Earth Observations for Global Water Security

The combined effects of population growth, increasing demands for water to support agriculture, energy security, and industrial expansion, and the challenges of climate change give rise to an urgent need to carefully monitor and assess trends and variations in water resources. Doing so will ensure that sustainable access to adequate quantities of safe and useable water will serve as a foundation for water security. Both satellite and in situ observations combined with data assimilation and models are needed for effective, integrated monitoring of the water cycle's trends and variability in terms of both quantity and quality. On the basis of a review of existing observational systems, we argue that a new integrated monitoring capability for water security purposes is urgently needed. Furthermore, the components for this capability exist and could be integrated through the cooperation of national observational programmes. The Group on Earth Observations should play a central role in the design, implementation, management and analysis of this system and its products

GEOSS AIP And GEOSS Water Services

The Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS) is being built through the coordination of efforts within the international Group on Earth Observations (GEO), a voluntary partnership established in February 2005, comprised of 89 Member States, the European Commission and 77 Participating Organizations. GEOSS is a global, distributed system accessible through the GEOSS Portal, including satellite observation systems and in situ networks and systems, which will deliver the benefits of Earth observations to both data & information providers and consumers world wide. The 10-Year Implementation Plan defines a vision statement for GEOSS, its purpose and scope, expected benefits for nine “Societal Benefit Areas” (SBAs) (disasters, health, energy, climate, water, weather, ecosystems, agriculture and biodiversity), technical and capacity building priorities, and the GEO governance structure. [1] The GEOSS Architecture Implementation Pilot (AIP) develops and deploys new process and infrastructure components for the GEOSS Common Infrastructure (GCI) as well as for the broader GEOSS architecture. The requirements for AIPs are based on user needs and community scenario requirements. The AIP process aims to increase the use of GEOSS resources by end-users in applying both in situ and remotely sensed data, and by extending results from previous GEO developments through integration with the GEOSS Common Infrastructure (GCI)

Monitoring mountains in a changing world: new horizons for the Global Network for Observations and Information on Mountain Environments (GEO-GNOME)

Mountains are globally distributed environments that provide significant societal benefits, a function that is increasingly compromised by climatic change, environmental stress, political and socioeconomic transformations, and unsustainable use of natural resources. Gaps in our understanding of these processes and their interactions limit our capacity to inform decisions, where both generalities of mountain regions (eg climate processes) and specificities (eg context-specific manifestations of climate risks) matter. The Global Network for Observations and Information on Mountain Environments (GEO-GNOME), a Group on Earth Observations initiative, aims to fill these gaps through accessible Earth Observation (EO) as well as in-situ data and information on global change drivers, conditions, and trends. A workshop convened by the Mountain Research Initiative (MRI) revised GEO-GNOME's work plan, galvanizing a network that promotes relevant monitoring of global change in mountains and is responsive to the integrated knowledge needs of policy, research, and management

An Introduction to the \u27Oceans and Society: Blue Planet\u27 Initiative

We live on a blue planet, and Earth’s waters benefit many sectors of society. The future of our blue planet is increasingly reliant on the services delivered by marine, coastal and inland waters and on the advancement of effective, evidence-based decisions on sustainable development. ‘Oceans and Society: Blue Planet’ is an initiative of the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) that aims to ensure the sustained development and use of ocean and coastal observations for the benefit of society. The initiative works to advance and exploit synergies among the many observational programmes devoted to ocean and coastal waters; to improve engagement with a variety of stakeholders for enhancing the timeliness, quality and range of information delivered; and to raise awareness of the societal benefits of ocean observations at the public and policy levels. This paper summarises the role of the initiative, current activities and considerations for future directions

TOWARD GLOBAL DROUGHT EARLY WARNING CAPABILITY: Expanding International Cooperation for the Development of a Framework for Monitoring and Forecasting

The need for a global drought early warning framework. Drought has had a significant impact on civilization throughout history in terms of reductions in agricultural productivity, potable water supply, and economic activity, and in extreme cases this has led to famine. Every continent has semiarid areas, which are especially vulnerable to drought. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has noted that average annual river runoff and water availability are projected to decrease by 10%–13% over some dry and semiarid regions in mid and low latitudes, increasing the frequency, intensity, and duration of drought, along with its associated impacts. The sheer magnitude of the problem demands efforts to reduce vulnerability to drought by moving away from the reactive, crisis management approach of the past toward a more proactive, risk management approach that is centered on reducing vulnerability to drought as much as possible while providing early warning of evolving drought conditions and possible impacts. Many countries, unfortunately, do not have adequate resources to provide early warning, but require outside support to provide the necessary early warning information for risk management. Furthermore, in an interconnected world, the need for information on a global scale is crucial for understanding the prospect of declines in agricultural productivity and associated impacts on food prices, food security, and potential for civil conflict

Toward Global Drought Early Warning Capability - Expanding International Cooperation for the Development of a Framework for Monitoring and Forecasting

