Search

Abstract Quantifying terrestrial evapotranspiration (ET) and soil moisture dynamics accurately is crucial for understanding the global water cycle and surface energy balance. We present a novel, long-term dataset of global ET and soil moisture derived from the newly developed Simple Terrestrial Hydrosphere model, version 2 (SiTHv2). This ecohydrological model, driven by multi-source satellite observations and hydrometeorological variables from reanalysis data, provides daily global ET-related estimates (e.g., total ET, plant transpiration, soil evaporation, intercepted evaporation) and three-layer soil moisture dynamics at a 0.1° spatial resolution. Validation with in-situ measurements and comparisons with mainstream global ET and soil moisture products demonstrate robust performance of SiTHv2 in both magnitude and temporal dynamics of ET and soil moisture at multiple scales. The comprehensive water path characterization in the SiTHv2 model makes this seamless dataset particularly valuable for studies requiring synchronized water budget and vegetation response to water constraints. With its long-term coverage and high spatiotemporal resolution, the SiTHv2-derived ET and soil moisture product will be suitable to support analyses related to the hydrologic cycle, drought assessment, and ecosystem health.

Objective: Cemiplimab combined with chemotherapy has emerged as a promising treatment option for advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Accordingly, this study has been conducted to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of this combination therapy in comparison to chemotherapy alone from the perspective of the United States healthcare system. Methods: The present study is based on a partitioned survival model developed from clinical data obtained during the 2-year follow-up of the phase III EMPOWER-Lung 3 part 2 trial. The purpose of this investigation is to estimate the 10-year life expectancy and total healthcare costs of patients with advanced NSCLC by leveraging primary outcomes that evaluated costs, quality-adjusted life years (QALYs), and incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER).To establish the willingness-to-pay (WTP) threshold for the analysis, a value of $150,000/QALY was adopted. Sensitivity analysis was performed to determine the impact of varying levels of uncertainty on the results of this study. Results: When compared to chemotherapy alone, the addition of cemiplimab to chemotherapy has been demonstrated to result in an incremental gain of 1.593 QALY at an additional cost of $109351.298. This equates to an incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER) of $68644.883/QALY. One-way sensitivity analyses were conducted on the model, which acknowledged the influence of several parameters, such as subsequent costs, the utility of progressive disease, the cost of best supportive care, the cost of cemiplimab per mg, and the utility of progression-free survival on the outcomes. Nonetheless, none of these parameters yielded an ICER lower than the WTP threshold. Conclusions: From the perspective of the United States healthcare system, the utilization of cemiplimab in combination with chemotherapy as a first-line treatment option for NSCLC appears to be a cost-effective approach as compared to using chemotherapy as a standalone therapy.

The root distribution and water uptake of irrigated vines (Vitis vinifera L.) in arid oasis areas remain poorly understood, particularly in terms of the variations in water uptake resulting from plant type and growing period. In this study, excavation and soil coring were employed to investigate the root distribution of vines. Meanwhile, the water uptake dynamics of irrigated vines in an arid oasis area were developed using stable isotopes of hydrogen and oxygen in water bodies (δD and δ18O) and in crops and soil water, coupled with a direct inference approach and a linear mixed model (IsoSource). The soil layers were divided into nine layers via hierarchical cluster analysis. The results indicated that the vertical distributions of the total and fine roots of grapevines were mainly in the range of 40–160 cm, accounting for 93.1% (91.2%) and 92.5% (90.0%) of the total root (200 cm) distribution during May and October, respectively. In the horizontal direction, both the total root and fine root systems were mainly distributed within 0–100 cm from the trunk and contributed 81.2% and 79.8% of the total root distribution, respectively. Meanwhile, both the total root weight (length) density and fine root weight (length) density decreased gradually with increasing radial distance from the trunk in the 0–80 cm range. The main water uptake of vines was at 0–40 cm in June, 20–80 cm in July, and 40–100 cm in August. These findings suggest that the main depth of root water uptake increases during the whole growth stage for grapevines in arid oasis ecosystems. This information will help growers to improve irrigation efficiency and provide a data analysis of water conservation in an arid oasis area during water stress.

