field observations of the incurred damages to the buildings and bridges due to earthquakes in near field show there are various failure modes which are in relation to the forces caused by vertical component. while vertical component of earthquake for ordinary buildings in most seismic regulations and standards is not considered. therefore, in the current study the effects of vertical and horizo...

Abstract Background Flexible vegetation is an important part of the riverine ecosystem, which can reduce flow velocity, change turbulence structure, and affect processes solute transport. Compared with rigid vegetation, has been reported in many previous studies, bending flexible increases complexity flow–vegetation–solute interactions. In this study, laboratory experiments are carried out to i...

Vegetation modelling has been viewed as a major approach for examining the dynamics of vegetation under climatic change. However, the characterization of uncertainty of model results is still a key issue. In order to improve future model-based research, it is important to synthesize the current approaches and the issues that arise in vegetation modelling and to propose potential strategies for ...

This work, carried out as part of the ESA-ESRIN project “Applications of SAR Polarimetry”, concerns a review of algorithms available for the quantitative inversion of polarimetric interferometric SAR data and validation of the algorithms using simulated SAR data for forest scattering. It has been shown in several recent publications that by using interferograms in multiple polarisation channels...

Light detection and ranging, or LiDAR, effectively produces products spatially characterizing both terrain and vegetation structure; however, development and use of those products has outpaced our understanding of the errors within them. LiDAR’s ability to capture three-dimensional structure has led to interest in conducting or augmenting forest inventories with LiDAR data. Prior to applying Li...

Long-term studies can broaden our ecological understanding and are particularly important when examining contingent effects that involve changes to dominance by long-lived species. Such a change occurred during the last century in Southwestern (USA) ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa) forests. We used five livestock grazing exclosures established in 1912 to quantify vegetation structure in 1941 an...