Biogeosciences Discussions This discussion paper is/has been under review for the journal Biogeosciences (BG). Please refer to the corresponding final paper in BG if available. Abstract Understanding biodiversity patterns and how they are driven at different spatial scales is a crucial issue in ecological studies. This is particularly evident for the deep sea, the largest biome of the biosphere...

The species-area relationship (SAR), describing the increase in species richness with increasing area, and the latitudinal diversity gradient (LDG), describing the decrease in species richness with increasing latitude, are the oldest and most robust patterns in biogeography, yet connections between them remain poorly understood. Here, using 1,742 floras covering the entirety of North America no...

LS is a very important factor in erosion evaluation. Slope gradient and slope length is used to calculate LS factor. However a major limitation is the difficulty in extracting the LS factor at regional landscape scales. The geographic information systembased (GIS-based) methods which have been developed for estimating the slope length for USLE and RUSLE model also have limitations. he unit cont...

In this paper, we propose a methodology for validating landslide susceptibility results in the Pinggu district (Beijing, China). A landslide inventory including 169 landslides was prepared, and eight factors correlated to landslides (lithology, tectonic faults, topographic elevation, slope gradient, aspect, slope curvature, land use, and road network) were processed, integrating two techniques,...

Compacted soil has lower water infiltration and hydraulic conductivity, which contributes to increased runoff and erosion on slopes. The aim of the present study was to assess runoff and sediment on three skidding trail longitudinal gradients (15%, 25%, and 35%) and different levels of machine traffic (low, medium, and high), over a two-year period following the impact in the Hyrcanian forest, ...

Hillslopes have complex three-dimensional shapes that are characterized by their plan shape, profile curvature of surface and bedrock, and soil depth. To investigate the stability of complex hillslopes (with different slope curvatures and plan shapes), we combine the hillslopestorage Boussinesq (HSB) model with the infinite slope stability method. The HSB model is based on the continuity and Da...

We develop an approach to utilize anisotropic metamaterials to solve one of the fundamental problems of modern plasmonics--parasitic scattering of surface waves into free-space modes, opening the road to truly two-dimensional plasmonic optics. We illustrate the developed formalism on the examples of plasmonic refractor and plasmonic crystal, and discuss limitations of the developed technique an...

This study demonstrates an integrated approach of remote sensing, geographic information system (GIS), and Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) method to create a landslide susceptibility map for Muong Lay town its vicinity in Northern midland mountainous Vietnam. Nine landslide-related factors, including petrological composition, active fault density, slope, drainage the difference height per un...