Search results for "SCA"

Thiourea-Catalyzed Domino Michael–Mannich [3+2] Cycloadditions: A Strategy for the Asymmetric Synthesis of 3,3′-Pyrrolidinyl-dispirooxindoles

2017

The asymmetric synthesis of trifluoromethylated 3,3′-pyrrolidinyl-dispirooxindole derivatives with four contiguous stereogenic centers, including two vicinal spiro-stereocenters, is described. Employing a bifunctional thiourea catalyst, a domino Michael–Mannich [3+2] cycloaddition occurs readily between isatin ketimines and isatin-derived enoates with good yields and very high stereoselectivities, providing a direct entry to the title compounds of potential medical value.

Down-Scaling Modis Vegetation Products with Landsat GAP Filled Surface Reflectance in Google Earth Engine

2020

High spatial resolution vegetation products are fundamental in different fields, such as improving the understanding of crop seasonality at regional scales. Here, two new vegetation products such as the Leaf Area Index (LAI) and the Fraction of Absorbed Photosynthetically Active Radiation (FAPAR) are downscaled at continental scales. A novel HIghly Scalable Temporal Adaptive Reflectance Fusion Model (HIS-TARFM) is used to generate the gap-free time series of Landsat surface reflectance data by fusing MODIS and Landsat reflectance for the contiguous United States. An artificial neural network is trained to capture the relationship between the gap free Landsat surface reflectance and the MODI…

The impact of climate change on extreme precipitation in Sicily, Italy

2018

Increasing precipitation extremes are one of the possible consequences of a warmer climate. These may exceed the capacity of urban drainage systems, and thus impact the urban environment. Because short-duration precipitation events are primarily responsible for flooding in urban systems, it is important to assess the response of extreme precipitation at hourly (or sub-hourly) scales to a warming climate. This study aims to evaluate the projected changes in extreme rainfall events across the region of Sicily (Italy) and, for two urban areas, to assess possible changes in Depth-Duration-Frequency (DDF) curves. We used Regional Climate Model outputs from Coordinated Regional Climate Downscalin…

Global trends in NDVI-derived parameters obtained from GIMMS data

2011

The Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) has been proven to be useful to assess vegetation changes around the world, in spite of limitations such as sensitivity to cloud or snow contamination. In order to map vegetation changes at global scale, this study uses NDVI time series provided by the GIMMS (Global Inventory Modeling and Mapping Studies) group, which were fitted annually to a double logistic function. This fitting procedure allowed for retrieval of NDVI-derived parameters which were tested for trends using Mann-Kendall statistics. These trends were validated by comparison at 73 ground control points documented as change hotspots. The obtained trends for NDVI-derived paramet…

2019

Urban Heat Islands (UHIs) at the surface and canopy levels are major issues in urban planification and development. For this reason, the comprehension and quantification of the influence that the different land-uses/land-covers have on UHIs is of particular importance. In order to perform a detailed thermal characterisation of the city, measures covering the whole scenario (city and surroundings) and with a recurrent revisit are needed. In addition, a resolution of tens of meters is needed to characterise the urban heterogeneities. Spaceborne remote sensing meets the first and the second requirements but the Land Surface Temperature (LST) resolutions remain too rough compared to the urban o…

Two-year global simulation of L-band brightness temperatures over land

2003

International audience; This letter presents a synthetic L-band (1.4 GHz) multiangular brightness temperature dataset over land surfaces that was simulated at a half-degree resolution and at the global scale. The microwave emission of various land-covers (herbaceous and woody vegetation, frozen and unfrozen bare soil, snow, etc.) was computed using a simple model [L-band Microwave Emission of the Biosphere (L-MEB)] based on radiative transfer equations. The soil and vegetation characteristics needed to initialize the L-MEB model were derived from existing land-cover maps. Continuous simulations from a land-surface scheme for 1987 and 1988 provided time series of the main variables driving t…

Using scintillometry to assess reference evapotranspiration methods and their impact on the water balance of olive groves

2016

Abstract Reference evapotranspiration (ET 0 ) is widely used for irrigation scheduling, to promote an efficient use of water resources for a sustainable agro-ecosystem productivity, as well as to manage water quality and to face other environmental concerns. As suggested by ASCE-EWRI and FAO, standard Penman–Monteith methods are generally applied for an accurate estimation of ET 0 from hourly to daily scale. In absence of detailed meteorological information several simplified equations, using a limited number of variables, have been proposed as alternative. In this paper, the performance of different reference evapotranspiration methods, at hourly (Penman–Monteith, Pristley–Taylor, Makkink …

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…

The joint sets on the Lilstock Benches, UK. Observations based on mapping a full resolution UAV-based image

2021

Outcrop studies of fracture networks are important to understand fractured reservoirs in the subsurface, but complete maps of all fractures in large outcrops are rare due to limitations of outcrop and image resolution. We manually mapped the first full-resolution UAV-based, Gigapixel dataset and DEM of the wave-cut Lilstock Benches in the southern Bristol Channel basin, a classic outcrop of layer-bound fracture networks in limestones. We present a map of the patterns and age relationships of successive sets of joints in dm-thick limestone layers separated by claystone beds. Using interpretation criteria based on crosscutting relationships, abutting and joint length, up to eight successive s…

Multispectral high resolution sensor fusion for smoothing and gap-filling in the cloud

2020

Remote sensing optical sensors onboard operational satellites cannot have high spectral, spatial and temporal resolutions simultaneously. In addition, clouds and aerosols can adversely affect the signal contaminating the land surface observations. We present a HIghly Scalable Temporal Adaptive Reflectance Fusion Model (HISTARFM) algorithm to combine multispectral images of different sensors to reduce noise and produce monthly gap free high resolution (30 m) observations over land. Our approach uses images from the Landsat (30 m spatial resolution and 16 day revisit cycle) and the MODIS missions, both from Terra and Aqua platforms (500 m spatial resolution and daily revisit cycle). We implem…