Using hydrologic landscape classification and climatic time series to assess hydrologic vulnerability of the western U.S. to climate

We apply the hydrologic landscape (HL) concept to assess the hydrologic vulnerability of the western United States (U.S.) to projected climate conditions. Our goal is to understand the potential impacts of hydrologic vulnerability for stakeholder-defined interests across large geographic areas. The basic assumption of the HL approach is that catchments that share similar physical and climatic characteristics are expected to have similar hydrologic characteristics. We use the hydrologic landscape vulnerability approach (HLVA) to map the HLVA index (an assessment of climate vulnerability) by integrating hydrologic landscapes into a retrospective analysis of historical data to assess variability in future climate projections and hydrology, which includes temperature, precipitation, potential evapotranspiration, snow accumulation, climatic moisture, surplus water, and seasonality of water surplus. Projections that are beyond 2 standard deviations of the historical decadal average contribute to the HLVA index for each metric. Separating vulnerability into these seven separate metrics allows stakeholders and/or water resource managers to have a more specific understanding of the potential impacts of future conditions. We also apply this approach to examine case studies. The case studies (Mt. Hood, Willamette Valley, and Napa–Sonoma Valley) are important to the ski and wine industries and illustrate how our approach might be used by specific stakeholders. The resulting vulnerability maps show that temperature and potential evapotranspiration are consistently projected to have high vulnerability indices for the western U.S. Precipitation vulnerability is not as spatially uniform as temperature. The highest-elevation areas with snow are projected to experience significant changes in snow accumulation. The seasonality vulnerability map shows that specific mountainous areas in the west are most prone to changes in seasonality, whereas many transitional terrains are moderately susceptible. This paper illustrates how HL and the HLVA can help assess climatic and hydrologic vulnerability across large spatial scales. By combining the HL concept and HLVA, resource managers could consider future climate conditions in their decisions about managing important economic and conservation resources.</p

Catchment classification:hydrological analysis of catchment behavior through process-based modeling along a climate gradient

Catchment classification is an efficient method to synthesize our understanding of how climate variability and catchment characteristics interact to define hydrological response. One way to accomplish catchment classification is to empirically relate climate and catchment characteristics to hydrologic behavior and to quantify the skill of predicting hydrologic response based on the combination of climate and catchment characteristics. Here we present results using an alternative approach that uses our current level of hydrological understanding, expressed in the form of a process-based model, to interrogate how climate and catchment characteristics interact to produce observed hydrologic response. The model uses topographic, geomorphologic, soil and vegetation information at the catchment scale and conditions parameter values using readily available data on precipitation, temperature and streamflow. It is applicable to a wide range of catchments in different climate settings. We have developed a step-by-step procedure to analyze the observed hydrologic response and to assign parameter values related to specific components of the model. We applied this procedure to 12 catchments across a climate gradient east of the Rocky Mountains, USA. We show that the model is capable of reproducing the observed hydrologic behavior measured through hydrologic signatures chosen at different temporal scales. Next, we analyze the dominant time scales of catchment response and their dimensionless ratios with respect to climate and observable landscape features in an attempt to explain hydrologic partitioning. We find that only a limited number of model parameters can be related to observable landscape features. However, several climate-model time scales, and the associated dimensionless numbers, show scaling relationships with respect to the investigated hydrological signatures (runoff coefficient, baseflow index, and slope of the flow duration curve). Moreover, some dimensionless numbers vary systematically across the climate gradient, possibly as a result of systematic co-variation of climate, vegetation and soil related time scales. If such co-variation can be shown to be robust across many catchments along different climate gradients, it opens perspective for model parameterization in ungauged catchments as well as prediction of hydrologic response in a rapidly changing environment

Diagnosis and treatment of thyroid cancer in children in the multicenter analysis in Poland for PPGGL

