Search results for "VEGETATION"
showing 10 items of 1069 documents
Effects of vegetation at different succession stages on soil properties and water flow in sandy soil
2015
The effects of vegetation at different succession stages on soil properties and water flow were assessed in sandy soil at 3 experimental sites near Sekule village (southwest Slovakia). Site S1 was a pioneer site dominated by mosses, site S2 was an early successional stage with a thin stand of grasses, and site S3 was an early successional stage (more advanced compared to the previous), richer in species, with a denser stand of grasses. It was found that vegetation at different succession stages affected soil properties and water flow in sandy soil, but the order of changes in some soil properties and water penetration depths were different from the order of succession stages.
On the influences of vegetation biomass on COSMO-Skymed X-band
2011
The knowledge of spatial and temporal variability of land cover is important to manage water resources for yield forecasting, water stress prediction, irrigation water management and flood protection. Cloud cover dramatically reduces the temporal resolution of optical data thus limiting their operational use; in addition, the spatial resolution is often inadequate for applications in heterogeneous areas. On the other hand, algorithms based on Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) implemented to retrieve vegetation parameters are not yet fully validated. New SAR missions (COSMO-Skymed and Terrasar-X) may represent a suitable source of data for operational uses due to the high spatial and temporal r…
Assessment and mapping the sensitive areas to desertification in an insular Sahelian mountain region Case study of the Ribeira Seca Watershed, Santia…
2015
10 pages; International audience; This paper presents the assessment and mapping of the Ribeira Seca catchment, an insular Sahelian mountain region sensitive to desertification, located on the island of Santiago, Cabo Verde. Desertification is a threat to the global environment, representing a serious ecological problem in Cabo Verde. To successfully combat desertification, an evaluation of desertification consequences is required and the building of cartography of the sensitivity for arid and semi-arid ecosystems is required as a first step. The MEDALUS model was the basis for this study in which six quality indicators were used: climate, soil, vegetation, land management, erosion and soci…
Fire Responses to the 2010 and 2015/2016 Amazonian Droughts
2019
Extreme droughts in Amazonia cause anomalous increase in fire occurrence, disrupting the stability of environmental, social and economic systems. Thus, understanding how droughts affect fire patterns in this region is essential for anticipating and planning actions for remediation of possible impacts. Focused on the Brazilian Amazon biome, we investigated fire responses to the 2010 and 2015/2016 Amazonian droughts using a remote sensing data. Our results revealed that the 2015/2016 drought surpassed the 2010 drought in intensity and extent. During the 2010 drought, we found a maximum area of 846,800 km2 (24% of the Brazilian Amazon biome) with significant (p<0.05) rainfall decrease in the f…
Droughts Over Amazonia in 2005, 2010, and 2015: A Cloud Cover Perspective
2018
Amazon forests experienced recent severe droughts in an anomalous short period induced by different mechanisms and had different length periods and spatial patterns. Droughts of 2005 and 2010 were attributed to anomalous Sea Surface Temperature (SST) over the Tropical North Atlantic (TNA) during the dry season, but the 2010 drought was more severe and remained for a longer period because it was also induced in late 2009 by a moderate to strong El Niño (EN). Drought in 2015 led to unprecedented warming and extreme soil moisture deficits over some regions, and it was attributed to a very strong EN. Several studies analyzed these drought events regarding different climatic factors such as anom…
SMAP Multi-Temporal vegetation optical depth retrieval as an indicator of crop yield trends and crop composition
2017
Vegetation Optical Depth (VOD) is related to Vegetation Water Content (VWC). This provides new and highly valuable information for ecological and agricultural studies. In this work, VOD from the Soil Moisture Active-Passive (SMAP) satellite has been retrieved with the new Multi-Temporal Dual-Channel Algorithm (MT-DCA). Then, it has been applied to the study of crop yield trends and crop composition. The increase on VOD (¿VOD) during crop development has been compared to yield data in two selected regions located in the United States. The first region presents a heterogeneous crop composition and weak ¿VOD-yield relationship (r2=0.21). The second region presents a highly homogenous cover and…
CLEARMiner: a new algorithm for mining association patterns on heterogeneous time series from climate data
2010
International audience; Recently, improvements in sensor technology contributed to increasing in spatial data acquisition. The use of remote sensing in many countries and states, where agricultural business is a large part of their gross income, can provide a valuable source to improve their economy. The combination of climate and remote sensing data can reveal useful information, which can help researchers to monitor and estimate the production of agricultural crops. Data mining techniques are the main tools to analyze and extract relationships and patterns. In this context, this paper presents a new algorithm for mining association patterns in Geo-referenced databases of climate and satel…
Timing and patterns of ENSO impacts in Africa over the last 30 years: insights from Normalized Difference Vegetation Index data.
2012
International audience; In this study we reassess and provide a more complete picture of the timing and patterns of ENSO impacts for the whole of Africa over the three last decades. We analyse the vegetation photosynthetic activity estimated by the NOAA-AVHRR Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) rather than rainfall itself, because NDVI allows us to document the impacts at fine space and time scales. The use of the monthly time-step adds important new insights to the findings of previous works based largely on annual or seasonal time-scales and on a regional spatial-scale: several dipolar and propagative patterns are highlighted. In addition, we show that the less-studied winter ra…
Functional ecology for evaluating and predicting the aptitude of permanent grassland to provide services
2013
National audience; Applying the principles of functional ecology helps better predict the services which can be provided by permanent grassland. Farming practices and environmental characteristics influence the functional composition of grassland. Functional plant types have a generic effect on forage services which can be assessed. 13 types of grassland composed of distinct functional types were defined based on 1,283 sample grassland fields located on 8 sites. This approach was validated by checking 8 Ellenberg indicator values (used to evaluate environmental characteristics and farming practices) against climatic data and descriptive data for farming practices. The interest of a function…
Les impacts du campagnol terrestre sur les systèmes fourragers : le cas de l’élevage bovin allaitant en Bourgogne
2014
EAAgroSupECOLDUR; Do vole outbreaks have the same effects on suckler beef farms in Burgundy as they do on daily farms in Auvergne and Franche-Comte? Semi-structured interviews were carried out with 19 farmers from Burgundy who had been affected by a water vole outbreak in 2011. The results indicate that, just like farmers in Auvergne and Franche-Comte, farmers in Burgundy witnessed a decrease in forage quantity and quality. Farmers used diverse measures to deal with the outbreak (e.g., avoidance strategies or the use of bromadiolone). Farmers that described water voles as pests were more likely to have used bromadiolone, while those who described water voles in morphological terms or in ter…