Dec 2013, Volume 7 Issue 4
    

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  • RESEARCH ARTICLE
    Chao GAO, Jun LEI, Fengjun JIN

    Oasis city system is the center of the man-land relationship in arid area and it is the most influential spatial and temporal multiple dynamic system. Oasis city system is not only the largest area where artificial disturbances occur at a regional scale but also the most concentrated area of human activity in arid area. In this study, we developed an applicable and convenient method to assess vulnerability of man-land system of oasis cities with vulnerability indicator system, respectively evaluating the sensitivity, adaptability and vulnerability of the eco-environment system, the economic system and the social system. The results showed that the sensitivity and vulnerability of oasis cities in Xinjiang, China have significant differences while their adaptability does little. In order to find the inherent differences in the vulnerability of oasis cities, triangle methodology has been adopted to divide Xinjiang oasis cities into five types. Some adaptive developing policies specific for individual cities are also proposed based on their vulnerability type and constraining factors.

  • RESEARCH ARTICLE
    Bo LIN, Qianqian XU, Wenhui LIU, Guochun ZHANG, Qiongyao XU, Qijing LIU

    The eastern slope of Changbai Mountain is characterized by pure larch forest (Larix olgensis) with little human disturbance. Response of tree growth to climate in this area remains unknown. Meanwhile, little is known about how climate variations affect the biomass increase which could be recognized as a three-dimensional tree growth index. The objective of this study is to investigate the climate effects on the radial and biomass growth of larch on eastern slope of Changbai Mountain. Tree-ring width chronologies and mean annual biomass increment were established using tree-ring data. We used correlation analysis and multiple regression analysis to explore the relationship between larch growth and climatic factors from 1957 to 2009. Results show that tree-ring growth and mean annual biomass increment were primarily and significantly affected by previous year climatic variables with slight difference among months. Temperatures were more consistently and strongly correlated to the chronologies and mean annual biomass increment than was precipitation. Temperature is the main factor limiting larch growth on Changbai Mountain and the ongoing climate warming may accelerate the growth of the species. The current stand biomass of the area was 240.72 Mg·ha-1 and the annual stand biomass increment in 2009 was 2.91 Mg·ha-1. In conclusion, the old-growth forest in the study area is still accumulating carbon efficiently.

  • RESEARCH ARTICLE
    Ci SONG, Jiong SHU, Mandi ZHOU, Wei GAO

    Hyper-spectral remote sensing may provide anβeffective solutionβto retrieve the methane (CH4) concentration in an atmospheric column. As a result of exploringβthe absorptive characteristics of CH4,βan appropriate band is selected from hyperspectral data for the detection ofβitsβcolumn concentration with high precision. Following the most recent inversion theory and methods, the line-by-line radiative transfer model (LBLRTM) is employed to forward model the impact of four sensitive factors on inversion precision, including CH4 initial profile, temperature, overlapping gases, and surface albedo. The results indicate that the four optimized factors could improve the inversion precision of atmospheric CH4 column concentration.

  • RESEARCH ARTICLE
    Lei LUO, Lingli MU, Xinyuan WANG, Chao LI, Wei JI, Jinjin ZHAO, Heng CAI

    Craters, one of the most significant features of the lunar surface, have been widely researched because they offer us the relative age of the surface unit as well as crucial geological information. Research on crater detection algorithms (CDAs) of the Moon and other planetary bodies has concentrated on detecting them from imagery data, but the computational cost of detecting large craters using images makes these CDAs impractical. This paper presents a new approach to crater detection that utilizes a digital elevation model instead of images; this enables fully automatic global detection of large craters. Craters were delineated by terrain attributes, and then thresholding maps of terrain attributes were used to transform topographic data into a binary image, finally craters were detected by using the Hough Transform from the binary image. By using the proposed algorithm, we produced a catalog of all craters≥10 km in diameter on the lunar surface and analyzed their distribution and population characteristics.

  • RESEARCH ARTICLE
    Yu LI, Nai’ang WANG, Zhuolun LI, Xuehua ZHOU, Chengqi ZHANG, Yue WANG

    Carbonate deposition is a main inorganic carbon sink in lakes, which varies depending on climate change and internal lake dynamics. Research on the relationship between lake carbonate and climate will help to understand mechanisms of carbon cycle in lacustrine systems. The approach of this study is to explicitly link carbonate formation with Holocene long-term climate change and lake evolution in a paleo-lake (Zhuye Lake), which is a terminal lake of a typical inland drainage basin in arid China. This paper presents analysis on grain-size, carbonate content and mineralogical composition of sediment samples from different locations of Zhuye Lake. The results show that calcite and aragonite are two main components for the lake carbonate, and the carbonate enrichment is associated with lake expansion during the Late Glacial and early to middle Holocene. Holocene lake expansion in arid regions of China is usually connected with high basin-wide precipitation that can strengthen the basin-wide surface carbonate accumulation in the terminal lake. For this reason, Zhuye Lake plays a role of carbon sinks during the wet periods of the Holocene.

  • RESEARCH ARTICLE
    Xin QIAN, Qinglai FENG, Chongpan CHONGLAKMANI, Denchok MONJAI

    Volcanic rocks in northwestern Thailand exposed dominantly in the Chiang Khong area, are commonly considered to be genetically linked to the tectonic evolution of the Paleo-Tethyan Ocean. The volcanic rocks consist mainly of andesitic to rhyolitic rocks and are traditionally mapped as Permian-Triassic sequences. Our zircon U-Pb geochronological results show that two andesitic samples (TL-1-B and TL-31-B), are representative of the Doi Yao volcanic zone, and give a mean weighted age of 241.2±4.6 Ma and 241.7±2.9 Ma, respectively. The rhyolitic sample (TL-32-B1) from the Doi Khun Ta Khuan volcanic zone erupted at 238.3±3.8 Ma. Such ages indicate that Chiang Khong volcanic rocks erputed during the early Middle Triassic period. Seven samples from the Doi Yao and Doi Khun Ta Khuan zones exhibit an affinity to arc volcanics. Three rhyolitic samples from the Chiang Khong area have a geochemical affinity to both arc and syn-collisional volcanic rocks. The Chiang Khong arc volcanic rocks can be geochemically compared with those in the Lampang area in northern Thailand, also consistent with those in Jinghong area of southwestern Yunnan. This indicates that the Chiang Rai arc-volcanic zone might northwardly link to the Lancangjiang volcanic zone in southwestern China.

  • RESEARCH ARTICLE
    Di WU, Maosi CHEN, Qiao WANG, Wei GAO

    Blue algae and green algae are the dominant phytoplankton groups that contribute to the eutrophication and the water bloom in inland water of China. The absorption coefficients (spectra) of the algae, which do not change with its intrinsic optical characteristics and the observation geometry, are strictly additive quantities. The characteristics of the absorption spectra of the two algae are presented. The pure blue algae and the pure green algae cultured in the laboratory environment are diluted and mixed at ten volume ratios. The Quantitative Filter Technique was applied to measure their absorption spectra. The “hot-ethanol extraction” method was chosen to calculate their concentration of Chlorophyll a. The retrieval algorithm developed in this study extracts the mapping information between each individual alga and their Chlorophyll a concentration via Continuous Wavelet Transform, and retrieves the Chlorophyll a concentration of each alga in their mixture using a trust region optimizer. The results show that the retrieved and the measured Chlorophyll a concentrations of the blue algae and the green algae components in the ten mixture match well with the average relative error of 5.55%.