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The environmental pollution, property losses and casualties caused by wildfires in California are getting worse by the year. To minimize the interference of wildfires on economic and social development, and formulate targeted mitigation strategies, it is imperative to understand the scale and extent of previous wildfire occurrences. In this study, we first investigated the temporal distributions of past wildfires in California divided by size and causes and analyzed the changes observed in the past two decades against the last century. The trend of wildfires in different time scales (yearly and monthly), as well as the distribution of wildfires across different spatial scales (administrative units, climate divisions in California from 2000 to 2019) were also studied. Furthermore, to extract the significant variables on the risk of wildfire occurrence, multivariate analyses of environmental and human-related variables with wildfire densities were carried out. The results show that the wildfire density distribution of the burned area in California conforms to the characteristics of the Pareto distribution. Over the past two decades, the frequency of small (

Eyespots on the wings of nymphalid butterflies represent colorful examples of pattern formation, yet the developmental origins and mechanisms underlying eyespot center differentiation are still poorly understood. Using CRISPR-Cas9 we re-examine the function of Distal-less (Dll) as an activator or repressor of eyespots, a topic that remains controversial. We show that the phenotypic outcome of CRISPR mutations depends upon which specific exon is targeted. In Bicyclus anynana, exon 2 mutations are associated with both missing and ectopic eyespots, and also exon skipping. Exon 3 mutations, which do not lead to exon skipping, produce only null phenotypes, including missing eyespots, lighter wing coloration and loss of scales. Reaction-diffusion modeling of Dll function, using Wnt and Dpp as candidate morphogens, accurately replicates these complex crispant phenotypes. These results provide new insight into the function of Dll as a potential activator of eyespot development, scale growth and melanization, and suggest that the tuning of Dll expression levels can generate a diversity of eyespot phenotypes, including their appearance on the wing.

In this paper, we explore the suitability of upcoming novel computing technologies, in particular adiabatic annealing based quantum computers, to solve fluid dynamics problems that form a critical component of several science and engineering applications. We start with simple flows with well-studied flow properties, and provide a framework to convert such systems to a form amenable for deployment on such quantum annealers. We analyze the solutions obtained both qualitatively and quantitatively as well as the sensitivities of the various solution selection schemes on the obtained solution.

We investigate the effects of an isolated meso-γ-scale surface heterogeneity for roughness and albedo on the atmospheric boundary-layer (ABL) height, with a case study at a semi-arid forest surrounded by sparse shrubland (forest area: 28km2, forest length in the main wind direction: 7 km). Doppler lidar and ceilometer measurements at this semi-arid forest show an increase in the ABL height over the forest compared with the shrubland on four out of eight days. The differences in the ABL height between shrubland and forest are explained for all days with a model that assumes a linear growth of the internal boundary layer of the forest through the convective ABL upwind of the forest followed by a square-root growth into the stable free atmosphere. For the environmental conditions that existed during our measurements, the increase in ABL height due to large sensible heat fluxes from the forest (600Wm-2 in summer) is subdued by stable stratification in the free atmosphere above the ABL, or reduced by high wind speeds in the mixed layer.

Supplementary Video: CRISPR-Cas9 Mediated Genome Editing in Bicyclus anynana Butterflies

The role of secondary circulations has recently been studied in the context of well-defined surface heterogeneity in a semiarid ecosystem where it was found that energy balance closure over a desert–forest system and the structure of the boundary layer was impacted by advection and flux divergence. As a part of the CliFF (“Climate feedbacks and benefits of semi-arid forests”, a collaboration between KIT, Germany, and the Weizmann Institute, Israel) campaign, we studied the boundary layer dynamics and turbulent transport of energy corresponding to this effect in Yatir Forest situated in the Negev Desert in Israel. The forest surrounded by small shrubs presents a distinct feature of surface heterogeneity, allowing us to study the differences between their interactions with the atmosphere above by conducting measurements with two eddy covariance (EC) stations and two Doppler lidars. As expected, the turbulence intensity and vertical fluxes of momentum and sensible heat are found to be higher above the forest compared to the shrubland. Turbulent statistics indicative of nonlocal motions are also found to differ over the forest and shrubland and also display a strong diurnal cycle. The production of turbulent kinetic energy (TKE) over the forest is strongly mechanical, while buoyancy effects generate most of the TKE over the shrubland. Overall TKE production is much higher above the forest compared to the shrubland. The forest is also found to be more efficient in dissipating TKE. The TKE budget appears to be balanced on average both for the forest and shrubland, although the imbalance of the TKE budget, which includes the role of TKE transport, is found to be quite different in terms of diurnal cycles for the forest and shrubland. The difference in turbulent quantities and the relationships between the components of TKE budget are used to infer the characteristics of the turbulent transport of energy between the desert and the forest.

Problems in the area of land/biosphere-atmosphere interaction, hydrology, climate modeling etc. can be systematically organized as a study of turbulent flow in presence of boundary conditions in an increasing order of complexity. The present work is an attempt to study a few subsets of this general problem of turbulence in natural environments- in the context of neutral and thermally stratified atmospheric surface layer, the presence of a heterogeneous vegetation canopy and the interaction between air flow and a static water body in presence of flexible protruding vegetation. The main issue addressed in the context of turbulence in the atmospheric surface layer is whether it is possible to describe the macro-states of turbulence such as mean velocity and turbulent velocity variance in terms of the micro-states of the turbulent flow, i.e., a distribution of turbulent kinetic energy across a multitude of scales. This has been achieved by a `spectral budget approach' which is extended for thermal stratification scenarios as well, in the process unifying the seemingly different and unrelated theories of turbulence such as Kolmogorov's hypothesis, Heisenberg's eddy viscosity, Monin Obukhov Similarity Theory (MOST) etc. under a common framework. In the case of a more complex scenario such as presence of a vegetation canopy with edges and gaps, the question that is addressed is in what detail the turbulence is needed to be resolved in order to capture the bulk flow features such as recirculation patterns. This issue is addressed by a simple numerical framework and it has been found out that an explicit prescription of turbulence is not necessary in presence of heterogeneities such as edges and gaps where the interplay between advection, pressure gradients and drag forces are sufficient to capture the first order dynamics. This result can be very important for eddy-covariance flux calibration strategies in non-ideal environments and the developed numerical model can be used in related dispersion studies and coupled land atmosphere interaction models. For other more complex biosphere atmosphere interactions such as greenhouse gas emissions from wetlands, the interplay between air and water, often in presence of flexible aquatic vegetation, controls turbulence in water, which in turn affect the gas transfer processes. This process of wind shear induced wave-turbulent-vegetation interaction is studied for the first time in the laboratory and the state of turbulence as well as the bulk flow is found to be highly sensitive to environmental controls such as water height, wind speed, vegetation density and flexibility. This dissertation describes and gradually develops these concepts in an increasing order of complexity of boundary conditions. The first three chapters address the neutral and thermally stratified boundary layers and the last two chapters address the canopy edge problem and the air-water-vegetation experiments respectively.