Ulysses was launched in October 1990, and its Solar X-ray/Cosmic Gamma-ray Burst Experiment (GRB) has provided more than 13 years of uninterrupted observations of solar X-ray flare activity. Due to the large variation of the relative solar latitude and longitude of the spacecraft orbit with respect to the Earth, the perspective of the GRB instrument often differed significantly from that of X-r...

Introduction: The objective of our research project is to develop data mining and knowledge discovery in databases (KDD) techniques, using the “Data to Knowledge” (D2K) platform developed by National Center for Supercomputing Application (NCSA), to facilitate analysis, visualization and modeling of land-surface variables obtained from the TERRA and AQUA platforms in support of climate and weath...

Large meteors (or superbolides [Ceplecha Z, et al. (1999) Meteoroids 1998:37-54]), although rare in recorded history, give sobering testimony to civilization's inherent vulnerability. A not-so-subtle reminder came on the morning of February 15, 2013, when a large meteoroid hurtled into the Earth's atmosphere, forming a superbolide near the city of Chelyabinsnk, Russia, ∼1,500 km east of Moscow,...

Physical, chemical, and biological processes create maintain the critical zone (CZ). In weathered crystalline rocks, these occur over 10–100 s of meters transform bedrock into soil. The CZ provides pore space flow paths for groundwater, supplies nutrients ecosystems, foundation life. Vegetation in aboveground depends on components actively mediates Earth system like evapotranspiration, nutrient...

ABSTRACT: Digital terrain models (DTM) have become a commonly used source of data describing the shape of the Earth. Resolution determines the level of details that can be represented in this model. Changing the resolution influences the accuracy of the DTM. The effect of a resolution is even more clearly seen in slope and aspect calculation. Despite the resolution, there are different methods ...

Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use. The MIT Faculty has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters. [1] First‐principles calculations on MgSiO 3 suggested a breakdown into MgO + SiO 2 at pressure above 1000 GPa with...

Hillslope length is a fundamental attribute of landscapes, intrinsically linked to drainage density, landslide hazard, biogeochemical cycling and hillslope sediment transport. Existing methods to estimate catchment average hillslope lengths include inversion of drainage density or identification of a break in slope–area scaling, where the hillslope domain transitions into the fluvial domain. He...

New Rb-Sr, (146,147)Sm-(142,143)Nd and Lu-Hf isotopic analyses of Mg-suite lunar crustal rocks 67667, 76335, 77215 and 78238, including an internal isochron for norite 77215, were undertaken to better define the time and duration of lunar crust formation and the history of the source materials of the Mg-suite. Isochron ages determined in this study for 77215 are: Rb-Sr=4450±270 Ma, (147)Sm-(143...

The Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO), scheduled for launch in December 2008, will make the first space-based measurements of atmospheric CO2 with the precision, spatial and temporal resolution needed to characterize CO2 sources and sinks on regional spatial scales and seasonal to interannual time scales. Variations in surface topography have a direct impact on the retrieval of the columnaverag...

This report addresses the problem of extracting topographic features from Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) imagery. The features are used for Earth science applications and include slope, curvature, aspect, flow direction, flow accumulation and compound topographic index (CTI). The objective of our work is (1) to support topographic feature extraction similar to the one in ArcGIS, (2) to...