IN24A-01
The Depth of 60-80 km as the Boundary of External Factor Influence on the Earth's Lithosphere
The results of statistical analysis of worldwide seismic catalogs (ISC and NEIC), which was carried out in frame of two projects are presented. In both cases we extracted the evens occurred in the Pacific region from 1964 to 2004 with Mb>=4.0. The aftershocks were canceled from the list. All events were divided into following magnitude levels: 4<=Mb<4.5; 4.5<=Mb<5; 5<=Mb<5.5; 5.5<=Mb<6.0; 6<=Mb. The events in each magnitude level were subdivided into two groups: shallow events (H<=Htr) and deep events (H>Htr), where Htr is threshold value of the EQ source depth. In frame of the first project statistical verification of hypothesis about within-year variability existence for the events of various energy levels was carried out for the Pacific region (PO). The whole PO was subdivided into 31 subregions (Japan, Kuril Islands, Kamchatka, Aleutian Islands, Alaska, California, and so on along the perimeter of the Pacific). Then we were checking if the distributions of the events during the year period are uniform or these distributions are non- uniform. We were testing it separately for each region, for every magnitude level and for every depth level (total number of the samples under study was 310). It was disproved the null hypothesis about uniform EQ distributions in the course of year for shallow events (with less than 2% significance level), and it was confirmed the null hypothesis for deep earthquakes. It was shown that the main maximum of the seismic activity take place in November-March (minimum of the Earth-Sun distance) for both Hemispheres and the minimum - in April. It was found by using special software procedure that the Htr boundary between the shallow and the deep events was arranged in deep 60-80 km. Thus the EQ with sources located above this boundary are affected by external (astronomical) factors, which may trigger the process of EQ generation. While the external factors don't influence on the EQ sources located below this boundary. In frame of the second project statistical verification of hypothesis about existence non-random component in time distribution of the EQ's between the northern and southern part of the Pacific was carried out. The distribution-free test (run test with significant level 1%) was used for existence proof of nonrandom component into time sequences. The time sequences of the EQ switching between the Northern and Southern parts of the Pacific region contain statistically significant nonrandom component for the events with 4.0<=Mb<6.0. Then data in each magnitude range was subdivided in two groups: the deep earthquakes (H>Htr) and the shallow earthquakes (H<=Htr, for the first time Htr=70km). It was found that nonrandom component does not exist for deep earthquakes. On the contrary it is clearly manifested in time distribution of the shallow events. It was shown also that if we try to vary Htr from 15 up to 200 km we could find the best Htr value for each magnitude level. The obtained results indicate also that external periodical factors can affect, on the process of earthquake triggering, if the depth of the earthquake focus is less than Htr. The digital model (superposition of random and periodic processes) was proposed. Thereby surface in depth of 60-80 km is the boundary of external factor influence on the Earth lithosphere.
IN24A-02
Meteorological Data Interpretation as a Tool to Predict Extreme Precipitations Caused by Tropical Storms.- An Example From Santiago, Baja California Sur, Mexico
A statistical analysis of the climatic measurements and observations of tropical storms between 1949 and 2002 was processed to identify the effects of tropical cyclones on the climate of the Santiago region in the southern part of the peninsula of Baja California. Between May and November the peninsula is periodically affected by tropical storms, which are formed in the eastern North Pacific basin. Therefore hurricanes and other tropical storms cause an important amount of the annual precipitation on the peninsula. The area of Santiago, in its southern part, has one of the largest records of daily precipitation in Baja California Sur. Continuously since 1939 the daily precipitation was registered in at least one of the three climatic stations (Santiago, Caduaño and La Rivera). The first registrations of extreme events like tropical cyclones date from the foundation of missions in the peninsula, but a complete database which includes the position of the centre of the tropical storms starts for the Central North Pacific in 1949 (documented by the "National Hurricane Center" from the national meteorological service of the USA). The reliability of the documentation grew with the beginning of observations by satellite in the sixties. Based on the records of precipitation and a occurrence of tropical storms, a database was generated from January 1949 to December 2002. The elaborated database includes the pressure and wind speed of the tropical storms and its category, distance and direction to Santiago. Because in the eastern Pacific, up to 5 tropical cyclones were observed at the same day, only the nearest tropical storm was taken in account. The main results are that tropical storms can cause significant precipitations in the Santiago watershed up to maximum distances of 700 Km. In total 35 percent of the observed precipitation is related to tropical storms. The average precipitation on days with tropical hurricanes in distances up to 700 km was 7.10 mm. Daily precipitation of more than 100 mm was always related with the positions of a tropical storm within this distance. The Gumbel function permits to calculate the maximum expected daily precipitation within 50 years. Related to tropical cyclones a maximum of 243 mm is expected, meanwhile daily precipitation, independent from tropical cyclones, will reach only 101 mm in the same return period. This analyse of the precipitation data increases the accuracy of the hydrological balance of the Santiago watershed. The elaborated methodology allows analysing the climate in other regions of the peninsula.
