Hasil untuk "Physical geography"

N. Mueller, D. Rojas-Rueda, T. Cole-Hunter et al.

OBJECTIVE Walking and cycling for transportation (i.e. active transportation, AT), provide substantial health benefits from increased physical activity (PA). However, risks of injury from exposure to motorized traffic and their emissions (i.e. air pollution) exist. The objective was to systematically review studies conducting health impact assessment (HIA) of a mode shift to AT on grounds of associated health benefits and risks. METHODS Systematic database searches of MEDLINE, Web of Science and Transportation Research International Documentation were performed by two independent researchers, augmented by bibliographic review, internet searches and expert consultation to identify peer-reviewed studies from inception to December 2014. RESULTS Thirty studies were included, originating predominantly from Europe, but also the United States, Australia and New Zealand. They compromised of mostly HIA approaches of comparative risk assessment and cost-benefit analysis. Estimated health benefit-risk or benefit-cost ratios of a mode shift to AT ranged between -2 and 360 (median=9). Effects of increased PA contributed the most to estimated health benefits, which strongly outweighed detrimental effects of traffic incidents and air pollution exposure on health. CONCLUSION Despite different HIA methodologies being applied with distinctive assumptions on key parameters, AT can provide substantial net health benefits, irrespective of geographical context.

H. Neufeld

R. Ricklefs

P. P. McDougall, S. Shane, B. Oviatt

S. Cutter, Jerry T. Mitchell, M. Scott

Keke Gai, Yulu Wu, Liehuang Zhu et al.

Implementing blockchain techniques has enabled secure smart trading in many realms, e.g. neighboring energy trading. However, trading information recorded on the blockchain also brings privacy concerns. Attackers can utilize data mining algorithms to obtain users’ privacy, specially, when the user group is located in nearby geographic positions. In this paper, we present a consortium blockchain-oriented approach to solve the problem of privacy leakage without restricting trading functions. The proposed approach mainly addresses energy trading users’ privacy in smart grid and screens the distribution of energy sale of sellers deriving from the fact that various energy trading volumes can be mined to detect its relationships with other information, such as physical location and energy usage. Experiment evaluations have demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed approach.

Junyi Zhang, Y. Hayashi, L. Frank

Impacts of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) on the transport sector and the corresponding policy measures are becoming widely investigated. Considering the various uncertainties and unknowns about this virus and its impacts (especially long-term impacts), it is critical to understand opinions and suggestions from experts within the transport sector and related planning fields. To date, however, there is no study that fills this gap in a comprehensive way. This paper is an executive summary of the findings of the WCTRS COVID-19 Taskforce expert survey conducted worldwide between the end of April and late May 2020, obtaining 284 valid answers. The experts include those in the field of transport and other relevant disciplines, keeping good balances between geographic regions, types of workplaces, and working durations. Based on extensive analyses of the survey results, this paper first reveals the realities of lockdowns, restrictions of out-of-home activities and other physical distancing requirements, as well as modal shifts. Experts’ agreements and disagreements to the structural questions about changes in lifestyles and society are then discussed. Analysis results revealed that our human society was not well prepared for the current pandemic, reaffirming the importance of risk communication. Geographical differences of modal shifts are further identified, especially related to active transport and car dependence. Improved sustainability and resilience are expected in the future but should be supported by effective behavioral intervention measures. Finally, policy implications of the findings are discussed, together with important future research issues.

N. L. Poff, J. V. Ward

Takashi Yamashita, Yulong Ren, Yuta Kosuge et al.