In this study, a series of naringenin-O-alkylamine derivatives were designed and obtained by introducing an alkylamine fragment into the naringenin skeleton. The in vitro biological activity results revealed that compounds 5f and 7k showed good antioxidant activity with ORAC values of 2.3eq and 1.2eq, respectively. Compounds 5f and 7k were reversible and excellent huAChE inhibitors with IC50 values of 0.91 μM and 0.57 μM, respectively. Moreover, compounds 5f and 7k could inhibit self-induced Aβ1–42 aggregation with 62.1% and 43.8% inhibition rate, respectively, and significantly inhibited huAChE-Aβ1–40 aggregation with 51.7% and 43.4% inhibition rate, respectively. In addition, compounds 5f and 7k were selective metal chelators and remarkably inhibited Cu2+-induced Aβ1–42 aggregation with 73.5% and 68.7% inhibition rates, respectively. Furthermore, compounds 5f and 7k could cross the blood-brain barrier in vitro and displayed good neuroprotective effects and anti-inflammatory properties. Further investigation showed that compound 5f did not show obvious hepatotoxicity and displayed a good hepatoprotective effect by its antioxidant activity. The in vivo study displayed that compound 5f significantly improved scopolamine-induced mice memory impairment. Therefore, compound 5f was a potential multifunctional candidate for the treatment of AD.

Herein, a series of novel O-alkyl ferulamide derivatives were designed and synthesised through the multi-target-directed ligands (MTDLs) strategy. The biological activities in vitro showed that compounds 5a, 5d, 5e, 5f, and 5h indicated significantly selective MAO-B inhibitory potency (IC50 = 0.32, 0.56, 0.54, 0.73, and 0.86 μM, respectively) and moderate antioxidant activity. Moreover, compounds 5a, 5d, 5e, 5f, and 5h showed potent anti-inflammatory properties, remarkable effects on self-induced Aβ1-42 aggregation, and potent neuroprotective effect on Aβ1-42-induced PC12 cell injury. Furthermore, compounds 5a, 5d, 5e, 5f, and 5h presented good blood–brain barrier permeation in vitro and drug-like properties. More interesting, the PET/CT images with [11C]5f demonstrated that [11C]5f could penetrate the BBB with a high brain uptake and exhibited good brain clearance kinetic property. Therefore, compound 5f would be a promising multi-functional agent for the treatment of AD.

Heterotrophic soil respiration and subsidence are enhanced by water table decline, with a meta-analysis estimating that soil respiration in drained peatlands across the globe release 645 Mt carbon per year.

Ecosystem health is the goal of eco-environmental management, and its assessment is necessary for improving regional ecological environments and promoting regional sustainable development. However, previous studies on regional ecosystem health assessment have mainly concentrated on rapidly developing urbanized areas, with very few having been conducted on alpine pastoral regions. Taking the Gannan alpine pastoral region of China as the study area, and based on remote-sensing and GIS technologies, we used entropy methods to calculate the relative weights of several indicators to quantify the uncertainty in the data processing so that the accuracy of the results of the ecosystem health evaluation could be improved. In this study, a new basic-pressure-state-response assessment framework for alpine pastoral ecosystem health assessment is proposed, based on the pressure-state-response. It was found that the levels of ecosystem health of the Gannan pastoral had a spatial distribution pattern that decreased from southwest to northeast, from 2000 to 2015. Notably, the areas of the well and weak health showed a decreasing trend, with more regions tending toward ordinary levels. Among all the assessing indicators, the average value of the pressure indicator was the greatest, with the basic indicator value being the lowest. Our assessment results could be used as a guide for eco-environment managers tasked with taking effective measures to improve the status of the ecosystem health in alpine pastoral regions.

Polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) is widely used in nuclear power plant uniforms, these uniforms are usually sealed with cement after use because they are radioactive, but this will waste land resources. Therefore, to find a simple and effective chemical method to deal with them has become a scientific challenge. Although Fenton process needs further post-treatment, but it has a great advantage on the treatment of PVA fabric, meanwhile, it is one of the most effective methods to dispose organic pollutants at present. In this paper, we investigated the degradation of discarded polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) fabric and PVA (1750) via Fenton process. Several potential factors were evaluated to describe the PVA fabric degrading efficiency and TOC removal rate, such as H2O2 dosage, the molar ratio of H2O2/Fe(NO3)2, initial pH value, reaction temperature, and reaction time. The optimum H2O2 dosage, the molar ratio of H2O2/Fe(NO3)2, initial pH value, reaction temperature, and reaction time were found to be 650 g, 10, 4, 50 °C, and 30 min, respectively. The viscosity-average molecular weight of PVA fabric was degraded from 130,293 to 420. The degrading efficiency and TOC removal rate were 99.96% and 99.97%, respectively. At last, the degradation mechanism and kinetics were studied in this paper.

