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Crop multi-model ensembles (MME) have proven to be effective in increasing the accuracy of simulations in modelling experiments. However, the ability of MME to capture crop responses to changes in sowing dates and densities has not yet been investigated. These management interventions are some of the main levers for adapting cropping systems to climate change. Here, we explore the performance of a MME of 29 wheat crop models to predict the effect of changing sowing dates and rates on yield and yield components, on two sites located in a high-yielding environment in New Zealand. The experiment was conducted for 6 years and provided 50 combinations of sowing date, sowing density and growing season. We show that the MME simulates seasonal growth of wheat well under standard sowing conditions, but fails under early sowing and high sowing rates. The comparison between observed and simulated in-season fraction of intercepted photosynthetically active radiation (FIPAR) for early sown wheat shows that the MME does not capture the decrease of crop above ground biomass during winter months due to senescence. Models need to better account for tiller competition for light, nutrients, and water during vegetative growth, and early tiller senescence and tiller mortality, which are exacerbated by early sowing, high sowing densities, and warmer winter temperatures., This study was a part of the Agricultural Model Intercomparison and Improvement Project (AgMIP) Wheat Phase 4 and was supported by the French National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food (INRAE) and the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) through the International Wheat Yield Partnership (IWYP, grant IWYP115). SD and PM acknowledge support from the metaprogram Agriculture and forestry in the face of climate change: adaptation and mitigation (CLIMAE) of INRAE. YC and FT acknowledge support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 31761143006). RPR and GBM acknowledge financial support from BARISTA project (031B0811A) through ERA-NET SusCrop under EU-FACCE JPI. KCK was funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) through the BonaRes project ’’I4S’’ (031B0513I). AS and TG acknowledge funding by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) through the BonaRes Project “Soil3” (FKZ 031B0026A). KCK and JEO were supported by the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of Czech Republic through SustES—Adaption strategies for sustainable ecosystem services and food security under adverse environmental conditions (CZ.02.1.01/0.0/0.0/16_019/000797). FE acknowledges support by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) under Germany’s Excellence Strategy – EXC 2070 – 390732324”. TKDW was funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG, Grant Agreement SFB 1253/1 2017). MAS and NS at Rothamsted Research received grant-aided support from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) through Designing Future Wheat [BB/P016855/1] and Achieving Sustainable Agricultural Systems [NE/N018125/1] jointly funded with NERC. TP and FT are supported by the DivCSA project funded by the Academy of Finland (decision no. 316215).

Tiny-fault detection plays a very important role in the research on the tight oil and gas reservoir in well area X in Ordos Basin, China. In this study, the target formation is the Majiagou dolomite reservoir section under the Ordovician salt with low-amplitude structures generally developed. The conventional attributes extracted from migrated seismic data could not achieve ideal results in detecting hidden faults with small displacement due to slight travel time differences and weak amplitude disturbances. To address this challenge, a segment and fusion strategy was adopted to highlight tiny faults in this region. First, the phase congruency analysis method was used to extract the local edges of coherence to locate the faults. Second, in the extraction process, the coherence was divided into segments according to the fault scales, and then enhanced segment by segment and fused. Third, the empirical formula of the new fault indicator was constructed by the phase congruency features, which can be used to accurately characterize tiny faults. This strategy performs well in both model tests and the migrated seismic data.

In order to obtain the accurate prediction efficiency of earthquake swarms in Gansu province, the statistics of minor-moderate earthquake swarms that have occurred in Gansu since 1980 are performed. The earthquake swarm parameters are calculated and the precursory earthquake swarms are extracted based on the criteria of distinguishing the abnormal earthquake swarm. The precursory swarms obtained were analyzed correspondingly with the earthquakes with M≥5 in and around Gansu, and the prediction efficiency of them was evaluated. The accurate precursor index of the earthquake swarms in Gansu were summarized, which provided a judging basis for the seismic trending and made a certain contribution to earthquake prevention and disaster reduction.

Summary Spectral decomposition is a method applied in geophysical interpretation widely, which can reveal the lateral variation in thin bed and is effective in channel detection. Generally, dozens of single frequency volume data would be generated to analyze for one seismic volume. However, lots of redundancy exist among these single frequency data, which leads to the result that interpreters are usually hard to choose those correct frequencies to characterize the seismic data. Principle component analysis (PCA) was applied to those single frequency data, which is able to obtain the most important elements and structures from overabundance data, and figure out the simple structure hidden in the complicated data. The real seismic data test demonstrates the effectiveness of this method, which is able to depict the channel characteristics more delicately.

