Snowpack Distribution Using Topographical, Climatological and Winter Season Index Inputs

A majority of the annual precipitation in many mountains falls as snow, and obtaining accurate estimates of the amount of water stored within the snowpack is important for water supply forecasting. Mountain topography can produce complex patterns of snow distribution, accumulation, and ablation, yet the interaction of topography and meteorological patterns tends to generate similar inter-annual snow depth distribution patterns. Here, we question whether snow depth patterns at or near peak accumulation are repeatable for a 10-year time frame and whether years with limited snow depth measurement can still be used to accurately represent snow depth and mean snow depth. We used snow depth measurements from the West Glacier Lake watershed, Wyoming, U.S.A., to investigate the distribution of snow depth. West Glacier Lake is a small (0.61 km2) windswept (mean of 8 m/s) watershed that ranges between 3277 m and 3493 m. Three interpolation methods were compared: (1) a binary regression tree, (2) multiple linear regression, and (3) generalized additive models. Generalized additive models using topographic parameters with measured snow depth presented the best estimates of the snow depth distribution and the basin mean amounts. The snow depth patterns near peak accumulation were found to be consistent inter-annually with an average annual correlation coefficient (r2) of 0.83, and scalable based on a winter season accumulation index (r2 = 0.75) based on the correlation between mean snow depth measurements to Brooklyn Lake snow telemetry (SNOTEL) snow depth data.

Automatic Representative View Selection of a 3D Cultural Relic Using Depth Variation Entropy and Depth Distribution Entropy

Automatically selecting a set of representative views of a 3D virtual cultural relic is crucial for constructing wisdom museums. There is no consensus regarding the definition of a good view in computer graphics; the same is true of multiple views. View-based methods play an important role in the field of 3D shape retrieval and classification. However, it is still difficult to select views that not only conform to subjective human preferences but also have a good feature description. In this study, we define two novel measures based on information entropy, named depth variation entropy and depth distribution entropy. These measures were used to determine the amount of information about the depth swings and different depth quantities of each view. Firstly, a canonical pose 3D cultural relic was generated using principal component analysis. A set of depth maps obtained by orthographic cameras was then captured on the dense vertices of a geodesic unit-sphere by subdividing the regular unit-octahedron. Afterwards, the two measures were calculated separately on the depth maps gained from the vertices and the results on each one-eighth sphere form a group. The views with maximum entropy of depth variation and depth distribution were selected, and further scattered viewpoints were selected. Finally, the threshold word histogram derived from the vector quantization of salient local descriptors on the selected depth maps represented the 3D cultural relic. The viewpoints obtained by the proposed method coincided with an arbitrary pose of the 3D model. The latter eliminated the steps of manually adjusting the model’s pose and provided acceptable display views for people. In addition, it was verified on several datasets that the proposed method, which uses the Bag-of-Words mechanism and a deep convolution neural network, also has good performance regarding retrieval and classification when dealing with only four views.

Hoki (Macruronus novaezelandiae) Diet Variability and Associated Middle-Depth Demersal Fish Species Depth Distribution in the Ecosystem on the Chatham Rise, New Zealand.

<p>Fisheries management in New Zealand is mostly on a single species basis. Globally there is a shift towards multispecies or ecosystem based fisheries management. For this to happen an understanding of how the ecosystem is organised and functions is needed. Trophic food web and diet studies have been used effectively to begin to understand the functioning of marine ecosystems. Who eats whom, however, is not the full extent of ecosystem function. Understanding of species distribution patterns, of both predators and prey species are also needed to begin to understand the full function of the marine ecosystem. The first part of this study investigated the diet of hoki (Macruronus novaezelandiae) over the Chatham Rise, New Zealand, between 200-800m. It characterised the diet of hoki as well as investigated potential sources of diet variability. Hoki diet was found to consist largely of mesopelagic teleosts, mainly of the family Myctophidae, natant decapods and euphausids, suggesting a pelagic feeding strategy, as other studies have also found. Differences were found in diet composition between this study and other studies on hoki diet, potentially suggesting differences in prey distribution between study areas. Differences in diet were found between fish from different depths and different sized fish from the same depth. No consistent pattern of diet differences was found between the different areas studied, suggesting that the patterns found may be aliasing depth and size patterns as well as reflecting differences in hoki size class distribution. The distribution of hoki was not homogeneous over the study area, with small fish found mainly in the western part of the study area in shallower water, while large fish were predominately found at greater depths over the whole study area. The second part of this study looked at the overall species distribution of 30 demersal fish species over the Chatham Rise, specifically examining for evidence of the mid-domain effect. The study also investigated body-size depth trends between these species, and split by class Osteichthyes and Chondrichthyes. The mid-domain effect predicts species richness, and thus distribution, is due to geometric constraints with the greatest species richness to be found at the centre of a geographically constrained domain. The overall species distribution was found to be explained by the mid-domain effect. The distribution pattern of larger individuals being found in deeper water, with smaller individuals found in shallower water has often been seen in marine systems. We found no interspecific pattern for body-size depth distribution with the entire species assemblage, nor when the assemblage was split by class into Osteichthyes and Chondrichthyes, which supports our findings of the mid-domain effect. At a species level patterns of positive, negative and no trend were found with body-size depth relationships. At a community level species distribution over the studied depth range was largely explained by the geometric constraints of the mid-domain effect, while at a species level distribution over depth was often a reflection of body size. Some species had large individuals deep while other species had small. Overall this supports the hypothesis that competition or adaptation works more strongly at a population or species level, than on the overall community who's species distribution can more often be attributed to random chance. This study begins to explain predator species distribution over the Chatham Rise and looks at the diet of one dominant species in the Chatham Rise ecosystem. This provides some of the basic knowledge needed for fisheries management to move towards a more ecosystem based approach. Further research should include investigation into prey species distribution and abundance to clarify some of the questions raised in the diet part of this study about the cause of diet variability and whether it was related to either prey abundance or patchy prey distribution. Research into the diet of other fish would be useful to ascertain which species compete with hoki for food and would provide fisheries managers with a list of species that may be affected indirectly through changes in hoki quota of abundance.</p>

