Sheltering behaviour of lambing Merino sheep in relation to grass hedges and artificial windbreaks

1977 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 691 ◽  
Author(s):  
JJ Lynch ◽  
G Alexander

This study extends previous findings that recently shorn, lambing ewes made extensive use of the shelter provided by hedges of a tall grass (Phalaris hybrid) and that the provision of such windbreaks was associated with a reduction in lamb mortality. The study compares phalaris hedges with fences of a polyethylene garden-mesh (Sarlon; 60% porosity) and examines the effect of different spacings between Sarlon shelters. The phalaris reduced wind speed over the lee 20 m to a greater extent than Sarlon. In contrast to the marked concentration of ewes immediately adjacent to the lee of the phalaris (0–2 m), ewes were dispersed over a greater distance (0-6 m) from the lee of the Sarlon; at night about 12% more of the flock were found within 6 m of the lee of the phalaris than within the same distance of the Sarlon. In addition to the proportion of shorn ewes that were expected to be in shelter on the basis of random distribution alone, c. 35% were found within 6 m of the shelter at night, and 15% during the day regardless of whether Sarlon shelters were 20, 40 or 80 m apart. Unshorn ewes made very little use of the shelters, and lambs from shorn and unshorn ewes made more use of shelters and particularly of the phalaris than their mothers. Ewes tended to congregate at one end of the paddock regardless of wind direction and the presence of shelter, which indicated a role for strategic selection of sites for shelters. As in the previous study, lamb mortality was lower in the sheltered than in the unsheltered group, especially amongst twins.

Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (9) ◽  
pp. 3101
Author(s):  
Yu Wan ◽  
Zhenxiang Yi

In this paper, a novel 2.5-dimensional (2.5D) flexible wind sensor is proposed based on four differential plate capacitors. This design consists of a windward pillar, two electrode layers, and a support layer, which are all made of polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) with different Young’s moduli. A 2 mm × 2 mm copper electrode array is located on each electrode layer, forming four parallel plate capacitors as the sensitive elements. The wind in the xy-plane tilts the windward pillar, decreasing two capacitances on the windward side and increasing two capacitances on the leeward side. The wind in the z-axis depresses the windward pillar, resulting in an increase of all four capacitances. Experiments demonstrate that this sensor can measure the wind speed up to 23.9 m/s and the wind direction over the full 360° range of the xy-plane. The sensitivities of wind speed are close to 4 fF·m−1·s and 3 fF·m−1·s in the xy-plane and z-axis, respectively.


1958 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 129-136 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. W. Newton ◽  
Sey Katz

By means of hourly rainfall data from the Hydroclimatic Network, the motions of large rainstorms, of the kind associated with squall lines, are examined in relation to the winds aloft. Very little correlation is found between the speed of movement of the rainstorms and the wind speed at any level, although the fastest moving storms were associated with strong winds aloft. Significant correlation is found between direction of motion of rainstorms, and wind direction at 700 mb or higher levels. On the average, the rainstorms move with an appreciable component toward right of the wind direction. The difference between these results, and those from other studies based on small precipitation areas, is ascribed to propagation. The mechanism involved is discussed briefly.


2011 ◽  
Vol 35 (6) ◽  
pp. 649-660 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. A. Gupta ◽  
Rajesh Kumar ◽  
Ajay Kumar Bansal

2014 ◽  
Vol 14 (19) ◽  
pp. 10721-10730 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. Ran ◽  
W. L. Lin ◽  
Y. Z. Deji ◽  
B. La ◽  
P. M. Tsering ◽  
...  

