Downscaling of Continental-Scale Atmospheric Forecasts to the Scale of a Watershed for Hydrologic Forecasting

2003 ◽  
pp. 271-288
Author(s):  
M. L. Kavvas ◽  
Z. Chen ◽  
M. Anderson
Keyword(s):  
Continental Scale

The Determinants of Entrepreneurship Development in Spatial Systems

2017 ◽  
Vol 13 ◽  
pp. 8-24
Author(s):  
Zbigniew Zioło
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Scales ◽  
Institutional Barriers ◽  
Entrepreneurship Development ◽  
Continental Scale ◽  
Spatial Systems ◽  
Business Conditions ◽  
Mutual Relations ◽  
Growth Shape ◽  
Strategic Goal

The processes of technological  progress create new opportunities for economic, social and cultural growth, shape new relations between economic  entities and their environment,  and influence changes in the determinants  of entrepreneurship development.  These processes vary significantly in certain geographic locations, characterised by an enormous  diversity of natural, social, economic and cultural structures. As a consequence, this creates different opportunities  and different conditions for the development of entrepreneurship in certain spatial scales, from the continental scale, through national and regional to local scales. The article presents complex conditions  for the development of entrepreneurship, highlights its limitations resulting from institutional  barriers, and the importance of knowing the mechanisms of mutual relations between spatial systems and the influence of control instruments. The quality of central and local government authorities is of particular significance here, which do not always properly use the mechanisms of rational business support. A serious barrier to the development of entrepreneurship is the low quality of social capital, manifested in a lack of trust in institutional authorities and reluctance to engage in entrepreneurship and business development. The conclusions point out that further research should be developed that will take into account changing business conditions, with a defined strategic goal of raising the quality and standard of living, international competitiveness of the country and products in different market categories.

scholarly journals Measuring compound flood potential from river discharge and storm surge extremes at the global scale

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 489-504 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anaïs Couasnon ◽  
Dirk Eilander ◽  
Sanne Muis ◽  
Ted I. E. Veldkamp ◽  
Ivan D. Haigh ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Storm Surge ◽  
River Discharge ◽  
Flood Hazard ◽  
Joint Probability ◽  
Global Scale ◽  
Statistical Dependence ◽  
Dependence Structure ◽  
Meteorological Forcing ◽  
Continental Scale ◽  
Bivariate Dependence

Abstract. The interaction between physical drivers from oceanographic, hydrological, and meteorological processes in coastal areas can result in compound flooding. Compound flood events, like Cyclone Idai and Hurricane Harvey, have revealed the devastating consequences of the co-occurrence of coastal and river floods. A number of studies have recently investigated the likelihood of compound flooding at the continental scale based on simulated variables of flood drivers, such as storm surge, precipitation, and river discharges. At the global scale, this has only been performed based on observations, thereby excluding a large extent of the global coastline. The purpose of this study is to fill this gap and identify regions with a high compound flooding potential from river discharge and storm surge extremes in river mouths globally. To do so, we use daily time series of river discharge and storm surge from state-of-the-art global models driven with consistent meteorological forcing from reanalysis datasets. We measure the compound flood potential by analysing both variables with respect to their timing, joint statistical dependence, and joint return period. Our analysis indicates many regions that deviate from statistical independence and could not be identified in previous global studies based on observations alone, such as Madagascar, northern Morocco, Vietnam, and Taiwan. We report possible causal mechanisms for the observed spatial patterns based on existing literature. Finally, we provide preliminary insights on the implications of the bivariate dependence behaviour on the flood hazard characterisation using Madagascar as a case study. Our global and local analyses show that the dependence structure between flood drivers can be complex and can significantly impact the joint probability of discharge and storm surge extremes. These emphasise the need to refine global flood risk assessments and emergency planning to account for these potential interactions.

scholarly journals A susceptibility-based rainfall threshold approach for landslide occurrence

2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 775-789 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elise Monsieurs ◽  
Olivier Dewitte ◽  
Alain Demoulin
Keyword(s):  
Landslide Susceptibility ◽  
Rainfall Threshold ◽  
Exceedance Probability ◽  
Equal Weight ◽  
Antecedent Rainfall ◽  
Rainfall Thresholds ◽  
Landslide Occurrence ◽  
Continental Scale ◽  
Satellite Rainfall ◽  
Rainfall Estimates