Abstract Terrestrial ecosystems provide multiple services interacting in complex ways. However, most ecosystem services (ESs) models (e.g., InVEST and ARIES) ignored the relationships among ESs. Process‐based models can overcome this limitation, and the integration of ecological models with remote sensing data could greatly facilitate the investigation of the complex ecological processes. Therefore, based on the Carbon and Exchange between Vegetation, Soil, and Atmosphere (CEVSA) models, we developed a process‐based ES model (CEVSA‐ES) integrating remotely sensed leaf area index to evaluate four important ESs (i.e., productivity provision, carbon sequestration, water retention, and soil retention) at annual timescale in China. Compared to the traditional terrestrial biosphere models, the main innovation of CEVSA‐ES model was the consideration of soil erosion processes and its impact on carbon cycling. The new version also improved the carbon‐water cycle algorithms. Then, the Sobol and DEMC methods that integrated the CEVSA‐ES model with nine flux sites comprising 39 site‐years were used to identify and optimize parameters. Finally, the model using the optimized parameters was validated at 26 field sites comprising 135 site‐years. Simulation results showed good fits with ecosystem processes, explaining 95%, 92%, 76%, and 65% interannual variabilities of gross primary productivity, ecosystem respiration, net ecosystem productivity, and evapotranspiration, respectively. The CEVSA‐ES model performed well for productivity provision and carbon sequestration, which explained 96% and 81% of the spatial‐temporal variations of the observed annual productivity provision and carbon sequestration, respectively. The model also captured the interannual trends of water retention and soil erosion for most sites or basins.

A global warming hiatus occurred during 1998 and 2012 but its effects on phenology are unclear. Here the authors examine the trends in spring and autumn phenology in the northern hemisphere and the effects of the warming hiatus and show that phenology change rate in the northern hemisphere slowed down during the warming hiatus.

Riparian ecosystems fundamentally depend on groundwater, and accurate estimations of groundwater evapotranspiration (ETG) are important for understanding ecosystem functionality and managing regional water resources. Over the past several decades, various methods have been proposed to estimate groundwater evapotranspiration based on water table fluctuations. However, the majority of methods cannot resolve sub-daily variations in ETG. In this study, we proposed a new hydraulic theory-based ETG estimation method at a sub-daily time scale. To evaluate its performance, we employed a variety of measurements (i.e., water table levels, latent heat flux and soil water contents) at a riparian forest (T. ramosissima) in Northwest China from 25 July to 10 October in 2017. The results indicated that the proposed method can successfully estimate ETG at both sub-daily (R2 = 0.75) and daily (R2 = 0.88) time scales, but the variations in the specific yield under different water table conditions should be carefully taken into account. In addition, we investigated the seasonal variations in water uptake source of the riparian plant, and found that it had strong plasticity in water usage during the study period. That is, it consumed approximately equal amounts of soil water and groundwater when soil moisture was available, and tended to consume more groundwater for survival as the soil moisture was depleted. To verify the seasonal patterns of the water uptake of the riparian forest, systematic isotope-based studies are needed in future study.