Abstract. Through several years of development, the city of Lhasa has become one of the most populated and urbanized areas on the highest plateau in the world. In the process of urbanization, current and potential air quality issues have been gradually concerned. To investigate the current status of air pollution in Lhasa, various gas pollutants including NOx, CO, SO2, and O3, were continuously measured from June 2012 to May 2013 at an urban site (29.40° N, 91.08° E, 3650 m a.s.l.). The seasonal variations of primary gas pollutants exhibited a peak from November to January with a large variability. High mixing ratios of primary trace gases almost exclusively occurred under low wind speed and showed no distinct dependence on wind direction, implying local urban emissions to be predominant. A comparison of NO2, CO, and SO2 mixing ratios in summer between 1998 and 2012 indicated a significant increase in emissions of these gas pollutants and a change in their intercorrelations, as a result of a substantial growth in the demand of energy consumption using fossil fuels instead of previously widely used biomass. The pronounced diurnal double peaks of primary trace gases in all seasons suggested automobile exhaust to be a major emission source in Lhasa. The secondary gas pollutant O3 displayed an average diurnal cycle of a shallow flat peak for about 4–5 h in the afternoon and a minimum in the early morning. Nighttime O3 was sometimes completely consumed by the high level of NOx. Seasonally, the variations of O3 mixing ratios displayed a low valley in winter and a peak in spring. In autumn and winter, transport largely contributed to the observed O3 mixing ratios, given its dependence on wind speed and wind direction, while in spring and summer photochemistry played an important role. A more efficient buildup of O3 mixing ratios in the morning and a higher peak in the afternoon was found in summer 2012 than in 1998. An enhancement in O3 mixing ratios would be expected in the future and more attention should be given to O3 photochemistry in response to increasing precursor emissions in this area.


2012 ◽  
Vol 248 ◽  
pp. 391-394
Author(s):  
Wen Zhou Yan ◽  
Wan Li Zhao ◽  
Qiu Yan Li

By using the computational fluid dynamics code, FLUENT, Numerically simulation is investigated for Youngshou power plant. Under the constant ambient temperature, the effects of different wind speed and wind direction on the thermal flow field are qualitatively considered. It was found that when considering about the existing and normally operating power plants, the thermal flow field is more sensitive to wind direction and wind speed. Based on the above results, three improved measures such as: increasing the wind-wall height and accelerating the rotational speed of the fans near the edge of the ACC platform and lengthen or widen the platform are developed to effectively improving the thermal flow field, and enhanced the heat dispersal of ACC.


2021 ◽  
Vol 99 (Supplement_3) ◽  
pp. 254-255
Author(s):  
Alexey V Shakhin ◽  
Arsen V Dotsev ◽  
Tatiana E Deniskova ◽  
Gottfried Brem ◽  
Natalia A Zinovieva

Abstract Prolificacy is a very important trait in sheep. Romanov sheep, the well-known Russian sheep breed, are characterized by very high prolificacy; however, the genetic basis of this unique property of Romanov sheep is still unknown. It was reported that Ovine BMPR1B gene, located on the OAR6, is associated with prolificacy in several sheep breeds. The aim of our study was to identify candidate SNPs within BMPR1B gene, related to prolificacy. To achieve this goal, using NGS technology, we sequenced ovine BMPR1B gene in Romanov sheep (n = 6), which are characterized by high prolificacy (about 270 lambs per 100 ewes). The sequences of BMPR1B gene of Noire du Velay, Tan, Southdown and Australian Horned Merino sheep breeds as well as Asiatic mouflon (n = 1), which are characterized by significantly lower prolificacy (from 110 to 180 lambs per 100 ewes) were derived from publicly available sources and used for comparison. FST analysis performed in PLINK 1.9 program revealed 10 SNPs with values higher than 0.8. The majority of candidate SNPs under putative selection were localized in the region from 29,382,098 to 29,430,387 on OAR6 of Ovine reference genome (Oar_v3.1 (Ensembl release 98). Thus, we can suggest, that this region of the BMPR1B gene can be considered as the putative region, associated with high prolificacy of Romanov sheep. Additional studies will be needed to confirm the effect of identified candidate SNPs on prolificacy traits. The research results will be useful for artificial selection of sheep with higher prolific capacity, including the introduction of desired alleles in sheep populations using genome editing technologies. This work was supported by the Russian Ministry of Science and Higher Education No. 0445-2019-0024 and RFBR No. 20-516-56002.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elin Andrée ◽  
Jian Su ◽  
Martin Drews ◽  
Morten Andreas Dahl Larsen ◽  
Asger Bendix Hansen ◽  
...  

