Search results for " Environmental Engineering"

Quantifying vegetation biophysical variables from the Sentinel-3/FLEX tandem mission: Evaluation of the synergy of OLCI and FLORIS data sources

2020

The ESA’s forthcoming FLuorescence EXplorer (FLEX) mission is dedicated to the global monitoring of the vegetation’s chlorophyll fluorescence by means of an imaging spectrometer, FLORIS. In order to properly interpret the fluorescence signal in relation to photosynthetic activity, essential vegetation variables need to be retrieved concomitantly. FLEX will fly in tandem with Sentinel-3 (S3), which conveys the Ocean and Land Colour Instrument (OLCI) that is designed to characterize the atmosphere and the terrestrial vegetation at a spatial resolution of 300 m. In this work we present the retrieval models of four essential biophysical variables: (1) Leaf Area Index (LAI), (2) leaf chlorophyll…

Hybrid inversion of radiative transfer models based on high spatial resolution satellite reflectance data improves fractional vegetation cover retrie…

2021

In forest landscapes affected by fire, the estimation of fractional vegetation cover (FVC) from remote sensing data using radiative transfer models (RTMs) enables to evaluate the ecological impact of such disturbance across plant communities at different spatio-temporal scales. Even though, when landscapes are highly heterogeneous, the fine-scale ground spatial variation might not be properly captured if FVC products are provided at moderate or coarse spatial scales, as typical of most of operational Earth observing satellite missions. The objective of this study was to evaluate the potential of a RTM inversion approach for estimating FVC from satellite reflectance data at high spatial reso…

Crop specific algorithms trained over ground measurements provide the best performance for GAI and fAPAR estimates from Landsat-8 observations

2021

Abstract Estimation of Green Area Index (GAI) and fraction of Absorbed Photosynthetically Active Radiation (fAPAR) from decametric satellites was investigated in this study using a large database of ground measurements over croplands. It covers six main crop types including rice, corn, wheat and barley, sunflower, soybean and other types of crops. Ground measurements were completed using either digital hemispherical cameras, LAI-2000 or AccuPAR devices over sites representative of a decametric pixel. Sites were spread over the globe and the data collected at several growth stages concurrently to the acquisition of Landsat-8 images. Several machine learning techniques were investigated to re…

The effect of microscale pore structure on matrix diffusion—a site-specific study on tonalite

1997

Abstract The matrix diffusion of non-sorbing tracers was studied in rocks from the Syyry area, Central Finland (SY1). The effect of alteration and weathering on rock matrix porosity and on the available pore space, which affects diffusivity, are discussed. The main rock type in the crystalline bedrock of Syyry is a slightly foliated, gray tonalite with mica gneiss inclusions as well as minor, more mafic inclusions. The total porosity and the spatial porosity distribution and microstructure of the rocks were investigated using infiltration of carbon- 14-methylmethacrylate, electron microscopy and Hg-porosimetry. The laboratory-scale diffusion experiments were performed using (1) the out-leac…

A space-time rainfall generator for highly convective Mediterranean rainstorms

2003

Distributed hydrological models require fine resolution rainfall inputs, enhancing the practical interest of space-time rainfall models, capable of generating through numerical simulation realistic space-time rainfall intensity fields. Among different mathematical approaches, those based on point processes and built upon a convenient analytical description of the raincell as the fundamental unit, have shown to be particularly suitable and well adapted when extreme rainfall events of convective nature are considered. Starting from previous formulations, some analytical refinements have been considered, allowing practical generation of space-time rainfall intensity fields for that type of rai…

2016

Gianluca Tramontana was supported by the GEOCARBON EU FP7 project (GA 283080). Dario Papale, Martin Jung and Markus Reichstein acknowledge funding from the EU FP7 project GEOCARBON (grant agreement no. 283080) and the EU H2020 BACI project (grant agreement no. 640176). Gustau Camps-Valls wants to acknowledge the support by an ERC Consolidator Grant with grant agreement 647423 (SEDAL). Kazuhito Ichii was supported by Environment Research and Technology Development Funds (2-1401) from the Ministry of the Environment of Japan and the JAXA Global Change Observation Mission (GCOM) project (no. 115). Christopher R. Schwalm was supported by National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) gran…

Soil evaporation monitoring : a possible synergism of microwave and infrared remote sensing

1995

Abstract Microwave remote sensing allows the measurement of the water content (θs) at the soil surface within a layer of a few centimetres. When combined with climatic data, θs is a relevant quantity to estimate the evaporation of bare soils. The implementation of a simple daily evaporation (Ed) model on bare soils based on a knowledge of θs is analysed. In order to cover a wide range of soil, soil moisture and climatic conditions, the analysis was carried out on a set of data simulated by a mechanistic model of heat and water flows in the soil. Propagation error analysis on the inputs (θs, daily potential evaporation and wind velocity) of the simple model shows that an accuracy of ± 1.5 mm…

Enhancing the retrieval of stream surface temperature from Landsat data

2019

International audience; Thermal images of water bodies often show a radiance gradient perpendicular to the banks. This effect is frequently due to mixed land and water thermal pixels. In the case of the Landsat images, radiance mixing can also affect pure water pixels due the cubic convolution resampling of the native thermal measurements. Some authors recommended a general-purpose margin of two thermal pixels to the banks or a minimum river width of three pixels, to avoid near bank effects in water temperature retrievals. Given the relatively course spatial resolution of satellite thermal sensors, the three pixel margin severely restricts their application to temperature mapping in many ri…

Estimation of evapotranspiration using SVAT models and surface IR temperature

1995

Soil Vegetation Atmosphere Transfer (SVAT) models have been implemented to estimate energy and mass fluxes between soil, vegetation and atmosphere of various ecosystems. They can also simulate remote sensing data and in particular thermal infrared surface temperature. Usually, these models are simple, but they use realistic descriptions of radiative, turbulent and water transfers. These include description of stomatal control of transpiration fluxes. Some studies have shown that such models may be used to derive evapotranspiration from surface temperature, using inversion procedures. In this study, inversion of two different SVAT models are compared.

Approach to a water safety plan for recreational waters: disinfection of a drainage pumping station as an unconventional point source of fecal contam…

2020

Abstract In the context of the management of bathing water quality, the intermittent contamination of rainwater drainage pumps (unconventional point sources) could be controlled by peracetic acid disinfection. Thus, a field experimental study was carried out to set up a water safety plan, determining the monitoring parameters and the critical limit for corrective actions. With a 0.5 mg/l dosage, the average logarithmic microbial reduction was 0.50 ± 0.48 for Escherichia coli (EC) and 0.43 ± 0.54 for intestinal enterococci. Among the chemical and physical parameters that could be monitored in real time, the oxidation–reduction potential was the only one able to predict the microbial concentr…