基于环境一号卫星的四川盆地气溶胶光学厚度精细化反演

四川盆地为中国灰霾形势较为严重的区域之一,对四川盆地大气灰霾的监测具有十分重要的意义。利用环境一号卫星数据,对能表征大气污染程度的气溶胶光学厚度进行了反演。提出了用EVI植被指数判定暗像元精细化反演气溶胶光学厚度的方法,该方法能较好地去除部分大气影响,气溶胶光学厚度反演结果与CE318的气溶胶光学厚度结果相关性较高,误差较小,具有较高的精度,反演结果满足精细化要求。反演结果表明,四川盆地内有德阳、成都、眉山和乐山4个气溶胶光学厚度高值区,该高值区呈带状分布且与四川盆地的地形密切相关。     

The Impact of Landsat Satellite Monitoring on Conservation Biology

Landsat 7s recent malfunctioning will result in significant gaps in long-term satellite monitoring of Earth, affecting not only the research of the Earth science community but also conservation users of these data. To determine whether or how important Landsat monitoring is for conservation and natural resource management, we reviewed the Landsat programs history with special emphasis on the development of user groups. We also conducted a bibliographic search to determine the extent to which conservation research has been based on Landsat data. Conservation biologists were not an early user group of Landsat data because a) biologists lacked technical capacity – computers and software – to analyze these data; b) Landsats 1980s commercialization rendered images too costly for biologists budgets; and c) the broad-scale disciplines of conservation biology and landscape ecology did not develop until the mid-to-late 1980s. All these conditions had changed by the 1990s and Landsat imagery became an important tool for conservation biology. Satellite monitoring and Landsat continuity are mandated by the Land Remote Sensing Act of 1992. This legislation leaves open commercial options. However, past experiments with commercial operations were neither viable nor economical, and severely reduced the quality of monitoring, archiving and data access for academia and the public. Future satellite monitoring programs are essential for conservation and natural resource management, must provide continuity with Landsat, and should be government operated.     

Linking Land Cover and Water Quality in New York City’S Water Supply Watersheds

The Catskill/Delaware reservoirs supply 90% of New York City’s drinking water. The City has implemented a series of watershed protection measures, including land acquisition, aimed at preserving water quality in the Catskill/Delaware watersheds. The objective of this study was to examine how relationships between landscape and surface water measurements change between years. Thirty-two drainage areas delineated from surface water sample points (total nitrogen, total phosphorus, and fecal coliform bacteria concentrations) were used in step-wise regression analyses to test landscape and surface-water quality relationships. Two measurements of land use, percent agriculture and percent urban development, were positively related to water quality and consistently present in all regression models. Together these two land uses explained 25 to 75% of the regression model variation. However, the contribution of agriculture to water quality condition showed a decreasing trend with time as overall agricultural land cover decreased. Results from this study demonstrate that relationships between land cover and surface water concentrations of total nitrogen, total phosphorus, and fecal coliform bacteria counts over a large area can be evaluated using a relatively simple geographic information system method. Land managers may find this method useful for targeting resources in relation to a particular water quality concern, focusing best management efforts, and maximizing benefits to water quality with minimal costs.The United States Environmental Protection Agency through its Office of Research and Development funded and managed the research described here. It has been subjected to Agency’s administrative review and approved for publication as an EPA document.     

Effectiveness of Africa's tropical protected areas for maintaining forest cover

The effectiveness of parks for forest conservation is widely debated in Africa, where increasing human pressure, insufficient funding, and lack of management capacity frequently place significant demands on forests. Tropical forests house a substantial portion of the world's remaining biodiversity and are heavily affected by anthropogenic activity. We analyzed park effectiveness at the individual (224 parks) and national (23 countries) level across Africa by comparing the extent of forest loss (as a proxy for deforestation) inside parks to matched unprotected control sites. Although significant geographical variation existed among parks, the majority of African parks had significantly less forest loss within their boundaries (e.g., Mahale Park had 34 times less forest loss within its boundary) than control sites. Accessibility was a significant driver of forest loss. Relatively inaccessible areas had a higher probability (odds ratio >1, p < 0.001) of forest loss but only in ineffective parks, and relatively accessible areas had a higher probability of forest loss but only in effective parks. Smaller parks less effectively prevented forest loss inside park boundaries than larger parks (T = ?2.32, p < 0.05), and older parks less effectively prevented forest loss inside park boundaries than younger parks (F_2,154 = ?4.11, p < 0.001). Our analyses, the first individual and national assessment of park effectiveness across Africa, demonstrated the complexity of factors (such as geographical variation, accessibility, and park size and age) influencing the ability of a park to curb forest loss within its boundaries.     

