Search results for " engineering"

2018

The Radar Vegetation Index (RVI) is a well-established microwave metric of vegetation cover. The index utilizes measured linear scattering intensities from co- and cross-polarization and is normalized to ideally range from 0 to 1, increasing with vegetation cover. At long wavelengths (L-band) microwave scattering does not only contain information coming from vegetation scattering, but also from soil scattering (moisture & roughness) and therefore the standard formulation of RVI needs to be revised. Using global level SMAP L-band radar data, we illustrate that RVI runs up to 1.2, due to the pre-factor in the standard formulation not being adjusted to the scattering mechanisms at these lo…

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…

Towards Understanding the Interconnection between Celestial Pole Motion and Earth’s Magnetic Field Using Space Geodetic Techniques

2021

The understanding of forced temporal variations in celestial pole motion (CPM) could bring us significantly closer to meeting the accuracy goals pursued by the Global Geodetic Observing System (GGOS) of the International Association of Geodesy (IAG), i.e., 1 mm accuracy and 0.1 mm/year stability on global scales in terms of the Earth orientation parameters. Besides astronomical forcing, CPM excitation depends on the processes in the fluid core and the core–mantle boundary. The same processes are responsible for the variations in the geomagnetic field (GMF). Several investigations were conducted during the last decade to find a possible interconnection of GMF changes with the length of day (…

Modelling nitrous oxide emissions from cropland at the regional scale

2006

Arable soils are a large source of nitrous oxide (N2O) emissions, making up half of the biogenic emissions worldwide. Estimating their source strength requires methods capable of capturing the spatial and temporal variability of N2O emissions, along with the effects of crop management. Here, we applied a process-based model, CERES, with geo-referenced input data on soils, weather, and land use to map N2O emissions from wheat-cropped soils in three agriculturally intensive regions in France. Emissions were mostly controlled by soil type and local climate conditions, and only to a minor extent by the doses of fertilizer nitrogen applied. As a result, the direct emission factors calculated at …

2019

The HyPlant imaging spectrometer is a high-performance airborne instrument consisting of two sensor modules. The DUAL module records hyperspectral data in the spectral range from 400–2500 nm, which is useful to derive biochemical and structural plant properties. In parallel, the FLUO module acquires data in the red and near infrared range (670–780 nm), with a distinctly higher spectral sampling interval and finer spectral resolution. The technical specifications of HyPlant FLUO allow for the retrieval of sun-induced chlorophyll fluorescence (SIF), a small signal emitted by plants, which is directly linked to their photosynthetic efficiency. The combined use of both HyPlant modules opens up …

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…

Evaluation of the S-NPP VIIRS land surface temperature product using ground data acquired by an autonomous system at a rice paddy

2018

Abstract The S-NPP VIIRS Land Surface Temperature (LST) product attained the stage V1 of validation maturity (provisional validated) at the end of 2014. This paper evaluates the current VIIRS V1 LST product versus concurrent ground data acquired at a rice paddy site from December 2014 to August 2016. The experimental site has three different seasonal and homogeneous land covers through the year, which makes the site interesting for validation activities. An autonomous and multiangular system was used to record continuous ground data at the site. The data acquired at zenith angles similar to the VIIRS viewing angles were used for the validation to avoid possible differences between satellite…

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.

Benchmarking numerical models of brittle thrust wedges

2016

International audience; We report quantitative results from three brittle thrust wedge experiments, comparing numerical resultsdirectly with each other and with corresponding analogue results. We first test whether the participatingcodes reproduce predictions from analytical critical taper theory. Eleven codes pass the stable wedgetest, showing negligible internal deformation and maintaining the initial surface slope upon horizontaltranslation over a frictional interface. Eight codes participated in the unstable wedge test that examinesthe evolution of a wedge by thrust formation from a subcritical state to the critical taper geometry. Thecritical taper is recovered, but the models show two…

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…