Conditioning DRASTIC model to simulate nitrate pollution case study: Hamadan–Bahar plain     

Samira Akhavan  Sayed-Farhad Mousavi  Jahangir Abedi-Koupai  Karim C. Abbaspour 《Environmental Earth Sciences》2011,63(6):1155-1167

One of the major causes of groundwater pollution in Hamadan–Bahar aquifer in western Iran is a non-point source pollution resulting from agricultural activities. Withdrawal of over 88% of drinking water from groundwater resources, adds urgency to the studies leading to a better management of water supplies in this region. In this study, the DRASTIC model was used to construct groundwater vulnerability maps based on the “intrinsic” (natural conditions) and “specific” (including management) concepts. As DRASTIC has drawbacks to simulate specific contaminants, we conditioned the rates on measured nitrate data and optimized the weights of the specific model to obtain a nitrate vulnerability map for the region. The performance of the conditioned DRASTIC model improved significantly (R ² = 0.52) over the intrinsic (R ² = 0.12) and specific (R ² = 0.19) models in predicting the groundwater nitrate concentration. Our study suggests that a locally conditioned DRASTIC model is an effective tool for predicting the region’s vulnerability to nitrate pollution. In addition, comparison of groundwater tables between two periods 30 years apart indicated a drawdown of around 50 m in the central plain of the Hamadan–Bahar region. Our interpretation of the vulnerability maps for the two periods showed a polluted zone developing in the central valley requiring careful evaluation and monitoring.  相似文献   

A Proposal for Establishing A Gravitational-Wave Detector Interferometer in Pakistan     

S.Z. Farooqui  M. Karim  N. Kawashima  A. Qadir  H. Rehman 《Astrophysics and Space Science》1997,258(1-2):221-235

The proposed ‘Gravitational-Wave Antenna Detector InteRferometer (GWADIR)’ will be a 3 km × 3 km Fabry-Perot type laser interferometer. The laser oscillator to be used will be a DL excited Nd-YAG laser with a minimum output of 100 Watts. The optical system will consist of 25 cm diameter Recycler, Beam Splitter, and Near/End Mirrors for each of two Ducts. The mirror system will be suspended by fine wires to isolate the system from the seismic noises of the earth. The output light emerging from the interferometer will be split into 8 beams and sent to 8 different interference detectors. These detectors will measure the interference intensities for the recombined light from the separate legs of the interferometer. The effective amplification due to the interferometer cavities will allow measurements of displacements to better than 10 times the wavelength of the laser light. A high vacuum of 10-8 Torrs will be maintained throughout the system, using turbo-molecular and ion pumps. The detector is designed to reach strain sensitivities from gravitational sources of h<10-23 (Hz)- 1/2 with a broad-band and narrow-band measurement capability in the range of frequencies from 50 Hz to 10 ⁴ Hz, thus allowing it to detect ‘standard’ signals from such sources as coalescing neutron stars or black-holes out to the edge of the universe. If enough funding became available, the project is expected to complete by the middle of the next decade. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.  相似文献   

Microbial diversity on the Tatahouine meteorite     

Karim BENZERARA  Virginie CHAPON  David MOREIRA  Purificacin L PEZ‐GARCÍA  Franois GUYOT  Thierry HEULIN 《Meteoritics & planetary science》2006,41(8):1249-1265

Abstract— Biological processes can alter the chemistry and mineralogy of meteorites in a very short time, even in cold or hot deserts. It is thus important to assess the diversity of microorganisms that colonize meteorites in order to better understand their physiological capabilities. Microscopy observations of Tatahouine meteorite fragments that were exposed for 70 years in the Sahara desert showed that they were colonized by morphologically diverse biomorphs. A molecular diversity study based on 16S rRNA gene amplification of DNA supported the conclusion that a huge taxonomic diversity of prokaryotes colonized the Tatahouine meteorite in less than 70 years in the Tatahouine sand. Eleven different bacterial divisions were evidenced, among which Cytophaga‐Flexibacter‐Bacteroides (CFB), Cyanobacteria, and Alpha‐Proteobacteria were dominantly represented. Crenarcheota were also detected. Most of the Tatahouine meteorite phylotypes were related to sequences identified in the surrounding Tatahouine more generally to sequences detected in soils. Some of them, in particular many of the archaeal phylotypes, were detected in arid regions in association with desert varnish. The results suggest that the diversity of the clone library generated from the meteorite fraction was reduced compared with that of the Tatahouine sand clone library, which can be explained as the result of partial colonization of the meteorite and/or a specific selection of colonizing bacteria by the substrate. We discuss the possibility that several groups detected in this study may play a prominent role in the various alteration processes detected at the surface of the Tatahouine meteorite.  相似文献   

