Bridging structure and function in semi-arid ecosystems by integrating remote sensing and ground based measurements

The Southwestern US is projected to continue the current significant warming trend, with increased variability in the timing and magnitude of rainfall events. The effects of these changes in climate are already evident in the form of multi-year droughts which have resulted in the widespread mortality of woody vegetation across the region. Therefore, the need to monitor and model forest mortality and carbon dynamics at the landscape and regional scale is an essential component of regional and global climate mitigation strategies, and critical if we are to understand how the imminent state transitions taking place in forests globally will affect climate forcing and feedbacks. Remote sensing offers the only solution to multitemporal regional observation, yet many challenges exist with employing modern remote sensing solutions in highly stressed vegetation characteristic of semi-arid biomes, making one of the most expansive biomes on the globe also one of the most difficult to accu- rately monitor and model. The goal of this research was to investigate how changes in the structure of semi-arid woodlands following forest mortality impacts ecosystem function, and to determine how this question can be addressed using remotely sensed data sets. I focused primarily on Pinus edulis and Juniperous monosperma (piñon-juniper) woodlands, and took advantage of an existing manipulation experiment where mortality was imposed on all of the large piñon (¡ 7 cm dbh) in a 4 ha PJ woodland in 2009 and the ecosystem functional responses have been quantified using eddy covariance. A nearby intact PJ woodland, also instrumented with eddy covariance, was used as a control for this experiment. I tested the ability of high resolution remote sensing data to mechanistically describe the patterns in overstory mortality and understory green-up in this manipulated woodland by comparing it to the intact woodland, and observed the heterogeneous response of the understory as a function of cover type. I also investigated the relationship between changes in soil water content and the greenness of the canopy, noting that in the disturbed woodland, I observed a decoupling between how the canopy was measured remotely (e.g., via vegetation indices, VI) and photosynthesis. This is significant in that it potentially represents a significant source of error in using existing light use efficiency models of carbon uptake in these disturbed woodlands. This research also suggested that leveraging remote sensing data which measures in the red-edge portion of reflected light can provide increased sensitivity to the low leaf area, ephemeral pulses of greenup that were identified in the disturbed woodland, post-canopy mortality. Given these findings, I developed a hierarchy of simple linear models to test how well vegetation indices acquired through different spatial resolution sensors (Land- sat and RapidEye) were able to predict carbon uptake in both intact and disturbed piñon-juniper woodlands. The vegetation indices used were a moisture sensitive VI, and a red-edge leveraging VI from these sensors, and I compared estimates of carbon uptake derived from these models to the Gross Primary Productivity estimated from tower-based eddy covariance at both the manipulated and intact piñon-juniper sites. I determined that the red-edge VI and the moisture sensitive VI both constrained uncertainty associated with carbon uptake, but that the variability in satellite view angle from scene to scene can impose a significant amount of noise in sparse canopy ecosystems. Finally, given the extent and prevalence of J. monosperma across the region, and its complex growth morphology, I tested the ability of aerial lidar to quantify the biomass of juniper. In this simplified case study, I developed a method- ology to relate the volume of canopy measured via lidar to the equivalent stem area at the root crown. By working in a single species ecosystem, I circumvented many challenges associated with driving allometries remotely, but also present a work-flow that I intend to adapt to more complex systems, namely piñon-juniper woodlands. Together, this work describes and addresses existing challenges with respect to us- ing remote sensing to understand both the structure and function of piñon-juniper woodlands, and how it changes in response to widespread piñon mortality. It provides several new techniques to mitigate the difficulties associated with monitoring mortality / recovery dynamics, predicting canopy function, and determining ecosystem state parameters in these complex, sensitive biomes

Influence of momentum-dependent interactions on balance energy and mass dependence

We aim to study the role of momentum-dependent interactions in transverse flow as well as in its disappearance. For the present study, central collisions involving mass between 24 and 394 are considered. We find that momentum-dependent interactions have different impact in lighter colliding nuclei compared to heavier colliding nuclei. In lighter nuclei, the contribution of mean field towards the flow is smaller compared to heavier nuclei where binary nucleon-nucleon collisions dominate the scene. The inclusion of momentum-dependent interactions also explains the energy of vanishing flow in $^{12}C+^{12}C$ reaction which was not possible with the static equation of state. An excellent agreement of our theoretical attempt is found for balance energy with experimental data throughout the periodic table

Disappearance of Transverse Flow in Central Collisions for Heavier Nuclei

For the first time, mass dependence of balance energy only for heavier systems has been studied. Our results are in excellent agreement with the data which allow us to predict the balance energy of U+U, for the first time, around 37-39 MeV/nucleon. Also our results indicate a hard equation of state along with nucleon-nucleon cross-section around 40 mb.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev. Let

On the sensitivity of the energy of vanishing flow towards mass asymmetry of colliding nuclei

We demonstrate the role of the mass asymmetry in the energy of vanishing flow by studying asymmetric reactions throughout the periodic table and over entire colliding geometry. Our results, which are almost independent of the system size and as well as of the colliding geometries indicate a sizable effect of the asymmetry of the reaction on the energy of vanishing flow

Particle-particle correlations and the space-time structure of heavy ion collisions

The present status of the use of two-particle intensity interferometry as a diagnostic tool to study the space-time dynamics of intermediate energy heavy ion collisions is examined. Calculations for the two-proton and two-pion correlation functions are presented and compared to experiment. The calculations are based on the nuclear Boltzmann-Uehling-Uhlenbeck transport theory.Comment: 20 pages, Preprint MSUCL-864 (to be published in Progress in Particle and Nuclear Physics, Vol. 30