IN24A-03
Implementation of Remote Sensing and GIS In the Land Use Classification "Case study of Mataro city - Spain"
Through reading these words a lot of land covers are changing. In the past so many tools tried to manage the urban area and to understand the service that they had to give or in the best case facing the problem of the population density crawl slowly to the good agriculture land or maybe it was difficult for them to follow the city growth especially for the major city or area. Remote sensing and GIS are mainly contributes to two kinds of applications. One is GIS database updating by Remote Sensing images, the other is Remote sensing analysis by the support of GIS data. These two aspects complement each other to make the GIS database update continually. The general concept reflects the way of Remote Sensing for provide the data and convert it from raster to vector format in which the sampling size is equal to image pixel size to be familiar with GIS applications. Also, the way of remote sensing for presenting the different between old and new land use and what is the benefit of this analysis for updating a GIS data. By the following paper, our methodology is studied to discover knowledge from Remote Sensing data in order to improve and updating the land use classification of images in Mataro city (The metropolitan area of Barcelona city). The paper is organized as follows. Section 1 describes the role of Remote Sensing in providing the analytic data for a GIS. Section 2 present an experiment of land use classification of Spot multi-spectral image through our case study of Mataro city. Section 3 will introduce the remote sensing benefits of compare between two different times of satellite images through the remote sensing and GIS applications. Finally we come to a conclusion.
IN24A-04
Frameworks for Geoscience Data Analysis and Visualization
We present a suite of tools developed at NCAR for analyzing and visualizing geoscientific data. NCL, a self-
contained scripting language, provides robust file input and output for a number of commonly used scientific
formats, including NetCDF, HDF, and GRIB, and most recently GRIB 2. It provides hundreds of analysis functions
and has easily accessed 2D visualization capabilities that many consider to be world class. Its diverse and
rapidly growing user base is spread among more than 70 countries around the world.
Recently, in order to reach a wider scientific community, we have developed new Python interfaces to NCL's
capabilities. PyNGL and PyNIO are Python modules that provide access to essentially the same visualization and
data I/O functionality as NCL. The programming style is remarkably similar, allowing users to easily move
between the NCL and Python languages. The online documentation has step-by-step tutorials for getting up to
speed with PyNGL and PyNIO. There are also hundreds of examples showing how to ingest, analyze and
visualize many varieties of data. This year we are releasing the complete suite of tools as OSI-compliant open
source. The tools are under continuous development with active community input. Our current projects are porting
the analysis functions to the Python environment and adding support for the NetCDF 4 and HDF 5 file formats.
http:www.ncl.ucar.edu/
IN24A-05
SERVIR Viz: A 3D Visualization Tool for Mesoamerica.
SERVIR Viz is a customized version of NASA's WorldWind, which is a freely distributed, open-source, web-
enabled, 3D earth exploration tool. IAGT developed SERVIR Viz in a joint effort with SERVIR research partners to
create a visualization framework for geospatial data resources available to the SERVIR project. SERVIR Viz is
customized by providing users with newly developed custom tools, enhancements to existing open source tools
and a specialized toolbar that allows shortcut access to existing tools. Another key feature is the ability to
visualize remotely-hosted framework GIS data layers, maps, real-time satellite images, and other SERVIR
products relevant to the Mesoamerica region using the NASA WorldWind visualization engine and base mapping
layers. The main users of SERVIR Viz are the seven countries of Mesoamerica, SERVIR participants, educators,
scientists, decision-makers, and the general public. SERVIR Viz enhances the SERVIR project infrastructure by
providing access to NASA GEOSS data products and internet served Mesoamerica centric GIS data products
within a tool developed specifically to promote use of GIS and visualization technologies in the decision support
goals of the SERVIR project. In addition, SERVIZ Viz can be toggled between English and Spanish to support a
wide cross section of users and development still continues to support new data and user requirements. This
presentation will include a live demonstration of SERVIR Viz.
