, an endophytic fungal strain that was isolated from the inner tissue of the stem of the marine mangrove plant Hibiscus tiliaceus. In addition, three known compounds including asperflavin (2), 2-O-methyleurotinone (5), and questin (7) were also isolated and identified. Their structures were elucidated on the basis of spectroscopic analysis. All of the isolated compounds were evaluated for 1,1-diphenyl-2-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) radical scavenging activity.

Impacts of anthropogenic activity on the recent evolution of the Huanghe (Yellow) River delta

Hydrological statistical data, remote sensing images, and bathymetric charts were used to study the recent evolution of the Huanghe (Yellow) River delta under human-induced interventions. It was clear that water and sediment discharge from the Huanghe River had dropped rapidly since 1970, particularly after 1986. The water and sediment discharges for the period of 1986-2000 were found to have been reduced to only 29.2% and 31.2% of those in the period of 1950-69. This was caused by human factors in the upper and middle reaches of the Huanghe River, including water diversion, damming and reservoir construction, and water and soil conservation. Based on the results from visual interpretation of processed Landsat (MSS or TMJETM+) images dated from 1976 to 2001 and two digital elevation models generated from bathymetric charts surveyed in 1976 and 1992, we found that human-induced reduction of water and sediment discharge led to coastline retrogradation, with the maximum mean recession rate of -0.51 km yr-1 over the period of 1976-98, and seabed erosion beyond the -20 m isobath between 1976 and 1992. Other impacts of human activities on the recent evolution of the Huanghe River delta, including tidal flats shrinking, artificial coastline increasing, land surface sinking and so on, were also analyzed. We found that: (i) the whole delta, including subaerial and subaqueous, has turned from a highly constructive period to a destructive phase; (ii) channelization and dredging were two of the main causes of delta destruction; (iii) land loss in the Huanghe River delta caused by submersion will be increased in the near future; (iv) the Huanghe River delta was becoming more fragile and susceptible to natural hazards.

淤泥质潮滩地貌的遥感研究－以苏北辐射沙洲海岸为例

本文以具有典型特征的苏北淤泥质潮滩海岸作为研究区，利用1975-2003年间14景覆盖该地区的Landsat和SPOT卫星影像作为主要数据源，结合地面调查和验证工作，在遥感影像处理和地理信息系统分析技术的支持下，对区内潮滩、岸线、水边线和盐沼植被等进行遥感解译，分析苏北辐射沙脊群和沿岸地貌的空间分布特征和动态演变趋势。研究结果表明：苏北辐射沙脊群海域的潮汐水位过程的不同步现象普遍存在，限制了常规遥感数据在苏北潮滩地貌研究中的适用范围和解译精度；在人工判别的辅助下，多光谱遥感的非监督分类方法可以有效解译淤泥质潮滩的水边线；利用修改型土壤调整植被指数（MSAVI）可以较好地提取潮滩上的盐沼植被信息；苏北沿岸潮滩的快速淤长促进了盐沼植被带向海侧快速扩展，近年来持续的潮滩围垦工程则不断从陆侧侵占盐沼植被带，使盐沼植被带宽度减小乃至消失；在大规模人类活动和自然条件的共同影响下，苏北辐射沙脊群海岸的岸线发育趋于平直化，无序的潮滩围垦项目使得可垦滩地资源被过度消耗；1975～2002年间，研究区北部和南部沿岸的高潮滩整体上处于淤长状态，中部沿岸潮滩和离岸沙洲高潮滩则被大面积侵蚀；1999年以来，研究区内低潮滩部位开始形成有序排列的滩面地物，并表现出逐年大面积蔓延的趋势，可能是滩涂紫菜养殖区扩展的结果。

