This paper deals with the problem of optimization of the final turn–into-the-wind maneuver of an aerial delivery system with account of the best known winds. The wind model required for the optimization algorithm to work may utilize onboard wind estimates only, incorporate the ground winds provided a priori or on-line by the target ground station, or be based on the winds measured and uplinked ...

Operational ground-based measurements of snow water equivalent (SWE) do not adequately explain spatial variability in mountainous terrain. To address this problem, we combine satellite-based retrievals of fractional snow cover for the period 20 0 0 to 2011 with spatially distributed energy balance calculations to reconstruct SWE values throughout each melt season in the Sierra Nevada of Califor...

Mountainous areas form a very specific context for sound propagation: There is a particular ground effect and meteorological conditions are often extreme. In this paper, detailed sound propagation calculations are compared to noise measurements accompanied by meteorological observations. The sound source considered is road traffic along the center axis of a valley. Noise levels were measured in...

The performance of a new algorithm for binary snow cover monitoring based on Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) satellite images at 250 m resolution is validated using snow cover maps (SCA) based on Landsat 7 ETM+ images and in situ snow depth measurements from ground stations in selected test sites in Central Europe. The advantages of the proposed algorithm are the improved ...

This study aims to evaluate quantitatively the land surface temperature (LST) derived from MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) MOD11A1 and MYD11A1 Collection 5 products for daily land air surface temperature (Ta) estimation over a mountainous region in northern Vietnam. The main objective is to estimate maximum and minimum Ta (Ta-max and Ta-min) using both TERRA and AQUA MODIS...

BACKGROUND Injury is the leading cause of death in teenagers worldwide. In Taiwan, people in mountainous areas have a 4 to 8 years shorter life span than the general population. Injury among teenagers is likely a major cause. The objective of this study was to investigate the regional differences in the prevalence, the risk factors, and the medical expenditures for injury among Taiwanese teenag...

The Himalayan mountain arc is one of the hotspots of biodiversity on earth, and species diversity is expected to be especially high among insects in this region. Little is known about the origin of the Himalayan insect fauna. With respect to the fauna of high altitude cloud forests, it has generally been accepted that Himalayan lineages are derived from ancestors that immigrated from Western As...

Updated extent, area, and spatial distribution of tropical evergreen forests from inventory data provides valuable knowledge for research of the carbon cycle, biodiversity, and ecosystem services in tropical regions. However, acquiring these data in mountainous regions requires labor-intensive, often cost-prohibitive field protocols. Here, we report about validated methods to rapidly identify t...

The spaceborne ESA-mission CHRIS/PROBA (Compact High Resolution Imaging SpectrometerProject for On-board Autonomy) provides hyperspectral and multidirectional data of selected targets spread over the world. While the spectral information content of CHRIS/PROBA data is able to assess the biochemistry of a vegetation canopy, the directional information can describe the structure of an observed ca...