Search results for "Earth and Planetary Sciences"

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 …

Coralline alga reveals first marine record of subarctic North Pacific climate change

2007

[1] While recent changes in subarctic North Pacific climate had dramatic effects on ecosystems and fishery yields, past climate dynamics and teleconnection patterns are poorly understood due to the absence of century-long high-resolution marine records. We present the first 117-year long annually resolved marine climate history from the western Bering Sea/Aleutian Island region using information contained in the calcitic skeleton of the long-lived crustose coralline red alga Clathromorphum nereostratum, a previously unused climate archive. The skeletal δ18O-time series indicates significant warming and/or freshening of surface waters after the middle of the 20th century. Furthermore, the ti…

Radiogenic isotopes: new tools help reconstruct paleocean circulation and erosion input

2001

Ocean and atmosphere circulation and continental weathering regimes have undergone great changes over thousands of years as well as tens of millions of years. During the glacial stages of the Pleistocene, ocean circulation was generally more sluggish and deep water circulation in the Atlantic had a shallower flow. At the same time, weathering on the continents was enhanced by glacial erosion, particularly in high northern latitudes, which increased the input of erosional detritus into the ocean. In addition, atmospheric pressure gradients were larger, leading to higher wind speeds and increased supply of aeolian dust to the ocean. Prior to the onset of Northern Hemisphere glaciation and pro…

Active tectonics along the south east offshore margin of Mt. Etna: New insights from high-resolution seismic profiles

2018

The offshore margin of Mt. Etna has been shaped by Middle Pleistocene to Holocene shortening and extension and, more recently, by gravity-related sliding of the volcanic edifice. These processes have acted contemporaneously although the gravitational component largely prevails over the tectonic one. In order to investigate this issue, we focused on the main role of active tectonics along the south-eastern offshore of Mt. Etna by means of marine high-resolution seismic data. Seismic profiles revealed post-220 ka sedimentary deposits unconformably overlaying the Lower-Middle Pleistocene Etnean clayey substratum and volcanics of the Basal Tholeiitic phase and the Timpe phase. Offshore Aci Trez…

Plio-Pleistocene Dust Traps on Paleokarst Surfaces: A Case Study From the Carpathian Basin

2020

Plio-Pleistocene silt/clay-rich deposits and paleo-karst fissure sediments from sites of the northern and southern parts of the Carpathian Basin were investigated. These materials were supposed to be mixed during transport before being captured in karstified fissures. Evidence that the eolian fissure sediments of Plio-Pleistocene age in the older Triassic–Cretaceous limestones are derived from eolian silt and clay includes compositional and textural matches, especially decreasing grain-size trends observed downwards from the paleo-surface of the former landscape. Various environmental factors could be recognized by the statistical evaluation of grain-size distribution curves of fissure fill…

Evaluation of deep learning algorithms for national scale landslide susceptibility mapping of Iran

2021

The identification of landslide-prone areas is an essential step in landslide hazard assessment and mitigation of landslide-related losses. In this study, we applied two novel deep learning algorithms, the recurrent neural network (RNN) and convolutional neural network (CNN), for national-scale landslide susceptibility mapping of Iran. We prepared a dataset comprising 4069 historical landslide locations and 11 conditioning factors (altitude, slope degree, profile curvature, distance to river, aspect, plan curvature, distance to road, distance to fault, rainfall, geology and land-sue) to construct a geospatial database and divided the data into the training and the testing dataset. We then d…

Influencia del ángulo de observación en la estimación del índice de área foliar (LAI) mediante imágenes PROBA/CHRIS

2016

La estimación de variables biofísicas como el Índice de Área Foliar (LAI) mediante técnicas de teledetección es objeto de numerosos estudios, ya que de su conocimiento se puede extraer valiosa información sobre el estado de la vegetación. En este trabajo se estudia la estimación del LAI mediante imágenes multiangulares PROBA/CHRIS, analizando el comportamiento de la reflectividad medida en sus 5 ángulos de observación, en las longitudes de onda de 665 y 705 nm correspondientes a la banda de absorción de la clorofila y la reflectividad de la vegetación en el Red-Edge, respectivamente. El Índice de Diferencia Normalizada (NDI) calculado en estas longitudes de onda, mostró una buena correlació…

Late Quaternary Variations in the South American Monsoon System as Inferred by Speleothems—New Perspectives using the SISAL Database

2019

Here we present an overview of speleothem δ18O records from South America, most of which are available in the Speleothem Isotopes Synthesis and Analysis (SISAL_v1) database. South American tropical and subtropical speleothem δ18O time series are primarily interpreted to reflect changes in precipitation amount, the amount effect, and consequently history of convection intensity variability of convergence zones such as the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) and the South America Monsoon System (SAMS). We investigate past hydroclimate scenarios in South America related to the South American Monsoon System in three different time periods: Late Pleistocene, Holocene, and the last tw…

Eco-Friendly Estimation of Heavy Metal Contents in Grapevine Foliage Using In-Field Hyperspectral Data and Multivariate Analysis

2019

Heavy metal monitoring in food-producing ecosystems can play an important role in human health safety. Since they are able to interfere with plants’ physiochemical characteristics, which influence the optical properties of leaves, they can be measured by in-field spectroscopy. In this study, the predictive power of spectroscopic data is examined. Five treatments of heavy metal stress (Cu, Zn, Pb, Cr, and Cd) were applied to grapevine seedlings and hyperspectral data (350−2500 nm), and heavy metal contents were collected based on in-field and laboratory experiments. The partial least squares (PLS) method was used as a feature selection technique, and multiple linear regressions (…

Transboundary Basins Need More Attention: Anthropogenic Impacts on Land Cover Changes in Aras River Basin, Monitoring and Prediction.

2020

Changes in land cover (LC) can alter the basin hydrology by affecting the evaporation, infiltration, and surface and subsurface flow processes, and ultimately affect river water quantity and quality. This study aimed to monitor and predict the LC composition of a major, transboundary basin contributing to the Caspian Sea, the Aras River Basin (ARB). To this end, four LC maps of ARB corresponding to the years 1984, 2000, 2010, and 2017 were generated using Landsat satellite imagery from Armenia and the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic. The LC gains and losses, net changes, exchanges, and the spatial trend of changes over 33 years (1984–2017) were investigated. The most important drivers of the…