http:servir.nsstc.nasa.gov/visualizations/servir_viz.html
IN24A-06
A Web Service Tool (SOAR) for the Dynamic Generation of L1 Grids of Coincident AIRS, AMSU and MODIS Satellite Sounding Radiance Data for Climate Studies
Three decades of Earth remote sensing from NASA, NOAA and DOD operational and research satellites carrying
successive generations of improved atmospheric sounder instruments have resulted in petabytes of radiance
data with varying spatial and spectral resolutions being stored at different data archives in various data formats by
the respective agencies. This evolution of sounders and the diversities of these archived data sets have led to
data processing obstacles limiting the science community from readily accessing and analyzing such long-term
climate data records. We address this problem by the development of a web based Service Oriented Atmospheric
Radiance (SOAR) system built on the SOA paradigm that makes it practical for the science community to
dynamically access, manipulate and generate long term records of L1 pre-gridded sounding radiances of
coincident multi-sensor data for regions specified according to user chosen criteria. SOAR employs a
modification of the standard Client Server interactions that allows users to represent themselves directly to the
Process Server through their own web browsers. The browser uses AJAX to request Javascript libraries and
DHTML interfaces that define the possible client interactions and communicates the SOAP messages to the
Process server allowing for dynamic web dialogs with the user to take place on the fly. The Process Server is also
connected to an underlying high performance compute cluster and storage system which provides much of the
data processing capabilities required to service the client requests. The compute cluster employs optical
communications to NOAA and NASA for accessing the data and under the governance of the Process Server
invokes algorithms for on-demand spatial, temporal, and spectral gridding. Scientists can choose from a variety
of statistical averaging techniques for compositing satellite observed sounder radiances from the AIRS, AMSU or
MODIS instruments to form spatial-temporal grids for their respective studies. A range of scientific visualization
and animation services are also provided for viewing the results of the user specified service requests. Results of
gridding, visualization and animating services for compositing and convolving the AIRS and MODIS spectral
sounding radiances will be presented. In addition, demonstrations of SOAR on demand visualizations and
animations for subsetting multi-year high-resolution multi-instrument pre-gridded radiance fields will be
presented.
http:iclass.umbc.edu
IN24A-07
The Geographic Information System techniques impact analyze of Office's Properties in Barcelona
The changes in the characteristics and needs in the cities structures means new challenges in the space to the economics activities. The increasing predominance of the tertiary industry, of offices or I+D buildings, like an effect of the economic transformation implies new forms, new technical characteristics and similar alternatives locations accordant with a changing demand. The project that is presented here, is developed by the Centre of Land Policy and Valuations of the University Polytechnic of Catalonia for the company "Servicios de Geo-marketing Inmobiliario S.L.' (SGMI, Real State Geo- marketing Services S.L.) The process consists in the generation of a geographic information system to the analyses of the characteristics office's buildings of Barcelona in the sense to introduce the property office's buildings of Barcelona into a database for the geo-marketing. This application allows the access to the necessary information of technical and constructive characteristics of the office's buildings, summoned by the most emblematic or central locations to the best technical level in their constructions towards facilitating the maximum knowledge the citizen in order to assure the choice according to the needs for every profile of demand. The work has consisted basically in defining the technical criteria of evaluation of the building, to systematize those characteristics in some indicators (variable) capable of expressing the level of quality of every variable, to establish a system measurement of greater to smaller value explained to the quality. Systematizing the collection of information of a total of 683 buildings of Barcelona and of some municipalities of its periphery, through a visit to every building, to process the data obtained to a database and to standardize the value of quality for every indicator and set of indicators towards determining a final qualification, obtained from the different physical, constructive and qualitative characteristics of every studied building. In the study and simulation of certain constructive parameters of the building the factor of location is very relevant, so that when relating the observed products, in their urban position, with the hierarchy agreed on of tertiary axes of the city, determining is possible in which measured the differential characteristics of those products, are adapted or not at the significance level of their urban site, and to determine forms of adequacy of the buildings placed in specific tertiary axes of the city, at the level that corresponds to him. The potency to anticipates the changes in the business models or the possibility to value the location profile, are very important aspects to the study the of the economic activities like an instrument to foresee relevant changes in the location and the level of requirement of technical evolution and services in the properties of biggest centrality. As final result factorial statistical measures that outline criteria of qualitative differentiation among the buildings studied, paying attention to urban areas are established. Competence ranges are determined, with regard to the quality of the buildings in comparable locations, and criteria are extracted about components being the most relevant in the choice and also the most singular.
IN24A-08
Efforts to Overcome Difficulties in a Higher Education Meteorology Department Institution
The development of cyberinfrastructure in higher education meteorology departments has become a key requirement to better qualify their students and develop scientific research. The authors present their efforts to overcome low budget, lack of personnel, and other difficulties in the Department of Meteorology, Universidade Federal do Pará (UFPA), to participate in international collaborations for sharing hydro-meteorological data, tools and technological systems. Some important steps towards a consolidated integration of the group with the international partnership are discussed, and three are highlighted: (a) the resources from the Unidata's Equipment Award (supported by the National Science Foundation - NSF) and equipment donated in cooperation with the COMET and Meteoforum projects; (b) the interaction of the local team making its project resources available to the community; and (c) the involvement of students with the programs and the cyberinfrastructure available locally. Some positive results can be observed, such as the ability for students of Synoptic Meteorology II class to not only see static meteorological fields on the web, but actually build themselves regional and real-time synoptic products from the data received through Unidata's Internet Data Distribution (IDD) system. Moreover, the UFPA's group intends to improve its infrastructure to expand the access of real-time data and products to other members of the local meteorological community.