Search results for " technology"

Who's better at spotting? A comparison between aerial photography and observer-based methods to monitor floating marine litter and marine mega-fauna.

2020

Pollution by marine litter is raising major concerns due to its potential impact on marine biodiversity and, above all, on endangered mega-fauna species, such as cetaceans and sea turtles. The density and distribution of marine litter and mega-fauna have been traditionally monitored through observer-based methods, yet the advent of new technologies has introduced aerial photography as an alternative monitoring method. However, to integrate results produced by different monitoring techniques and consider the photographic method a viable alternative, this ‘new’ methodology must be validated. This study aims to compare observations obtained from the concurrent application of observer-based and…

Validation of the Sentinel-3 Ocean and Land Colour Instrument (OLCI) Terrestrial Chlorophyll Index (OTCI): Synergetic Exploitation of the Sentinel-2 …

2018

Continuity to the Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS) Terrestrial Chlorophyll Index (MTCI) will be provided by the Sentinel-3 Ocean and Land Colour Instrument (OLCI), and to ensure its utility in a wide range of operational applications, validation efforts are required. In the past, these activities have been constrained by the need for costly airborne hyperspectral data acquisition, but the Sentinel-2 Multispectral Instrument (MSI) now offers a promising alternative. In this paper, we explore the synergetic use of Sentinel-2 MSI data for validation of the Sentinel-3 OLCI Terrestrial Chlorophyll Index (OTCI) over the Valencia Anchor Station, a large agricultural site in the Valen…

A Regional Geography Approach to Understanding the Environmental Changes as a Consequence of the COVID-19 Lockdown in Highly Populated Spanish Cities

2021

Spain has been highly impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, which is reflected at different scales. From an economic point of view, lockdowns and the reduction of activities have damaged the country (e.g., complete lockdown from March 13 to June 21, 2020). However, it is not clear if the associated environmental impacts could be observed in 2020. Currently, studies on the effects of the lockdown (e.g., decrease in economic activities, transport and social communication) on specific parameters related to climate change, such as air temperature or air pollution, due to a drastic decrease in human activities are rare. They are focused on specific cities and short periods of time. Therefore, the m…

Record-breaking warming and extreme drought in the Amazon rainforest during the course of El Niño 2015–2016

2016

AbstractThe El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is the main driver of interannual climate extremes in Amazonia and other tropical regions. The current 2015/2016 EN event was expected to be as strong as the EN of the century in 1997/98, with extreme heat and drought over most of Amazonian rainforests. Here we show that this protracted EN event, combined with the regional warming trend, was associated with unprecedented warming and a larger extent of extreme drought in Amazonia compared to the earlier strong EN events in 1982/83 and 1997/98. Typical EN-like drought conditions were observed only in eastern Amazonia, whilst in western Amazonia there was an unusual wetting. We attribute this wet…

Fractals and geography

2007

Modeling the Effects of Climate Change on the Supply of Phosphate-Phosphorus

2009

The transfer of phosphorus from terrestrial to aquatic ecosystems is a key route through which climate can influence aquatic ecosystems. A number of climatic factors interact in complex ways to regulate the transfer of phosphorus and modulate its ecological effects on downstream lakes and reservoirs. Processes influencing both the amount and timing of phosphorus export from terrestrial watersheds must be quantified before we can assess the direct and indirect effects of the weather on the supply and recycling of phosphorus. Simulation of the export of phosphorus from the terrestrial environment is complicated by the fact that it is difficult to describe seasonal and inter-annual variations …

Machine learning regression algorithms for biophysical parameter retrieval: Opportunities for Sentinel-2 and -3

2012

Abstract ESA's upcoming satellites Sentinel-2 (S2) and Sentinel-3 (S3) aim to ensure continuity for Landsat 5/7, SPOT-5, SPOT-Vegetation and Envisat MERIS observations by providing superspectral images of high spatial and temporal resolution. S2 and S3 will deliver near real-time operational products with a high accuracy for land monitoring. This unprecedented data availability leads to an urgent need for developing robust and accurate retrieval methods. Machine learning regression algorithms may be powerful candidates for the estimation of biophysical parameters from satellite reflectance measurements because of their ability to perform adaptive, nonlinear data fitting. By using data from …

Diving below the spin-down limit: Constraints on gravitational waves from the energetic young pulsar PSR J0537-6910

2021

We present a search for continuous gravitational-wave signals from the young, energetic X-ray pulsar PSR J0537-6910 using data from the second and third observing runs of LIGO and Virgo. The search is enabled by a contemporaneous timing ephemeris obtained using NICER data. The NICER ephemeris has also been extended through 2020 October and includes three new glitches. PSR J0537-6910 has the largest spin-down luminosity of any pulsar and is highly active with regards to glitches. Analyses of its long-term and inter-glitch braking indices provided intriguing evidence that its spin-down energy budget may include gravitational-wave emission from a time-varying mass quadrupole moment. Its 62 Hz …

Coastal precipitation regimes in Kenya.

1997

Kenya is under the influence of the seasonal reversal of the Indian ocean monsoons. However, its coastal belt, up to about 50 km inland, exhibits original climatic features. Hierarchical clustering...

Optimized Class-Separability in Hyperspectral Images

2016

International audience; Image visualization techniques are mostly based on three bands as RGB color composite channels for human eye to characterize the scene. This, however, is not effective in case of hyper-spectral images (HSI) because they contain dozens of informative spectral bands. To eliminate redundancy of spectral information among these bands, dimensionality reduction (DR) is applied while at the same trying to retain maximum information. In this paper, we propose a new method of information-preserved hyper-spectral satellite image visualization that is based on fusion of unsupervised band selection techniques and color matching function (CMF) stretching. The results show consist…