As an important part of the wetland ecosystem, alpine wetland is not only one of the most important ecological water conservation areas in the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau region, but is also an effective regulator of the local climate. In this study, using three machine learning algorithms to extract wetland, we employ the landscape ecological index to quantitatively analyze the evolution of landscape patterns and grey correlation to analyze the driving factors of Zoige wetland landscape pattern change from 1995 to 2020. The following results were obtained. (1) The random forest algorithm (RF) performs best when dealing with high-dimensional data, and the accuracy of the decision tree algorithm (DT) is better. The performance of the RF and DT is better than that of the support vector machine algorithm. (2) The alpine wetland in the study area was degraded from 1995 to 2015, whereas wetland area began to increase after 2015. (3) The results of landscape analysis show the decrease in wetland area from 1995 to 2005 was mainly due to the fragmentation of larger patches into many small patches and loss of the original small patches, while the 2005 to 2015 decrease was caused by the loss of many middle patches and the decrease in large patches from the edge to the middle. The 2015 to 2020 increase is due to an increase in the number of smaller patches and recovery of original wetland area. (4) The grey correlation degree further shows that precipitation and evaporation are the main factors leading to the change in the landscape pattern of Zoige alpine wetland. The results are of great significance to the long-term monitoring of the Zoige wetland ecosystem.

As an important production base for livestock and a unique ecological zone in China, the northeast Tibetan Plateau has experienced dramatic land use/land cover (LULC) changes with increasing human activities and continuous climate change. However, extensive cloud cover limits the ability of optical remote sensing satellites to monitor accurately LULC changes in this area. To overcome this problem in LULC mapping in the Ganan Prefecture, 2000–2018, we used the dense time stacking of multi-temporal Landsat images and random forest algorithm based on the Google Earth Engine (GEE) platform. The dynamic trends of LULC changes were analyzed, and geographical detectors quantitatively evaluated the key driving factors of these changes. The results showed that (1) the overall classification accuracy varied between 89.14% and 91.41%, and the kappa values were greater than 86.55%, indicating that the classification results were reliably accurate. (2) The major LULC types in the study area were grassland and forest, and their area accounted for 50% and 25%, respectively. During the study period, the grassland area decreased, while the area of forest land and construction land increased to varying degrees. The land-use intensity presents multi-level intensity, and it was higher in the northeast than that in the southwest. (3) Elevation and population density were the major driving factors of LULC changes, and economic development has also significantly affected LULC. These findings revealed the main factors driving LULC changes in Gannan Prefecture and provided a reference for assisting in the development of sustainable land management and ecological protection policy decisions.

We evaluated the performance of three global evapotranspiration (ET) models at local, regional, and global scales using the multiple sets of leaf area index (LAI) and meteorological data from 1982 to 2017 and investigated the uncertainty in ET simulations from the model structure and forcing data. The three ET models were the Simple Terrestrial Hydrosphere model (SiTH) developed by our team, the Priestley–Taylor Jet Propulsion Laboratory model (PT-JPL), and the MODerate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) ET algorithm (MOD16). Comparing the observed with simulated monthly ET by the three models over 43 Fluxnet sites, we found that SiTH overestimated ET for forests with mean slope from 1.25 to 1.67, but it performed better than the other two models over short vegetation. MOD16 and PT-JPL models simulated well for forests but poorly in dryland biomes (slope = 0.25~0.55; R2 = 0.02~0.46). At the catchment scale, all models performed well, except for some tropical and high latitudinal catchments, with NSE values lower than 0 and RMSE and MAE values far beyond their mean values. At the global scale, SiTH highly overestimated ET in tropics, while PT-JPL slightly underestimated ET between 30°N and 60°N and MOD16 underestimated ET between 15°S and 30°S. Generally, the PT-JPL provided the better performance than SiTH and MOD16 models. This study also revealed that the estimated ET by SiTH and especially PT-JPL model were influenced by the uncertainty in meteorological data, and the estimated ET was performed better using MERRA-2 datasets for PT-JPL and using ERA5 datasets for SiTH. While the estimated ET by MOD16 were relatively sensitive to LAI data. In addition, our results suggested that the GLOBMAP and GIMMS datasets were more suitable for long-term ET simulations than the GLASS dataset.

To compress stereo video effectively, this paper proposes a novel macroblock (MB) level rate control method based on binocular perception. A binocular just-notification difference (BJND) model based on the parallax matching is first used to describe binocular perception. Then, the proposed rate control method is performed in stereo video coding with four levels, namely, view level, group-of-pictures (GOP) level, frame level, and MB level. In the view level, different proportions of bitrates are allocated for the left and right views of stereo video according to the prestatistical rate allocation proportion. In the GOP level, the total number of bitrates allocated to each GOP is computed and the initial quantization parameter of each GOP is set. In the frame level, the target bits allocated to each frame are computed. In the MB level, visual perception factor, which is measured by the BJND value of MB, is used to adjust the MB level bit allocation, so that the rate control results in line with the human visual characteristics. Experimental results show that the proposed method can control the bitrate more accurately and get better subjective quality of stereo video, compared with other methods.