Abstract Purpose There are no previous reports investigating the effects of different set numbers in low-intensity resistance exercise with slow movement and tonic force generation (LST) on muscle fatigue using surface electromyography (sEMG). This study aimed to examine muscle fatigue induced by one set and three sets of LST and to compare the impact of set differences on muscle activity by comparing LST with traditional high-intensity resistance exercise (TRAD). Methods Twenty-three healthy male students participated in this study. After 1RM testing in each leg was completed, participants were randomly assigned to either a group performing one set of exercises (n = 10) or a group performing three sets (n = 13). Each participant performed the LST protocol (50% 1RM) and the TRAD protocol (80% 1RM) with single leg extension until failure. The LST protocol consisted of a 3-s concentric, a 1-s isometric, and a 3-s eccentric phase. In contrast, the TRAD protocol consisted of a 1-s concentric, a 1-s eccentric, and a 1-s rest phase. For the three-set group, a 2-min rest interval was provided between sets. The outcome measures included maximal isometric knee extension torque (MVC) before and after exercise, root mean square (RMS), and mean power frequency (MPF) values recorded during the exercises. Results No significant differences in MVC were observed between the type of exercise or the number of sets. Similarly, no significant differences in the RMS during the exercise were observed across exercise types or number of sets. On the other hand, with the significant interaction of MPF (p = 0.001, η p 2  = 0.399), there was a significant difference in three sets of LST compared to one set of LST (p = 0.012, d = 1.16) and three sets of TRAD (p < 0.001, d = 0.93). Conclusion Our findings suggest that performing three sets of LST induces significant muscle fatigue. Therefore, we speculate that performing three sets of LST may lead to the accumulation of metabolic stress and thereby cause muscle fatigue.

Abdoul Azise SODORE

The impacts of climate change on agriculture, breeding and sylviculture in the Centre North region reduce the populations’ livelihoods. In this context, it is important to examine the role of agroecology in the adaptation strategies of these communities. The objective of this research is to analyse the locals’ adaptation strategies with agroecology practices. The methodology combined literature review, the climatic, geographic and socioeconomic data collection, treatment and analysis. To do that, the KoboCollect platform was used for data collection, while QGIS, Excel, and Word were used for mapping and data processing. The results indicate that climate influences agriculture, livestock farming, and the harvesting of both woody and non-woody forest products, which constitute the main livelihoods of the local populations. The technics of zai, stones barriers, hedges, crop rotation and association and organic fertilizers are used by the farmers. These agroecology practices remain very relevant in terms of feasibility and efficiency. In this regard, greater support should be provided to farmers to encourage the adoption of agroecological practices, especially within a national context characterized by increasing pressure on natural resources due to ongoing insecurity.

Xikun Wei, Guojie Wang, Britta Schmalz

Study region: Mainland China, encompassing 185 hydrological stations across climatic zones. Study focus: This study focuses on projecting future runoff changes across China under multiple Shared Socioeconomic Pathway (SSP) scenarios. We applied advanced deep learning (DL) models, including LSTM-SA and GRU-SA, combined with high-resolution climate inputs produced by a DL-based downscaling of CMIP6 data. The models achieved strong performance, with mean Nash–Sutcliffe Efficiency (NSE) values of 0.65 and 0.66, and corresponding medians of 0.72 and 0.73, respectively. These results confirm the robustness of the DL-based rainfall–runoff simulations across diverse climatic and hydrological regimes. Our result further indicated that reliable monthly rainfall–runoff models can be constructed with as few as 500 training samples, highlighting the efficiency of DL approaches in data-limited settings. New hydrological insights for the region: Future runoff projections reveal overall increases at most stations, with particularly strong signals in the central transitional and southern humid regions. While the spatial distribution of changes remains consistent across scenarios, the magnitude intensifies under higher emissions. Seasonal contrasts are pronounced: summer runoff is projected to increase markedly, while winter runoff tends to decline in humid regions and shows spatial heterogeneity in transitional zones. These patterns suggest heightened risks of both floods and droughts, with more frequent extreme events likely in humid areas. The findings provide new insights into regional hydrological responses to climate change and deliver valuable scientific evidence to support adaptive water resource allocation, flood control, and drought mitigation strategies across China.

Chong Wei, Xiaohua Dong, Yaoming Ma et al.