Plant Phenology in Western Canada: Trends and Links to the View From Space

One feature of climate change is the trends to earlier spring onset in many north temperate areas of the world. The timing of spring flowering and leafing of perennial plants is largely controlled by temperature accumulation; both temperature and phenological records illustrate changes in recent decades. Phenology studies date back over a century, with extensive databases existing for western Canada. Earlier spring flowering has been noted for many woody plants, with larger trends seen for species that develop at spring's start. Implications for ecosystems of trends to earlier spring arrival include changes in plant species composition, changes in timing and distribution of pests and disease, and potentially disrupted ecological interactions. While Alberta has extensive phenology databases (for species, years, and geographic coverage) for recent decades, these data cannot provide continuous ground coverage. There is great potential for phenological data to provide ground validation for satellite imagery interpretation, especially as new remote sensors are becoming available. Phenological networks are experiencing a resurgence of interest in Canada (www.plantwatch.ca) and globally, and linking these ground-based observations with the view from space will greatly enhance our capacity to track the biotic response to climate changes.     

GPM卫星降水数据在天山山区的适用性分析

卫星降水产品在山区的适用性具有较高的不确定性。论文基于天山山区2014-2015年167个气象站点数据,应用较为广泛的两套卫星降水产品--TRMM与CMORPH,选用均方根误差（RMSE）、相关系数（R）、相对误差（PB）,以及分类统计分析指标（错报率FAR、探测率POD、公正先兆评分ETS、频率偏差BIAS）等,评估了新一代卫星降水产品--Global Precipitation Measurement（GPM）在天山山区的适用性。结果表明：相对于以上两种产品,GPM在山区的精度最高。具体表现在：1）3套产品在降水较多的夏秋季均表现较好,相对于TRMM与CMORPH,GPM与观测数据的相关系数最高（R≥0.6）,相对误差最小（PB≈10%）;2）在整个天山山区,GPM相对于其他两套产品表现出较低的误差范围（-55%~55%）;3）GPM在不同的高程带内,均表现出同观测站点较低的误差与较高的相关系数;4）3套降水产品均表现出对探测弱降水事件较高的准确性（POD≈0.58）和较低的错误率（FAR≈0.63）,但综合分析4种指数,GPM表现最佳,能够以较准确的精度和较低的误差估测降水系统。     

2014年河北中南部两次重霾天气成因分析

利用河北省环保局环境监测站提供的污染物浓度数据及常规气象观测数据、NCEP再分析资料,结合HYSPLIT4.9后向轨迹模式,对2014年10月上旬发生在河北省的2次大范围的重霾天气特征和成因进行综合分析.结果表明,这2次重污染天气过程PM_2.5地面浓度最大值出现在邢台,为507μg/m³,水平能见度不足1km.均压场的分布和较为平稳的高空形势为2次霾天气提供了有利的气象背景.高湿,静小风以及较低的混合层高度不利于污染物扩散,是导致这两次重污染天气持续的主要原因.结合卫星火点及污染物来源分析表明,河北南部及周边省份的秸秆燃烧加重了第2次过程的污染,污染气团的输送对区域性重霾天气产生重要影响.     