滑坡泥石流信息遥感获取与空间预测

On the issue of geological hazard evaluation（GHE）, taking remote sensing and GIS systems as experimental environment, assisting with some programming development, this thesis combines multi-knowledges of geo-hazard mechanism, statistic learning, remote sensing (RS), high-spectral recognition, spatial analysis, digital photogrammetry as well as mineralogy, and selects geo-hazard samples from Hong Kong and Three Parallel River region as experimental data, to study two kinds of core questions of GHE, geo-hazard information acquiring and evaluation model. In the aspect of landslide information acquiring by RS, three detailed topics are presented, image enhance for visual interpretation, automatic recognition of landslide as well as quantitative mineral mapping. As to the evaluation model, the latest and powerful data mining method, support vector machine (SVM), is introduced to GHE field, and a serious of comparing experiments are carried out to verify its feasibility and efficiency. Furthermore, this paper proposes a method to forecast the distribution of landslides if rainfall in future is known baseing on historical rainfall and corresponding landslide susceptibility map. The details are as following: (a) Remote sensing image enhancing methods for geo-hazard visual interpretation. The effect of visual interpretation is determined by RS data and image enhancing method, for which the most effective and regular technique is image merge between high-spatial image and multi-spectral image, but there are few researches concerning the merging methods of geo-hazard recognition. By the comparing experimental of six mainstream merging methods and combination of different remote sensing data source, this thesis presents merits of each method ,and qualitatively analyzes the effect of spatial resolution, spectral resolution and time phase on merging image. (b) Automatic recognition of shallow landslide by RS image. The inventory of landslide is the base of landslide forecast and landslide study. If persistent collecting of landslide events, updating the geo-hazard inventory in time, and promoting prediction model incessantly, the accuracy of forecast would be boosted step by step. RS technique is a feasible method to obtain landslide information, which is determined by the feature of geo-hazard distribution. An automatic hierarchical approach is proposed to identify shallow landslides in vegetable region by the combination of multi-spectral RS imagery and DEM derivatives, and the experiment is also drilled to inspect its efficiency. (c) Hazard-causing factors obtaining. Accurate environmental factors are the key to analyze and predict the risk of regional geological hazard. As to predict huge debris flow, the main challenge is still to determine the startup material and its volume in debris flow source region. Exerting the merits of various RS technique, this thesis presents the methods to obtain two important hazard-causing factors, DEM and alteration mineral, and through spatial analysis, finds the relationship between hydrothermal clay alteration minerals and geo-hazards in the arid-hot valleys of Three Parallel Rivers region. (d) Applying support vector machine (SVM) to landslide susceptibility mapping. Introduce the latest and powerful statistical learning theory, SVM, to RGHE. SVM that proved an efficient statistic learning method can deal with two-class and one-class samples, with feature avoiding produce ‘pseudo’ samples. 55 years historical samples in a natural terrain of Hong Kong are used to assess this method, whose susceptibility maps obtained by one-class SVM and two-class SVM are compared to that obtained by logistic regression method. It can conclude that two-class SVM possesses better prediction efficiency than logistic regression and one-class SVM. However, one-class SVM, only requires failed cases, has an advantage over the other two methods as only "failed" case information is usually available in landslide susceptibility mapping. (e) Predicting the distribution of rainfall-induced landslides by time-series analysis. Rainfall is the most dominating factor to bring in landslides. More than 90% losing and casualty by landslides is introduced by rainfall, so predicting landslide sites under certain rainfall is an important geological evaluating issue. With full considering the contribution of stable factors (landslide susceptibility map) and dynamic factors (rainfall), the time-series linear regression analysis between rainfall and landslide risk mapis presented, and experiments based on true samples prove that this method is perfect in natural region of Hong Kong. The following 4 practicable or original findings are obtained: 1) The RS ways to enhance geo-hazards image, automatic recognize shallow landslides, obtain DEM and mineral are studied, and the detailed operating steps are given through examples. The conclusion is practical strongly. 2) The explorative researching about relationship between geo-hazards and alteration mineral in arid-hot valley of Jinshajiang river is presented. Based on standard USGS mineral spectrum, the distribution of hydrothermal alteration mineral is mapped by SAM method. Through statistic analysis between debris flows and hazard-causing factors, the strong correlation between debris flows and clay minerals is found and validated. 3) Applying SVM theory (especially one-class SVM theory) to the landslide susceptibility mapping and system evaluation for its performance is also carried out, which proves that advantages of SVM in this field. 4) Establishing time-serial prediction method for rainfall induced landslide distribution. In a natural study area, the distribution of landslides induced by a storm is predicted successfully under a real maximum 24h rainfall based on the regression between 4 historical storms and corresponding landslides.

