Search results for "Earth and Related Environmental Sciences"
showing 10 items of 6573 documents
A new calibration of the effective scattering albedo and soil roughness parameters in the SMOS SM retrieval algorithm
2017
Abstract This study focuses on the calibration of the effective vegetation scattering albedo (ω) and surface soil roughness parameters (H R , and N Rp , p = H,V) in the Soil Moisture (SM) retrieval from L-band passive microwave observations using the L-band Microwave Emission of the Biosphere (L-MEB) model. In the current Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) Level 2 (L2), v620, and Level 3 (L3), v300, SM retrieval algorithms, low vegetated areas are parameterized by ω = 0 and H R = 0.1, whereas values of ω = 0.06 − 0.08 and H R = 0.3 are used for forests. Several parameterizations of the vegetation and soil roughness parameters (ω, H R and N Rp , p = H,V) were tested in this study, tre…
Identification of metalloporphyrins extracted from the copper bearing black shale of fore sudetic monocline (Poland)
2006
Abstract Metalloporphyrins were isolated from copper-bearing black shale ores. The shale originates from the Lubin copper mine (Poland). The porphyrins have been extracted by way of a Soxhlet apparatus, and then purified using column chromatography. In order to identify the extracted porphyrins complexes UV–Vis, mass spectrometry and EPR analytical techniques have been used.
What have we learnt about board gender diversity as a business strategy? The appointment of board subcommittees
2018
This is the pre-peer reviewed version of the following article: What have we learnt about board gender diversity as a business strategy? The appointment of board subcommittees, which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1002/bse.2226. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Use of Self-Archived Versions. This paper explores whether a board's gender diversity influences the voluntary formation of its board subcommittees. Female board directorship may become a business strategy for firms if it affects the appointment of board subcommittees. We hypothesize that the voluntary creation of board subcommittees is affe…
Variabilité de la température entre 1951 et 2014 en Allemagne associée à l’évolution de la floraison des pommiers.
2018
Apple tree bloom onset in Germany has advanced by 2 days/decade in 1951-2014 and by 3 days/decade in 1988-2014, behaving similarly in respect to its evolution since 1951 and its sensitivity to temperature to other species’ phenological spring phases. The evolution however was not linear; by conducting a split moving-window dissimilarity analysis (SMWDA) we were able to detect the “break-period” 1987-1989 which coincides with a breakpoint that has been identified in the phases of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO). We observed distinct spatial patterns with apple bloom advancing from southwest to northeast and, most interestingly, a longitudinal gradient in the trend of apple bloom onset r…
Green Roofs as Effective Tools for Improving the Indoor Comfort Levels of Buildings—An Application to a Case Study in Sicily
2020
In the line of pursuing better energy efficiency in human activities that would result in a more sustainable utilization of resources, the building sector plays a relevant role, being responsible for almost 40% of both energy consumption and the release of pollutant substances in the atmosphere. For this purpose, techniques aimed at improving the energy performances of buildings&rsquo
In-situ measurements of hemp-lime insulation materials for energy efficiency improvement
2018
Abstract Reduction of the CO2 emissions in the atmosphere is one of the goals set forth by the European Union, hence various directives have been adopted, such as the European directive 2012/27/EU on energy efficiency, i.e. ensuring from 2019 the construction of the near-zero energy buildings (nZEB). The construction segment plays a very important part in solving the current global problem of the greenhouse gas emissions and related processes of global warming, because in certain countries (i.e. in Latvia) it represents more than a half of the total energy consumption. Hence the necessity to elaborate means on how to boost the energy efficiency of the buildings meanwhile not rising pressure…
Assessing the efficiency of Chilean water and sewerage companies accounting for uncertainty
2016
Abstract Efficiency assessment of water and sewerage companies (WaSCs) has attracted considerable attention both for water company managers and water regulators. Within the methodological approaches that can be applied to estimate efficiency scores, data envelopment analysis (DEA) is the most widely applied technique. In spite of the positive features of DEA, it presents a major drawback which is its deterministic nature. In other words, conventional DEA models do not account for uncertainty in the data. To overcome this limitation, we assess, for the first time, the efficiency of a sample of Chilean WaSCs by using a DEA model with statistical tolerance in the data. Hence, 81 efficiency sco…
“The tree was there first” – using an everyday ecological dilemma to explore the personal orientations of secondary school students in environmental …
2020
Studies have repeatedly shown that the goals of environmental education are as indispensable as they are difficult to achieve. In particular, the discrepancy between environmental awareness and eve...
Smart city dvelopment with digital twin technology
2020
Growing urban areas are major consumers of natural resources, energy and raw materials. Understanding cities´ urban metabolism is salient when developing sustainable and resilient cities. This paper addresses concepts of smart city and digital twin technology as means to foster more sustainable urban development. Smart city has globally been well adopted concept in urban development. With smart city development cities aim to optimize overall performance of the city, its infrastructures, processes and services, but also to improve socio-economic wellbeing. Dynamic digital twins are constituted to form real-time connectivity between virtual and physical objects. Digital twin combines virtual …
Convolutional Long Short-Term Memory Network for Multitemporal Cloud Detection Over Landmarks
2019
In this work, we propose to exploit both the temporal and spatial correlations in Earth observation satellite images through deep learning methods. In particular, the combination of a U-Net convolutional neural network together with a convolutional long short-term memory (LSTM) layer is proposed. This model is applied for cloud detection on MSG/SEVIRI image time series over selected landmarks. Implementation details are provided and our proposal is compared against a standard SVM and a U-Net without the convolutional LSTM layer but including temporal information too. Experimental results show that this combination of networks exploits both the spatial and temporal dependence and provides st…