Adaptive Progressive Band Selection for Dimensionality Reduction in Hyperspectral Images     

Karim Saheb Ettabaa  Manel Ben Salem 《Journal of the Indian Society of Remote Sensing》2018,46(2):157-167

One of the challenging problems in processing high dimensional data, as hyperspectral images, with better spectral and temporal resolution is the computational complexity resulting from processing the huge amount of data volume. Various methods have been developed in the literature for dimensionality reduction, generally divided into two main techniques: data transformation techniques and features selection techniques. The feature selection technique is advantageous compared to transformation techniques in preserving the original data. However, deciding the appropriate number of features to be selected and choosing these features are very challenging since they require exhaustive researches. The progressive feature selection technique is a new concept recently introduced to address these issues based on priority criteria. However, this approach presents limits when these criteria are insufficient or depends on domain applications. In this paper, we present a new approach to improve the Progressive Feature Selection technique by adding new criteria that measure the amount of information present in each band. The endmembers extraction phase of the proposed approach includes both the N-FINDR and the ATGP algorithms. A case based reasoning system is used to choose the optimal criterion for the endmember extraction. The performances of this proposed approach were evaluated using AVIRIS hyperspectral image and the obtained results prove its effectiveness compared to other PBS techniques.  相似文献   

Influence of Environmental Variables and Fishing Pressure on Bivalve Fisheries in an Inshore Lagoon and Adjacent Nearshore Coastal Area     

Baptista Vânia  Hadayet Ullah  Célia M. Teixeira  Pedro Range  Karim Erzini  Francisco Leitão 《Estuaries and Coasts》2014,37(1):191-205

Climate changes affect marine ecosystems and the survival, growth, reproduction and distribution of species, including those targeted by commercial fisheries. The impact of climate change has been reported for many fish species, but studies focusing on the effects of climate on bivalve resources are lacking. In Portugal, the harvesting of bivalves is an old and artisanal activity, of special importance along the Algarve coast (South of Portugal). This study aims to evaluate the influence of climatic, environmental and fisheries factors on the landings of intertidal coastal lagoon and coastal bivalve species (subtidal nearshore species). The environmental and fisheries parameters considered to affect the landings of bivalves in the eastern Algarve were: fishing effort (number of fishing events), sea surface temperature, North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) index, upwelling index, wind magnitude and direction and river discharges. Analysis of time series data using min/max autocorrelation factor analysis and dynamic factor analysis showed that, for most species, fishing effort was positively related with landings per unit effort trends in the following year. Lagoon bivalve species (Cerastoderma edule and Ruditapes decussatus) responded to different environmental variables than the coastal bivalve species (Chamelea gallina, Pharus legumen, Donax spp. and Spisula solida). Upwelling index had a significant effect on the lagoon bivalves while the NAO index, wind magnitude and direction, and river discharges only affected the coastal species. This study highlighted the need to adapt fishing effort regimes, while considering the background effects of environmental variability, in order to improve fisheries management.  相似文献   

RETRACTED ARTICLE: Numerical analysis of multiphase flow in porous material     

Nadia Laredj  Karim Bendani  Hanifi Missoum  Mustapha Maliki 《Acta Geotechnica》2014,9(1):1-5

Greenhouse gas emissions, energy security and sustainability are three of the greatest contemporary global challenges to mankind today. The Sino-German Group of scientists have composed a special issue, which is a collection of diverse quality scientific works, that will try to elucidate the current developments in CO₂ geologic sequestration research to reduce greenhouse emission including measures to monitor surface leakage, groundwater quality and the integrity of caprock, while ensuring a sufficient supply of clean energy.  相似文献   

Undrained shear strength response under monotonic loading of Chlef (Algeria) sandy soil     

Hanifi Missoum  Mostefa Belkhatir  Karim Bendani 《Arabian Journal of Geosciences》2013,6(3):615-623

