The Community Environmental Monitoring Program in the 21st Century: The Evolution of a Monitoring Network

This paper focuses on the evolution of the various operational aspects of the Community Environmental Monitoring Program (CEMP) network following the transfer of program administration from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to the Desert Research Institute (DRI) of the Nevada System of Higher Education in 1999-2000. The CEMP consists of a network of 29 fixed radiation and weather monitoring stations located in Nevada, Utah, and California. Its mission is to involve stakeholders directly in monitoring for airborne radiological releases to the off site environment as a result of past or ongoing activities on the Nevada Test Site (NTS) and to make data as transparent and accessible to the general public as feasible. At its inception in 1981, the CEMP was a cooperative project of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), DRI, and EPA. In 1999-2000, technical administration of the CEMP transitioned from EPA to DRI. Concurrent with and subsequent to this transition, station and program operations underwent significant enhancements that furthered the mission of the program. These enhancements included the addition of a full suite of meteorological instrumentation, state-of-the-art electronic data collectors, on-site displays, and communications hardware. A public website was developed. Finally, the DRI developed a mobile monitoring station that can be operated entirely on solar power in conjunction with a deep-cell battery, and includes all meteorological sensors and a pressurized ion chamber for detecting background gamma radiation. Final station configurations have resulted in the creation of a platform that is well suited for use as an in-field multi-environment test-bed for prototype environmental sensors and in interfacing with other scientific and educational programs. Recent and near-future collaborators have included federal, state, and local agencies in both the government and private sectors. The CEMP also serves as a model for other programs wishing to involve stakeholders with a meaningful role in the process of monitoring and data collection

Ambient Radon-222 Monitoring in Amargosa Valley, Nevada

As part of a program to characterize and baseline selected environmental parameters in the region around the proposed repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, ambient radon-222 monitoring was conducted in the rural community of Amargosa Valley, the community closest to the proposed repository site. Passive integrating radon monitors and a continuous radon monitoring instrument were deployed adjacent to the Community Environmental Monitoring Program (CEMP) (http://www.cemp.dri.edu/index.html) station located in the Amargosa Valley Community Center near the library. The CEMP station provided real-time ambient gamma exposure and meteorological data used to correct the integrated radon measurements as well as verify meteorological data collected by the continuous radon monitoring instrument. Additionally, different types of environmental enclosures that housed the monitors and instrument were used to determine if particular designs influenced the ambient radon measurements

BIOSPHERE MODELING AT YUCCA MOUNTAIN, NEVADA

The objectives of the biosphere modeling efforts are to assess how radionuclides potentially released from the proposed repository could be transported through a variety of environmental media. The study of these transport mechanisms, referred to as pathways, is critical in calculating the potential radiation dose to man. Since most of the existing and pending regulations applicable to the Project are radiation dose based standards, the biosphere modeling effort will provide crucial technical input to support the Viability Assessment (VA), the Working Draft of License Application (WDLA), and the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS)

Pitfalls of Transparency: Lessons Learned from the Milford Flats Fire

The Community Environmental Monitoring Program (CEMP) consists of a network of 29 radiation and weather monitoring stations located over a 160,000-km2 area of southern Nevada, southwestern Utah, and southeastern California. The program provides stakeholders with a hands-on role in the monitoring for airborne radioactivity that could result from ongoing or past activities on the Nevada Test Site (NTS). The CEMP’s mission includes provisions for the transparency of the monitoring data as well as public accessibility to these data. This is accomplished through direct stakeholder participation, public outreach, and near real-time uploads of monitoring data to a publicly accessible web site located at http://cemp.dri.edu/. In early July 2007, a lightning strike ignited a wildfire just outside the city of Milford in southeastern Utah. This fire, named the Milford Flats Fire, grew rapidly and eventually became the largest wildfire in recorded history in the state, burning approximately 567 square miles. At about the same time, the pressurized ion chamber (PIC) located at the CEMP station in Milford began reporting average exposure rates that ranged from four to seven times normal for the area. Initially, it was believed that elevated readings could be a result of gamma-emitting radon progeny released by the fire and transported in smoke plumes. The U.S. Department of Energy issued a press release offering this as a possible first explanation, and the release received a great amount of attention, particularly in the state of Utah, where concerns were expressed that the fire could be causing re-suspension of radionuclides associated with fallout from past nuclear testing at the NTS. Subsequent analyses of particulate air filter samples obtained from the Milford station, as well as an examination of the data reported by the PIC, the timing of the incident, and diagnostic testing on the PIC, showed that the abnormal gamma readings were a result of instrument malfunction. WM2008 Conference, February 24-28, 2008, Phoenix, AZ This paper will review the data from the PIC and the analytical results of air filter samples collected at Milford, and present lessons learned from the Milford Flats Fire Incident on providing real-time access to monitoring data for the public

Accidental Pinhole and Pinspeck Cameras

We identify and study two types of “accidental” images that can be formed in scenes. The first is an accidental pinhole camera image. The second class of accidental images are “inverse” pinhole camera images, formed by subtracting an image with a small occluder present from a reference image without the occluder. Both types of accidental cameras happen in a variety of different situations. For example, an indoor scene illuminated by natural light, a street with a person walking under the shadow of a building, etc. The images produced by accidental cameras are often mistaken for shadows or interreflections. However, accidental images can reveal information about the scene outside the image, the lighting conditions, or the aperture by which light enters the scene.National Science Foundation (U.S.) (CAREER Award 0747120)United States. Office of Naval Research. Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (N000141010933)National Science Foundation (U.S.) (CGV 1111415)National Science Foundation (U.S.) (CGV 0964004