Introduction: Differentiated thyroid carcinoma (DTC) in children presents different biological behavior in comparison to adults. Authors presents preliminary results of multicenter analysis concerning incidence, diagnostics and treatment of DTC in children. Material and methods: The study is a retrospective analysis of 107 pediatric patients from 14 academic centers based on the data from 2000 to 2005 obtained by questionnaire in hospitals involved in the treatment of DTC in children. Results: Papillary thyroid cancer was diagnosed in 83 children, follicular thyroid cancer in 10 children and medullary thyroid cancer in 14 children. Incidence of DTC in children was estimated between 18 and 23 cases per year. The biggest group of patients consisted of children between 11 and 15 years of age, with girls to boys ratio 3.3 : 1. Clinically DTC in children presented most often as solitary thyroid nodule. Cervical lymphadenopathy was observed in 42% of patients. Intraoperative verification indicated metastatic nodes in 50% of children. Low stage DTC predominated (T1 in 36% and T2 in 26% of children). One step surgery was performed in 65% of children with DTC, two step surgery in 25% of patients. I131 therapy was undertaken in 80% of children. Lung metastases were indicated in post therapeutic studies in 14% of children with DTC. Prophylactic thyroidectomies were performed in 79% of children in the group of patients with MTC and RET gene mutations. Conclusions: The necessity of introduction of unified therapeutic standard in children with DTC in Poland is underlined.Wstęp: Zróżnicowane raki tarczycy (DTC, differentiated thyroid carcinoma) występują u dzieci rzadko. Większość przypadków wykrywanych jest w wieku 11-17 lat. W odróżnieniu od dorosłych DTC u dzieci prezentują odmienne zachowanie biologiczne. Mała liczba przypadków DTC w poszczególnych ośrodkach oraz względnie łagodny ich przebieg utrudniają ocenę występowania i leczenia DTC u dzieci w Polsce, uzależniając ją od wysiłków włożonych w uzyskanie rzetelnych danych. Autorzy przedstawiają wstępne wyniki analizy wieloośrodkowej dotyczące występowania, diagnostyki i leczenia DTC u dzieci. Materiał i metody: Podjęte badania są retrospektywną analizą obejmującą lata 2000-2005, opartą na danych z historii chorób uzyskanych z ankiet rozesłanych do ośrodków dla dzieci i dorosłych podejmujących leczenie DTC. Do analizy zgłoszono 107 pacjentów z 14 ośrodków akademickich w Polsce. Analizie poddano wiek i płeć dzieci z DTC, wielkość i lokalizację zmian w tarczycy, sposoby rozpoznawania DTC, rodzaje i zakres wykonywanych zabiegów operacyjnych oraz leczenie uzupełniające izotopem J131. Wyniki: Raka brodawkowatego stwierdzono u 83 dzieci, pęcherzykowego u 10 dzieci, a rdzeniastego u 14 dzieci. Częstość występowania DTC u dzieci w Polsce wahała się między 18 a 23 przypadkami rocznie. W województwach: mazowieckim i połączonych wielkopolskim i lubuskim wykazano w okresie 2000-2005 wyższą (24 i 25) częstość występowania DTC, w pozostałych województwach wykazywano od 2 do 10 przypadków DTC. Największą grupę pacjentów stanowiły dzieci w wieku 11-15 lat, a stosunek dziewcząt do chłopców wynosił 3,3 : 1. Klinicznie DTC prezentowały się najczęściej jako pojedyncze guzki tarczycy. Limfadenopatię szyjną w badaniu klinicznym stwierdzono u 42% pacjentów, a śródoperacyjnie u 50% dzieci. U większości pacjentów dominowały niższe stopnie zaawansowania DTC (T1 u 36% i T2 u 26% dzieci). Operacje jednoetapowe wykonano u 65% dzieci, operacje dwuetapowe u 25% dzieci, a profilaktyczne tyreoidektomie u 79% dzieci z grupy pacjentów z rakiem rdzeniastym tarczycy (MTC, medullary thyroid cancinoma) i mutacją genu Ret. Leczenie izotopowe J131 podjęto u 80% dzieci. Przerzuty do płuc w scyntygrafii poterapeutycznej wykazano u 14% dzieci z DTC. Wnioski: We wnioskach podkreśla się konieczność wdrożenia na terenie całego kraju ujednoliconego i ocenianego na podstawie obiektywnych przesłanek sposobu postępowania z dziećmi z DTC

Efekty wykorzystania cash poolingu w zarządzaniu środkami pieniężnymi w grupie kapitałowej w górnictwie węgla kamiennego