Study regions: The Wangjiaba (WJB) watershed, located in the upper Huaihe River Basin in China. Study focus: An attributing framework has been proposed combining the Double Mass Curve (DMC) and the Soil and Water Assessment Tools (SWAT) model to identify the contributions of climate variability, Land use (LU) change, and Other Human Activities (OHA) to the variations in runoff-sediment processes within the WJB. New hydrological insights for the region: The studied period was able to be separated into three sub-periods (P1: 1981–1991, P2: 1992–2009, and P3: 2010–2019) using the DMC, and the SWAT model could simulate runoff and Sediment Yields Load (SYL) properly during different sub-periods after calibration. Generally, the runoff, SYL, and Suspended Sediment Concentration (SSC) within the WJB exhibited a decrease trend with a change rate of −1.3 mm a−1, −8.49×104 t a−1, and −0.01 kg m−3 a−1, respectively. Substantially, climate variability decreases runoff, SYL, and SSC from P1 to P3; LU change decreases runoff, SYL, and SSC from P2 to P3; OHA decreases SYL and SSC from P1 to P2, but increases SYL and SSC from P2 to P3. It should be noticed that the OHA has increased the SYL significantly especially over the downstream of WJB from P2 to P3. It is essential to enhance soil erosion prevention measures in the future under the background of global climate change.

Die Hu, Fengxiang Guo, Qingyan Meng et al.

Land surface temperature (LST) captures fundamental information on the spatiotemporal variation of energy balance at the surface. The trade-off between spatial and temporal resolutions of remote sensing images (retrieved LSTs), however, restricts fine-scale thermal environmental investigations. In this context, a novel dual-layer composite framework (DCF) for LST downscaling coupling spatial autocorrelation and spatial heterogeneity was developed based on the two fundamental laws of geography and used to improve existing kernel-driven methods. Besides, a new non-parametric kernel-driven LST downscaling method (N-DLST) was also proposed under the DCF, in which Bayesian non-parametric general regression (BNGR) was applied to predict the high-resolution LSTs with auto-selected kernels. In the experiment of downscaling Landsat 8 LST from 300 m to 30 m over the highly heterogeneous urban area, the N-DLST method significantly outperformed the original kernel-driven methods, with the highest coefficient of determination (R2 = 0.93) and lowest root mean square error (RMSE = 0.85). Moreover, the enhanced effects of DCF in downscaling LST were demonstrated by comparing the accuracy of the disaggregation of radiometric surface temperature (DisTrad), the geographically weighted regression-based method (GWR), and random forest (RF) method before and after their improvements. Visual interpretation and quantitative assessments revealed that the DCF could improve the accuracy of DisTrad, GWR, and RF methods with an increase in R2 by approximately 0.09 and a decrease in RMSE by more than 0.4 °C. In the cases of LST downscaling over highly heterogeneous contexts and water bodies, N-DLST effectively preserved the textures and large-scale variations, yielding the most consistent spatial pattern with the reference LST. Given the simplicity of the modelling process and absence of auxiliary data, the DCF could strengthen the performance of both linear and nonlinear LST downscaling methods, while the N-DLST method could serve as an effective tool for high-resolution LST prediction.

Yichen Yao, Xiaohui Zhong, Yongjun Zheng et al.

Abstract The atmospheric radiative transfer calculations are among the most time‐consuming components of the numerical weather prediction (NWP) models. Deep learning (DL) models have recently been increasingly applied to accelerate radiative transfer modeling. Besides, a physical relationship exists between the output variables, including fluxes and heating rate profiles. Integration of such physical laws in DL models is crucial for the consistency and credibility of the DL‐based parameterizations. Therefore, we propose a physics‐incorporated framework for the radiative transfer DL model, in which the physical relationship between fluxes and heating rates is encoded as a layer of the network so that the energy conservation can be satisfied. It is also found that the prediction accuracy was improved with the physic‐incorporated layer. In addition, we trained and compared various types of DL model architectures, including fully connected (FC) neural networks (NNs), convolutional‐based NNs (CNNs), bidirectional recurrent‐based NNs (RNNs), transformer‐based NNs, and neural operator networks, respectively. The offline evaluation demonstrates that bidirectional RNNs, transformer‐based NNs, and neural operator networks significantly outperform the FC NNs and CNNs due to their capability of global perception. A global perspective of an entire atmospheric column is essential and suitable for radiative transfer modeling as the changes in atmospheric components of one layer/level have both local and global impacts on radiation along the entire vertical column. Furthermore, the bidirectional RNNs achieve the best performance as they can extract information from both upward and downward directions, similar to the radiative transfer processes in the atmosphere.

