Karl Benedict

Utilize cloud computing to support dust storm forecasting

Abstract The simulations and potential forecasting of dust storms are of significant interest to public health and environment sciences. Dust storms have interannual variabilities and are typical disruptive events. The computing platform for a dust storm forecasting operational system should support a disruptive fashion by scaling up to enable high-resolution forecasting and massive public access when dust storms come and scaling down when no dust storm events occur to save energy and costs. With the capability of providing a large, elastic, and virtualized pool of computational resources, cloud computing becomes a new and advantageous computing paradigm to resolve scientific problems traditionally requiring a large-scale and high-performance cluster. This paper examines the viability for cloud computing to support dust storm forecasting. Through a holistic study by systematically comparing cloud computing using Amazon EC2 to traditional high performance computing (HPC) cluster, we find that cloud computing is emerging as a credible solution for (1) supporting dust storm forecasting in spinning off a large group of computing resources in a few minutes to satisfy the disruptive computing requirements of dust storm forecasting, (2) performing high-resolution dust storm forecasting when required, (3) supporting concurrent computing requirements, (4) supporting real dust storm event forecasting for a large geographic domain by using recent dust storm event in Phoniex, 05 July 2011 as example, and (5) reducing cost by maintaining low computing support when there is no dust storm events while invoking a large amount of computing resource to perform high-resolution forecasting and responding to large amount of concurrent public accesses.

Using adaptively coupled models and high-performance computing for enabling the computability of dust storm forecasting

Forecasting dust storms for large geographical areas with high resolution poses great challenges for scientific and computational research. Limitations of computing power and the scalability of parallel systems preclude an immediate solution to such challenges. This article reports our research on using adaptively coupled models to resolve the computational challenges and enable the computability of dust storm forecasting by dividing the large geographical domain into multiple subdomains based on spatiotemporal distributions of the dust storm. A dust storm model (Eta-8bin) performs a quick forecasting with low resolution (22 km) to identify potential hotspots with high dust concentration. A finer model, non-hydrostatic mesoscale model (NMM-dust) performs high-resolution (3 km) forecasting over the much smaller hotspots in parallel to reduce computational requirements and computing time. We also adopted spatiotemporal principles among computing resources and subdomains to optimize parallel systems and improve the performance of high-resolution NMM-dust model. This research enabled the computability of high-resolution, large-area dust storm forecasting using the adaptively coupled execution of the two models Eta-8bin and NMM-dust.

Functional Requirements Specification for Archival Asset Management: Identification and Integration of Essential Properties of Services-Oriented Architecture Products

The complexity and size of geospatial data can constrain the capabilities of service providers and create risks to the long-term preservation and archiving of valuable information assets. While services-oriented architectures such as the Earth Data Analysis Centers Geographic Storage, Transformation and Retrieval Engine (GSToRE 1) facilitate increased use and impact of geospatial data by mitigating these complexities by development of dynamic applications and interfaces, such services can often be primarily focused on the maintenance and delivery of only the most current versions of geospatial data that may nonetheless possess significant historical, cultural, or scientific value. Actions and documentation required to assure long-term preservation may not be supported by existing business models or may be otherwise compromised. However, general purpose archives offer a preservation capability that is complementary to the value created by dynamic service providers. We present an overview of the features of GSToRE, and the DSpace 2 repository platform and describe the requirements of a methodology for the harvest, quality assurance, and ingest of geospatial data into an institutional repository as a complement to the dynamic data access and visualization services provided by GSToRE and systems like it.

Projecting Avian Responses to Landscape Management Along the Middle Rio Grande, New Mexico

Abstract Most lowland rivers in the southwestern United States have been impounded, diverted, or dewatered. Lack of flooding due to river impoundments on the Middle Rio Grande has contributed to the spread of exotic vegetation such as Russian olive (Elaeagnus angustifolia) and saltcedar (Tamarix) associated with fuel loads of dense understory. Management has largely focused on thinning of understory vegetation to remove nonnative species and reduce fire risk, but it is unclear how these actions impact avian populations. Using distance-sampling methods, we quantified densities of five groups of birds (birds nesting in canopy, midstory, and understory; water-obligates; and spring migrants) across 12 types of vegetation spanning managed and nonmanaged stands. We used a space-for-time substitution model to estimate changes in abundance of birds from scenarios that applied four possible options for management at the landscape scale. One option, mechanical clearing of cottonwood understory, had severe detrimental impacts for abundances of the three nesting guilds and spring migrants when applied across the study area. A hand-thinning method to remove most exotics but retain native shrubs and the ground layer also negatively impacted birds nesting in understory but had positive or no effect on the other four groups of birds. Over the short term (5–10 years), not clearing would increase the proportion of native and nonnative understory and generally increase abundances of birds. With application of “no management” over a longer period (50–75 years), we assumed transition of most cottonwood (Populus deltoides var. wislizeii) stands to shrublands of Russian olive and projected that canopy-nesting birds would decrease but other groups would increase. A scenario of wetland restoration that converted 25% of open habitat to wetland increased abundances of understory-nesting birds slightly and water-obligate birds substantially. Our projections of changes in avian populations will help managers evaluate biological impacts of management being considered for the Middle Rio Grande. Resumen La mayoría de los ríos de tierra baja del suroeste de los Estados Unidos ha sido embalsada, desviada, o deshidratada. La falta de inundaciones debido a embalses de la parte media del río Bravo ha contribuido a la propagación de vegetación exótica como el olivo ruso (Elaeagnus angustifolia) y el cedro salado (Tamarix), asociada con cargas de combustible del sotobosque denso. El manejo se ha enfocado en disminuir la vegetación del sotobosque para remover las especies no nativas y reducir los riesgos de incendios, pero no es claro el impacto que estas acciones tienen sobre las poblaciones aviarias. Por medio de métodos de muestreo a distancia, cuantificamos las abundancias de cinco grupos de aves (pájaros que anidan en el dosel, el estrato medio y el sotobosque; obligados al agua; y especies migratorias primaverales) en 12 tipos de vegetación en parcelas manejadas y no manejadas. Utilizamos un modelo de sustitución de espacio por tiempo para estimar los cambios de abundancia de aves en escenarios que aplicaron cuatro posibles opciones para manejo a escala de paisaje. Una opción, la limpieza mecánica de álamos del sotobosque, tuvo impactos negativos severos sobre la abundancia de los tres grupos de aves según su anidación y las especies migratorias primaverales cuando se aplicó a toda el área de estudio. El método de limpieza manual para remover la mayoría de las especies exóticas y mantener los arbustos nativos y el sotobosque también impactó negativamente a las aves anidando en el sotobosque pero tuvo un impacto positivo o neutro en los otros cuatro grupos de aves. A corto plazo (5–10 años), no limpiar incrementaría la proporción del sotobosque nativo y no nativo y en general incrementaría la abundancia de aves. Con la aplicación de “no-manejo” a largo plazo (50–75 años), asumimos la transición de la mayoría de las parcelas de álamos (Populus deltoides var. wislizeii) a matorrales de olivos rusos y proyectamos que las aves que anidan en el dosel disminuirán pero las aves de los otros grupos se incrementarán. Un escenario de restauración de humedales que convirtió 25% del hábitat abierto a humedales incrementó la abundancia de las aves anidando en el sotobosque en poca medida pero incrementó sustancialmente la abundancia de las aves ligadas a agua. Nuestras proyecciones sobre los cambios en las poblaciones de aves ayudarán a evaluar los impactos biológicos del manejo siendo considerado para la parte medio del río Bravo.