The article presents the effects of cash pooling application in a capital group. Calculations made on a mining company data indicate that the group’s companies achieve benefits on interests. Companies with surplus funds achieve higher interests on deposits. Companies recording cash shortages on current accounts pay lower interests on debit in the current account. Cash pooling provides for optimal use of the group’s funds, harmonisation of procedures in the area of financial cooperation, improves the group’s financial liquidity, and reduces the costs of external financing. One must not forget the effect of cash pooling manifested in high flexibility of financial settlements among the companies within the capital group.W artykule zaprezentowane zostały efekty zastosowania cash poolingu w grupie kapitałowej w branży górnictwa węgla kamiennego. W pierwszej części niniejszego opracowania przedstawiono istotę, rodzaje oraz sposoby zastosowania cash poolingu. W drugiej części pracy autorzy podkreślają korzyści zastosowania cash poolingu w grupie kapitałowej. Obliczenia dokonane z wykorzystaniem danych spółki węglowej wykazały, że spółki grupy osiągają korzyści odsetkowe. Spółki posiadające nadwyżki środków uzyskują wyższe odsetki z lokat. Spółki wykazujące niedobory gotówki na rachunkach bieżących płacą niższe odsetki od kredytów w rachunku bieżącym. Cash pooling zapewnia optymalne wykorzystanie środków finansowych grupy, ujednolicenie procedur w zakresie współdziałania finansowego, poprawia płynność finansową grupy i ogranicza koszty finansowania zewnętrznego. Nie bez znaczenia jako efekt cash poolingu jest również wysoki stopień elastyczności dokonywania rozliczeń finansowych między spółkami grupy kapitałowej. Wdrożenie w grupie kapitałowej cash poolingu pozwala osiągnąć wiele korzyści finansowych

Climate-vegetation-soil interactions and long-term hydrologic partitioning: signatures of catchment co-evolution

Budyko (1974) postulated that long-term catchment water balance is controlled to first order by the available water and energy. This leads to the interesting question of how do landscape characteristics (soils, geology, vegetation) and climate properties (precipitation, potential evaporation, number of wet and dry days) interact at the catchment scale to produce such a simple and predictable outcome of hydrological partitioning? Here we use a physically-based hydrologic model separately parameterized in 12 US catchments across a climate gradient to decouple the impact of climate and landscape properties to gain insight into the role of climate-vegetation-soil interactions in long-term hydrologic partitioning. The 12 catchment models (with different paramterizations) are subjected to the 12 different climate forcings, resulting in 144 10 yr model simulations. The results are analyzed per catchment (one catchment model subjected to 12 climates) and per climate (one climate filtered by 12 different model parameterization), and compared to water balance predictions based on Budyko's hypothesis (<i>E/P</i> = &varphi; (<i>E</i>_p/<i>P</i>); <i>E</i>: evaporation, <i>P</i>: precipitation, <i>E</i>_p: potential evaporation). We find significant anti-correlation between average deviations of the evaporation index (<i>E</i>/<i>P</i>) computed per catchment vs. per climate, compared to that predicted by Budyko. Catchments that on average produce more <i>E</i>/<i>P</i> have developed in climates that on average produce less <i>E</i>/<i>P</i>, when compared to Budyko's prediction. Water and energy seasonality could not explain these observations, confirming previous results reported by Potter et al. (2005). Next, we analyze which model (i.e., landscape filter) characteristics explain the catchment's tendency to produce more or less <i>E</i>/<i>P</i>. We find that the time scale that controls subsurface storage release explains the observed trend. This time scale combines several geomorphologic and hydraulic soil properties. Catchments with relatively longer subsurface storage release time scales produce significantly more <i>E</i>/<i>P</i>. Vegetation in these catchments have longer access to this additional groundwater source and thus are less prone to water stress. Further analysis reveals that climates that give rise to more (less) <i>E</i>/<i>P</i> are associated with catchments that have vegetation with less (more) efficient water use parameters. In particular, the climates with tendency to produce more <i>E</i>/<i>P</i> have catchments that have lower % root fraction and less light use efficiency. Our results suggest that their exists strong interactions between climate, vegetation and soil properties that lead to specific hydrologic partitioning at the catchment scale. This co-evolution of catchment vegetation and soils with climate needs to be further explored to improve our capabilities to predict hydrologic partitioning in ungauged basins

Technical Note: Characterizing hydrologic change through catchment classification