During the last mid-century, the Chlef area was strongly affected by two earthquakes. From the geological context, there were numerous ejections onto the ground level of great masses of sandy soils and large displacements of various forms of some building foundations. These damages are due to soil liquefaction problem. This loss of shear strength can be attributed to many factors. History of recent cases indicates that sand deposited with silt content is much more liquefiable than clean sand. Therefore, a deep understanding of silty sand behavior is needed for the liquefaction assessment of silty sandy soils. Moreover, during seismic shaking, the post-liquefaction behavior of silty sand and, consequently, the stability of structures founded on liquefied soil depend on the steady-state shear strength of soil. The objective of this laboratory investigation is to show the effect of silt contents and the relative density on the mechanical behavior of such soils in monotonic loading. In this context, a series of undrained triaxial tests were performed on reconstituted saturated silty sand samples with different fines content ranging from 0% to 40%. In all tests, the confining pressure was held constant to 100 kPa. The fines content and the global void ratio are expressed by means of the equivalent void ratio. Linear correlations relating the undrained residual shear strength of loose, medium dense, and dense (D _r?=?12%, 50%, and 90% before consolidation) sand–silt mixtures to the equivalent void ratio are obtained. The concept of the equivalent void ratio will then be used as a key parameter to express the dilatancy behavior of both clean and silty sand soils. Moreover, from the experimental results obtained, it is clear that the global void ratio cannot be used as a state parameter and may not represent the actual behavior of the soil as well.  相似文献   

Discussion and comments on “Filtering of the gravimetric anomalies to the study of the geological structures of Oued Zarga (Septentrional Tunisia): structural implications”, Arab J Geosci (2012) 5:169–180 by A. Ayed, M. Ghanmi and F. Zargouni     

Djamel Boubaya  Karim Allek  Mohamed Hamoudi 《Arabian Journal of Geosciences》2013,6(8):3161-3162

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Fuzzy Classification for Mapping Invasive Species from Multispectral Imagery     

Mohadeseh Amiri  Karim Solaimani  Mirhassan Miryaghoubzadeh 《Journal of the Indian Society of Remote Sensing》2013,41(4):749-755

Vegetation maps are essential tools for planning and evaluation in nature conservation. To a large extend, management objectives can be defined in terms of vegetation attributes. Vegetation maps are frequently used in conservation planning and evaluation. Nowadays, remote sensing is one of the most important sources of vegetation cover classifications at different scales. In this paper, the usefulness of moderate resolution images for invasive species Cirsium arvense and Stachys byzanthina mapping at local scale is evaluated. A fuzzy classification approach is tested for improved discrimination of invasive species. The study was carried out in Vazroud rangelands located in the Mazandaran province of Iran. In this study among the analysed Z-score for uncertainty map creation is found that 0.9, 1.0 for TM image and 1.1 for IRS image in normalized are the best based on known attributes of the study area.  相似文献   

Sector collapse at Kick 'em Jenny submarine volcano (Lesser Antilles): numerical simulation and landslide behaviour     

Frédéric Dondin  Jean-Frédéric Lebrun  Karim Kelfoun  Nicolas Fournier  Auran Randrianasolo 《Bulletin of Volcanology》2012,74(2):595-607

Kick 'em Jenny volcano is the only known active submarine volcano in the Lesser Antilles. It lies within a horseshoe-shaped structure open to the west northwest, toward the deep Grenada Basin. A detailed bathymetric survey of the basin slope at Kick 'em Jenny and resulting high-resolution digital elevation model allowed the identification of a major submarine landslide deposit. This deposit is thought to result from a single sector collapse event at Kick 'em Jenny and to be linked to the formation of the horseshoe-shaped structure. We estimated the volume and the leading-edge runout of the landslide to be ca. 4.4 km³ and 14 km, respectively. We modelled a sector collapse event of a proto Kick 'em Jenny volcano using VolcFlow, a finite difference code based on depth-integrated mass and momentum equations. Our models show that the landslide can be simulated by either a Coulomb-type rheology with low basal friction angles (5.5°–6.5°) and a significant internal friction angle (above 17.5°) or, with better results, by a Bingham rheology with low Bingham kinematic viscosity (0 < ν _B < 30 m²/s) and high shear strength (130 < γ ≤ 180 m²/s²). The models and the short runout distance suggest that the landslide travelled as a stiff cohesive flow affected by minimal granular disaggregation and slumping on a non-lubricated surface. The main submarine landslide deposit can therefore be considered as a submarine mass slide deposit that behaved like a slump.  相似文献