Mar 2013, Volume 7 Issue 1
    

  • Select all
  • RESEARCH ARTICLE
    Minyue ZHAO, Xiang LI

    Advances of positioning and wireless communication technologies make it possible to collect a large number of trajectory data of moving vehicles in a fast and convenient fashion. The data can be applied to various fields such as traffic study. In this paper, we attempt to derive average delay of traffic flow around intersections and verify the results with changes of time. The intersection zone is delineated first. Positioning points geographically located within this zone are selected, and then outliers are removed. Turn trips are extracted from selected trajectory data. Each trip, physically consisting of time-series positioning points, is identified with entry road segment and turning direction, i.e. target road segment. Turn trips are grouped into different categories according to their time attributes. Then, delay of each trip during a turn is calculated with its recorded speed. Delays of all trips in the same period of time are plotted to observe the change pattern of traffic conditions. Compared to conventional approaches, the proposed method can be applied to those intersections without fixed data collection devices such as loop detectors since a large number of trajectory data can always provide a more complete spatio-temporal picture of a road network. With respect to data availability, taxi trajectory data and an intersection in Shanghai are employed to test the proposed methodology. Results demonstrate its applicability.

  • RESEARCH ARTICLE
    Handong WANG, Yang YUE, Qingquan LI

    Many studies have been carried out using vehicle trajectory to analyze traffic conditions, for instance, identifying traffic congestion. However, there is a lack of a systematic study on the appropriate number of probe vehicles and their sampling interval in order to identify traffic congestion accurately. Moreover, most of related studies ignore the streaming feature of trajectory data. This paper first represents a novel method of identifying traffic congestion considering the stream feature of vehicle trajectories. Instead of processing the whole data stream, a series of snapshots are extracted. Congested road segments can be identified by analyzing the clusters’ evolution among a series of adjacent snapshots. We then calculated a series of parameters and their corresponding congestion identification accuracy. The results have implications for related probe vehicle deployment and traffic analysis; for example, when 5% of probe vehicles are available, 85% identification accuracy can be reached if the sampling time interval is 10 s.

  • RESEARCH ARTICLE
    Junzhong ZHANG, Baiying MAN, Benzhong FU, Li LIU, Changzhi HAN

    To understand the diversity of culturable fungi in soil at alpine sites, Rhododendron fruticosa shrubland, Salix cupularis fruticosa shrubland, and Dasiphoru fruticosa shrubland of the Eastern Qilian Mountains were selected to investigate. Three methods, including traditional culturing, rDNA internal transcribed spacer (ITS) sequence analysis, and economical efficiency analysis, were carried out to estimate the diversity of soil culturable fungi of these three alpine shrublands. A total of 35 strains of culturable fungi were cultured by dilution plate technique and were analyzed by rDNA ITS sequence. The diversity indices such as species abundance (S), Shannon–Wiener index (H), Simpson dominance index (D), and Pielou evenness index (J) of Rhododendron fruticosa shrubland, Salix cupularis fruticosa shrubland, and Dasiphoru fruticosa shrubland were ranged between 16 and 17, 2.66–2.71, 0.92, 0.95–0.97 respectively. The results showed that the diversity of soil fungi were abundant in these three types of alpine shrub grasslands, while further study should be done to explore their potential value.

  • RESEARCH ARTICLE
    Zhuoqi CHEN, Runhe SHI, Shupeng Zhang

    A simple and accurate method to estimate evapotranspiration (ET) is essential for dynamic monitoring of the Earth system at a large scale. In this paper, we developed an artificial neural network (ANN) model forced by remote sensing and AmeriFlux data to estimate ET. First, the ANN was trained with ET measurements made at 13 AmeriFlux sites and land surface products derived from satellite remotely sensed data (normalized difference vegetation index, land surface temperature and surface net radiation) for the period 2002–2006. ET estimated with the ANN was then validated by ET observed at five AmeriFlux sites during the same period. The validation sites covered five different vegetation types and were not involved in the ANN training. The coefficient of determination (R2) value for comparison between estimated and measured ET was 0.77, the root-mean-square error was 0.62 mm/d, and the mean residual was -0.28. The simple model developed in this paper captured the seasonal and interannual variation features of ET on the whole. However, the accuracy of estimated ET depended on the vegetation types, among which estimated ET showed the best result for deciduous broadleaf forest compared to the other four vegetation types.