Large Characteristic Scales Research Articles

Acoustic diversity of forested landscapes: Relationships to habitat structure and anthropogenic pressure

Understanding how human-dominated landscapes affect biodiversity and ecosystems is essential for effective conservation planning. This work aims to understand the relationship between the acoustic diversity of forested landscapes, and descriptors of habitat structure, composition, and anthropogenic pressure, as well as to identify the characteristic scale at which acoustic community diversity relates to those metrics in central Massachusetts.Ten passive acoustic recorders were placed within forest areas in central Massachusetts, during the breeding season. Mono audio recordings were collected during the dawn chorus. The relationship between acoustic indices (AI), and core habitat quality, connectivity, vegetation productivity, percent tree cover, human edge, artificial illumination, and traffic noise were assessed.Significant relationships were found between AI and variables related to habitat structure and human pressure. Sounds related to biota (biophony) and acoustic complexity were positively correlated with core habitat quality, connectivity, and vegetation while negatively correlated with human pressure variables, including nighttime lights, traffic noise, and human edge. AI can therefore act as successful indicators of habitat quality in highly modified landscapes The highest correlations were found at buffers between 1.5 and 3 Km. This response of AI to the broad spatial context and not to the local site characteristics indicate that they can act as robust landscape-scale indicators.The large characteristic scale indicates that urban planning should consider potential impacts acting at scales beyond site planning. Moreover, conservation planning can benefit from managing the context matrix to support biodiversity, particularly traffic noise and artificial illumination reduction initiatives.

The Master Equation and the Pauli Equation in the Fuzzy Time Model

The approach proposed in the study is based on the revision of the concept of time as a point on the real axis. It uses the concept of fuzzy time as the set of real numbers with a finite, but not equal to one, function of membership to the time set, i.e. the fuzzy time concept. It is postulated that in fuzzy time t the system dynamics follows from the standard variational principle of the least action and is ordinary Hamilton-Jacobi mechanics. This validates the passage to the limit from fuzzy mechanics to ordinary variational conservative mechanics. The Liouville equation is solved by the method of successive approximations in the time domain of a much larger characteristic scale of fuzziness, using interaction as a small parameter. A standard diagram technique is used. It can be shown that the defuzzification of the Liouville equation inevitably reduces the reversible part in the description to the irreversible evolutionary equation. The latter leads to the second law of thermodynamics. Generalization to the quantum case is possible, i.e. the so-called fuzzy Pauli equation can be drawn.

Optimum configuration for accurate simulations of chaotic porous media with Lattice Boltzmann Methods considering boundary conditions, lattice spacing and domain size

Simulations of the flow field through chaotic porous media are powerful numerical challenges of special interest in science and technology. The simulations are usually done over representative samples which summarise the properties of the material. Several factors affect the accuracy of the results. Firstly the spatial resolution has to be fine enough to be able to capture the smallest geometrical details. Secondly the domain size has to be large enough to contain the large characteristic scale of the porous media. And finally the effects induced by the boundary conditions have to be diluted when more realistic options are not available. This is the case when the geometry is obtained by tomography and the periodic boundary conditions cannot be applied to delimit the sample because its geometry is not periodic. Impermeable boundary conditions are usually chosen to enclose the domain, forcing mass conservation. As a result, the flow field is over-restricted and the total pressure drop can be over-estimated. In this paper a new strategy is presented to optimise the computational resources consumption keeping the restrictions imposed by the accuracy criteria. The effects of the domain size, discretisation thickness and boundary condition disturbances are studied in detail. The study starts with the procedural generation of chaotic porous walls which mimics acicular mullite filters. An advantage of this process is the possibility to create periodic geometries. Periodicity permits the application of advanced techniques such as cyclic cross-correlations between the phase field and the velocity component fields without aliasing. From cross-correlation operations the large characteristic scale is obtained. The result is a lower threshold for the domain size. In second place a mesh independent study is done to find the upper threshold for the lattice spacing. The Minkowski–Bouligand fractal dimension of the fluid–solid interface corroborates the results. It has been demonstrated how the fractal dimension is a good candidate to replace the mesh independent study with lower computational cost for this type of problems. The last step is to compare the results obtained for a periodic geometry applying periodicity and symmetry as boundary conditions. Considering the periodic case as reference the resultant error is analysed. The explanation of the analysis includes how the intensity of the error changes in space and the limitations of symmetric boundary conditions.

Temporal variation of characteristic scales in urban landscapes: an insight into the evolving internal structures of China’s two largest cities

Urbanization has induced profound landscape changes. While the spatiotemporal patterns of urban landscapes have been extensively studied, the manner by which the internal structures of already urbanized areas change remains little understood. Characteristic scales are an important measure of landscape structure, and they represent the typical spatial extents of landscape elements in hierarchies. In this study, we quantified temporal variations of the characteristic scales in the central urban landscapes of Beijing and Shanghai over an 18 year period. Using transect data from Landsat images, characteristic scales were identified through wavelet analysis and then classified into several discrete domains using the k-means clustering method. These characteristic scale domains appeared to correspond with the typical extents of the blocks and block clusters in the study areas. Results showed that the number of the characteristic scale domains changed within a small range of 3–5 while the mean values of the characteristic scales within the domains showed substantial temporal variation. Larger characteristic scales were more variable than smaller ones in both cities. Distinguishing relative change rates of building forms, land use and street layout of urban landscapes allowed us to interpret these differences. The street layout of urban landscapes usually reacts slowly to the force of change, acting as the skeleton of the urban landscape. As a result, block sizes can remain relatively stable and corresponding characteristic scales present inheritance features. Land use and building forms are more susceptible to changes. Block clusters with flexible extents could result in significant variation of characteristic scales.

Simulations of free surface flows with implementation of surface tension and interface sharpening in the two-fluid model

Two-fluid model used for free surface flows with large characteristic scales is improved; the smeared interface is sharpened with conservative level set method and the surface tension force with wetting angle is implemented. Surface tension force is split between two phases with several models. Detailed analysis showed the splitting of surface tension force with volume averaging as the most appropriate. The improved two-fluid model with interface sharpening and implemented surface tension is validated on several test cases. The pressure jump over a droplet interface test case showed that the pressure jump in simulation converges with grid refinement to the analytical one. The parasitic currents in simulation are one order of magnitude larger than in simulation with volume of fluid model. In the oscillating droplet test case the time period of oscillating droplet with initially ellipsoid or square shape is similar to the analytical time period. In the rising bubble test case, the rising bubble position, terminal velocity, and circularity are similar to the one observed in simulations with level set model. The wetting angle is implemented in the two-fluid model with interface sharpening and surface tension force. Model is tested in the simulation of droplet in contact with wall with different wetting angles.