Application of remote sensing technology to land evaluation, planning utilization of land resources, and assessment of westland habitat in eastern South Dakota, parts 1 and 2

The author has identified the following significant results. LANDSAT fulfilled the requirements for general soils and land use information. RB-57 imagery was required to provide the information and detail needed for mapping soils for land evaluation. Soils maps for land evaluation were provided on clear mylar at the scale of the county highway map to aid users in locating mapping units. Resulting mapped data were computer processed to provided a series of interpretive maps (land value, limitations to development, etc.) and area summaries for the users

Fluvio-deltaic avulsions during relative sea-level fall.

Understanding river response to changes in relative sea level (RSL) is essential for predicting fluvial stratigraphy and source-to-sink dynamics. Recent theoretical work has suggested that rivers can remain aggradational during RSL fall, but field data are needed to verify this response and investigate sediment deposition processes. We show with field work and modeling that fluvio-deltaic systems can remain aggradational or at grade during RSL fall, leading to superelevation and continuation of delta lobe avulsions. The field site is the Goose River, Newfoundland-Labrador, Canada, which has experienced steady RSL fall of around 3–4 mm yr⁻¹ in the past 5 k.y. from post-glacial isostatic rebound. Elevation analysis and optically stimulated luminescence dating suggest that the Goose River avulsed and deposited three delta lobes during RSL fall. Simulation results from Delft3D software show that if the characteristic fluvial response time is longer than the duration of RSL fall, then fluvial systems remain aggradational or at grade, and continue to avulse during RSL fall due to superelevation. Intriguingly, we find that avulsions become more frequent at faster rates of RSL fall, provided the system response time remains longer than the duration of RSL fall. This work suggests that RSL fall rate may influence the architecture of falling-stage or forced regression deposits by controlling the number of deposited delta lobes

Transfer Function Approximations for Large Highly Coupled Elastic Boosters with Fuel Slosh

Transfer function approximations for large highly coupled flexible body launch vehicles with liquid fuel slos

Finding Person Relations in Image Data of the Internet Archive

The multimedia content in the World Wide Web is rapidly growing and contains valuable information for many applications in different domains. For this reason, the Internet Archive initiative has been gathering billions of time-versioned web pages since the mid-nineties. However, the huge amount of data is rarely labeled with appropriate metadata and automatic approaches are required to enable semantic search. Normally, the textual content of the Internet Archive is used to extract entities and their possible relations across domains such as politics and entertainment, whereas image and video content is usually neglected. In this paper, we introduce a system for person recognition in image content of web news stored in the Internet Archive. Thus, the system complements entity recognition in text and allows researchers and analysts to track media coverage and relations of persons more precisely. Based on a deep learning face recognition approach, we suggest a system that automatically detects persons of interest and gathers sample material, which is subsequently used to identify them in the image data of the Internet Archive. We evaluate the performance of the face recognition system on an appropriate standard benchmark dataset and demonstrate the feasibility of the approach with two use cases

The influence of flow discharge variations on the morphodynamics of a diffluence-confluence unit on a large river: Impacts of discharge variation on a diffluence-confluence unit

© 2017 The Authors. Earth Surface Processes and Landforms published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Bifurcations are key geomorphological nodes in anabranching and braided fluvial channels, controlling local bed morphology, the routing of sediment and water, and ultimately defining the stability of their associated diffluence–confluence unit. Recently, numerical modelling of bifurcations has focused on the relationship between flow conditions and the partitioning of sediment between the bifurcate channels. Herein, we report on field observations spanning September 2013 to July 2014 of the three-dimensional flow structure, bed morphological change and partitioning of both flow discharge and suspended sediment through a large diffluence–confluence unit on the Mekong River, Cambodia, across a range of flow stages (from 13 500 to 27 000 m 3 s −1 ). Analysis of discharge and sediment load throughout the diffluence–confluence unit reveals that during the highest flows (Q = 27 000 m 3 s −1 ), the downstream island complex is a net sink of sediment (losing 2600 ± 2000 kg s −1 between the diffluence and confluence), whereas during the rising limb (Q = 19 500 m 3 s −1 ) and falling limb flows (Q = 13 500 m 3 s −1 ) the sediment balance is in quasi-equilibrium. We show that the discharge asymmetry of the bifurcation varies with discharge and highlight that the influence of upstream curvature-induced water surface slope and bed morphological change may be first-order controls on bifurcation configuration. Comparison of our field data to existing bifurcation stability diagrams reveals that during lower (rising and falling limb) flow the bifurcation may be classified as unstable, yet transitions to a stable condition at high flows. However, over the long term (1959–2013) aerial imagery reveals the diffluence–confluence unit to be fairly stable. We propose, therefore, that the long-term stability of the bifurcation, as well as the larger channel planform and morphology of the diffluence–confluence unit, may be controlled by the dominant sediment transport regime of the system. © 2017 The Authors. Earth Surface Processes and Landforms published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd

Consequence of reputation in an open-ended Naming Game

We study a modified version of the Naming Game, a recently introduced model which describes how shared vocabulary can emerge spontaneously in a population without any central control. In particular, we introduce a new mechanism that allows a continuous interchange with the external inventory of words. A novel playing strategy, influenced by the hierarchical structure that individuals' reputation defines in the community, is implemented. We analyze how these features influence the convergence times, the cognitive efforts of the agents and the scaling behavior in memory and time.Comment: 6 pages, 6 figure

Extreme flood-driven fluvial bank erosion and sediment loads: direct process measurements using integrated Mobile Laser Scanning (MLS) and hydro-acoustic techniques: Direct measurement of flood-driven erosion using MLS and MBES

Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. This methods paper details the first attempt at monitoring bank erosion, flow and suspended sediment at a site during flooding on the Mekong River induced by the passage of tropical cyclones. We deployed integrated mobile laser scanning (MLS) and multibeam echo sounding (MBES), alongside acoustic Doppler current profiling (aDcp), to directly measure changes in river bank and bed at high (~0.05 m) spatial resolution, in conjunction with measurements of flow and suspended sediment dynamics. We outline the methodological steps used to collect and process this complex point cloud data, and detail the procedures used to process and calibrate the aDcp flow and sediment flux data. A comparison with conventional remote sensing methods of estimating bank erosion, using aerial images and Landsat imagery, reveals that traditional techniques are error prone at the high temporal resolutions required to quantify the patterns and volumes of bank erosion induced by the passage of individual flood events. Our analysis reveals the importance of cyclone-driven flood events in causing high rates of erosion and suspended sediment transport, with a c. twofold increase in bank erosion volumes and a fourfold increase in suspended sediment volumes in the cyclone-affected wet season. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd

Sharp transition towards shared vocabularies in multi-agent systems

What processes can explain how very large populations are able to converge on the use of a particular word or grammatical construction without global coordination? Answering this question helps to understand why new language constructs usually propagate along an S-shaped curve with a rather sudden transition towards global agreement. It also helps to analyze and design new technologies that support or orchestrate self-organizing communication systems, such as recent social tagging systems for the web. The article introduces and studies a microscopic model of communicating autonomous agents performing language games without any central control. We show that the system undergoes a disorder/order transition, going trough a sharp symmetry breaking process to reach a shared set of conventions. Before the transition, the system builds up non-trivial scale-invariant correlations, for instance in the distribution of competing synonyms, which display a Zipf-like law. These correlations make the system ready for the transition towards shared conventions, which, observed on the time-scale of collective behaviors, becomes sharper and sharper with system size. This surprising result not only explains why human language can scale up to very large populations but also suggests ways to optimize artificial semiotic dynamics.Comment: 12 pages, 4 figure

Remote sensing applications to resource problems in South Dakota

There are no author-identified significant results in this report

The impact of significant input of fine sediment on benthic fauna at tributary junctions: a case study of the Bermejo-Paraguay River confluence, Argentina

This study examines the morphological features, suspended sediment inputs and hydraulic conditions within a large river in association with ecological patterns before and after a tributary confluence. In order to examine these effects, the macroinvertebrate distributions from three reaches of the Paraguay and Bermejo Rivers (Paraguay-Argentina) are investigated. The Bermejo River is a tributary that supplies significant quantities of fine sediment to the Paraguay River, primarily in suspension. Two reaches were examined on the Paraguay River, upstream and downstream of the Bermejo River junction, with the third study reach located on the Bermejo River, upstream of the confluence with the Paraguay River. The results provide clear evidence that a significantly increased loading of fine sediment at a river confluence has effects on the distribution and potential movement of benthic invertebrates in the lotic environment by representing physical barriers at affected sites. These effects may be important at both local and regional scales, and such increases in suspended sediment (especially associated with anthropogenic change) may thus pose a major threat to ecosystem integrity that has been historically underestimated