Jeroen Wouters, Reinhard K. H. Schiemann, Len C. Shaffrey

Abstract We test the application of a rare event simulation (RES) algorithm to accelerate the sampling of extreme winter rainfall over Europe in a climate model. The genealogical particle analysis algorithm, an ensemble method that interrupts the simulation at intermediate times to clone realizations in which an extreme event is developing, is applied to the intermediate complexity general circulation model PlaSim. We show that the algorithm strongly reduces the numerical effort required to estimate probabilities of extremes, demonstrating the potential of RES of seasonal precipitation extremes.

DAISUKE AIBA

Mature modifications, ontogeny, and dimorphism of the small-sized tetragonitid ammonoid Tetragonites minimus were investigated in 43 specimens from the Santonian, Upper Cretaceous of the northwestern area of Hokkaido, Japan. Four types of mature modifications were recognised in the shell diameters of 11–13 mm and 16–19 mm, and two differently sized adults were regarded as microconchs and macroconchs respectively. The conch forms of dimorphic pairs were similar in juvenile but differ in the later stage. The supplementary analysis showed that the remarkable adult size differences in antidimorphs continued at least in the Turonian–Santonian. The mature size and size difference between dimorphic pairs decreased chronologically. 36 specimens (84% of examined specimens) were mature, and immature shells were rare in the Santonian. Most of the shells were remarkably well preserved, indicating that T. minimus assemblage fossilised quickly near their original habitat without long-distance post-mortem transport. Hence the bias in the fossil occurrence of adult T. minimus is unlikely to be due to taphonomy such as the bias of fossilisation potential and floatability in the bottom currents. Tetragonites minimus might have been changing their habitats during their life cycle.

Mauro Henrique Soares da Silva, Vanessa de Menezes das Neves Silva

O presente estudo teve por objetivo analisar a relação entre o isolamento social e a evolução da Covid-19 no município de Três Lagoas, no Mato Grosso do Sul, e a influência das políticas públicas na evolução e controle da doença. Os dados de casos confirmados da doença e a da taxa de isolamento social foram correlacinoados por meio da aplicação do coeficiente de correlação (R). Foram analisados também os decretos da Prefeitura do Município publicados no ano de 2020. Os resultados evidenciam que o ano foi marcado pelo crescimento exponencial de casos confirmados de Covid-19 com a flexibilização das políticas públicas de enfrentamento à Pandemia, revelando um coeficiente de correlação muito forte entre a evoluçaõ dos casos confirmados da doença e a variação da taxa de isolamento social

Janina J. Nett, Wei Chu, Peter Fischer et al.

The Carpathian Basin is a key region for understanding modern human expansion into western Eurasia during the Late Pleistocene because of numerous early hominid fossil find spots. However, the corresponding archeological record remains less understood due to a paucity of well dated, contextualized sites. To help rectify this, we excavated and sampled Crvenka-At (Serbia), one of the largest Upper Paleolithic sites in the region to obtain radiometric ages for the archeological artifacts and evaluate their depositional context and subsequent site formation processes. Our results confirm that this locality represents a multiple-occupation Aurignacian site that dates to 36.4 ± 2.8 ka based on modeling of luminescence ages. Electrical resistivity tomography measurements indicate that the site formed on a sandy-gravelly fill terrace covered by overbank deposits. Complex grain size distributions further suggest site formation in contrasting depositional environments typically occurring alongside fluvial channels, at lakeshores, in alluvial fan or delta settings. The site is thus the closest (ca. 50 km) known Aurignacian site to the earliest undisputed modern human remains in Europe at the Peştera cu oase and some intervals of the occupation may therefore have been contemporaneous with them. This suggests that modern humans, during their initial settlement of Europe, exploited a wider range of topographic and ecological settings than previously posited. Our findings indicate that lowland areas of the Carpathian Basin are an important part of understanding the early settlement patterns of modern humans in Europe.

J. N. Roemmich, L. Epstein, S. Raja et al.

M. Hillsdon, J. Panter, C. Foster et al.