Search results for "Wetness"
showing 10 items of 20 documents
Thermosensory mapping of skin wetness sensitivity across the body of young males and females at rest and following maximal incremental running
2019
Key points: Humans lack skin receptors for wetness (i.e. hygroreceptors), yet we present a remarkable wetness sensitivity. Afferent inputs from skin cold-sensitive thermoreceptors are key for sensing wetness; yet, it is unknown whether males and females differ in their wetness sensitivity across their body and whether high intensity exercise modulates this sensitivity. We mapped sensitivity to cold, neutral and warm wetness across five body regions and show that females are more sensitive to skin wetness than males, and that this difference is greater for cold than warm wetness sensitivity. We also show that a single bout of maximal exercise reduced the sensitivity to skin wetness (i.e. hyg…
Soil moisture variations from boreal forests to the tundra
2023
Soil moisture has a profound influence on life on Earth, and this vital water resource varies across space and time. Here, we explored soil moisture variations in boreal forest and tundra environments, where comprehensive soil moisture datasets are scarce. We installed soil moisture sensors up to 14 cm depth at 503 measurement sites within seven study areas across northern Europe. We recorded 6,138,528 measurements to capture soil moisture variations of the snowless season from April to September 2020. We described the spatio-temporal patterns of soil moisture, and test how these patterns are linked to topography and how these links vary in space and time. We found large spatial variation a…
The role of the diagnostic areas in the assessment of landslide susceptibility models: a test in the sicilian chain
2011
Abstract The aim of the research was to verify and compare the predictive power of different diagnostic areas in assessing landslide susceptibility with a multivariate approach. Scarps, landslide areas (the union between scarp and accumulation zones) and areas uphill from crowns, for rotational slides, source or scarp areas and landslide areas, for flows, have been tested. A multivariate approach was applied to assess the landslide susceptibility on the basis of three selected conditioning factors (lithology, slope angle, and topographic wetness index), which were combined in a Unique Condition Unit (UCU) layer. By intersecting the UCU layer with the vector layer of the diagnostic areas, la…
Slope units-based flow susceptibility model: using validation tests to select controlling factors
2011
A susceptibility map for an area, which is representative in terms of both geologic setting and slope instability phenomena of large sectors of the Sicilian Apennines, was produced using slope units and a multiparametric univariate model. The study area, extending for approximately 90 km2, was partitioned into 774 slope units, whose expected landslide occurrence was estimated by averaging seven susceptibility values, determined for the selected controlling factors: lithology, mean slope gradient, stream power index at the foot, mean topographic wetness index and profile curvature, slope unit length, and altitude range. Each of the recognized 490 landslides was represented by its centroid po…
Monitoring peatland water table depth with optical and radar satellite imagery
2022
Peatland water table depth (WTD) and wetness have widely been monitored with optical and synthetic aperture radar (SAR) remote sensing but there is a lack of studies that have used multi-sensor data, i.e., combination of optical and SAR data. We assessed how well WTD can be monitored with remote sensing data, whether multi-sensor approach boosts explanatory capacity and whether there are differences in regression performance between data and peatland types. Our data consisted of continuous multiannual WTD data from altogether 50 restored and undrained Finnish peatlands, and optical (Landsat 5–8, Sentinel-2) and Sentinel-1 C-band SAR data processed in Google Earth Engine. We calculated rando…
Exploiting the topographic information in a PDM-based conceptual hydrological model
2014
In this work, a conceptual lumped model was developed to simulate runoff and analyze hydrological processes with the goal of incorporating the morphological information into a probability-distributed model (PDM). PDMs usually describe the process of runoff generation as the result of soil saturation excess caused by precipitation with soil storage capacity represented by a spatially distributed quantity and described by a probability distribution. The proposed model, called topography-based probability distributed model (TOPDM), based on a simple water balance whose components are basin soil moisture storage, precipitation, drainage to groundwater, evapotranspiration, and Dunnian and Horton…
Water erosion susceptibility mapping by applying Stochastic Gradient Treeboost to the Imera Meridionale River Basin (Sicily, Italy)
2016
Abstract Soil erosion by water constitutes a serious problem affecting various countries. In the last few years, a number of studies have adopted statistical approaches for erosion susceptibility zonation. In this study, the Stochastic Gradient Treeboost (SGT) was tested as a multivariate statistical tool for exploring, analyzing and predicting the spatial occurrence of rill–interrill erosion and gully erosion. This technique implements the stochastic gradient boosting algorithm with a tree-based method. The study area is a 9.5 km 2 river catchment located in central-northern Sicily (Italy), where water erosion processes are prevalent, and affect the agricultural productivity of local commu…
Retrieval of Forest Water Potential from L-Band Vegetation Optical Depth
2021
A retrieval methodology for forest water potential from ground-based L-band radiometry is proposed. It contains the estimation of the gravimetric and the relative water content of a forest stand and tests in situ- and model-based functions to transform these estimates into forest water potential. The retrieval is based on vegetation optical depth data from a tower-based experiment of the SMAPVEX 19–21 campaign for the period from April to October 2019 at Harvard Forest, MA, USA. In addition, comparison and validation with in situ measurements on leaf and xylem water potential as well as on leaf wetness and complex permittivity are foreseen to understand limitations and potentials of the pro…
Ageing reduces skin wetness sensitivity across the body.
2021
New findings What is the central question of this study? Ageing impairs the skin's thermal and tactile sensitivity: does ageing also induce loss of skin wetness sensitivity? What is the main finding and its importance? Older adults show an average 15% loss of skin wetness sensitivity, with this sensory deficit being mediated by a combination of reductions in skin's tactile sensing and hydration status. These findings increase knowledge of wetness sensing mechanisms across the lifespan. Abstract Humans use sensory integration mechanisms to sense skin wetness based on thermal and mechanical cues. Ageing impairs the skin's thermal and tactile sensitivity, yet we lack evidence on whether wetnes…
Using topographical attributes to evaluate gully erosion proneness (susceptibility) in two mediterranean basins: advantages and limitations
2015
Empirical multivariate predictive models represent an important tool to estimate gully erosion susceptibility. Topography, lithology, climate, land use and vegetation cover are commonly used as input for these approaches. In this paper, two multivariate predictive models were generated for two gully erosion processes in San Giorgio basin (Italy) and Mula River basin (Spain) using only topographical attributes as independent variables. Initially, nine models (five for San Giorgio and four for Mula) with pixel sizes ranging from 2 to 50 m were generated, and validation statistics were calculated to estimate the optimal pixel size. The best models were selected based on model performance using…