ISU Transportation Building Redesign

TSM416: Technology CapstoneProblem Statement: ISU Transportation Services is an organization within Iowa State University that works on and maintains all of the rental vehicles. They need a more efficient way of maintaining their fleet of vehicles. They do not have enough space for the number of vehicles they are taking care of anymore and, therefore, need a larger area to work on, store, and clean their vehicles. As of now, there is no budget for this new design, but we must consider different alternatives that can be used or not used in the final design to keep the overall cost reasonable

ISU Transportation Shop Redesign

TSM416: Technology CapstoneProblem Statement: The current shop ISU Transportation uses is too small for their vehicle fleet, does not have enough room for spare parts, doesn’t flow properly, and the employees are not all in the same building. ISU Transportation needs a shop to work on all their cars, flow properly, and function as a car maintenance shop should. ISU Transportation employees care about this because they need an easy-to-function shop

Tropical forest backscatter anomaly evident in SeaWinds scatterometer morning overpass data during 2005 drought in Amazonia

A severe drought occurred in southwestern Amazonia in the dry season (June–September) of 2005. We analyzed 10 years (7/99–10/09) of SeaWinds active microwave Ku-band backscatter data collected over the Amazon Basin, developing monthly means and anomalies from those means in an effort to detect landscape responses to this drought. We compared these to seasonal accumulating water deficit anomalies generated using Tropical Rainfall Monitoring Mission (TRMM) precipitation data (1999–2009) and 100 mm mo− 1 evapotranspiration demand as a water deficit threshold. There was significant interannual variability in dry-season monthly mean backscatter only for morning (c. 06:00 LST) overpass data, and little interannual variability in dry-season monthly mean backscatter for afternoon (c. 18:00 LST) overpass data. Strong negative anomalies in both morning-overpass backscatter and accumulating water deficit developed during July–October 2005, centered on the southwestern Amazon Basin, with a strong spatial correlation between morning-overpass backscatter anomalies and water deficit anomalies in September. This is the first reporting of tropical forest seasonal drought detection by active microwave scatterometry. Based on the differences between early-morning and late-afternoon backscatter variability, we hypothesize that as the drought persisted over several months, the forest canopy was increasingly unable to recover full leaf moisture content over night, resulting in anomalously low early-morning overpass backscatter