Search results for "Water science"
showing 10 items of 1545 documents
The SESAMO early warning system for rainfall-triggered landslides
2016
The development of Web-based information systems coupled with advanced monitoring systems could prove to be extremely useful in landslide risk management and mitigation. A new frontier in the field of rainfall-triggered landslides (RTLs) lies in the real-time modelling of the relationship between rainfall and slope stability; this requires an intensive monitoring of some key parameters that could be achieved through the use of modern and often low-cost technologies. This work describes an integrated information system for early warning of RTLs that has been deployed and tested, in a prototypal form, for an Italian pilot site. The core of the proposed system is a wireless sensor network coll…
Historical and Technical Notes on Aqueducts from Prehistoric to Medieval Times
2013
The aim of this paper is to present the evolution of aqueduct technologies through the millennia, from prehistoric to medieval times. These hydraulic works were used by several civilizations to collect water from springs and to transport it to settlements, sanctuaries and other targets. Several civilizations, in China and the Americas, developed water transport systems independently, and brought these to high levels of sophistication. For the Mediterranean civilizations, one of the salient characteristics of cultural development, since the Minoan Era (ca. 3200-1100 BC), is the architectural and hydraulic function of aqueducts used for the water supply in palaces and other settlements. The M…
Insight into the noble crayfish morphological diversity: a geometric morphometric approach.
2022
The noble crayfish (Astacus astacus), a keystone species of high ecological, economic, and cultural importance in Europe, is threatened due to a long-term population decline caused by anthropogenic pressure on its habitats, the presence of non-indigenous invasive crayfish species and climate change. Since the effective protection of the remaining populations requires conservation measures based on the comprehensive knowledge of the species, including good understanding of its genetic and morphological variability, our aim was to study morphological features of the noble crayfish in Croatia using geometric morphometrics for the first time. We applied two-dimensional geometric morphometrics t…
Thermomechanical modeling of slab eduction
2012
[1] Plate eduction is a geodynamic process characterized by normal-sense coherent motion of previously subducted continental plate. This mechanism may occur after slab detachment has separated the negatively buoyant oceanic plate from the positively buoyant orogenic root. Eduction may therefore be partly responsible for exhumation of high pressure rocks and late orogenic extension. We used two-dimensional thermomechanical modeling to investigate the main features of the plate eduction model. The results show that eduction can lead to the quasi adiabatic decompression of the subducted crust (≈2 GPa) in a timespan of 5 My, large localized extensional strain in the former subduction channel, f…
Intense magmatic degassing through the lake of Copahue volcano, 2013–2014
2015
Here we report on the first assessment of volatile fluxes from the hyperacid crater lake hosted within the summit crater of Copahue, a very active volcano on the Argentina-Chile border. Our observations were performed using a variety of in situ and remote sensing techniques during field campaigns in March 2013, when the crater hosted an active fumarole field, and in March 2014, when an acidic volcanic lake covered the fumarole field. In the latter campaign, we found that 566 to 1373 t d -1 of SO 2 were being emitted from the lake in a plume that appeared largely invisible. This, combined with our derived bulk plume composition, was converted into flux of other volcanic species (H 2 O ~ 1098…
High-speed intensified video recordings of sprites and elves over the western Mediterranean Sea during winter thunderstorms
2010
We report the first intensified high‐speed video images of elves, sprites, and halos observed in Europe. All the events corresponded to winter season thunderstorms over the Mediterranean Sea. The observations comprise many elves generated by both cloud‐to‐ground lightning current polarities. In 8 of the 14 sprite observations we observed an elve previous to the sprite. In three cases we observed also an elve quickly followed by a halo and a sprite. In several observations we observed lightning light before the mesospheric transient luminous event. We present a case where the lightning from cloud tops was visible during the entire event. Thanks to the high‐speed videos and their resolution a…
Characterization and intercomparison of global moderate resolution leaf area index (LAI) products: Analysis of climatologies and theoretical uncertai…
2013
products (R 2 >0.74), with typical deviations of<0.5 for nonforest and<1.0 for forest biomes. JRC-TIP, the only effective LAI product, is about half the values of the other LAI products. The average uncertainties and relative uncertainties are in the following order: MODIS (0.17, 11.5%)<GEOV1 (0.24, 26.6%)<Land-SAF (0.36, 37.8%) <JRC-TIP (0.43, 114.3%). The highest relative uncertainties usually appear in ecological transition zones. More than 75% of MODIS, GEOV1, JRC-TIP, and Land-SAF pixels are within the absolute uncertainty requirements (� 0.5) set by the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS), whereas more than 78.5% of MODIS and 44.6% of GEOV1 pixels are within the threshold for relat…
Landslide susceptibility mapping using precipitation data, Mazandaran Province, north of Iran
2017
Precipitation is a nonlinear and complex phenomenon and varies in time and space. It is also evident that there is a link between precipitation and shallow landslides, and precipitation is always considered as a landslide-triggering factor. This study aims to investigate the relationship between the characteristics of precipitation and the historical shallow landslides in Mazandaran Province, north of Iran. For this purpose, the spatial variability of rainfall was analyzed using monthly rainfall data collected at 15 synoptic stations distributed over the region between 1981 and 2014. Monthly precipitation and other derived parameters were used, and a hybrid model combining principal compone…
Mg/Ca ratios in coralline algae record northwest Atlantic temperature variations and North Atlantic Oscillation relationships
2010
Climate variability in the North Atlantic has been linked in part to the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO). The NAO influences marine ecosystems in the northwestern Atlantic and transport variability of the cold Labrador Current. Understanding historic patterns of NAO variability requires long‐term and high‐resolution climate records that are not available from instrumental data. Here we present the first century‐scale proxy record of sea surface temperature (SST) variability from the Newfoundland shelf, a region from which other annual‐resolution shallow marine proxies are unavailable. The 116 year record was obtained from three sites along the eastern Newfoundland shelf using laser ablatio…
The 2-μm spectroscopy of Huygens probe landing site on Titan with Very Large Telescope/Nasmyth Adaptive Optics System Near-Infrared Imager and Spectr…
2007
[1] Several ground-based telescopes followed the event of the Huygens probe descent through Titan's atmosphere (14 January 2005). We used the Nasmyth Adaptive Optics System Near-Infrared Imager and Spectrograph (NACO) adaptive optics system at the UT-4 of the Very Large Telescope in Chile to perform both spectroscopic and imaging measurements of Titan. We present here a selected sample of the spectra we acquired on 16 January 2005 in the K band between 2.03 and 2.40 μm. Our spectra include the Huygens landing site and surrounding dark and bright areas. We apply a radiative transfer code using new methane absorption coefficients calculated in the 2-μm region. The analysis of the data yields …