浑善达克沙地与河北沽源地区土地沙漠化研究

The Otindag sandy land and the Guyuan region of Hebei Province lie in the agro-pastoral zone, where sandy desertification is serious. So they are typical for us to study on. In this paper, detail investigation were made on the Remote Sensing, Hydrochemistry, Chronology, grain size analyzing of research region to monitor sandy desertification and environmental background. The main conclusions are presented as following: 1. According to the diverse natural condition, the research area is divided into three types as sandy land desertification, cultivated land desertification and desertification reflected by lake change. The monitoring result of the first type shows that the main performance way of the sandy desertification in Otindag sandy land is that (1) the expansion of both the shifting dune and the half fixed sandy dune, (2) the reduce of the fixed sandy dune. While the result of the second type shows (1) the desertification land in the Guyuan region has first increasing then reducing change for about 30 years. (2) The sand mainly concentrates west of the research area and small part of wind-drift sand distributes northeast the research area with the spot shape. (3) The meadow area increases obviously. As far as the third type, the Dalai Nur lake area occurs first expanding then reducing change and the wind-drift sand around the lake first reduces then increases. 2. The land cover of the different types change with the same law. It is worth notice that the lake area changes oppositely with that of the wind-drift sand. 3. For about 5,000 a B.P. -2800 a B.P., the well developed palaeosols emerged. After that, three layer palaeosols were founded in the profile of Otindag sandy land. The analyses of grain size show that the sand grains of the south were coarser than that of the north. The sand in the north and middle were well sorted, while the south poor sorted. 4. Both the natural and human impact on the process of sandy desertification. On this research result, different regions have different influences. So the measures to improve sandy desertification should be choosed respectively.

Monitoring the vegetation start of season (SOS) across the island of Ireland using the MERIS global vegetation index