Gamow-Teller strength distributions for nuclei in pre-supernova stellar cores

Electron-capture and $\beta$-decay of nuclei in the core of massive stars play an important role in the stages leading to a type II supernova explosion. Nuclei in the f-p shell are particularly important for these reactions in the post Silicon-burning stage of a presupernova star. In this paper, we characterise the energy distribution of the Gamow-Teller Giant Resonance (GTGR) for mid-fp-shell nuclei in terms of a few shape parameters, using data obtained from high energy, forward scattering (p,n) and (n,p) reactions. The energy of the GTGR centroid $E_{GT}$ is further generalised as function of nuclear properties like mass number, isospin and other shell model properties of the nucleus. Since a large fraction of the GT strength lies in the GTGR region, and the GTGR is accessible for weak transitions taking place at energies relevant to the cores of presupernova and collapsing stars, our results are relevant to the study of important $e^-$-capture and $\beta$-decay rates of arbitrary, neutron-rich, f-p shell nuclei in stellar cores. Using the observed GTGR and Isobaric Analog States (IAS) energy systematics we compare the coupling coefficients in the Bohr-Mottelson two particle interaction Hamiltonian for different regions of the Isotope Table.Comment: Revtex, 28 pages +7 figures (PostScript Figures, uuencoded, filename: Sutfigs.uu). If you have difficulty printing the figures, please contact [email protected]. Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. C, Nov 01, 199

Nuclear Flow Excitation Function

We consider the dependence of collective flow on the nuclear surface thickness in a Boltzmann--Uehling--Uhlenbeck transport model of heavy ion collisions. Well defined surfaces are introduced by giving test particles a Gaussian density profile of constant width. Zeros of the flow excitation function are as much influenced by the surface thickness as the nuclear equation of state, and the dependence of this effect is understood in terms of a simple potential scattering model. Realistic calculations must also take into account medium effects for the nucleon--nucleon cross section, and impact parameter averaging. We find that balance energy scales with the mass number as $A^{-y}$, where $y$ has a numerical value between 0.35 and 0.5, depending on the assumptions about the in-medium nucleon-nucleon cross section.Comment: 11 pages (LaTeX), 7 figures (not included), MSUCL-884, WSU-NP-93-

Isospin dependence of collective flow in heavy-ion collisions at intermediate energies

Within the framework of an isospin-dependent Boltzmann-Uehling-Uhlenbeck (BUU) model using initial proton and neutron densities calculated from the nonlinear relativistic mean-field (RMF) theory, we compare the strength of transverse collective flow in reactions $^{48}Ca+^{58}Fe$ and $^{48}Cr+^{58}Ni$, which have the same mass number but different neutron/proton ratios. The neutron-rich system ($^{48}Ca+^{58}Fe$) is found to show significantly stronger negative deflection and consequently has a higher balance energy, especially in peripheral collisions. NOTE ADDED IN PROOF: The new phenomenon predicted in this work has just been confirmed by an experiment done by G.D. Westfall et al. using the NSCL/MSU radioactive beam facility and a spartan soccer. A paper by R. Pak et al. is submitted to PRL to report the experimental result.Comment: Latex file, 9 pages, 4 figures availabe upon request; Phys. Rev. Lett. (June 3, 1996) in pres

Design, Implementation and First Measurements with the Medipix Neutron Camera in CMS

The Medipix detector is the first device dedicated to measuring mixed-field radiation in the CMS cavern and able to distinguish between different particle types. Medipix2-MXR chips bump bonded to silicon sensors with various neutron conversion layers developed by the IEAP CTU in Prague were successfully installed for the 2008 LHC start-up in the CMS experimental and services caverns to measure the flux of various particle types, in particular neutrons. They have operated almost continuously during the 2010 run period, and the results shown here are from the proton run between the beginning of July and the end of October 2010. Clear signals are seen and different particle types have been observed during regular LHC luminosity running, and an agreement in the measured flux rate is found with the simulations. These initial results are promising, and indicate that these devices have the potential for further and future LHC and high energy physics applications as radiation monitoring devices for mixed field environments, including neutron flux monitoring. Further extensions are foreseen in the near future to increase the performance of the detector and its coverage for monitoring in CMS.Comment: 15 pages, 16 figures, submitted to JINS

Neutrons from multiplicity-selected Au-Au collisions at 150, 250, 400, and 650 AMeV

We measured neutron triple-differential cross sections from multiplicity-selected Au-Au collisions at 150, 250, 400, and 650 \AMeV. The reaction plane for each collision was estimated from the summed transverse velocity vector of the charged fragments emitted in the collision. We examined the azimuthal distribution of the triple-differential cross sections as a function of the polar angle and the neutron rapidity. We extracted the average in--plane transverse momentum $\langle P_x\rangle$ and the normalized observable $\langle P_x/P_\perp\rangle$, where $P_\perp$ is the neutron transverse momentum, as a function of the neutron center-of-mass rapidity, and we examined the dependence of these observables on beam energy. These collective flow observables for neutrons, which are consistent with those of protons plus bound nucleons from the Plastic Ball Group, agree with the Boltzmann--Uehling--Uhlenbeck (BUU) calculations with a momentum--dependent interaction. Also, we calculated the polar-angle-integrated maximum azimuthal anisotropy ratio R from the value of $\langle P_x/P_\perp\rangle$.Comment: 20 LaTeX pages. 11 figures to be faxed on request, send email to sender's addres