<p>The potential impacts of extreme sea level events are becoming more apparent to the public and policy makers alike. As the magnitude of these events are expected to increase due to climate change, and increased coastal urbanization results in ever increasing stakes in the coastal zones, the need for risk assessments is growing too.</p><p>The physical conditions that generate extreme sea levels are highly dependent on site specific conditions, such as bathymetry, tidal regime, wind fetch and the shape of the coastline. For a low-lying country like Denmark, which consists of a peninsula and islands that partition off the semi-enclosed Baltic Sea from the North Sea, a better understanding of how the local sea level responds to wind forcing is urgently called for.</p><p>We here present a map for Denmark that shows the most efficient wind directions for generating extreme sea levels, for a total of 70 locations distributed all over the country’s coastlines. The maps are produced by conducting simulations with a high resolution, 3D-ocean model, which is used for operational storm surge modelling at the Danish Meteorological Institute. We force the model with idealized wind fields that maintain a fixed wind speed and wind direction over the entire model domain. Simulations are conducted for one wind speed and one wind direction at a time, generating ensembles of a set of wind directions for a fixed wind speed, as well as a set of wind speeds for a fixed wind direction, respectively.</p><p>For each wind direction, we find that the maximum water level at a given location increases linearly with the wind speed, and the slope values show clear spatial patterns, for example distinguishing the Danish southern North Sea coast from the central or northern North Sea Coast. The slope values are highest along the southwestern North Sea coast, where the passage of North Atlantic low pressure systems over the shallow North Sea, as well as the large tidal range, result in a much larger range of variability than in the more sheltered Inner Danish Waters. However, in our simulations the large fetch of the Baltic Sea, in combination with the funneling effect of the Danish Straits, result in almost as high water levels as along the North Sea coast.</p><p>Although the wind forcing is completely synthetic with no spatial and temporal structure of a real storm, this idealized approach allows us to systematically investigate the sea level response at the boundaries of what is physically plausible. We evaluate the results from these simulations by comparison to peak water levels from a 58 year long, high resolution ocean hindcast, with promising agreement.</p>


2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert J. H. Dunn ◽  
Kate M. Willett ◽  
David E. Parker ◽  
Lorna Mitchell

Abstract. HadISD is a sub-daily, station-based, quality-controlled dataset designed to study past extremes of temperature, pressure and humidity and allow comparisons to future projections. Herein we describe the first major update to the HadISD dataset. The temporal coverage of the dataset has been extended to 1931 to present, doubling the time range over which data are provided. Improvements made to the station selection and merging procedures result in 7677 stations being provided in version 2.0.0.2015p of this dataset. The selection of stations to merge together making composites has also been improved and made more robust. The underlying structure of the quality control procedure is the same as for HadISD.1.0.x, but a number of improvements have been implemented in individual tests. Also, more detailed quality control tests for wind speed and direction have been added. The data will be made available as netCDF files at www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadisd and updated annually.


2017 ◽  
Vol 32 (6) ◽  
pp. 2217-2227 ◽  
Author(s):  
Siri Sofie Eide ◽  
John Bjørnar Bremnes ◽  
Ingelin Steinsland

Abstract In this paper, probabilistic wind speed forecasts are constructed based on ensemble numerical weather prediction (NWP) forecasts for both wind speed and wind direction. Including other NWP variables in addition to the one subject to forecasting is common for statistical calibration of deterministic forecasts. However, this practice is rarely seen for ensemble forecasts, probably because of a lack of methods. A Bayesian modeling approach (BMA) is adopted, and a flexible model class based on splines is introduced for the mean model. The spline model allows both wind speed and wind direction to be included nonlinearly. The proposed methodology is tested for forecasting hourly maximum 10-min wind speeds based on ensemble forecasts from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts at 204 locations in Norway for lead times from +12 to +108 h. An improvement in the continuous ranked probability score is seen for approximately 85% of the locations using the proposed method compared to standard BMA based on only wind speed forecasts. For moderate-to-strong wind the improvement is substantial, while for low wind speeds there is generally less or no improvement. On average, the improvement is 5%. The proposed methodology can be extended to include more NWP variables in the calibration and can also be applied to other variables.


Author(s):  
R. S. Amano ◽  
Ryan Malloy

The project has been completed, and all of the aforementioned objectives have been achieved. An anemometer has been constructed to measure wind speed, and a wind vane has been built to sense wind direction. An LCD module has been acquired and has been programmed to display the wind speed and its direction. An H-Bridge circuit was used to drive a gear motor that rotated the nacelle toward the windward direction. Finally, the blade pitch angle was controlled by a swash plate mechanism and servo motors installed on the generator itself. A microcontroller has been programmed to optimally control the servo motors and gear motor based on input from the wind vane and anemometer sensors.


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