Limitations on the recruitment of the rare sand shrubby legume Eremosparton songoricum(Fabaceae) in Gurbantunggut Desert,China

Eremosparton songoricum,a rare and endemic sand dune plant,appears to be experiencing recruitment failure.The structure of five populations from the Gurbantunggut Desert,China,was investigated for recruitment patterns,and two of them were examined for flowering,pollination and seed germination limits on regeneration.The results showed that total 150 seedlings only occurred on line transects in riverside Dure population,but they all died half a month later;no seedlings occurred in other four hinterland desert populations indicating recruitment was a failure at all populations although flowers were plentiful.Reproductive success depends on pollinators.Nectar is ＇reward＇ for pollinators,with 0.06 μL-0.12 μL and 0.15 μL-0.35 μL per flower in Dure and Kabu populations,respectively,in continuously two secreting days.Spontaneous self pollination is rare with nearly zero fruit production.Geitonogamous self pollination is predominant with 14.47% fruit set.Seed mass in the riverside Dure population was significantly greater than that in other hinterland desert populations.Consequently,the Dure population exhibited a significantly higher germination rate（about 90%） than those in other populations（about 30%）.Results suggested that recruitment failure of E.songoricum is not due to flower shortage,pollination limitation,or poor seed germination but environmental pressure and/or human disturbance.

Gaussian process tomography based on Bayesian data analysis for soft x-ray and AXUV diagnostics on EAST

This work presents the Gaussian process tomography(GPT)based on Bayesian data analysis and its applications in soft x-ray(SXR)and absolute extreme ultraviolet spectroscopy(AXUV)diagnostics on experimental advanced superconducting tokamak(EAST).This is the first application of the GPT method in the AXUV diagnostic system in fusion devices.It is found that even if only horizontal detector arrays are used to reconstruct the two-dimensional(2D)distribution of SXR and AXUV emissivity fields,the GPT method performs robustly and extremely fast,which enables the GPT method to provide real-time feedback on impurity transport and fast magnetohydrodynamics(MHD)events.By reconstructing SXR emissivity in the poloidal cross section on EAST,an m/n=1/1 internal kink mode has been observed,and the plasma redistribution due to the kink mode is clearly visible in the reconstructions,where m is the poloidal mode number and n is the toroidal mode number.Sawtooth-like internal disruptions extended throughout the entire plasma core and mainly driven by the m/n=2/1 mode have been acquired.During the sawtooth-like internal disruption crash phase,the conversion from an m=2 mode to an m=1 mode is observed.Using the reconstructed AXUV emissivity field we were able to observe the process of impurity accumulated in the plasma core and the mitigation of core impurity due to neon injection in the plasma edge.The data from all other diagnostics involved in the analysis shows that the reconstructions from AXUV measurements are reliable.