A semidistributed, physical‐based Urban Forest Effects – Hydrology (UFORE‐Hydro) model was created to simulate and study tree effects on urban hydrology and guide management of urban runoff at the catchment scale. The model simulates hydrological processes of precipitation, interception, evaporation, infiltration, and runoff using data inputs of weather, elevation, and land cover along with nine channel, soil, and vegetation parameters. Weather data are pre‐processed by UFORE using Penman‐Monteith equations to provide potential evaporation terms for open water and vegetation. Canopy interception algorithms modified established routines to better account for variable density urban trees, short vegetation, and seasonal growth phenology. Actual evaporation algorithms allocate potential energy between leaf surface storage and transpiration from soil storage. Infiltration algorithms use a variable rain rate Green‐Ampt formulation and handle both infiltration excess and saturation excess ponding and runoff. Stream discharge is the sum of surface runoff and TOPMODEL‐based subsurface flow equations. Automated calibration routines that use observed discharge has been coupled to the model. Once calibrated, the model can examine how alternative tree management schemes impact urban runoff. UFORE‐Hydro model testing in the urban Dead Run catchment of Baltimore, Maryland, illustrated how trees significantly reduce runoff for low intensity and short duration precipitation events.
The digestibility and structural changes of rice starch induced by heat-moisture treatment (HMT) were investigated, and the relationships among the moisture content-starch structure-starch digestibility were revealed. HMT could simultaneously disorder and reassemble the rice starch molecules across multi-scale lengths and convert some fractions of rapidly-digestible starch (RDS) into slowly-digestible starch (SDS) and resistant starch (RS). In particular, the HMT rice starch with less than 30% moisture content showed a higher SDS+RS content (25.0%). During HMT, SDS and RS were preferably formed by the degraded starch molecules with M between 4×10 and 4×10g/mol, single helices and amylose-lipids complexes that were formed by degraded starch chains with higher thermal stability and crystalline lamellae with greater thicknesses. Thus, our research suggests a potential approach using HMT to control the digestion of starch products with desired digestibility.
Waterlogging is one of the most serious hazards in China. Old-style residences in cities are prone to be damaged by waterlogging hazards. This paper describes our exposure assessment of old-style residences in Shanghai during rainstorm waterlogging. Two rainstorm scenarios of 20-year and 50-year return periods were simulated with the rainstorm simulation model from Shanghai Flood Risk Information Center. Each old-style residence was ranked according to its degree of exposure indicated by the inundation depth of that residence. An exposure assessment model was then built to integrate three ranks of exposure in order to reflect the total exposure features of a district and to compare disaster situation among different districts. Our research results reveal that Hongkou District and Huangpu District are the regions most necessary for the government to carry out safety defense in old-style residences, while rainstorms bring little effect on old-style residences in the districts of Putuo, Luwan, Changning, Zhabei, and Jing'an. These results provide important information for Shanghai Municipal Government to improve waterlogging management, and the method of exposure assessment can also be applied in other cities to provide guidance regarding flood risk control.
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.