Cosmogenic chlorine-36 reveals dates of the multiple prehistoric earthquakes that have produced a scarp on the Hebgen Lake fault. Apparent chlorine-36 ages are stratigraphically correct, follow a predicted theoretical pattern, and produce geologically reasonable model ages of 24, 20, 7.0, 2.6, 1.7, and 0.4 thousand years ago. This result demonstrates the feasibility of using cosmogenic chlorine-36 to extract paleoearthquake records from bedrock fault scarps.
Expert assessments for crop and range productivity of very-large arid and semiarid areas worldwide are ever more in demand and these studies require greater sensitivity in delineating the different grades or levels of soil salinity. In conjunction with field study in arid southeastern Oregon, we assess the merit of adding decision-tree analysis (DTA) to a commonly used remote-sensing method. Randomly sampled surface soil horizons were analyzed for saturation percentage, field capacity, pH and electrical conductivity (EC). IFSAR data were acquired for terrain analysis and surficial geological mapping, followed by derivation of layers for analysis. Significant correlation was found between EC values and surface elevation, bands 1, 2, 3 and 4 of the Landsat TM image, and brightness and wetness indices. Maximum-likelihood supervised classification of the Landsat images yields two salinity classes: non-saline soils (EC < 4 dSm -1 ), prediction accuracy of 97%, and saline soils (EC > 4 dSm -1 ), prediction accuracy 60%. Addition of DTA results in successful prediction of five classes of soil salinity and an overall accuracy of about 99%. Moreover, the calculated area of salt-affected soil was overestimated when mapped using remote sensing data only compared to that predicted by additionally using DTA. DTA is a promising approach for mapping soil salinity in more productive and accurate ways compared to only using remote-sensing analysis.
OPEN ACCESSRemote Sens. 2010, 2 152
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.