Characterizing 3D vegetation structure from space: Mission requirements

Human and natural forces are rapidly modifying the global distribution and structure of terrestrial ecosystems on which all of life depends, altering the global carbon cycle, affecting our climate now and for the foreseeable future, causing steep reductions in species diversity, and endangering Earth's sustainability.To understand changes and trends in terrestrial ecosystems and their functioning as carbon sources and sinks, and to characterize the impact of their changes on climate, habitat and biodiversity, new space assets are urgently needed to produce high spatial resolution global maps of the three-dimensional (3D) structure of vegetation, its biomass above ground, the carbon stored within and the implications for atmospheric green house gas concentrations and climate. These needs were articulated in a 2007 National Research Council (NRC) report (NRC, 2007) recommending a new satellite mission, DESDynI, carrying an L-band Polarized Synthetic Aperture Radar (Pol-SAR) and a multi-beam lidar (Light RAnging And Detection) operating at 1064 nm. The objectives of this paper are to articulate the importance of these new, multi-year, 3D vegetation structure and biomass measurements, to briefly review the feasibility of radar and lidar remote sensing technology to meet these requirements, to define the data products and measurement requirements, and to consider implications of mission durations. The paper addresses these objectives by synthesizing research results and other input from a broad community of terrestrial ecology, carbon cycle, and remote sensing scientists and working groups. We conclude that:

(1)

Current global biomass and 3-D vegetation structure information is unsuitable for both science and management and policy. The only existing global datasets of biomass are approximations based on combining land cover type and representative carbon values, instead of measurements of actual biomass. Current measurement attempts based on radar and multispectral data have low explanatory power outside low biomass areas. There is no current capability for repeatable disturbance and regrowth estimates.

(2)

The science and policy needs for information on vegetation 3D structure can be successfully addressed by a mission capable of producing (i) a first global inventory of forest biomass with a spatial resolution 1 km or finer and unprecedented accuracy (ii) annual global disturbance maps at a spatial resolution of 1 ha with subsequent biomass accumulation rates at resolutions of 1 km or finer, and (iii) transects of vertical and horizontal forest structure with 30 m along-transect measurements globally at 25 m spatial resolution, essential for habitat characterization.

We also show from the literature that lidar profile samples together with wall-to-wall L-band quad-pol-SAR imagery and ecosystem dynamics models can work together to satisfy these vegetation 3D structure and biomass measurement requirements. Finally we argue that the technology readiness levels of combined pol-SAR and lidar instruments are adequate for space flight. Remaining to be worked out, are the particulars of a lidar/pol-SAR mission design that is feasible and at a minimum satisfies the information and measurement requirement articulated herein.     

Rule chaining in fuzzy expert systems

A fuzzy expert system must do rule chaining differently than a nonfuzzy expert system. In particular, any rule that can fire with a particular linguistic variable in its consequent must fire before any rule whose antecedent conditions depend upon the resultant fuzzy set value of the consequent linguistic variable is allowed to fire. The dependent rules would be considered in a chain with the fuzzy rules which generate or assert the needed fuzzy linguistic variable. A recent paper by J. Pan et al. (1998) points out that a version of the FuzzyCLIPS expert system shell does not operate with chained fuzzy rules as one would expect. They introduce FuzzyShell which is described as the only known shell to have the expected fuzzy rule chaining performance. We show several approaches to obtaining the desired behavior in FuzzyCLIPS. Further, a potential pitfall with the FuzzyShell approach to dealing with chaining is pointed out     

Issues in representation of molecular structure the development of molecular connectivity.

Significant issues in the representation of molecular structure and the development of the molecular connectivity paradigm are presented. In the molecular connectivity paradigm, molecular structure is represented directly. Kier and Hall developed the method by creating ways to encode electronic information based on the paradigm developed from the Randi? branching index. The simple and valence delta values were created to encode atomic and valence-state electronic information through counts of sigma, pi, and lone pair electrons. A family of indices was created to provide a wide range of structure information. The key aspects of the development are presented and discussed in such a way as to reveal, at least in part, the imaginative thinking involved in the process. Possible future roles for molecular connectivity chi indices are discussed.     

Micromachined Accelerometers With Optical Interferometric Read-Out and Integrated Electrostatic Actuation

A micromachined accelerometer device structure with diffraction-based optical detection and integrated electrostatic actuation is introduced. The sensor consists of a bulk silicon proof mass electrode that moves vertically with respect to a rigid diffraction grating backplate electrode to provide interferometric detection resolution of the proof-mass displacement when illuminated with coherent light. The sensor architecture includes a monolithically integrated electrostatic actuation port that enables the application of precisely controlled broadband forces to the proof mass while the displacement is simultaneously and independently measured optically. This enables several useful features such as dynamic self-characterization and a variety of force-feedback modalities, including alteration of device dynamics in situ. These features are experimentally demonstrated with sensors that have been optoelectronically integrated into sub-cubic-millimeter volumes using an entirely surface-normal, rigid, and robust embodiment incorporating vertical cavity surface emitting lasers and integrated photodetector arrays. In addition to small form factor and high acceleration resolution, the ability to self-characterize and alter device dynamics in situ may be advantageous. This allows periodic calibration and in situ matching of sensor dynamics among an array of accelerometers or seismometers configured in a network.     

