To better understand the effects of biological soil crusts (BSCs) on soil moisture and wind erosion and study the necessity and feasibility of disturbance of BSCs in the Mu Us sandland, the effects of four treatments, including moss-dominated crusts alone, Artemisia ordosica alone, bare sand, and Artemisia ordosica combined with moss-dominated crusts, on rainwater infiltration, soil moisture, a...

Biomass, mainly in the form of wood, is the oldest form of energy used by humans. Gasification is a process of conversion of solid carbonaceous fuel into combustible gas by partial combustion. In the present study, a model developed by us in our earlier study is used for predicting the steady-state composition and rate of reaction profiles for the reduction zone of the downdraft biomass gasifie...

UNLABELLED The public health risk and economic impact of dampness and mold exposures was assessed using current asthma as a health endpoint. Individual risk of current asthma from exposure to dampness and mold in homes from W.J. Fisk, Q. Lei-Gomez & M.J. Mendell [(2007) Indoor Air, [corrected] 17, 284-296], and [corrected] asthma risks calculated from additional studies that reported the preval...

Soil exists mainly in unsaturated conditions. Therefore, accurate prediction of the soil shear strength for conditions also becomes equally important geotechnical design earth structures. This study primarily investigates effect moisture content on its strength. The characteristics silica sands with different grain sizes were studied using modified triaxial apparatus and analytical methods. For...

For the purpose of deriving grid-scale vertical velocity and advective tendencies from sounding measurements, an objective scheme is developed to process atmospheric soundings of winds, temperature, and water vapor mixing ratio over a network of a small number of stations. Given the inevitable uncertainties in the original data, state variables of the atmosphere are adjusted by the smallest pos...

The objective of this paper is to present the contribution of a new dielectric constant characterisation for the modelling of radar backscattering behaviour. Our analysis is based on a large number of radar measurements acquired during different experimental campaigns (Orgeval'94, Pays de Caux'98, 99). We propose a dielectric constant model, based on the combination of contributions from both s...