Search results for "PLOT"

Estensione della definizione di Malattia di Fabry in base ai dati ottenuti dallo studio dell'attività enzimatica e degli aplotipi genetici

2011

Measurement of Water Soil Erosion at Sparacia Experimental Area (Southern Italy): A Summary of More than Twenty Years of Scientific Activity

2022

The main purpose of this article is to give a general idea of the scientific activity that was carried out starting from the 2000s on the basis of the data collected in the plots installed at the Sparacia experimental station for soil erosion measurement in Sicily, South Italy. The paper includes a presentation of the experimental site, a description of the methods and procedures for measuring soil erosion processes both available in the literature and applied at the Sparacia station (sediment sampling and water level reading in the storage tanks for total erosion measurements; profilometer, and Structure from Motion technique for rill erosion measurements), and the main results obtained in…

Predicting soil loss on moderate slopes using an empirical model for sediment concentration

2011

Summary The objective of this investigation was to estimate event soil loss per unit area from bare plots in central and southern Italy using an empirical model for sediment concentration. The analysis was developed using data collected on bare plots differing in length (11–44 m) and slope (10–26%) at three Italian stations (Masse, Umbria; Caratozzolo, Calabria; Sparacia, Sicily). At first, an analysis was carried out, using the experimental data collected at Sparacia, to establish a relationship between sediment concentration and hydrological variables, such as runoff, rainfall amount and single storm erosion index. Then, an empirical model to estimate plot soil loss as a function of rainf…

A new expression of the slope length factor to apply USLE-MM at Sparacia experimental area (Southern Italy)

2013

Abstract Predicting soil loss due to water erosion by empirical models is useful to assess the severity of the phenomenon in an area of interest and to predict the effect of alternative soil erosion control practices. The USLE scheme cannot be used at the Sparacia experimental area (Sicily, South Italy) to predict event soil loss per unit plot area, Ae, because experimental data suggest that, generally, Ae does not increase with plot length, λ. The USLE-MM scheme uses the runoff coefficient, QR, as an additional independent variable in order to develop an empirical model allowing prediction of storm soil loss values that do not necessarily increase with λ. According to this model, Ae is exp…

Testing assumptions and procedures to empirically predict bare plot soil loss in a Mediterranean environment

2014

Empirical prediction of soil erosion has both scientific and practical importance. This investigation tested USLE and USLE-based procedures to predict bare plot soil loss at the Sparacia area, in Sicily. Event soil loss per unit area, Ae, did not vary appreciably with plot length, λ, because the decrease in runoff with λ was offset by an increase in sediment concentration. Slope steepness, s, had a positive effective on Ae, and this result was associated with a runoff coefficient that did not vary appreciably with s and a sediment concentration generally increasing with s. Plot steepness did not have a statistically detectable effect on the calculations of the soil erodibility factor of bot…

Checking generalization of the USLE-MM in central and South Italy

2018

The USLE-MM estimates event normalized plot soil loss, Ae,N, by an erosivity term given by the runoff coefficient, QR, times the single-storm erosion index, EI30, raised to an exponent b1 > 1. In this investigation, carried out at the three experi-mental sites of Bagnara, Masse and Sparacia, in Italy, the soundness of the USLE-MM scheme with a single exponent for the three sites was tested. The model was parameterized both locally and considering all sites simultaneously. The performances of the fitted models were established by considering all erosive events and also by distinguishing between events of different severity. The b1 exponent varied widely among the three sites (1.05 - 1.44) bu…

Testing the “physical model concept” by soil loss data measured in Sicily

2012

The best possible model to predict the erosion from an area of land has been suggested to be a physical model of the area that has similar soil type, land use, size, shape, slope and erosive inputs. Therefore, a replicated plot has to be considered the best possible, unbiased, real world model. In this paper the physical model concept was tested by using soil loss data collected on plots of different length at the experimental station of Sparacia, in Sicily (South Italy). This investigation supported the conclusions that i) a coefficient of determination between measured and predicted soil loss values of 0.77 has to be considered as the best-case prediction scenario and ii) an uncalibrated …

The influence of solvent on conformational properties of peptides with Aib residue—a DFT study

2017

The conformational propensities of the Aib residue on the example of two model peptides Ac-Aib-NHMe (1) and Ac-Aib-NMe2 (2), were studied by B3LYP and M06-2X functionals, in the gas phase and in the polar solvents. To verify the reliability of selected functionals, we also performed MP2 calculations for the tested molecules in vacuum. Polarizable continuum models (PCM and SMD) were used to estimate the solvent effect. Ramachandran maps were calculated to find all energy minima. Noncovalent intramolecular interactions due to hydrogen-bonds and dipole attractions between carbonyl groups are responsible for the relative stabilities of the conformers. In order to verify the theoretical results,…

The evolutionary history of the Arabidopsis arenosa complex: diverse tetraploids mask the Western Carpathian center of species and genetic diversity.

2012

The Arabidopsis arenosa complex is closely related to the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana. Species and subspecies in the complex are mainly biennial, predominantly outcrossing, herbaceous, and with a distribution range covering most parts of latitudes and the eastern reaches of Europe. In this study we present the first comprehensive evolutionary history of the A. arenosa species complex, covering its natural range, by using chromosome counts, nuclear AFLP data, and a maternally inherited marker from the chloroplast genome [trnL intron (trnL) and trnL/F intergenic spacer (trnL/F-IGS) of tRNA(Leu) and tRNA(Phe), respectively]. We unravel the broad-scale cytogeographic and phylogeographic pa…

Phylogenetic analysis of cryptic speciation in the polychaetePygospio elegans

2012

Development in marine invertebrate species can take place through a variety of modes and larval forms, but within a species, developmental mode is typically uniform. Poecilogony refers to the presence of more than one mode of development within a single species. True poecilogony is rare, however, and in some cases, apparent poecilogony is actually the result of variation in development mode among recently diverged cryptic species. We used a phylogenetic approach to examine whether poecilogony in the marine polychaete worm, Pygospio elegans, is the result of cryptic speciation. Populations of worms identified as P. elegans express a variety of developmental modes including planktonic, broode…