Geology topics

K. Thompson

Publications and source records attributed to K. Thompson.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

USGS2012

The detection of coastal-trapped waves

We outline a simple method for estimating the cross-spectral matrix of coastal-trapped wave amplitudes,A, from a set of oceanographic observations. Specifically, we propose that A may be estimated by (M'M) -1 M'UM(M'M) -1 where a prime denote conjugate transpose, U is the sample cross-spectral matrix of observations and M is a matrix which has the spatial form of the waves for columns. In general, M will be complex and frequency-dependent. We discuss the bias of this estimator and show how to estimate the variance of the power and cross spectra of wave amplitudes. We also outline an ad hoc scheme for assessing the predictive skill of the coastal trapped wave representation and finally give some advice on how to interpret A. Although the method is presented in the context of shelf circulation and coastal trapped waves, it may be applied to any linear system where the spatial forms of the waves are known and the cross-spectral matrix of their amplitudes is required.

Journal of Geophysical Research C: Oceans↗

USGS2005

Timing of seed dispersal generates a bimodal seed bank depth distribution

The density of soil seed banks is normally highest at the soil surface and declines monotonically with depth. Sometimes, for a variety of reasons, peak density occurs below the surface but, except in severely disturbed soils, it is generally true that deeper seeds are older. In seasonally dry habitats that develop deep soil cracks during the dry season, it is possible that some seeds fall down cracks and rapidly become deeply buried. We investigated this possibility for three dominant clonal perennials ( Scirpus maritimus , S. litoralis , and Juncus subulatus ) in the Doñana salt marsh, a nontidal marsh with a Mediterranean climate located in southwest Spain. Two species, which shed most of their seed during the dry season and have seeds with low buoyancy, had bimodal viable seed depth distributions, with peak densities at the surface and at 16–20 cm. A third species, which shed most seeds after soil cracks had closed and had seeds with high buoyancy, had viable seeds only in surface soil. Bimodal seed bank depth distributions may be relatively common in seasonally dry habitats with fine-textured soils, but their ecological significance has not been investigated.

American Journal of Botany↗

USGS2000

No consistent effect of plant diversity on productivity

Hector et al . (1) reported on BIODEPTH, a major international experiment on the response of plant productivity to variation in the number of plant species. They found “an overall log-linear reduction of average aboveground biomass with loss of species,” leading to what the accompanying Perspective (2) described as “a rule of thumb—that each halving of diversity leads to a 10 to 20% reduction in productivity.” These conclusions, if true, imply that the continuing high rate of plant extinction threatens the future productivity of Earth's natural and managed ecosystems and could impair their ability to produce resources essential for human survival and to regulate the concentration of atmospheric CO 2 . The three sites with proper experimental design (Portugal, Sweden, and Sheffield) all showed significant positive regressions of productivity across two or three doublings of species richness [Fig. 1; (12)]. This is the pattern expected from random selection from a set of objects with different properties (13–15), because the probability of including any specific member of the set—such as a plant species that grows rapidly or fixes nitrogen—increases with the number of objects selected. Such a pattern, found consistently in randomly assembled experimental plant communities but only rarely in natural plant communities (4, 5,13–15), has been identified as a statistical artifact of experimental design (5, 13, 14). Although one study (15) suggested that the pattern constitutes a natural mechanism by which diversity affects productivity, this requires the biologically unrealistic assumption that plant communities are randomly assembled with respect to productivity (5).

Science↗

USGS1999

Digital photogrammetric analysis of the IMP camera images: Mapping the Mars Pathfinder landing site in three dimensions

This paper describes our photogrammetric analysis of the Imager for Mars Pathfinder data, part of a broader program of mapping the Mars Pathfinder landing site in support of geoscience investigations. This analysis, carried out primarily with a commercial digital photogrammetric system, supported by our in‐house Integrated Software for Imagers and Spectrometers (ISIS), consists of three steps: (1) geometric control: simultaneous solution for refined estimates of camera positions and pointing plus three‐dimensional (3‐D) coordinates of ∼10 3 features sitewide, based on the measured image coordinates of those features; (2) topographic modeling: identification of ∼3×10 5 closely spaced points in the images and calculation (based on camera parameters from step 1) of their 3‐D coordinates, yielding digital terrain models (DTMs); and (3) geometric manipulation of the data: combination of the DTMs from different stereo pairs into a sitewide model, and reprojection of image data to remove parallax between the different spectral filters in the two cameras and to provide an undistorted planimetric view of the site. These processes are described in detail and example products are shown. Plans for combining the photogrammetrically derived topographic data with spectrophotometry are also described. These include photometric modeling using surface orientations from the DTM to study surface microtextures and improve the accuracy of spectral measurements, and photoclinometry to refine the DTM to single‐pixel resolution where photometric properties are sufficiently uniform. Finally, the inclusion of rover images in a joint photogrammetric analysis with IMP images is described. This challenging task will provide coverage of areas hidden to the IMP, but accurate ranging of distant features can be achieved only if the lander is also visible in the rover image used.

Journal of Geophysical Research E: Planets↗