Search results for "Planetary Science"
showing 10 items of 4367 documents
Soil Mapping and Processes Modeling for Sustainable Land Management
2017
Soil maps and models are indispensable tools in sustainable land management. The sustainable land use of our territory is fundamental to providing long-term socio-economic and environmental benefits. The risk of land degradation and corresponding declines in ecosystem services depends on the type of land use. Soil restoration can be extremely expensive, more than the implementation of sustainable land use practices. This is especially important in the context of climate change and the increasing pressure that a growing population places on soil resources, which is a global phenomenon. The objective of this chapter is to show the advantages of using soil mapping and modeling in sustainable l…
Usage of European census data for sustainable land management – German case study
2014
AbstractThis paper describes opportunities and results of the usage of high resolution census data for sustainable land management. Following European Union requirements many countries in Europe have counted their population and other indicators in 2011. To take full benefit of the very rich high resolution census data in Germany some country specific problems had to be solved. By applying a semi-automatic procedure the study describes in which way the official topographical and property information systems provided by the surveying authorities are used to determine the boundaries of small scale census units. Linking the census data to the corresponding geographical units enables public adm…
Bildning as a Central Concept in the Cultural Policy of the Swedish Government : From Arthur Engberg to Alice Bah Kuhnke
2015
This article explores bildning as a central concept in the development of the explicit cultural policy of the Swedish government. It takes its point of departure in how the concept of bildning was interpreted by Arthur Engberg, the minister responsible for cultural policy in the Social Democrat governments 1932–1939. In his interpretation bildning was liked both to upholding the high arts and the national culture and to the idea of re-invigorating these through cultural policy and education. The article continues by looking at the role and the interpretations of this concept in the later government reports and government bills aiming to cover the entirety of Swedish cultural policy, i.e. th…
Making regional cultural policy: regional government bodies’ cultural policy activities in Finland
2022
In Finnish cultural policy, power and responsibilities have been distributed to various regional government bodies and a distinct regional authority is lacking. This presents a notable difference to Sweden where the self-governing and politically elected assemblies at the regional level function as key regional cultural policy authorities. This article examines how the regional government bodies in Finland are participating in cultural policymaking in contrast to Sweden by recognising different activities that are carried out by the regional level. The analysis is conducted in two case regions (Central Finland and Värmland) based on interview data, legislation and policy documents. The resu…
Optical counterpart to Swift J0243.6+6124
2020
Context. Swift J0243.6+6124 is a unique system. It is the first and only ultra-luminous X-ray source in our Galaxy. It is the first and only high-mass Be X-ray pulsar showing radio jet emission. It was discovered during a giant X-ray outburst in October 2017. While there are numerous studies in the X-ray band, very little is known about the optical counterpart. Aims. Our aim is to characterize the variability timescales in the optical and infrared bands in order to understand the nature of this intriguing system. Methods. We performed optical spectroscopic observations to determine the spectral type. Long-term photometric light curves together with the equivalent width of the Hα line were u…
Swift observations of GRB 060614: an anomalous burst with a well behaved afterglow
2007
GRB 060614 is a remarkable GRB observed by Swift with puzzling properties, which challenge current progenitor models. The lack of any bright SN down to very strict limits and the vanishing spectral lags are typical of short GRBs, strikingly at odds with the long (102s) duration of this event. Here we present spectral and temporal analysis of the Swift observations. We show that the burst presents standard optical, UV and X-ray afterglows. An achromatic break is observed simultaneously in optical and X-rays, at a time consistent with the break in the R-band light curve measured by the VLT. The achromatic behaviour and the consistent post-break decay slopes make GRB 060614 one of the best exa…
What a New Model of Skeletal Homologies Tells Us About Asteroid Evolution1
2000
The Extraxial-Axial Theory (EAT) is applied to the body wall homologies of asteroids. Attempts to characterize major plate systems of asteroids as axial or extraxial, particularly those that are highly organized into series, can be problematic. However, the Optical Plate Rule (OPR) is instrumental in establishing that ambulacrals and terminals are axial. It is equally clear that the region aboral to the marginal frame is a part of the perforate extraxial body wall (with the possible exception of the centrodorsal, which is likely imperforate extraxial). Previously established EAT criteria, particularly those strongly rooted in the embryologically expressed boundary between axial and extraxia…
Surface Soil Moisture Retrieval Using the L-Band Synthetic Aperture Radar Onboard the Soil Moisture Active–Passive Satellite and Evaluation at Core V…
2017
This paper evaluates the retrieval of soil moisture in the top 5-cm layer at 3-km spatial resolution using L-band dual-copolarized Soil Moisture Active–Passive (SMAP) synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data that mapped the globe every three days from mid-April to early July, 2015. Surface soil moisture retrievals using radar observations have been challenging in the past due to complicating factors of surface roughness and vegetation scattering. Here, physically based forward models of radar scattering for individual vegetation types are inverted using a time-series approach to retrieve soil moisture while correcting for the effects of static roughness and dynamic vegetation. Compared with the …
Investigating the Relationship between X-Band SAR Data from COSMO-SkyMed Satellite and NDVI for LAI Detection
2013
Monitoring spatial and temporal variability of vegetation is important to manage land and water resources, with significant impact on the sustainability of modern agriculture. Cloud cover noticeably reduces the temporal resolution of retrievals based on optical data. COSMO-SkyMed (the new Italian Synthetic Aperture RADAR-SAR) opened new opportunities to develop agro-hydrological applications. Indeed, it represents a valuable source of data for operational use, due to the high spatial and temporal resolutions. Although X-band is not the most suitable to model agricultural and hydrological processes, an assessment of vegetation development can be achieved combing optical vegetation indices (V…
A RADARSAT-2 Quad-Polarized Time Series for Monitoring Crop and Soil Conditions in Barrax, Spain
2012
An analysis of the sensitivity of synthetic aperture radar (SAR) backscatter (σo) to crop and soil conditions was conducted using 57 RADARSAT-2 C-band quad-polarized SAR images acquired from April to September 2009 for large fields of wheat, barley, oat, corn, onion, and alfalfa in Barrax, Spain. Preliminary results showed that the cross-polarized σHVo was particularly useful for monitoring both crop and soil conditions and was the least sensitive to differences in beam incidence angle. The greatest separability of barley, corn, and onion occurred in spring after the barley had been harvested or in the narrow time window associated with grain crop heading when corn and onion were still imma…