基于TRMM订正数据的横断山区降水时空分布特征

鉴于高时空变异地区降水观测的需求,论文提出了基于ISODATA动态聚类法和最大似然法分区逐月回归的TRMM数据订正方法,并以横断山区为例,利用地基台站降水数据对1998-2012 年的TRMM 3B43 V7 数据进行了实验研究,并探讨了过去15 a 横断山区的降水时空分布特征及变化趋势。结果表明,TRMM 3B43 V7 数据在横断山区的总体精度较高,单站精度较低。订正后的TRMM 3B43 数据,与实测值偏差大为减少,降水相对偏差大于10%的站点由原始数据的16 个(42.1%)减少为7 个(18.4%),有81.6%的站点年降水量相对偏差小于10%,且相对偏差大于等于20%的站点仅3 个,能够基本满足横断山区降水时空分布特征研究的精度需要,有效地弥补了有限站点观测的不足。研究区内年降水量从东南向西北递减,与东亚季风在该区域的走向一致;1998-2012 年横断山区的降水量主要呈减少趋势,减少地区主要分布在南部以及中西部地区。夏季降水减少趋势最为突出,秋季次之,冬春变化趋势不明显。横断山区大部分区域的降水量与东亚夏季风指数正相关,与东亚冬季风指数负相关;最近15 a,研究区东亚季风指数持续变小,恰好与研究结果中的降水减少趋势一致。     

Landscape trajectory of natural boreal forest loss as an impediment to green infrastructure

Loss of natural forests by forest clearcutting has been identified as a critical conservation challenge worldwide. This study addressed forest fragmentation and loss in the context of the establishment of a functional green infrastructure as a spatiotemporally connected landscape-scale network of habitats enhancing biodiversity, favorable conservation status, and ecosystem services. Through retrospective analysis of satellite images, we assessed a 50- to 60-year spatiotemporal clearcutting impact trajectory on natural and near-natural boreal forests across a sizable and representative region from the Gulf of Bothnia to the Scandinavian Mountain Range in northern Fennoscandia. This period broadly covers the whole forest clearcutting period; thus, our approach and results can be applied to comprehensive impact assessment of industrial forest management. The entire study region covers close to 46,000 km² of forest-dominated landscape in a late phase of transition from a natural or near-natural to a land-use modified state. We found a substantial loss of intact forest, in particular of large, contiguous areas, a spatial polarization of remaining forest on regional scale where the inland has been more severely affected than the mountain and coastal zones, and a pronounced impact on interior forest core areas. Salient results were a decrease in area of the largest intact forest patch from 225,853 to 68,714 ha in the mountain zone and from 257,715 to 38,668 ha in the foothills zone, a decrease from 75% to 38% intact forest in the inland zones, a decrease in largest patch core area (assessed by considering 100-m patch edge disturbance) from 6114 to 351 ha in the coastal zone, and a geographic imbalance in protected forest with an evident predominance in the mountain zone. These results demonstrate profound disturbance of configuration of the natural forest landscape and disrupted connectivity, which challenges the establishment of functional green infrastructure. Our approach supports the identification of forests for expanded protection and conservation-oriented forest landscape restoration.     

Benchmarking Optical/Thermal Satellite Imagery for Estimating Evapotranspiration and Soil Moisture in Decision Support Tools

Generally, one expects evapotranspiration (ET) maps derived from optical/thermal Landsat and MODIS satellite imagery to improve decision support tools and lead to superior decisions regarding water resources management. However, there is lack of supportive evidence to accept or reject this expectation. We “benchmark” three existing hydrologic decision support tools with the following benchmarks: annual ET for the ET Toolbox developed by the United States Bureau of Reclamation, predicted rainfall‐runoff hydrographs for the Gridded Surface/Subsurface Hydrologic Analysis model developed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and the average annual groundwater recharge for the Distributed Parameter Watershed Model used by Daniel B. Stephens & Associates. The conclusion of this benchmark study is that the use of NASA/USGS optical/thermal satellite imagery can considerably improve hydrologic decision support tools compared to their traditional implementations. The benefits of improved decision making, resulting from more accurate results of hydrologic support systems using optical/thermal satellite imagery, should substantially exceed the costs for acquiring such imagery and implementing the remote sensing algorithms. In fact, the value of reduced error in estimating average annual groundwater recharge in the San Gabriel Mountains, California alone, in terms of value of water, may be as large as $1 billion, more than sufficient to pay for one new Landsat satellite.