Summary In this abstract, firstly, we present new explicit expressions for anisotropic EI formulae by replacing the Thomsen’s coefficients with fracture parameters azimuth, density and fillings. This makes anisotropic EI formulae more significantly meaningful. The synthetic modeling shows that crack density in gas-saturated cracked media changes EI more than the water-saturated-fractured media does. Secondly, by comparing the acoustic impedance (AI), isotropic elastic impedance (EI) with the new one, as well as the corresponding seismic impedance inversion methods, we find that these different inversion methods are strategies to approximate the solutions of our geophysical problems when the data conditions are different. AI inversion is for the case of post-stack seismic data with zero offset and zero degree azimuth angles, and isotropic EI inversion is for the case of pre-stack seismic data with wide offset and narrow azimuth. So we can infer that anisotropic EI inversion for seismic data with wide offset and wide or full azimuth may be not impossible.

Anisotropy caused by crack development is an important property for fractured reservoirs, however, the direct relations between crack parameters and anisotropic elastic impedance formula hasn’t been established. In this abstract, we review the relations between parallel infinite fracture model and isolated parallel penny-shaped crack model, then introduce crack distribution density, infill property and Pwave, S-wave velocity for wall rock to existing HTI elastic impedance formula. Normalized impedance modeling results show that impedances are influenced by the above three types of parameters in different ways. Impedances for gas-filled cracked media change more sensitively with variation of crack density, while the water-saturated cracked ones are more sensitive to the variation of vs/vp.

Although dryland farming and grazing have been practiced for over 130 years in the 17,000 ha Simmons Creek catchment without surface salinity problems, the area has been identified as a significant source of salt seepage to Billabong Creek in the NSW Murray catchment. Groundwater movement and salinity levels are spatially heterogenous at Simmons Creek. Groundwater of the upper catchment is relatively fresh and seemingly unconnected with the highly saline groundwater of the lower catchment. However, fresh surface water does flow from the upper to the lower catchment. This spatial diversity provokes the question of where high-water-use forest habitats might be placed to achieve different combinations of environmental services (greater water yield, lower stream salinity and greater biodiversity) at least cost. Agro-forestry and or carbon sequestration benefits are not considered here. This paper presents methods and preliminary calculations of land use changes for least-cost delivery of these environmental service targets.

Synchronous treatment of high imperforate anus with large omphalocele is a challenge for pediatric surgeon. A case of this unusual condition in a male neonate is presented. The high imperforate anus was repaired by primary one-stage posterior sagittal anorectoplasty, and the omphalocele was treated nonoperatively. Recovery was uneventful.

Rainfall, temperature, and solar radiation are important climate factors, which determine crop growth, development and yield from instantaneous to decadal scales. We propose to identify year patterns of climate impact on yield on the basis of rain and non-rain weather. There are inter-related impacts of climatic factors on crop production within a specific pattern. Historical wheat yield data in Queensland during 1889-2004 were used. The influence of meteorological conditions on wheat yields was derived from statistical yield data which were detrended by 9-year-smoothing averages to remove the effects of technological improvements on wheat yields over time. Climate affects crop growth and development differently over different growth stages. Therefore, we considered the climate effects at both vegetative and reproductive stages (before and after flowering date, respectively) on yield. Cluster analysis was employed to identify the year patterns of climate impact. Five patterns were significantly classified. Precipitation during the vegetative stage was the dominant and beneficial factor for wheat yields while increasing maximum temperature had a negative influence. Crop yields were strongly dependent on solar radiation under normal rainfall conditions. As the effect of rainfall on soil water is relatively long-lasting, its beneficial effect in vegetative stage was higher than its effect during the reproductive stage. The Agricultural Production Systems sIMulator (APSIM) was evaluated using long-term historical data to determine whether the model could reasonably simulate effects of climate factors for each year pattern. The model provided good estimates of wheat yield when conditions resulted in medium yield levels, however, in extremely low or high yield years, corresponding to extremely low or high precipitation in the vegetative stage, the model tended to underestimate or overestimate. Under high growing season precipitation, simulations responded more favourably to reproductive stage rainfall than measured yields. © 2013 Royal Meteorological Society.