There has been an intensive search in recent years for suitable strategies to organize and classify the very heterogeneous group of catchments that characterize our landscape. One strand of this work has focused on testing the value of hydrological signatures derived from widely available hydro-meteorological observations for this catchment classification effort. Here we extend this effort by organizing 314 catchments across the contiguous US into 12 distinct clusters using six signature characteristics for a baseline decade (1948–1958, period 1). We subsequently develop a regression tree and utilize it to classify these catchments for three subsequent decades (periods 2–4). This analysis allows us to assess the movement of catchments between clusters over time, and therefore to assess whether their hydrologic similarity/dissimilarity changes. We find examples in which catchments initially assigned to a single class diverge into multiple classes (e.g., midwestern catchments between periods 1 and 2), but also cases where catchments from different classes would converge into a single class (e.g., midwestern catchments between periods 2 and 3). We attempt to interpret the observed changes for causes of this temporal variability in hydrologic behavior. Generally, the changes in both directions were most strongly controlled by changes in the water balance of catchments characterized by an aridity index close to one. Changes to climate characteristics of catchments – mean annual precipitation, length of cold season or the seasonality of precipitation throughout the year – seem to explain most of the observed class transitions between slightly water-limited and slightly energy-limited states. Inadequate temporal information on other time-varying aspects, such as land use change, limits our ability to further disentangle causes for change

Characterizing hydrologic change through catchment classification

There has been an intensive search in recent years for suitable strategies to organize and classify the very heterogeneous group of catchments that characterize our landscape. One strand of this work has focused on testing the value of hydrological signatures derived from widely available hydro-meteorological observations for this catchment classification effort. Here we extend this effort by organizing 314 catchments across the contiguous US into 12 distinct clusters using six signature characteristics for a baseline decade (1948–1958, period 1). We subsequently develop a regression tree and utilize it to classify these catchments for three subsequent decades (periods 2–4). This analysis allows us to assess the movement of catchments between clusters over time, and therefore to assess whether their hydrologic similarity/dissimilarity changes. We find examples in which catchments initially assigned to a single class diverge into multiple classes (e.g., midwestern catchments between periods 1 and 2), but also cases where catchments from different classes would converge into a single class (e.g., midwestern catchments between periods 2 and 3). We attempt to interpret the observed changes for causes of this temporal variability in hydrologic behavior. Generally, the changes in both directions were most strongly controlled by changes in the water balance of catchments characterized by an aridity index close to one. Changes to climate characteristics of catchments – mean annual precipitation, length of cold season or the seasonality of precipitation throughout the year – seem to explain most of the observed class transitions between slightly water-limited and slightly energy-limited states. Inadequate temporal information on other time-varying aspects, such as land use change, limits our ability to further disentangle causes for change

Comparative hydrology across AmeriFlux sites: The variable roles of climate, vegetation, and groundwater

Watersheds can be characterized as complex space?time filters that transform incoming fluxes of energy, water, and nutrients into variable output signals. The behavior of these filters is driven by climate, geomorphology, and ecology and, accordingly, varies from site to site. We investigated this variation by exploring the behavior of evapotranspiration signals from 14 different AmeriFlux sites. Evapotranspiration is driven by water and energetic forcing and is mediated by ecology and internal redistribution of water and energy. As such, it integrates biological and physical controls, making it an ideal signature to target when investigating watershed filtering. We adopted a paradigmatic approach (referred to as the null model) that couples the Penman?Monteith equation to a soil moisture model and explored the deviations between the predictions of the null model and the observed AmeriFlux data across the sites in order to identify the controls on these deviations and their commonalities and differences across the sites. The null model reproduced evapotranspiration fluxes reasonably well for arid, shallow?rooted systems but overestimated the effects of water limitation and could not reproduce seasonal variation in evapotranspiration at other sites. Accounting for plant access to groundwater (or deep soil moisture) reserves and for the effects of soil temperature on limiting evapotranspiration resolved these discrepancies and greatly improved prediction of evapotranspiration at multiple time scales. The results indicate that site?specific hydrology and climatic factors pose important controls on biosphere?hydrosphere interactions and suggest that plant–water table interactions and early season phenological controls need to be incorporated into even simple models to reproduce the seasonality in evapotranspiration.Water ManagementCivil Engineering and Geoscience