The aim of this study was to develop a methodology, based on satellite remote sensing, to estimate the vegetation Start of Season (SOS) across the whole island of Ireland on an annual basis. This growing body of research is known as Land Surface Phenology (LSP) monitoring. The SOS was estimated for each year from a 7-year time series of 10-day composited, 1.2 km reduced resolution MERIS Global Vegetation Index (MGVI) data from 2003 to 2009, using the time series analysis software, TIMESAT. The selection of a 10-day composite period was guided by in-situ observations of leaf unfolding and cloud cover at representative point locations on the island. The MGVI time series was smoothed and the SOS metric extracted at a point corresponding to 20% of the seasonal MGVI amplitude. The SOS metric was extracted on a per pixel basis and gridded for national scale coverage. There were consistent spatial patterns in the SOS grids which were replicated on an annual basis and were qualitatively linked to variation in landcover. Analysis revealed that three statistically separable groups of CORINE Land Cover (CLC) classes could be derived from differences in the SOS, namely agricultural and forest land cover types, peat bogs, and natural and semi-natural vegetation types. These groups demonstrated that managed vegetation, e.g. pastures has a significantly earlier SOS than in unmanaged vegetation e.g. natural grasslands. There was also interannual spatio-temporal variability in the SOS. Such variability was highlighted in a series of anomaly grids showing variation from the 7-year mean SOS. An initial climate analysis indicated that an anomalously cold winter and spring in 2005/2006, linked to a negative North Atlantic Oscillation index value, delayed the 2006 SOS countrywide, while in other years the SOS anomalies showed more complex variation. A correlation study using air temperature as a climate variable revealed the spatial complexity of the air temperature-SOS relationship across the Republic of Ireland as the timing of maximum correlation varied from November to April depending on location. The SOS was found to occur earlier due to warmer winters in the Southeast while it was later with warmer winters in the Northwest. The inverse pattern emerged in the spatial patterns of the spring correlates. This contrasting pattern would appear to be linked to vegetation management as arable cropping is typically practiced in the southeast while there is mixed agriculture and mostly pastures to the west. Therefore, land use as well as air temperature appears to be an important determinant of national scale patterns in the SOS. The TIMESAT tool formed a crucial component of the estimation of SOS across the country in all seven years as it minimised the negative impact of noise and data dropouts in the MGVI time series by applying a smoothing algorithm. The extracted SOS metric was sensitive to temporal and spatial variation in land surface vegetation seasonality while the spatial patterns in the gridded SOS estimates aligned with those in landcover type. The methodology can be extended for a longer time series of FAPAR as MERIS will be replaced by the ESA Sentinel mission in 2013, while the availability of full resolution (300m) MERIS FAPAR and equivalent sensor products holds the possibility of monitoring finer scale seasonality variation. This study has shown the utility of the SOS metric as an indicator of spatiotemporal variability in vegetation phenology, as well as a correlate of other environmental variables such as air temperature. However, the satellite-based method is not seen as a replacement of ground-based observations, but rather as a complementary approach to studying vegetation phenology at the national scale. In future, the method can be extended to extract other metrics of the seasonal cycle in order to gain a more comprehensive view of seasonal vegetation development.

Calibrating single-ended fiber-optic Raman spectra distributed temperature sensing data.

Hydrologic research is a very demanding application of fiber-optic distributed temperature sensing (DTS) in terms of precision, accuracy and calibration. The physics behind the most frequently used DTS instruments are considered as they apply to four calibration methods for single-ended DTS installations. The new methods presented are more accurate than the instrument-calibrated data, achieving accuracies on the order of tenths of a degree root mean square error (RMSE) and mean bias. Effects of localized non-uniformities that violate the assumptions of single-ended calibration data are explored and quantified. Experimental design considerations such as selection of integration times or selection of the length of the reference sections are discussed, and the impacts of these considerations on calibrated temperatures are explored in two case studies.

Mighty small: Observing and modeling individual microbes becomes big science

Progress in microbiology has always been driven by technological advances, ever since Antonie van Leeuwenhoek discovered bacteria by making an improved compound microscope. However, until very recently we have not been able to identify microbes and record their mostly invisible activities, such as nutrient consumption or toxin production on the level of the single cell, not even in the laboratory. This is now changing with the rapid rise of exciting new technologies for single-cell microbiology (1, 2), which enable microbiologists to do what plant and animal ecologists have been doing for a long time: observe who does what, when, where, and next to whom. Single cells taken from the environment can be identified and even their genomes sequenced. Ex situ, their size, elemental, and biochemical composition, as well as other characteristics can be measured with high-throughput and cells sorted accordingly. Even better, individual microbes can be observed in situ with a range of novel microscopic and spectroscopic methods, enabling localization, identification, or functional characterization of cells in a natural sample, combined with detecting uptake of labeled compounds. Alternatively, they can be placed into fabricated microfluidic environments, where they can be positioned, exposed to stimuli, monitored, and their interactions controlled “in microfluido.” By introducing genetically engineered reporter cells into a fabricated landscape or a microcosm taken from nature, their reproductive success or activity can be followed, or their sensing of their local environment recorded.

