Mapping Cropland Burned Area in Northeastern China by Integrating Landsat Time Series and Multi-Harmonic Model

Accurate cropland burned area estimation is crucial for air quality modeling and cropland management. However, current global burned area products have been primarily derived from coarse spatial resolution images which cannot fulfill the spatial requirement for fire monitoring at local levels. In addition, there is an overall lack of accurate cropland straw burning identification approaches at high temporal and spatial resolution. In this study, we propose a novel algorithm to capture burned area in croplands using dense Landsat time series image stacks. Cropland burning shows a short-term seasonal variation and a long-term dynamic trend, so a multi-harmonic model is applied to characterize fire dynamics in cropland areas. By assessing a time series of the Burned Area Index (BAI), our algorithm detects all potential burned areas in croplands. A land cover mask is used on the primary burned area map to remove false detections, and the spatial information with a moving window based on a majority vote is employed to further reduce salt-and-pepper noise and improve the mapping accuracy. Compared with the accuracy of 67.3% of MODIS products and that of 68.5% of Global Annual Burned Area Map (GABAM) products, a superior overall accuracy of 92.9% was obtained by our algorithm using Landsat time series and multi-harmonic model. Our approach represents a flexible and robust way of detecting straw burning in complex agriculture landscapes. In future studies, the effectiveness of combining different spectral indices and satellite images can be further investigated.

Analysis of Ozone Concentrations between 2002–2020 in Urban Air in Northern Spain

This paper analyses surface ozone measurements at five stations in an urban area (Valladolid) in the upper Spanish plateau over the period 2002–2020. Temporal evolutions, the relationship between ozone and other pollutants such as nitrogen oxides, and the assessment of the ozone concentration trend during the study period were analysed. Daily evolution of ozone at all the stations showed mean maximum concentrations in the afternoon, 15:00 GMT, with values ranging between 73.8 and 80.9 µg m−3, evidencing the influence of photochemical processes favoured by solar radiation in ozone formation. The lowest levels were recorded at night and in the early morning, 7:00 GMT, and were between 23.4 and 32.3 µg m−3, related with the reduction by NO reactions and deposition processes. A broad spring–summer peak between May and July was seen, with the highest values in the latter, with a mean value of up to 73.8 µg m−3. The variation in the monthly mean ozone concentrations of the different percentiles was analysed using a harmonic model. The empirical equation described the experimental values satisfactorily, with a confidence level of 95% and coefficients of determination above 80%, confirming the major decreasing trend in the ozone peak values over the study period.

Thermodynamics of dissipative coherent states

Almost all traditional physical formalisms are developed by using conservative forces, and the microscopic implementation of dissipation involves a sort of unusual process, mainly in quantum systems. In this work, we study the quantum harmonic model endowed with a non-Hermitian term responsible for dissipation. In addition, we also include an oscillating field that drives the model to a coherent state, which is dominated by fluctuation in a specific frequency, while regular thermal states are lowlily occupied. The usual coherent state formalism at zero temperature is extended to treat dissipative models at finite temperature. We define a generating function that is used in the evaluation of the most relevant statistical averages, such as the particle distribution. Then, we successfully employ the developed formalism to discuss two well-known applications; the damped quantum harmonic oscillator, and the precession magnetization in a ferromagnetic sample.

Microscopic Dynamic Mechanism of Irreversible Thermodynamic Equilibration of Crystals

The dynamics of free and forced vibrations of a chain of particles are investigated in a harmonic model taking into account the retardation of interactions between atoms. It is found that the retardation of interactions between particles leads to the non-existence of stationary free vibrations of the crystal lattice. It is shown that in the case of a stable lattice, forced vibrations, regardless of the initial conditions, pass into a stationary regime. A non-statistical dynamic mechanism of the irreversible thermodynamic equilibration is proposed.

Two Faces of the Two Phase Thermodynamic Model

The quantum harmonic model and the two-phase thermodynamics method (2PT) are widely used to obtain quantum corrected properties such as isobaric heat capacities or molar entropies. 2PT heat capacities were calculated inconsistently in the literature. For water the classical heat capacity was also considered, but for organic liquids it was omitted. We reanalyzed the performance of different quantum corrections on the heat capacities of common organic solvents against experimental data. We have pointed out serious flaws in previous 2PT studies. The vibrational density of states was calculated incorrectly causing 39 % relative error in diffusion coefficients and 45 % error in the 2PT heat capacities. The wrong conversion of isobaric isochoric heat capacity also caused about 40 % error but in the other direction. We have introduced the concept of anharmonic correction (AC) which is simply the deviation of the classical heat capacity from that of the harmonic oscillator model. This anharmonic contribution is around +30-40 J/mol/K for water depending on the water model and -8-10 J/mol/K for hydrocarbons and halocarbons. AC is unrealistically large, +40 J/K/mol for alcohols and amines indicating some deficiency of the OPLS force field. The accuracy of the computations was also assessed with the determination of the self-diffusion coefficients.