Rugosity

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Rugosity, fr, is a measure of small-scale variations of amplitude in the height of a surface,

Contents

where Ar is the real (true, actual) surface area and Ag is the geometric surface area. [1]

Utility

Rugosity calculations are commonly used in materials science to characterize surfaces, amongst others, in marine science to characterize seafloor habitats. A common technique to measure seafloor rugosity is Risk's chain-and-tape method [2] but with the advent of underwater photography less invasive quantitative methods have been developed. Some examples include measuring small-scale seafloor bottom roughness from microtopographic laser scanning (Du Preez and Tunnicliffe 2012), [3] and deriving multi-scale measures of rugosity, slope and aspect from benthic stereo image reconstructions (Friedman et al. 2012). [4]

Inconsistency

Despite the popularity of using rugosity for two- and three-dimensional surface analyses, methodological inconsistency has been problematic. Building off recent advances, the new arc-chord ratio (ACR) rugosity index is capable of measuring the rugosity of two-dimensional profiles and three-dimensional surfaces using a single method (Du Preez 2015). [5] The ACR rugosity index is defined as the contoured (real) surface area divided by the area of the surface orthogonally projected onto a plane of best fit (POBF), where the POBF is a function (linear interpolation) of the boundary data only. Using a POBF, instead of an arbitrary horizontal geometric plane, results in an important advantage of the ACR rugosity index: unlike most rugosity indices ACR rugosity is not confounded by slope.

Ecology: As a measure of complexity, rugosity is presumed to be an indicator of the amount of available habitat available for colonization by benthic organisms (those attached to the seafloor), and shelter and foraging area for mobile organisms.

Geology: For marine geologists and geomorphologists, rugosity is a useful characteristic in distinguishing different types of seafloors in remote sensing applications (e.g., sonar and laser altimetry, based from ships, planes or satellites).

Oceanography: Among oceanographers, rugosity is recognized to influence small-scale hydrodynamics by converting organized laminar or oscillatory flow into energy-dissipating turbulence.

Coral biology: High rugosity is often an indication of the presence of coral, which creates a complex surface as it grows. A rugose seafloor's tendency to generate turbulence is understood to promote the growth of coral and coralline algae by delivering nutrient-rich water after the organisms have depleted the nutrients from the envelope of water immediately surrounding their tissues.

See also

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Benoit B.Mandelbrot was a Polish-born French-American mathematician and polymath with broad interests in the practical sciences, especially regarding what he labeled as "the art of roughness" of physical phenomena and "the uncontrolled element in life". He referred to himself as a "fractalist" and is recognized for his contribution to the field of fractal geometry, which included coining the word "fractal", as well as developing a theory of "roughness and self-similarity" in nature.

Fractal Self similar mathematical structures

In mathematics, a fractal is a geometric shape containing detailed structure at arbitrarily small scales, usually having a fractal dimension strictly exceeding the topological dimension. Many fractals appear similar at various scales, as illustrated in successive magnifications of the Mandelbrot set. This exhibition of similar patterns at increasingly smaller scales is called self-similarity, also known as expanding symmetry or unfolding symmetry; if this replication is exactly the same at every scale, as in the Menger sponge, the shape is called affine self-similar. Fractal geometry lies within the mathematical branch of measure theory.

Benthos Community of organisms that live in the benthic zone

Benthos, also known as benthon, is the community of organisms that live on, in, or near the bottom of a sea, river, lake, or stream, also known as the benthic zone. This community lives in or near marine or freshwater sedimentary environments, from tidal pools along the foreshore, out to the continental shelf, and then down to the abyssal depths.

Reef A shoal of rock, coral or other sufficiently coherent material, lying beneath the surface of water

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Cold seep Ocean floor area where hydrogen sulfide, methane and other hydrocarbon-rich fluid seepage occurs

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Benthic zone Ecological region at the lowest level of a body of water

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Seafloor mapping Measurement and presentation of water depth of a given body of water

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Geological structure measurement by LiDAR technology is a remote sensing method applied in structural geology. It enables monitoring and characterisation of rock bodies. This method's typical use is to acquire high resolution structural and deformational data for identifying geological hazards risk, such as assessing rockfall risks or studying pre-earthquake deformation signs.

Pore structure

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References

  1. IUPAC , Compendium of Chemical Terminology , 2nd ed. (the "Gold Book") (1997). Online corrected version: (2006) " Roughness factor (rugosity) of a surface ". doi : 10.1351/goldbook.R05419
  2. Risk, M. J. 1972. "Fish diversity on a coral reef in the Virgin Islands." Atoll Res. Bull. 193:1-6 [doi:10.5479/si.00775630. 153.1]
  3. Du Preez, C. and V. Tunnicliffe. (2012). "A new video survey method of microtopographic laser scanning (MiLS) to measure small-scale seafloor bottom roughness." Limnology and Oceanography: Methods. 10:899-909. [DOI 10.4319/lom.2012.10.899].
  4. Friedman A, Pizarro O, Williams SB, Johnson-Roberson M (2012) "Multi-Scale Measures of Rugosity, Slope and Aspect from Benthic Stereo Image Reconstructions". PLoS ONE 7(12): e50440. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0050440
  5. Du Preez, C. 2015. "A new arc-chord ratio (ACR) rugosity index for quantifying three-dimensional landscape structural complexity". Landscape Ecology. 30: 181-192. doi: 10.1007/s10980-014-0118-8.