Hypoxic exposure in the perinatal period causes periventricular white matter damage (PWMD), a condition associated with myelination abnormalities. Under hypoxic conditions, glial cells were activated and released a large number of inflammatory mediators in the PWM in neonatal brain, which may result in oligodendrocyte (OL) loss and axonal injury. This study aims to determine if astrocytes are activated and generate proinflammatory cytokines that may be coupled with the oligodendroglial loss and hypomyelination observed in hypoxic PWMD. Twenty-four 1-day-old Wistar rats were exposed to hypoxia for 2 h. The rats were then allowed to recover under normoxic conditions for 7 or 28 days before being killed. Another group of 24 rats kept outside the chamber was used as age-matched controls. Upregulated expression of TNF-α and IL-1β was observed in astrocytes in the PWM of P7 hypoxic rats by double immunofluorescence, western blotting and real time RT-PCR. This was linked to apoptosis and enhanced expression of TNF-R1 and IL-1R1 in APC(+) OLs. PLP expression was decreased significantly in the PWM of P28d hypoxic rats. The proportion of myelinated axons was markedly reduced by electron microscopy (EM) and the average g-ratios were higher in P28d hypoxic rats. Upregulated expression of TNF-α and IL-1β in primary cultured astrocytes as well as their corresponding receptors in primary culture APC(+) oligodendrocytes were detected under hypoxic conditions. Our results suggest that following a hypoxic insult, astrocytes in the PWM of neonatal rats produce inflammatory cytokines such as TNF-α and IL-1β, which induce apoptosis of OLs via their corresponding receptors associated with them. This results in hypomyelination in the PWM of hypoxic rats.

The 30-year normalized-difference vegetation index (NDVI) time series from AVHRR/MODIS satellite sensors was used in this study to assess the regional vegetation dynamic changes in the Tao River Basin, which cuts across the Eastern Tibetan Plateau (ETP) and the Southwestern Loess Plateau (SLP). First, principal component and correlation analyses were carried out to determine the key climatic variables driving ecological change in the region. Then, regression models were tested to correlate NDVI with the selected climatic variables to determine their predictive power. Finally, Sen’s slope method was used to determine how terrestrial vegetation has responded to regional climate change in the region. The results indicated an average winter season NDVI value of 0.14 in the ETP but only 0.04 in the SLP. Primarily driven by increasing temperature, vegetation growth has generally been enhanced since 1981; spring NDVI increased by 0.03 every 10 years in the ETP and 0.02 in the SLP. Further, results from trend analyses suggest vegetation growth in the ETP shifted to earlier-start and earlier-end dates, however in the SLP, the growing season has been extended with an earlier-start and later-end date. The precipitation threshold for vegetation germination, measured by the cumulative spring rainfall, was found to be 44 mm for both the ETP and SLP.

