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Effective natural resource planning depends on understanding the prevalence of runoff generating processes. Within a specific area of interest, this demands reproducible, straightforward information that can complement available local data and can orient and guide stakeholders with diverse training and backgrounds. To address this demand within the contiguous United States (CONUS), we characterized and mapped the predominance of two primary runoff generating processes: infiltration‐excess and saturation‐excess runoff (IE vs. SE, respectively). Specifically, we constructed a gap‐filled grid of surficial saturated hydraulic conductivity using the Soil Survey Geographic and State Soil Geographic soils databases. We then compared surficial saturated hydraulic conductivity values with 1‐hr rainfall‐frequency estimates across a range of return intervals derived from CONUS‐scale random forest models. This assessment of the prevalence of IE versus SE runoff also incorporated a simple uncertainty analysis, as well as a case study of how the approach could be used to evaluate future alterations in runoff processes resulting from climate change. We found a low likelihood of IE runoff on undisturbed soils over much of CONUS for 1‐hr storms with return intervals <5 years. Conversely, IE runoff is most likely in the Central United States (i.e., Texas, Louisiana, Kansas, Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska, and Western South Dakota), and the relative predominance of runoff types is highly sensitive to the accuracy of the estimated soil properties. Leveraging publicly available data sets and reproducible workflows, our approach offers greater understanding of predominant runoff generating processes over a continental extent and expands the technical resources available to environmental planners, regulators, and modellers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Federal Aviation Administration's augmentation to the global positioning system for civil aviation is called the wide area augmentation system. This paper introduces the wide area augmentation system-based flight inspection system. This system is better optimized than the current flight inspection systems in terms of accuracy, cost, and efficiency. Although they meet the Federal Aviation Administration's flight inspection system accuracy requirements, the current flight inspection systems are either higher cost or less efficient. The innovative use of the wide area augmentation system with a radar altimeter and a television positioning system without a requirement for an inertial navigator makes it possible for the wide area augmentation system-based flight inspection system to have low cost and high efficiency in flight inspection for instrument landing system calibration. The wide area augmentation system-based flight inspection system meets the Federal Aviation Administration's accuracy requirements for CAT III ILS calibration and also provides firm integrity algorithms. The performance of the wide area augmentation system-based flight inspection system is confirmed with tests using flight data taken in collaboration with the Federal Aviation Administration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops an empirical confidence bound for barometric altimeter altitude errors and shows how this bound may improve the performance of GPS-based approach and landing systems. This empirical bound is developed using historical meteorological data collected at a set of geographically diverse locations over a thirty year period. The confidence bound developed is shown to provide a Gaussian overbound on altimeter altitude errors in standard atmospheric conditions between a 10-5 and 10-6 confidence level. This confidence bound is integrated into the standard methodology for analyzing the performance of GPS-based landing systems and the results of a performance trade study using the confidence bound are presented. The results show that incorporating the empirical barometric altimeter confidence bound provides an increase in the coterminous United States (CONUS) service volume for lateral precision with vertical guidance (LPV) type approaches. While this increase is approximately 2% for an L1 single-frequency GPS user, it jumps to roughly 40% for an L5 single-frequency user. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the ruling of a U.S. federal district court on the case Townsend Industries versus United States which held that a company's expenditures for employee fishing trip were subject to employment tax. Facts of cases; Arguments of the tax payer; Analysis on the arguments of the court in its ruling; Implications of the ruling; Ruling of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eight Circuit reversing the decision of the federal district court.