Drought has had a significant impact on civilization throughout history in terms of reductions in agricultural productivity, potable water supply, and economic activity, and in extreme cases this has led to famine. Every continent has semiarid areas, which are especially vulnerable to drought. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has noted that average annual river runoff and water availability are projected to decrease by 10 percent-13 percent over some dry and semiarid regions in mid and low latitudes, increasing the frequency, intensity, and duration of drought, along with its associated impacts. The sheer magnitude of the problem demands efforts to reduce vulnerability to drought by moving away from the reactive, crisis management approach of the past toward a more proactive, risk management approach that is centered on reducing vulnerability to drought as much as possible while providing early warning of evolving drought conditions and possible impacts. Many countries, unfortunately, do not have adequate resources to provide early warning, but require outside support to provide the necessary early warning information for risk management. Furthermore, in an interconnected world, the need for information on a global scale is crucial for understanding the prospect of declines in agricultural productivity and associated impacts on food prices, food security, and potential for civil conflict. This paper highlights the recent progress made toward a Global Drought Early Warning Monitoring Framework (GDEWF), an underlying partnership and framework, along with its Global Drought Early Warning System (GDEWS), which is its interoperable information system, and the organizations that have begun working together to make it a reality. The GDEWF aims to improve existing regional and national drought monitoring and forecasting capabilities by adding a global component, facilitating continental monitoring and forecasting (where lacking), and improving these tools at various scales, thereby increasing the capacity of national and regional institutions that lack drought early warning systems or complementing existing ones. A further goal is to improve coordination of information delivery for drought-related activities and relief efforts across the world. This is especially relevant for regions and nations with low capacity for drought early warning. To do this requires a global partnership that leverages the resources necessary and develops capabilities at the global level, such as global drought forecasting combined with early warning tools, global real-time monitoring, and harmonized methods to identify critical areas vulnerable to drought. Although the path to a fully functional GDEWS is challenging, multiple partners and organizations within the drought, forecasting, agricultural, and water-cycle communities are committed to working toward its success

First narrow-band search for continuous gravitational waves from known pulsars in advanced detector data

Spinning neutron stars asymmetric with respect to their rotation axis are potential sources of continuous gravitational waves for ground-based interferometric detectors. In the case of known pulsars a fully coherent search, based on matched filtering, which uses the position and rotational parameters obtained from electromagnetic observations, can be carried out. Matched filtering maximizes the signalto- noise (SNR) ratio, but a large sensitivity loss is expected in case of even a very small mismatch between the assumed and the true signal parameters. For this reason, narrow-band analysis methods have been developed, allowing a fully coherent search for gravitational waves from known pulsars over a fraction of a hertz and several spin-down values. In this paper we describe a narrow-band search of 11 pulsars using data from Advanced LIGO’s first observing run. Although we have found several initial outliers, further studies show no significant evidence for the presence of a gravitational wave signal. Finally, we have placed upper limits on the signal strain amplitude lower than the spin-down limit for 5 of the 11 targets over the bands searched; in the case of J1813-1749 the spin-down limit has been beaten for the first time. For an additional 3 targets, the median upper limit across the search bands is below the spin-down limit. This is the most sensitive narrow-band search for continuous gravitational waves carried out so far

New models and online calculator for predicting non-sentinel lymph node status in sentinel lymph node positive breast cancer patients

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Current practice is to perform a completion axillary lymph node dissection (ALND) for breast cancer patients with tumor-involved sentinel lymph nodes (SLNs), although fewer than half will have non-sentinel node (NSLN) metastasis. Our goal was to develop new models to quantify the risk of NSLN metastasis in SLN-positive patients and to compare predictive capabilities to another widely used model.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>We constructed three models to predict NSLN status: recursive partitioning with receiver operating characteristic curves (RP-ROC), boosted Classification and Regression Trees (CART), and multivariate logistic regression (MLR) informed by CART. Data were compiled from a multicenter Northern California and Oregon database of 784 patients who prospectively underwent SLN biopsy and completion ALND. We compared the predictive abilities of our best model and the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Breast Cancer Nomogram (Nomogram) in our dataset and an independent dataset from Northwestern University.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>285 patients had positive SLNs, of which 213 had known angiolymphatic invasion status and 171 had complete pathologic data including hormone receptor status. 264 (93%) patients had limited SLN disease (micrometastasis, 70%, or isolated tumor cells, 23%). 101 (35%) of all SLN-positive patients had tumor-involved NSLNs. Three variables (tumor size, angiolymphatic invasion, and SLN metastasis size) predicted risk in all our models. RP-ROC and boosted CART stratified patients into four risk levels. MLR informed by CART was most accurate. Using two composite predictors calculated from three variables, MLR informed by CART was more accurate than the Nomogram computed using eight predictors. In our dataset, area under ROC curve (AUC) was 0.83/0.85 for MLR (n = 213/n = 171) and 0.77 for Nomogram (n = 171). When applied to an independent dataset (n = 77), AUC was 0.74 for our model and 0.62 for Nomogram. The composite predictors in our model were the product of angiolymphatic invasion and size of SLN metastasis, and the product of tumor size and square of SLN metastasis size.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>We present a new model developed from a community-based SLN database that uses only three rather than eight variables to achieve higher accuracy than the Nomogram for predicting NSLN status in two different datasets. </p