Research on evaporation of Taiyuan basin area by using remote sensing

International audienceTaiyuan basin is enclosed by hills and mountains, located in the middle of Shanxi province, standing between longitudes 111°40'?113°00'E and latitude 37°00'?38&deg00'N. With various types and wide distribution, the mineral resources are very abundant in this basin area. However, there is a great shortage of water resources. Due to continual fall of groundwater level caused by excessive extraction of ground water, some severe environmental problems are induced in this area, such as ground subsidence, etc. The goal of this paper is to estimate the spatial distribution of actual evaporation over the basin by using remote sensing data. The Surface Energy Balance System (SEBS) has been developed (Su, 2001, 2002). Using visible and infrared satellite remote sensing data, SEBS is based on land surface energy balance theory combined with the in-situ meteorological data or the product of atmospheric numerical model to estimate land surface turbulent flux and the relative evaporation at different scales. SEBS was served as the core methodology of this paper and was used for evaporation estimation. On the basis of hydro-geological data and NOAA satellite data, the SEBS was used in this paper for the estimation of actual evaporation of Taiyuan basin. The spatial distribution of the evaporative fraction and daily evaporation over the basin area was shown. On the other hand, the difference of land surface parameters and evaporation for various target types in the basin area was discussed

The long-term effects of alfalfa on soil water content in the Loess Plateau of northwest China

Soil desiccation is the most serious problem in forest vegetations and grassland, which lead to widespread land degradation in the Loess Plateau of China. The soil water variations at 0 to 1000 cm depth of different vegetations were studied to explore the hydrological effects of vegetations and determine the optimal length of alfalfa (Medicago sativa L.) phase at the Zhenyuan Agri-ecological Station of the Loess Plateau in China. Eight treatments were designed in this study: waste land, wheat land and six continuous growing alfalfa treatments, including 4-year-old (4 year), 6-year-old (6 year), 8- year-old (8 year), 12-year-old (12 year), 18-year-old (18 year) and 26-year-old (26 year) alfalfa grasslands.  Results showed that the wheat field had the best soil water content and no dry soil layer, while slightly dry soil layer occurred in wasteland and 4, 6 and 8 year alfalfa grasslands. After alfalfa grew for > 8 years, moderately dry soil layer appeared in the grassland and expanded beyond 500 cm soil depth. The result also showed that wheat field, wasteland and the alfalfa grasslands growing for 4, 6 and 8 years had no unfavorable impacts on the ecological environments of the soil moisture but the grasslands for 12, 18 and 26 years did exert relatively stronger unfavorable influences on the hydrological effects. Considering all the factors, this study recommends that the optimal length of alfalfa phase should be 8 years.Key words: Different vegetation, alfalfa grasslands, soil water content, ecological effect, soil desiccation, Loess Plateau of China

An advanced fuzzy Bayesian-based FMEA approach for assessing maritime supply chain risks

This paper aims to develop a novel model to assess the risk factors of maritime supply chains by incorporating a fuzzy belief rule approach with Bayesian networks. The new model, compared to traditional risk analysis methods, has the capability of improving result accuracy under a high uncertainty in risk data. A real case of a world leading container shipping company is investigated, and the research results reveal that among the most significant risk factors are transportation of dangerous goods, fluctuation of fuel price, fierce competition, unattractive markets, and change of exchange rates in sequence. Such findings will provide useful insights for accident prevention

Non-unique factorization of polynomials over residue class rings of the integers

We investigate non-unique factorization of polynomials in Z_{p^n}[x] into irreducibles. As a Noetherian ring whose zero-divisors are contained in the Jacobson radical, Z_{p^n}[x] is atomic. We reduce the question of factoring arbitrary non-zero polynomials into irreducibles to the problem of factoring monic polynomials into monic irreducibles. The multiplicative monoid of monic polynomials of Z_{p^n}[x] is a direct sum of monoids corresponding to irreducible polynomials in Z_p[x], and we show that each of these monoids has infinite elasticity. Moreover, for every positive integer m, there exists in each of these monoids a product of 2 irreducibles that can also be represented as a product of m irreducibles.Comment: 11 page

The Universal Edge Physics in Fractional Quantum Hall Liquids

The chiral Luttinger liquid theory for fractional quantum Hall edge transport predicts universal power-law behavior in the current-voltage ($I$-$V$) characteristics for electrons tunneling into the edge. However, it has not been unambiguously observed in experiments in two-dimensional electron gases based on GaAs/GaAlAs heterostructures or quantum wells. One plausible cause is the fractional quantum Hall edge reconstruction, which introduces non-chiral edge modes. The coupling between counterpropagating edge modes can modify the exponent of the $I$-$V$ characteristics. By comparing the $\nu=1/3$ fractional quantum Hall states in modulation-doped semiconductor devices and in graphene devices, we show that the graphene-based systems have an experimental accessible parameter region to avoid the edge reconstruction, which is suitable for the exploration of the universal edge tunneling exponent predicted by the chiral Luttinger liquid theory.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figure