Application of autoregressive spectral analysis to cepstral estimation of mean scatterer spacing

The problem of estimation of mean scatterer spacing in an object containing regularly spaced structures is addressed. An autoregressive (AR) spectral estimation method is compared with a conventional fast Fourier transform (FFT)-based approach for this task. Regularly spaced structures produce a periodicity in the power spectrum of ultrasonic backscatter. This periodicity is manifested as a peak in the cepstrum. A phantom was constructed for comparison of the two methods. It contained regularly spaced nylon filaments. It also contained randomly positioned glass spheres that produced incoherent backscatter. In an experiment in which this target was interrogated using broadband ultrasound, the AR spectral estimate offered considerable improvement over the FFT when the analysis gate length was on the order of the structural dimension. Advantages included improved resolution, reduction in bias and variance of scatterer spacing estimates, and greater resistance to ringing artifacts. Data were also acquired from human liver in vivo. AR spectral estimates on human data exhibited a decreased dependence on gate length. These results offer promise for enhanced spatial resolution and accuracy in ultrasonic tissue characterization and nondestructive evaluation of materials.     

Three-dimensional moment invariants

Recognition of three-dimensional objects independent of size, position, and orientation is an important and difficult problem of scene analysis. The use of three-dimensional moment invariants is proposed as a solution. The generalization of the results of two-dimensional moment invariants which had linked two-dimensional moments to binary quantics is done by linking three-dimensional moments to ternary quantics. The existence and number of nth order moments in two and three dimensions is explored. Algebraic invariants of several ternary forms under different orthogonal transformations are derived by using the invariant property of coefficients of ternary forms. The result is a set of three-dimensional moment invariants which are invariant under size, orientation, and position change. This property is highly significant in compressing the data which are needed in three-dimensional object recognition. Empirical examples are also given.     

Failure of triiodothyronine to inhibit TSH-mediated thyroid hormone release in man

We studied the effect of short-term triiodothyronine administration on thyroid gland responsivity to exogenous thyrotropin in four euthyroid human subjects. Thyroidal iodine release and serum thyroxine during daily im injections of bovine TSH were not significantly inhibited, despite a four-fold elevation in serum T3 concentrations. This negative finding contrasts with earlier positive reports of a regulatory "short-loop" effect of elevated circulating T3 on the thyroid gland. This difference may be due either to the use in previous murine or in vitro studies of non-physiologic, high doses of exogenous T3, or failure to control the withdrawal of the trophic effect of endogenous TSH in man on the subsequent glandular response.     

Organometallic VPE growth of AlxGa1−xAs

The " hybrid" organometallic VPE process for the growth of Al_xGa_l-xAs has been explored. Six growth parameters have been considered; substrate orientation, substrate temperature during growth, total flow rate and ratios of Al, HC1 and As to the total group III flow rate. The effects of these six growth parameters on the growth process (growth rate, composition and surface morphology) and the materials properties (carrier concentration, photoluminescence intensity and spectrum) have been systematically studied. A technique has been developed for the growth of heterostructures by changing only the H₂ diluent flow rate. This results in high quality heterostructures with x changing from 0.05 to 0.30 in > 100 å.     

Network Discovery and Verification

Due to its fast, dynamic, and distributed growth process, it is hard to obtain an accurate map of the Internet. In many cases, such a map-representing the structure of the Internet as a graph with nodes and links-is a prerequisite when investigating properties of the Internet. A common way to obtain such maps is to make certain local measurements at a small subset of the nodes, and then to combine these in order to "discover" (an approximation of) the actual graph. Each of these measurements is potentially quite costly. It is thus a natural objective to minimize the number of measurements which still discover the whole graph. We formalize this problem as a combinatorial optimization problem and consider it for two different models characterized by different types of measurements. We give several upper and lower bounds on the competitive ratio (for the online network discovery problem) and the approximation ratio (for the offline network verification problem) in both models. Furthermore, for one of the two models, we compare four simple greedy strategies in an experimental analysis     

Low-temperature conductance measurements of surface states in HfO2–Si structures with different gate materials

Metal-oxide-semiconductor capacitors based on HfO₂ gate stack with different metal and metal compound gates (Al, TiN, NiSi and NiAlN) are compared to study the effect of the gate electrode material on the trap density at the insulator–semiconductor interface.C–V and G–ω measurements were made in the frequency range from 1 kHz to 1 MHz in the temperature range 180–300 K. From the maximum of the plot G/ω vs. ln(ω) the density of interface states was calculated, and from its position on the frequency axis the trap cross-section was found. Reducing temperature makes it possible to decrease leakage current through the dielectric and to investigate the states located closer to the band edge.The structures under study were shown to contain significant interface trap densities located near the valence band edge (around 2×10¹¹ cm⁻²eV⁻¹ for Al and up to (3.5–5.5)×10¹² cm⁻² eV⁻¹ for other gate materials). The peak in the surface state distribution is situated at 0.18 eV above the valence band edge for Al electrode. The capture cross-section is 5.8×10⁻¹⁷ cm² at 200 K for Al–HfO₂–Si structure.