Radiometric correction of multi-temporal Landsat data for characterization of early successional forest patterns in western Oregon

Detecting and characterizing continuous changes in early forest succession using multi-temporal satellite imagery requires atmospheric correction procedures that are both operationally reliable, and that result in comparable units (e.g., surface reflectance). This paper presents a comparison of five atmospheric correction methods (2 relative, 3 absolute) used to correct a nearly continuous 20-year Landsat TM/ETM+ image data set (19-images) covering western Oregon (path/row 46/29). In theory, full absolute correction of individual images in a time-series should effectively minimize atmospheric effects resulting in a series of images that appears more similar in spectral response than the same set of uncorrected images. Contradicting this theory, evidence is presented that demonstrates how absolute correction methods such as Second Simulation of the Satellite Signal in the Solar Spectrum (6 s), Modified Dense Dark Vegetation (MDDV), and Dark Object Subtraction (DOS) actually make images in a time-series somewhat less spectrally similar to one another. Since the development of meaningful spectral reflectance trajectories is more dependant on consistent measurement of surface reflectance rather than on accurate estimation of true surface reflectance, correction using image pairs is also tested. The relative methods tested are variants of an approach referred to as “absolute-normalization”, which matches images in a time-series to an atmospherically corrected reference image using pseudo-invariant features and reduced major axis (RMA) regression. An advantage of “absolute-normalization” is that all images in the time-series are converted to units of surface reflectance while simultaneously being corrected for atmospheric effects. Of the two relative correction methods used for “absolute-normalization”, the first employed an automated ordination algorithm called multivariate alteration detection (MAD) to statistically locate pseudo-invariant pixels between each subject and reference image, while the second used analyst selected pseudo-invariant features (PIF) common to the entire image set. Overall, relative correction employed in the “absolute-normalization” context produced the most consistent temporal reflectance response, with the automated MAD algorithm performing equally as well as the handpicked PIFs. Although both relative methods performed nearly equally in terms of observed errors, several reasons emerged for preferring the MAD algorithm. The paper concludes by demonstrating how “absolute-normalization” improves (i.e., reduces scatter in) spectral reflectance trajectory models used for characterizing patterns of early forest succession.     

Contamination due to process gases

A survey is given of the BOC Group technical research programs, whose purpose is to relate purity in gas processing to ULSI device parameters. Results from the following research programs are presented: how inert gas purity affects the Ti silicide for IGFET metallization; the effects of argon versus nitrogen used in silicon gate oxidation process steps; and preliminary work on a new gas analytical tool, Atmospheric Pressure Ionization Mass Spectrometry (APIMS), which allows measurement of sub ppb impurity levels in processing gases.     

三维大气电波折射修正实验研究

外测系统电波折射修正常用的球面分层法和水平分层法都没有考虑到大气水平不均匀性的影响因此其修正精度不是太高。而三维大气法不仅考虑了大气在垂直方向上的变化，而且也考虑了在水平方向上的变化，所以其修正精度较高。     

大气环境研究若干领域的动态与进展

介绍了大气环境中若干研究领域的动态与进展,内容包括“欧洲示踪实验计划”;符合指数d的概念,IAEA等开展环境迁移模式有效性的大型国际合作计划,扩散参数的不确定度和其对扩散因子的影响;海陆风环流的实验观测与分析;不同地表干,湿沉积,再悬浮参数及其实测值,事故评价中的大气扩散,天气取样技术,事故冲洗因子计算模式及有效扩散参数。     

阀切换技术在大气样品SF_6快速分析中的应用

建立了双柱阀切换技术分析大气样品中SF_6浓度的GC—ECD方法。采用φ3.2 mm×1 m 5A分子筛(粒径为0.246～0.369 mm)柱为预柱,φ3.2 mm×0.5 m 5A分子筛(粒径为0.1 75～0.246 mm)柱为分析柱。在实验条件下,平均峰高响应为1.08×10~(-14)mL/μV,SF_6峰高响应的相对标准偏差为2.2%,SF_6的最低检测限为6.03×10~(-13)mL(3倍基线噪音)。采用该方法分析大气中SF_6浓度,样品分析时间为1.2 min,大大缩短了样品分析时间。12 min内完成11个空气样品分析,相对标准偏差2.1%。     

Formation of silicon dioxide layers at low temperatures (150-400 °C) by atmospheric pressure plasma oxidation of silicon