Hoki (Macruronus novaezelandiae) Diet Variability and Associated Middle-Depth Demersal Fish Species Depth Distribution in the Ecosystem on the Chatham Rise, New Zealand.

<p>Fisheries management in New Zealand is mostly on a single species basis. Globally there is a shift towards multispecies or ecosystem based fisheries management. For this to happen an understanding of how the ecosystem is organised and functions is needed. Trophic food web and diet studies have been used effectively to begin to understand the functioning of marine ecosystems. Who eats whom, however, is not the full extent of ecosystem function. Understanding of species distribution patterns, of both predators and prey species are also needed to begin to understand the full function of the marine ecosystem. The first part of this study investigated the diet of hoki (Macruronus novaezelandiae) over the Chatham Rise, New Zealand, between 200-800m. It characterised the diet of hoki as well as investigated potential sources of diet variability. Hoki diet was found to consist largely of mesopelagic teleosts, mainly of the family Myctophidae, natant decapods and euphausids, suggesting a pelagic feeding strategy, as other studies have also found. Differences were found in diet composition between this study and other studies on hoki diet, potentially suggesting differences in prey distribution between study areas. Differences in diet were found between fish from different depths and different sized fish from the same depth. No consistent pattern of diet differences was found between the different areas studied, suggesting that the patterns found may be aliasing depth and size patterns as well as reflecting differences in hoki size class distribution. The distribution of hoki was not homogeneous over the study area, with small fish found mainly in the western part of the study area in shallower water, while large fish were predominately found at greater depths over the whole study area. The second part of this study looked at the overall species distribution of 30 demersal fish species over the Chatham Rise, specifically examining for evidence of the mid-domain effect. The study also investigated body-size depth trends between these species, and split by class Osteichthyes and Chondrichthyes. The mid-domain effect predicts species richness, and thus distribution, is due to geometric constraints with the greatest species richness to be found at the centre of a geographically constrained domain. The overall species distribution was found to be explained by the mid-domain effect. The distribution pattern of larger individuals being found in deeper water, with smaller individuals found in shallower water has often been seen in marine systems. We found no interspecific pattern for body-size depth distribution with the entire species assemblage, nor when the assemblage was split by class into Osteichthyes and Chondrichthyes, which supports our findings of the mid-domain effect. At a species level patterns of positive, negative and no trend were found with body-size depth relationships. At a community level species distribution over the studied depth range was largely explained by the geometric constraints of the mid-domain effect, while at a species level distribution over depth was often a reflection of body size. Some species had large individuals deep while other species had small. Overall this supports the hypothesis that competition or adaptation works more strongly at a population or species level, than on the overall community who's species distribution can more often be attributed to random chance. This study begins to explain predator species distribution over the Chatham Rise and looks at the diet of one dominant species in the Chatham Rise ecosystem. This provides some of the basic knowledge needed for fisheries management to move towards a more ecosystem based approach. Further research should include investigation into prey species distribution and abundance to clarify some of the questions raised in the diet part of this study about the cause of diet variability and whether it was related to either prey abundance or patchy prey distribution. Research into the diet of other fish would be useful to ascertain which species compete with hoki for food and would provide fisheries managers with a list of species that may be affected indirectly through changes in hoki quota of abundance.</p>