Article
Geosciences, Multidisciplinary
Yi-Fan Liu, Ze Huang, Ling-Chao Meng, Shu-Yuan Li, Yu-Bin Wang, Yu Liu, Manuel Lopez-Vicente, Gao-Lin Wu
Summary: The study revealed that understory shading in forest-grassland ecosystems altered the community composition and structure of understory grasslands, leading to increased soil loss. Shade-tolerant herb species play a crucial role in controlling soil erosion, highlighting the importance of species selection for vegetation restoration in such ecosystems.
Review
Agriculture, Multidisciplinary
Filippo Milazzo, Richard M. Francksen, Laura Zavattaro, Mohamed Abdalla, Stanislav Hejduk, Simone Ravetto Enri, Marco Pittarello, Paul Newell Price, Rene L. M. Schils, Pete Smith, Tom Vanwalleghem
Summary: Permanent grasslands play a crucial role in protecting the landscape from soil erosion and flooding, but this role has not been fully quantified. The degradation of grasslands is quickly increasing, leading to erosion and runoff. This study aims to quantify the erosion and flooding mitigation effect of permanent grasslands compared to other land uses, as well as review the soil erosion processes affecting grasslands in the EU.
AGRICULTURE ECOSYSTEMS & ENVIRONMENT
(2023)
Article
Meteorology & Atmospheric Sciences
Liming Zhou, Yuhong Tian, Nan Wei, Shu-Peng Ho, Jing Li
Summary: Turbulent mixing in the planetary boundary layer plays a critical role in the vertical exchange of heat, moisture, momentum, trace gases, and aerosols. This study examines the spatial patterns of long-term PBLH trends over land and finds consensus on increasing PBLH over the Sahara Desert and Arabian Peninsula and declining PBLH in India. The changes in PBLH are significantly correlated with changes in surface heating and moisture at the global scale.
JOURNAL OF CLIMATE
(2021)
Article
Agronomy
F. J. Pan, L. Y. Yang, C. L. Wang, R. R. Yan, C. J. Li, Y. F. Hu, Y. Jiang, J. Cao, H. Y. Tan, X. P. Xin
Summary: The frequency of mowing significantly affects the community structure and biomass of soil nematodes in northeast China grassland. High mowing frequency reduces the abundance and biomass of soil nematodes, while moderate frequency enhances these indices.
Article
Environmental Sciences
Xinjian Guan, Yingjun Xu, Yu Meng, Bing Qiu, Denghua Yan
Summary: This study explores the multi-dimensional service functions of vegetation ecosystems and proposes a methodology for quantifying their emergy values. Using Luoyang City as a case study, the results show that the emergy values of vegetation ecosystem service functions exhibit a decreasing and then increasing trend, with the forest ecological zone located in the southern counties and the grassland ecological zone located in the central county.
SCIENCE OF THE TOTAL ENVIRONMENT
(2024)
Article
Environmental Sciences
Su Yonghong, Luo Fandi, Zhu Gaofengx, Zhu Gaofeng, Kun Zhang, Zhang Qi
Summary: Forests have both biochemical and biophysical effects on climate, and the biophysical effects of afforestation in arid regions have been less studied compared to other regions. In this study, the impacts of arid forests on surface temperature were characterized using eddy covariance flux measurements and the decomposed temperature metric (DTM) method. It was found that afforestation led to a cooling effect from March to September and a slight warming effect in other months, with evapotranspiration playing a dominant role in cooling surface temperature.
SCIENCE OF THE TOTAL ENVIRONMENT
(2023)
Article
Biodiversity Conservation
Nitu Wu, Lufs Guilherme Teixeira Crusiol, Guixiang Liu, Deji Wuyun, Guodong Han
Summary: This study compared the performance of six widely used machine learning algorithms for aboveground biomass (AGB) estimation in the typical steppe of northern China. The results showed that stepwise linear regression (SLR) was more suitable for estimating AGB at the Sentinel scale. Additionally, vegetation indices played a significant role in the development of selected models, while Sentinel C-band synthetic aperture radar (SAR) was unsuitable for modeling AGB in the typical steppe.