The Atapuerca sites and the Ibeas hominids

The Atapuerca railway Trench and Ibeas sites near Burgos, Spain, are cave fillings that include a series of deposits ranging from below the Matuyama/Bruhnes reversal up to the end of Middle Pleistocene. The lowest fossil-bearing bed in the Trench contains an assemblage of large and small Mammals including Mimomys savini, Pitymys gregaloides, Pliomys episcopalis, Crocuta crocuta, Dama sp. and Megacerini; the uppermost assemblage includes Canis lupus, Lynx spelaea, Panthera (Leo) fossilis, Felis sylvestris, Equus caballus steinheimensis, E.c. germanicus, Pitymys subtenaneus, Microtus arvalis agrestis, Pliomys lenki, and also Panthera toscana, Dicerorhinus bemitoechus, Bison schoetensacki, which are equally present in the lowest level. The biostratigraphic correlation and dates of the sites are briefly discussed, as are the paleoclimatic interpretation of the Trench sequences. Stone artifacts are found in several layers; the earliest occurrences correspond to the upper beds containing Mimomys savini. A set of preserved human occupation floors has been excavated in the top fossil-bearing beds. The stone-tool assemblages of the upper levels are of upper-medial Acheulean to Charentian tradition. The rich bone breccia SH, in the Cueva Mayor-Cueva del Silo, Ibeas de Juarros, is a derived deposit, due to a mud flow that dispersed and carried the skeletons of many carnivores and humans. The taxa represented are: Vrsus deningeri (largely dominant), Panthera (Leo) fossilis, Vulpes vulpes, Homo sapiens var. Several traits of both mandibular and cranial remains are summarized. Preliminary attempts at dating suggest that the Ibeas fossil man is older than the Last Interglacial, or oxygen-isotope stage 5

Treaty of Fort Laramie, 1868 (Kappler)

This 1904 reprint of the Sioux Treaty of 1868, also known as the Treaty of Fort Laramie, 1868, was transcribed and published in vol. II of Charles Kappler’s Indian Affairs. Laws and Treaties. This treaty, between the United States government and the Sioux and Arapaho Nations, established the Great Sioux Reservation, promised the Sioux would own the Black Hills in perpetuity, and set aside the country north of the North Platte River and east of the summits of the Big Horn Mountains as unceded Indian territory. Furthermore, the U.S. government pledged to close the Bozeman Trail forts and provide food, clothing, and annuities to the tribes, given that they agreed to relinquish all rights to live outside the reservation.https://commons.und.edu/indigenous-gov-docs/1176/thumbnail.jp

Comparison of Ambient Radon Concentrations in Air in the Northern Mojave Desert from Continuous and Integrating Instruments

As part of a program to characterize and baseline environmental parameters, ambient radon-222 (Rn) monitoring was conducted in the rural community of Amargosa Valley, NV, the closest community to Yucca Mountain. Passive integrating and continuous Rn monitoring instruments were deployed adjacent to the Community Environmental Monitoring Program (CEMP) station in Amargosa Valley. The CEMP station provided real-time ambient gamma exposure and meteorological data used to correct the integrated Rn measurements, verified the meteorological data collected by the continuous Rn monitoring instrument, and for provided instrumentation for evaluating the relationships between meteorological conditions and Rn concentrations. Hourly Rn concentrations in air measured by the continuous Rn monitoring instrument (AlphaGUARD®) were compared to the average hourly values for the integrating Rn measurements (E-PERM®) by dividing the total Rn measurements by the number of hours the instruments were deployed. The results of the comparison indicated that average hourly ambient Rn concentrations as measured by both methods ranged from 0.2 to 0.4 pico-curies per liter of air. Ambient Rn values for the AlphaGUARD exhibited diurnal variations. When Rn concentrations were compared with measurements of temperature (T), barometric pressure, and relative humidity, the correlation (inversely) was highest with T, albeit weakly

Joint Inference in Weakly-Annotated Image Datasets via Dense Correspondence

We present a principled framework for inferring pixel labels in weakly-annotated image datasets. Most previous, example-based approaches to computer vision rely on a large corpus of densely labeled images. However, for large, modern image datasets, such labels are expensive to obtain and are often unavailable. We establish a large-scale graphical model spanning all labeled and unlabeled images, then solve it to infer pixel labels jointly for all images in the dataset while enforcing consistent annotations over similar visual patterns. This model requires significantly less labeled data and assists in resolving ambiguities by propagating inferred annotations from images with stronger local visual evidences to images with weaker local evidences. We apply our proposed framework to two computer vision problems, namely image annotation with semantic segmentation, and object discovery and co-segmentation (segmenting multiple images containing a common object). Extensive numerical evaluations and comparisons show that our method consistently outperforms the state-of-the-art in automatic annotation and semantic labeling, while requiring significantly less labeled data. In contrast to previous co-segmentation techniques, our method manages to discover and segment objects well even in the presence of substantial amounts of noise images (images not containing the common object), as typical for datasets collected from Internet search

Intrinsic Textures for Relightable Free-Viewpoint Video

This paper presents an approach to estimate the intrinsic texture properties (albedo, shading, normal) of scenes from multiple view acquisition under unknown illumination conditions. We introduce the concept of intrinsic textures, which are pixel-resolution surface textures representing the intrinsic appearance parameters of a scene. Unlike previous video relighting methods, the approach does not assume regions of uniform albedo, which makes it applicable to richly textured scenes. We show that intrinsic image methods can be used to refine an initial, low-frequency shading estimate based on a global lighting reconstruction from an original texture and coarse scene geometry in order to resolve the inherent global ambiguity in shading. The method is applied to relighting of free-viewpoint rendering from multiple view video capture. This demonstrates relighting with reproduction of fine surface detail. Quantitative evaluation on synthetic models with textured appearance shows accurate estimation of intrinsic surface reflectance properties. © 2014 Springer International Publishing