Snow phenology, recurrent seasonal patterns in snow cover and snowfall, has been significantly affected by global warming. Through the interaction with the climate, the dynamic variability of snow phenology affects the regional climate environment, vegetation ecosystem, soil properties, agricultural water resources, snow disasters and animal migration. First, this study compares the advantages, disadvantages and applicability of different sources of observation data and the principal research methods involved in studying snow phenology. Then, this work discusses the spatiotemporal variability and changing trends of snow phenology in the Northern Hemisphere, and summarizes the relationship between climate, vegetation and snow phenology. Finally, this review highlights the key areas related to snow phenology that require further study. Overall, during the past 50 years in the Northern Hemisphere, the snow cover end date (SCED) has shown a significantly advanced trend, the snow cover onset date (SCOD) has also been occurring slowly earlier, and the snow cover days (SCD) has shortened, but these two trends are not significant. The snow phenology variation is closely related to climate factors, atmospheric circulation, vegetation status and some spatial factors. Snow cover impacts climate change through interactions with atmospheric circulation systems. The rise in temperature will delay the SCOD, and the SCED is closely related to the temperature of the snowmelt season. The interaction between seasonal snow cover and climate will either stimulate or impede vegetation growth. With the change in snow cover, especially the decrease in snow cover in the melting stage can impact the climate change, the rise in temperature will change the growth conditions and extend the vegetation growth season. The relationship between snow cover and vegetation is inconsistent in different elevations and latitudes. Snow phenology variation is very complex and is the result of the combined action of many factors. Additionally, snow phenology will also have a great impact on the cryosphere. Therefore, we must understand snow phenology variation and prepare for future changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using laser wavelength modulation spectroscopy (LWMS), a rapid detection method to determine the oxygen contents in glass medicine bottles with an open single path and short optical distance was proposed. It is widely acknowledged that temperature changes influence the gas line strength, the full width at half maximum (FWHM) of absorption parameters, and the density of gas molecules. As a direct consequence, these factors affect the detection accuracy of gas concentrations. Two methods of temperature compensation and correction were proposed to address this problem: one method uses a theoretical compensation of scale factors based on the relationship between various parameters in the HITRAN 2012 database (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, MA), and the second method uses the compensation of an experimental correction function based on the relationship between temperature and harmonic intensity measurements. Furthermore, the two methods were integrated into the regression equations for the peak value of the secondary harmonics and the gas concentration for quantitative predictions. At different temperatures (ranging from 276-316 K), glass medicine bottles with oxygen concentrations of 21% were tested to obtain predictive values based on direct concentration evaluation by the two methods. The experimental results show that the predicated root mean square errors after theoretical and experimental correction are 0.0024 and 0.0058, respectively 80.33% and 52.46% less than that obtained through direct concentration evaluation. This validates the effectiveness of the two proposed methods, which can further improve the accuracy and stability for detecting gas concentration using LWMS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wetland methane (CH4) emissions are the largest natural source in the global CH4 budget, contributing to roughly one third of total natural and anthropogenic emissions. As the second most important anthropogenic greenhouse gas in the atmosphere after CO2, CH4 is strongly associated with climate feedbacks. However, due to the paucity of data, wetland CH4 feedbacks were not fully assessed in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fifth Assessment Report. The degree to which future expansion of wetlands and CH4 emissions will evolve and consequently drive climate feedbacks is thus a question of major concern. Here we present an ensemble estimate of wetland CH4 emissions driven by 38 general circulation models for the 21st century. We find that climate change-induced increases in boreal wetland extent and temperature-driven increases in tropical CH4 emissions will dominate anthropogenic CH4 emissions by 38 to 56% toward the end of the 21st century under the Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP2.6). Depending on scenarios, wetland CH4 feedbacks translate to an increase in additional global mean radiative forcing of 0.04 W⋅m-2 to 0.19 W⋅m-2 by the end of the 21st century. Under the "worst-case" RCP8.5 scenario, with no climate mitigation, boreal CH4 emissions are enhanced by 18.05 Tg to 41.69 Tg, due to thawing of inundated areas during the cold season (December to May) and rising temperature, while tropical CH4 emissions accelerate with a total increment of 48.36 Tg to 87.37 Tg by 2099. Our results suggest that climate mitigation policies must consider mitigation of wetland CH4 feedbacks to maintain average global warming below 2 °C. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we examined the year 2011 characteristics of energy flux partitioning and evapotranspiration of a sub-alpine spruce forest underlain by permafrost on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau (QPT). Energy balance closure on a half-hourly basis was H + λE = 0.81 × ( Rn − G − S) + 3.48 (W m−2) ( r2 = 0.83, n = 14938), where H, λE, Rn, G and S are the sensible heat, latent heat, net radiation, soil heat and air-column heat storage fluxes, respectively. Maximum H was higher than maximum λE, and H dominated the energy budget at midday during the whole year, even in summer time. However, the rainfall events significantly affected energy flux partitioning and evapotranspiration. The mean value of evaporative fraction (Λ = λE/( λE + H)) during the growth period on zero precipitation days and non-zero precipitation days was 0.40 and 0.61, respectively. The mean daily evapotranspiration of this sub-alpine forest during summer time was 2.56 mm day−1. The annual evapotranspiration and sublimation was 417 ± 8 mm year−1, which was very similar to the annual precipitation of 428 mm. Sublimation accounted for 7.1% (30 ± 2 mm year−1) of annual evapotranspiration and sublimation, indicating that the sublimation is not negligible in the annual water balance in sub-alpine forests on the QPT. The low values of the Priestley-Taylor coefficient ( α) and the very low value of the decoupling coefficient (Ω) during most of the growing season suggested low soil water content and conservative water loss in this sub-alpine forest. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A major research plan entitled "Integrated research on the eco-hydrological process of the Heihe River Basin" was launched by the National Natural Science Foundation of China in 2010. One of the key aims of this research plan is to establish a research platform that integrates observation, data management, and model simulation to foster twenty-first-century watershed science in China. Based on the diverse needs of inter-disciplinary studies within this research plan, a program called the Heihe Watershed Allied Telemetry Experimental Research (HiWATER) was implemented. The overall objective of HiWATER is to improve the observability of hydrological and ecological processes, to build a world-class watershed observing system, and to enhance the applicability of remote sensing in integrated eco-hydrological studies and water resource management at the basin scale. This paper introduces the background, scientific objectives, and experimental design of HiWATER. The instrumental setting and airborne mission plans are also outlined. The highlights are the use of a flux observing matrix and an eco-hydrological wireless sensor network to capture multiscale heterogeneities and to address complex problems, such as heterogeneity, scaling, uncertainty, and closing water cycle at the watershed scale. HiWATER was formally initialized in May 2012 and will last four years until 2015. Data will be made available to the scientific community via the Environmental and Ecological Science Data Center for West China. International scientists are welcome to participate in the field campaign and use the data in their analyses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Photosynthesis response to carbon dioxide concentration can provide data on a number of important parameters related to leaf physiology. The genetic algorithm (GA), which is a robust stochastic evolutionary computational algorithm inspired by both natural selection and natural genetics, is proposed to simultaneously estimate the parameters [including maximum carboxylation rate allowed by ribulose 1·5-bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase (Rubisco) carboxylation rate ( Vcmax), potential light-saturated electron transport rate ( Jmax), triose-phosphate utilization (TPU), leaf dark respiration in the light ( Rd) and mesophyll conductance ( gm)] of the photosynthesis models presented by Farquhar, von Caemmerer and Berry, and Ethier and Livingston. The results show that by properly constraining the parameter bounds the GA-based estimate methods can effectively and efficiently obtain globally (or, at least near globally) optimal solutions, which are as good as or better than those obtained by non-linear curve fitting methods used in previous studies. More complicated problems such as taking the gm variation response to CO2 into account can be easily formulated and solved by using GA. The influence of the crossover probability ( Pc), mutation probability ( Pm), population size and generation on the performance of GA was also investigated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Forests influence climate through both the biochemical and biophysical processes, and the impacts of the latter on local climate may be much larger than the former. However, the biophysical effects of afforestation in arid regions have received little attention compared with afforestation in the tropic, temperate and boreal zones. In this study, we combined in situ eddy covariance flux measurements from a neighboring pairs of forested and background desert sites with the decomposed temperature metric (DTM) method to characterize the impacts of arid forests on surface temperature (T s ). A clear-sky, one-dimensional planetary boundary layer (PBL) model was used to estimate the impacts of afforestation on state of regional climate. We showed that despite absorbing more net radiation (35.4 W m -2 ) the riparian forests tended to cool T s (-1.28 °C) on annual basis, but with a significant seasonality. Specifically, afforestation may lead to a net cooling effect from March to September and a slightly warming effect in other months. The DTM method revealed that evapotranspiration played a dominant role in cooling surface temperature, while surface albedo (α) and incoming longwave radiation (L↓) acted together to increase forest surface temperature. From June to September, a shallower, cooler and wetter boundary layer was developed over the forest due to high plant transpiration. In other months, the PBL was slightly deeper and warmer over the forest than that over the desert. Therefore, the riparian forests were important in moderating warming trends in arid regions., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest We declared that we have no financial and personal relationships with other people or organizations that can inappropriately influence our work. All authors have agreed the submits of this paper to your Journal. We declared that we will not submit this paper to another Journal until we hear from you., (Copyright © 2022. Published by Elsevier B.V.)