Abstract. Rainfall threshold determination is a pressing issue in the landslide scientific community. While major improvements have been made towards more reproducible techniques for the identification of triggering conditions for landsliding, the now well-established rainfall intensity or event-duration thresholds for landsliding suffer from several limitations. Here, we propose a new approach of the frequentist method for threshold definition based on satellite-derived antecedent rainfall estimates directly coupled with landslide susceptibility data. Adopting a bootstrap statistical technique for the identification of threshold uncertainties at different exceedance probability levels, it results in thresholds expressed as AR = (α±Δα)⋅S(β±Δβ), where AR is antecedent rainfall (mm), S is landslide susceptibility, α and β are scaling parameters, and Δα and Δβ are their uncertainties. The main improvements of this approach consist in (1) using spatially continuous satellite rainfall data, (2) giving equal weight to rainfall characteristics and ground susceptibility factors in the definition of spatially varying rainfall thresholds, (3) proposing an exponential antecedent rainfall function that involves past daily rainfall in the exponent to account for the different lasting effect of large versus small rainfall, (4) quantitatively exploiting the lower parts of the cloud of data points, most meaningful for threshold estimation, and (5) merging the uncertainty on landslide date with the fit uncertainty in a single error estimation. We apply our approach in the western branch of the East African Rift based on landslides that occurred between 2001 and 2018, satellite rainfall estimates from the Tropical Rainfall Measurement Mission Multi-satellite Precipitation Analysis (TMPA 3B42 RT), and the continental-scale map of landslide susceptibility of Broeckx et al. (2018) and provide the first regional rainfall thresholds for landsliding in tropical Africa.

scholarly journals Distinct Biogeographic Patterns for Archaea, Bacteria, and Fungi along the Vegetation Gradient at the Continental Scale in Eastern China

mSystems ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Bin Ma ◽  
Zhongmin Dai ◽  
Haizhen Wang ◽  
Melissa Dsouza ◽  
Xingmei Liu ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Eastern China ◽  
Soil Microbial Communities ◽  
Natural Forest ◽  
Community Diversity ◽  
Biogeographic Patterns ◽  
Soil Microbial ◽  
Continental Scale ◽  
Forest Sites ◽  
Vegetation Gradient ◽  
Bacteria And Fungi

ABSTRACT Understanding biogeographic patterns is a precursor to improving our knowledge of the function of microbiomes and to predicting ecosystem responses to environmental change. Using natural forest soil samples from 110 locations, this study is one of the largest attempts to comprehensively understand the different patterns of soil archaeal, bacterial, and fungal biogeography at the continental scale in eastern China. These patterns in natural forest sites could ascertain reliable soil microbial biogeographic patterns by eliminating anthropogenic influences. This information provides guidelines for monitoring the belowground ecosystem’s decline and restoration. Meanwhile, the deviations in the soil microbial communities from corresponding natural forest states indicate the extent of degradation of the soil ecosystem. Moreover, given the association between vegetation type and the microbial community, this information could be used to predict the long-term response of the underground ecosystem to the vegetation distribution caused by global climate change. The natural forest ecosystem in Eastern China, from tropical forest to boreal forest, has declined due to cropland development during the last 300 years, yet little is known about the historical biogeographic patterns and driving processes for the major domains of microorganisms along this continental-scale natural vegetation gradient. We predicted the biogeographic patterns of soil archaeal, bacterial, and fungal communities across 110 natural forest sites along a transect across four vegetation zones in Eastern China. The distance decay relationships demonstrated the distinct biogeographic patterns of archaeal, bacterial, and fungal communities. While historical processes mainly influenced bacterial community variations, spatially autocorrelated environmental variables mainly influenced the fungal community. Archaea did not display a distance decay pattern along the vegetation gradient. Bacterial community diversity and structure were correlated with the ratio of acid oxalate-soluble Fe to free Fe oxides (Feo/Fed ratio). Fungal community diversity and structure were influenced by dissolved organic carbon (DOC) and free aluminum (Ald), respectively. The role of these environmental variables was confirmed by the correlations between dominant operational taxonomic units (OTUs) and edaphic variables. However, most of the dominant OTUs were not correlated with the major driving variables for the entire communities. These results demonstrate that soil archaea, bacteria, and fungi have different biogeographic patterns and driving processes along this continental-scale natural vegetation gradient, implying different community assembly mechanisms and ecological functions for archaea, bacteria, and fungi in soil ecosystems. IMPORTANCE Understanding biogeographic patterns is a precursor to improving our knowledge of the function of microbiomes and to predicting ecosystem responses to environmental change. Using natural forest soil samples from 110 locations, this study is one of the largest attempts to comprehensively understand the different patterns of soil archaeal, bacterial, and fungal biogeography at the continental scale in eastern China. These patterns in natural forest sites could ascertain reliable soil microbial biogeographic patterns by eliminating anthropogenic influences. This information provides guidelines for monitoring the belowground ecosystem’s decline and restoration. Meanwhile, the deviations in the soil microbial communities from corresponding natural forest states indicate the extent of degradation of the soil ecosystem. Moreover, given the association between vegetation type and the microbial community, this information could be used to predict the long-term response of the underground ecosystem to the vegetation distribution caused by global climate change. Author Video: An author video summary of this article is available.

scholarly journals The role of extreme rain events in driving tree growth across a continental‐scale climatic range in Australia

Ecography ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alison J. O'Donnell ◽  
Michael Renton ◽  
Kathryn J. Allen ◽  
Pauline F. Grierson
Keyword(s):  
Tree Growth ◽  
Continental Scale ◽  
Extreme Rain ◽  
Climatic Range ◽  
Rain Events
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