This work contributes to the issue of categoricity versus gradiency in natural assimilations. We focused on voice-assimilation in French and started from the assumption that the main cue to obstruent voicing is glottal pulsing. We quantified glottal pulsing continuously with a single acoustic measure — the proportion in duration of voiced portion(s) within a consonant — which we call v-ratio. W...

Title of dissertation: ASSIMILATING SATELLITE OBSERVATIONS WITH A LOCAL ENSEMBLE KALMAN FILTER Elana Judith Fertig Doctor of Philosophy, 2007 Dissertation directed by: Professor Brian R. Hunt Department of Mathematics Numerical weather prediction relies on data assimilation to estimate the current state of the atmosphere. Generally speaking, data assimilation methods combine information from ob...

Leaf area index (LAI) is a major indicator for crop growth monitoring and yield estimation. Data assimilation as an effective tool for crop LAI estimation fully considers the properties of actual observations and physical model simulations. In this work, we present a new data assimilation scheme, introducing a very fast simulated annealing (VFSA) optimization algorithm into the process of crop ...

To improve the accuracy of winter wheat yield estimation, the Crop Environment Resource Synthesis for Wheat (CERES-Wheat) model with an assimilation strategy was performed by assimilating measured or remotely-sensed leaf area index (LAI) values. The performances of the crop model for two different assimilation methods were compared by employing particle filters (PF) and the proper orthogonal de...

A four-dimensional variational (4D-Var) data assimilation method is implemented in an improved intermediate coupled model (ICM) of the tropical Pacific. A twin experiment is designed to evaluate the impact of the 4D-Var data assimilation algorithm on ENSO analysis and prediction based on the ICM. The model error is assumed to arise only from the parameter uncertainty. The “observation” of the S...

To improve snowpack estimates in Community Land Model version 4 (CLM4), the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) snow cover fraction (SCF) was assimilated into the Community Land Model version 4 (CLM4) via the Data Assimilation Research Testbed (DART). The interface between CLM4 and DART is a flexible, extensible approach to land surface data assimilation. This data assimilatio...

Immigrant Wage and Employment Assimilation: A Comparison of Methods We compare alternative methods for estimating immigrant wage and employment assimilation using unique panel data over 2001–2009 for a large, nationally-representative sample of immigrants. Previous assimilation estimates have been mainly based on crosssectional data and have therefore suffered from a range of potential biases. ...

This paper presents an approach for employing an artificial neural network (NN) to emulate an ensemble Kalman filter (EnKF) as a method of data assimilation. The assimilation methods are tested in the Simplified Parameterizations PrimitivE-Equation Dynamics (SPEEDY) model, an atmospheric general circulation model (AGCM), using synthetic observational data simulating localization of balloon soun...

Scaevola aemula is a popular ornamental crop cultivated as a bedding plant or for hanging baskets. We characterized gas exchange properties of S. aemula ‘New Wonder’ in response to photosynthetically active radiation (PAR), carbon dioxide concentration, and leaf temperature. Net CO2 assimilation rate (A) was responsive to CO2, exhibiting a saturation when intercellular CO2 concentration (Ci) wa...

This report aims to critically review the work carried out to-date on the assimilation of data into ocean ecosystem and coupled bio-physical models. The review is prompted by the newly available ocean colour data from SeaWiFS and OCTS, and their potential use for data assimilation to improve both the models and their predictive capabilities. In addition, some initial results on the comparison o...