ECOLOGICAL INDICATORS
(2023)
Article
Geosciences, Multidisciplinary
Xin Li, Zhaoxia Pu
Summary: The study found a linear relationship between the maximum intensity of large eddies and the square of mean horizontal divergence, and using this relationship in the PBL parameterization scheme can improve the accuracy of hurricane forecasts.
GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS
(2021)
Article
Biodiversity Conservation
Yi Wang, Jian Sun, Wen He, Chongchong Ye, Biying Liu, Youchao Chen, Tao Zeng, Shaoxiu Ma, Xiaoyu Gan, Chiyuan Miao, Huakun Zhou, Atsushi Tsunekawa
Summary: This study investigates the dominant factors of alpine vegetation distribution and predicts the future changes of vegetation boundary using climate models. The results show that precipitation plays a significant role in the distribution of alpine grasslands and reveal the migration of the grassland ecosystem under different climate change scenarios.
ECOLOGICAL INDICATORS
(2022)
Article
Mechanics
Ambrish Pandey
Summary: The study investigates the structure of the thermal boundary layer in Rayleigh-Benard convection for Prandtl number 0.021, finding that the local thermal boundary layer thickness varies in different regions due to the influence of Ra-beta(x) and beta(x). The research concludes that the thermal boundary layer structure eventually becomes uniform throughout the horizontal plate, despite deviations from the Prandtl-Blasius-Pohlhausen profile.
JOURNAL OF FLUID MECHANICS
(2021)
Article
Mechanics
Scott Morgan, Christopher Davies, Christian Thomas
Summary: The study investigates the control of stationary convective instabilities in the rotating disk boundary layer by modulating the disk rotation rate periodically. The addition of a time-periodic modulation stabilizes the flow and raises the critical Reynolds number for the onset of instabilities. Energy analysis shows a reduction in Reynolds stress energy production and an increase in viscous dissipation across the boundary layer with the time-periodic modulation. Comparisons are made with other control techniques such as distributed surface roughness and compliant walls.
JOURNAL OF FLUID MECHANICS
(2021)
Article
Mechanics
Yue Xiao, Bin Zhang, Moli Zhao, Shaowei Wang
Summary: This study examines the instability of the buoyancy-driven boundary layer on a vertical cylinder, providing mathematical descriptions and analytical solutions of the basic flow. Results show the effects of Prandtl number and transversal curvature, with significant differences in unstable modes observed for different Pr values.
Article
Engineering, Environmental
Qian Zhang, Jianchuan Qi, Baodong Cheng, Chang Yu, Sai Liang, Thomas O. Wiedmann, Yu Liu, Qiumeng Zhong
Summary: Achieving forest sustainability is a declared goal of sustainable development. Measuring global forests' safe operating space is crucial for sustainable forest management. Global timber harvests, mainly driven by developed nations and emerging economies, exceed national forestry boundaries in many countries.
ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
(2021)
Article
Environmental Sciences
Md Lokman Hossain, Jianfeng Li, Yangchen Lai, Carl Beierkuhnlein
Summary: Grassland ecosystems in northern China show varying levels of resistance and resilience to extreme climate events, such as droughts. Alpine and steppe grasslands exhibit higher resistance and lower resilience after extreme wet conditions, while lower resistance and higher resilience after extreme dry conditions. Hay meadows show stable resistance and resilience under climatic perturbations. Increasing trends of greenness were observed in alpine grassland, grass-dominated steppe, and hay meadow, while no significant changes were observed in arid and semi-arid steppes.
ENVIRONMENTAL MONITORING AND ASSESSMENT
(2023)
Article
Mechanics
Erik Lindborg
Summary: In this study, we investigate the Nusselt-Rayleigh number problem of Rayleigh-Benard convection and propose that the velocity and thermal boundary layer widths, delta(u) and delta(T), are controlled by the dissipation scales of turbulence outside the boundary layers. We derive the scaling relations for Nu, delta(T)/L, and delta(u)/L in the high Ra limit and find that they are independent of the Prandtl number. For Pr close to 1, we make a more general assumption and show that Nu scales with Ra-alpha/(3-alpha), where alpha is the intermediate scaling coefficient. We argue that the boundary layers will retain the intermediate scaling alpha = 3/4 in the limit of high Ra.
JOURNAL OF FLUID MECHANICS
(2023)