The formation of silicon dioxide (SiO₂) layers at low temperatures (150-400 °C) by atmospheric pressure plasma oxidation of Si(0 0 1) wafers have been studied using a gas mixture containing He and O₂. A 150 MHz very high frequency (VHF) power supply was used to generate high-density atomic oxygen in the atmospheric pressure plasma. Oxidation rate, structure, and thickness and refractive index profiles of the oxidized layers were investigated by ellipsometry and infrared absorption spectroscopy. Atomic force microscopy was also employed to observe atomic-scale morphologies of the layer surface and wafer Si surface, after chemical removal of the oxidized layers. It was found that stoichiometric SiO₂ layers were obtained at higher oxidation rates than conventional dry O₂ thermal oxidation and radical oxidation processes, even at a very low substrate temperature of 150 °C. Although thickness variations were observed in the plasma region, the refractive index was independent of both substrate temperature and VHF power. In addition, the SiO₂ surface and SiO₂/Si interface roughnesses were comparable to those obtained in conventional dry oxidation at high temperatures.     

Application to cleaning of waste plastic surfaces using atmospheric non-thermal plasma jets

The removal of paint on the surface of waste plastics is difficult by the conventional process; in this research, a new cleaning mechanism using atmospheric plasmas was examined through optical emission spectroscopy, electron spectroscopy for chemical analysis, and scanning electron microscopy. Results indicate that an increase of pulse frequency enables for a short processing time for the removal of the paint film, signifying that the production of radicals in plasma, especially oxygen radicals, can be controlled by pulse frequency.Plasma jets were generated under the experimental conditions of an input power of 250 W to 400 W, a pulse frequency of 2 kHz to 12 kHz, and a plasma gas flow rate of 30 L/min. Examination of the intensity ratio of the reactive species, as measured by emission spectroscopy, showed that the O/N value increased with an increase in pulse frequency. Results of analysis with electron spectroscopy for chemical analysis show that nitrogen atoms and molybdenum in only the paint film decreased through plasma processing.     

一种大气激光通信机的总体设计

介绍了一种大气激光通信机的总体设计方案,并给出了基于该方案的试验样机的测试结果.测试结果表明:按照该方案研制的试验样机能够满足总体设计要求.     

tau: A 1D radiative transfer code for transmission spectroscopy of extrasolar planet atmospheres

The tau code is a 1D$1D$ line-by-line radiative transfer code, which is generally applicable for modelling transmission spectra of close-in extrasolar planets. The inputs are the assumed pressure–temperature profile of the planetary atmosphere, the continuum absorption coefficients and the absorption cross-sections for the trace molecular absorbers present in the model, as well as the fundamental system parameters taken from the published literature. The program then calculates the optical path through the planetary atmosphere of the radiation from the host star, and quantifies the absorption due to the modelled composition in a transmission spectrum of transit depth as a function of wavelength. The code is written in C++, parallelised using OpenMP, and is available for public download and use from http://www.ucl.ac.uk/exoplanets/.     

Parallelisation of the Lagrangian atmospheric dispersion model NAME

The NAME  Atmospheric Dispersion Model is a Lagrangian particle model used by the Met Office to predict the propagation and spread of pollutants in the atmosphere. The model is routinely used in emergency response applications, where it is important to obtain results as quickly as possible. This requirement for a short runtime and the increase in core number of commonly available CPUs, such as the Intel Xeon series, has motivated the parallelisation of NAME  in the OpenMP  shared memory framework. In this work we describe the implementation of this parallelisation strategy in NAME  and discuss the performance of the model for different setups. Due to the independence of the model particles, the parallelisation of the main compute intensive loops is relatively straightforward. The random number generator for modelling sub-grid scale turbulent motion needs to be adapted to ensure that different particles use independent sets of random numbers. We find that on Intel Xeon X5680 CPUs the model shows very good strong scaling up to 12 cores in a realistic emergency response application for predicting the dispersion of volcanic ash in the North Atlantic airspace. We implemented a mechanism for asynchronous reading of meteorological data from disk and demonstrate how this can reduce the runtime if disk access plays a significant role in a model run. To explore the performance on different chip architectures we also ported the part of the code which is used for calculating the gamma dose from a cloud of radioactive particles to a graphics processing unit (GPU) using CUDA-C. We were able to demonstrate a significant speedup of around one order of magnitude relative to the serial CPU version.