How does tree age influence damage and recovery in forests impacted by freezing rain and snow?

The response and recovery mechanisms of forests to damage from freezing rain and snow events are a key topic in forest research and management. However, the relationship between the degree of damage and tree age, i.e., whether seedlings, young trees, or adult trees are most vulnerable, remains unclear and is rarely reported. We investigated the effect of tree age on the degrees of vegetation damage and subsequent recovery in three subtropical forest types-coniferous, mixed, and broad-leaved —in the Tianjing Mountains, South China, after a series of rare icy rain and freezing snow events in 2008. The results showed that damage and recovery rates were both dependent on tree age, with the proportion of damaged vegetation increasing with age(estimated by diameter at breast height, DBH) in all three forest types and gradually plateauing. Significant variation occurred among forest types. Young trees in the coniferous forest were more vulnerable than those in the broad-leaved forest. The type of damage also varied with tree age in different ways in the three forest types. The proportion of young seedlings that were uprooted(the most severe type of damage) was highest in the coniferous forest. In the mixed forest, young trees were significantly more likely to be uprooted than seedlings and adult trees, while in the broad-leaved forest, the proportion of uprooted adult trees was significantly higher than that of seedlings and young trees. There were also differences among forest types in how tree age affected damage recovery. In the coniferous forest, the recovery rate of trees with broken trunks or crowns(DBH > 2.5 cm) increased with tree age. However, in the mixed and broad-leaved forests, no obvious correlation between the recovery rate of trees with broken trunks or crowns and tree age was observed. Trees with severe root damage did not recover; they were uprooted and died. In these forests, vegetation damage and recovery showed tree age dependencies, which varied with tree shape, forest type, and damage type. Understanding this dependency will guide restoration after freezing rain and snow disturbances.

Indications of stratospheric anomalies in the freezing rain and snow disaster in South China,2008

NCEP/NCAR reanalysis data were used to characterize stratospheric temperature and water-vapor anomalies before and after the freezing rain and snow disaster of South China in 2008,and the influence of stratospheric circulation anomalies on the troposphere.Stratospheric temperature and water-vapor anomalies provided good leading indicators of this weather event.The period from December 1st 2007 to February 28th 2008 was divided into 18 pentads.During the 6th pentad,temperature decreased significantly at 10 hPa in the near-polar stratospheric region,and the decreasing trend strengthened and extended downward and southward to middle and lower latitudes.During the 14th-18th pentads,the temperature decrease reached its maximum and extended to 30°N.This coincided with the widespread freezing rain and snow event.By the end of January 2008,the temperature decrease ended in the near-polar stratospheric region,but continued in the mid-latitude area of the troposphere as the freezing rain and snow weather persisted.Similar to the temperature variations,positive anomalies of relative humidity in the stratospheric near-polar region also strengthened and extended downward and southward,coinciding with the freezing rain and snow event.Along with the significant relationship between the freezing rain and snow disaster and stratospheric circulation anomalies,the stratospheric polar vortex changed its shape in late December,intensifying and spreading downward from the top of the stratosphere and southward to the Asian continent,resulting in a deepening of the East Asian Trough and a strengthening of meridional circulation.Before the occurrence of the freezing rain and snow event,temperature and vapor increases in the stratosphere transferred downward to the troposphere,along with a stratospheric flow in the near-polar region southward to lower latitudes.

Comparative Analysis on the Rainfall and Snowfall Weather with Close Interval Time and the Key Point of Forecast

From the circulation situation,the influence system,the temperature stratification characteristics in middle and low levels,the application of numerical forecast products and so on,the rainfall and snowfall weather processes with shorter interval time in February of 2009 were contrasted and analyzed.The results showed that it not only needed analyze in detail the vertical distribution situation of temperature,but also needed exactly forecast the invasion time of cold air and the decline speed of temperature to judge the precipitation form in winter was the rain or the snow.Particularly,the temperature threshold in high-low level which coordinated with the boundary of rain and snow was the key point of rain and snow forecast.Before the precipitation,different temperatures in high-altitude and on the ground were main causes of different precipitation natures.

The Unprecedented Freezing Disaster in January 2008 in Southern China and Its Possible Association with the Global Warming

The unprecedented disaster of low temperature and persistent rain, snow, and ice storms, causing widespread freezing in the Yangtze River Basin and southern China in January 2008, is not a local or regional event, but a part of the chain events of large-scale low temperature and snow storms in the same period in Asia. The severity and impacts of the southern China 2008 freezing disaster were the most significant among others. This disastrous event was characterized by three major features： （1） snowfall, freezing rain, and rainfall, the three forms of precipitation, coexisted with freezing rain being the dominant producer responsible for the disaster; （2） low temperature, rain and snow, and freezing rain exhibited extremely great intensity, with record-breaking measurements observed for eight meteorological variables based on the statistics made by China National Climate Center and the provincial meteorological services in the Yangtze River Basin and southern China; （3） the disastrous weathers persisted for an exceptionally long time period, unrecorded before in the meteorological observation history of China. The southern China 2008 freezing disaster may be resulted from multiple different factors that superimpose on and interlink with one another at the right time and place. Among them, the La Nina situation is a climate background that provided conducive conditions for the intrusions of cold air into southern China; the persistent anomaly of the atmospheric circulation in Eurasia is the direct cause for a succession of cold air incursions into southern China; and the northward transport of warm and moist airflows from the Bay of Bengal and South China Sea finally warranted the formation of the freezing rain and snow storms and their prolonged dominance in the southern areas of China. A preliminary discussion of a possible association of this disastrous event with the global warming is presented. This event may be viewed as a short-term regional perturbation to the global warming. There is not any possibility for this event to divert the long-term trend and the overall pattern of the global warming.

A primary-secondary background model with sliding window PCA algorithm

Rain and snow seriously degrade outdoor video quality.In this work,a primary-secondary background model for removal of rain and snow is built.First,we analyze video noise and use a sliding window sequence principal component analysis de-nosing algorithm to reduce white noise in the video.Next,we apply the Gaussian mixture model(GMM)to model the video and segment all foreground objects primarily.After that,we calculate von Mises distribution of the velocity vectors and ratio of the overlapped region with referring to the result of the primary segmentation and extract the interesting object.Finally,rain and snow streaks are inpainted using the background to improve the quality of the video data.Experiments show that the proposed method can effectively suppress noise and extract interesting targets.