Plankton indicators and ocean observing systems: support to the marine ecosystem state assessment

Ecological indicators are used extensively as tools to manage environmental resources. In the oceans, indicators of plankton can be measured using a variety of observing systems including: mooring stations, ships, autonomous floats and ocean colour remote sensing. Given the broad range of temporal and spatial sampling resolutions of these different observing systems, as well as discrepancies in measurements obtained from different sensors, the estimation and interpretation of plankton indicators can present significant challenges. To provide support to the assessment of the state of the marine ecosystem, we propose a suite of plankton indicators and subsequently classify them in an ecological framework that characterizes key attributes of the ecosystem. We present two case studies dealing with plankton indicators of biomass, size structure and phenology, estimated using the most spatially extensive and longest in situ and remote-sensing observations. Discussion of these studies illustrates how some of the challenges in estimating and interpreting plankton indicators may be addressed by using for example relative measurement thresholds, interpolation procedures and delineation of biogeochemical provinces. We demonstrate that one of the benefits attained, when analyzing a suite of plankton indicators classified in an ecological framework, is the elucidation of non-trivial changes in composition, structure and functioning of the marine ecosystem.

Can benthic community structure be used to predict the process of bioturbation in real ecosystems

Disentangling the roles of environmental change and natural environmental variability on biologically mediated ecosystem processes is paramount to predict future marine ecosystem functioning. Bioturbation, the biogenic mixing of sediments, has a regulating role in marine biogeochemical processes. However, our understanding of bioturbation as a community level process and of its environmental drivers is still limited by loose use of terminology, and a lack of consensus about what bioturbation is. To help resolve these challenges, this empirical study investigated the links between four different attributes of bioturbation (bioturbation depth, activity and distance, and biodiffusive transport); the ability of an index of bioturbation (BPc) to predict each of them; and their relation to seasonality, in a shallow coastal system – the Western Channel Observatory, UK. Bioturbation distance depended on changes in benthic community structure, while the other three attributes were more directly influenced by seasonality in food availability. In parallel, BPc successfully predicted bioturbation distance but not the other attributes of bioturbation. This study therefore highlights that community bioturbation results from this combination of processes responding to environmental variability at different time-scales. However, community level measurements of bioturbation across environmental variability are still scarce, and BPc is calculated using commonly available data on benthic community structure and the functional classification of invertebrates. Therefore, BPc could be used to support the growth of landscape scale bioturbation research, but future uses of the index need to consider which bioturbation attributes the index actually predicts. As BPc predicts bioturbation distance, estimated here using a random-walk model applicable to community settings, studies using either of the metrics should be directly comparable and contribute to a more integrated future for bioturbation research.

The biogeochemical structuring role of horizontal stirring: Lagrangian perspectives on iron delivery downstream of the Kerguelen Plateau

Field campaigns are instrumental in providing ground truth for understanding and modeling global ocean biogeochemical budgets. A survey however can only inspect a fraction of the global oceans, typically a region hundreds of kilometers wide for a temporal window of the order of (at most) several weeks. This spatiotemporal domain is also the one in which the mesoscale activity induces through horizontal stirring a strong variability in the biogeochemical tracers, with ephemeral, local contrasts which can easily mask the regional and seasonal gradients. Therefore, whenever local in situ measures are used to infer larger-scale budgets, one faces the challenge of identifying the mesoscale structuring effect, if not simply to filter it out. In the case of the KEOPS2 investigation of biogeochemical responses to natural iron fertilization, this problem was tackled by designing an adaptive sampling strategy based on regionally optimized multisatellite products analyzed in real time by specifically designed Lagrangian diagnostics. This strategy identified the different mesoscale and stirring structures present in the region and tracked the dynamical frontiers among them. It also enabled back trajectories for the ship-sampled stations to be estimated, providing important insights into the timing and pathways of iron supply, which were explored further using a model based on first-order iron removal. This context was essential for the interpretation of the field results. The mesoscale circulation-based strategy was also validated post-cruise by comparing the Lagrangian maps derived from satellites with the patterns of more than one hundred drifters, including some adaptively released during KEOPS2 and a subsequent research voyage. The KEOPS2 strategy was adapted to the specific biogeochemical characteristics of the region, but its principles are general and will be useful for future in situ biogeochemical surveys.