Base flows are important for tropical regions with pronounced dry seasons, which are facing increasing water demands. Base flow generation, however, is one of the most challenging hydrological processes to characterize in the tropics. In many years during the May–December wet season in the Panama Canal Watershed (PCW), base flows in rivers abruptly increase. This increase persists until the start of the December–April dry season. Understanding this unusual base flow jump (BFJ) behaviour is critical to improve water provisioning in the seasonal tropics, especially during droughts and extended dry seasons. This study developed an integrated approach combining piecewise regression on cumulative average base flow and sensitivity analysis to calculate the timing and magnitude of BFJ. Rainfall, forest cover, mean land surface slope, catchment area, and estimated subsurface storage were tested as predictors for the occurrence and magnitude of the BFJs in seven subcatchments of the PCW. Sensitivity analysis on correlated predictors allowed ranking of predictor contributions due to isolated and cross-correlation effects. Correlations between observed BFJs and BFJs predicted by watershed and rainfall-related predictors were 0.92 and 0.65 for BFJ timing and magnitude, respectively. Forest cover was the second most significant predictor after cumulative rainfall for jump magnitude, owing to larger subsurface storage and groundwater recharge in forests than pastures. Catchments in the mountainous eastern PCW always generated larger jumps due to their higher rainfall and greater forest cover than the western PCW catchments. The cross-correlations between predictors contributed to more than 50% of the jump variances. The results demonstrate the importance of rainfall gradient and catchment characteristics in affecting the sudden and sustained BFJs, which can help inform land management decisions intended to enhance water supplies in the tropics. This study underscores the need for more research to further understand the hydrological processes involved in the BFJ phenomenon, including better BFJ models and field characterizations, to help improve tropical ecosystem services under a changing environment. 相似文献
We present a study on human perception of map complexity, with the objective of better understanding design decisions that may lead to undesirable levels of complexity in web maps. We compare three complexity metrics to human ratings of complexity obtained through a user survey. Specifically, we use two algorithmic approaches published by others, which measure feature congestion (FC) and subband entropy (SE), as well as our own approach of counting object types rather than individual objects. We compare these metrics with each other as well as with human complexity ratings for three maps of the same area from map providers Google Maps, Bing Maps, and OpenStreetMap. Each map design is assessed at three different scales (levels of detail). We find that (1) the FC and SE metrics appear to be adequate predictors of what humans consider complex; (2) object-type counts are slightly less successful at predicting human-rated complexity, implying that clutter is more important in perceived complexity than diversity of symbology; and (3) generalization choices do impact human complexity ratings. These findings contribute to our understanding of what makes a map complex, with implications for designing maps that are easy to use. 相似文献
A model integrating geo-information and self-organizing map (SOM) for exploring the database of soil environmental surveys was established. The dataset of 5 heavy metals (As, Cd, Cr, Hg, and Pb) was built by the regular grid sampling in Hechi, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region in southern China. Auxiliary datasets were collected throughout the study area to help interpret the potential causes of pollution. The main findings are as follows: (1) Soil samples of 5 elements exhibited strong variation and high skewness. High pollution risk existed in the case study area, especially Hg and Cd. (2) As and Pb had a similar topo-logical distribution pattern, meaning they behaved similarly in the soil environment. Cr had behaviours in soil different from those of the other 4 elements. (3) From the U-matrix of SOM networks, 3 levels of SEQ were identified, and 11 high risk areas of soil heavy metal-contaminated were found throughout the study area, which were basically near rivers, factories, and ore zones. (4) The variations of contamination index (CI) followed the trend of construction land (1.353) > forestland (1.267) > cropland (1.175) > grassland (1.056), which suggest that decision makers should focus more on the problem of soil pollution surrounding industrial and mining enterprises and farmland.
Simulating land use/cover change (LUCC) and determining its transition rules have been a focus of research for several decades. Previous studies used ordinary logistic regression (OLR) to determine transition rules in cellular automata (CA) modeling of LUCC, which often neglected the spatially non-stationary relationships between driving factors and land use/cover categories. We use an integrated geographically weighted logistic regression (GWLR) CA-Markov method to simulate LUCC from 2001–2011 over 29 towns in the Connecticut River Basin. Results are compared with those obtained from the OLR-CA-Markov method, and the sensitivity of LUCC simulated by the GWLR-CA-Markov method to the spatial non-stationarity-based suitability map is investigated. Analysis of residuals indicates better goodness of fit in model calibration for geographically weighted regression (GWR) than OLR. Coefficients of driving factors indicate that GWLR outperforms OLR in depicting the local suitability of land use/cover categories. Kappa statistics of the simulated maps indicate high agreement with observed land use/cover for both OLR-CA-Markov and GWLR-CA-Markov methods. Similarity in simulation accuracy between the methods suggests that the sensitivity of simulated LUCC to suitability inputs is low with respect to spatial non-stationarity. Therefore, this study provides critical insight on the role of spatial non-stationarity throughout the process of LUCC simulation. 相似文献