Search results for "forest"
showing 10 items of 3780 documents
Modelling rainfall interarrival times and rainfall depths at daily scale
2023
Analysis of daily rainfall data, and subsequent modelling of some derived variables concerning rainfall, is fundamental in different areas such as agricultural, ecological, and engineering disciplines. A way of studying the alternance of consecutive rainy days (wet spells) and no-rainy days (dry spells) is through the interarrival time (IT), which is the time elapsed between two consecutives rainy days. If we suppose that IT observations are independent and identically distributed (i.i.d.), ITs are usually modelled through a renewal processes. The simplest renewal process is the Bernoulli process with ITs geometrically distributed. The need to suppose a non-constant probability of rain brin…
Applying a probabilistic model of rainfall and snow days occurrence to daily series recorded in NW Italy.
2014
Daily precipitation records exist spanning several decades. A valuable amount of climatic information exists in the time-series of interarrival times (IT), defined as the succession of times (number of days) elapsed from a rainy (or snowy) day to the one immediately preceding it.In a previous work, Agnese et al. (2014) have been successfully tested some probabilistic modelling of rain occurrence on Sicily rainfall data; particularly, the better fitting of IT’s observed frequencies was obtained by 3-parameter Lerch-series distribution. In this work thisdistribution is tested on 70 years of 20 precipitation time-series taken in the North-West Italy, both in the plain and in the mountains, up …
Improvement of FAO-56 Model to Estimate Transpiration Fluxes of Drought Tolerant Crops under Soil Water Deficit: Application for Olive Groves
2014
[EN] Agro-hydrological models are considered an economic and simple tool for quantifying crop water requirements. In the last two decades, agro-hydrological physically based models have been developed to simulate mass and energy exchange processes in the soil-plant-atmosphere system. Although very reliable, because of the high number of required variables, simplified models have been proposed to quantify crop water consumes. The main aim of this paper is to propose an amendment of the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) of the United Nations FAO-56 spreadsheet program to introduce a more realistic shape of the stress function, valid for mature olive orchards (Olea europaea L.). The mod…
Physical and hydraulic characterization of a clay soil at the plot scale
2010
Summary The soil physical and hydraulic properties have to be determined for interpreting and simulating many hydrological processes. An investigation was carried out to determine the physical and hydraulic characteristics of a clay soil at the plot scale. An intensive sampling of the surface soil layer of two plots of 4 × 11 m2 was carried out by measuring, for each plot, dry soil bulk density, ρb, and antecedent soil water content, θi, at 88 sampling points and field-saturated soil hydraulic conductivity, Kfs, at 176 sampling points. A wide range of Kfs values (0.7–5107 mm h−1) were measured by the Simplified Falling Head (SFH) technique. For each variable, the two plots yielded very simi…
USING A TRANSIENT INFILTROMETRIC TECHNIQUE FOR INTENSIVELY SAMPLING FIELD-SATURATED HYDRAULIC CONDUCTIVITY OF A CLAY SOIL IN TWO RUNOFF PLOTS
2012
Point measurement of soil properties allows to explain and simulate plot scale hydrological processes. An intensive sampling was carried out at the surface of an unsaturated clay soil to measure, on two adjacent plots of 4×11 m2 and two different dates (May 2007 and February-March 2008), dry soil bulk density, rb, and antecedent soil water content, qi, at 88 points. Field-saturated soil hydraulic conductivity, Kfs, was also measured at 176 points by the transient Simplified Falling Head technique to determine the soil water permeability characteristics at the beginning of a possible rainfall event yielding measurable runoff. The rb values did not differ significantly between the two dates b…
High resolution remote estimation of soil surface water content by a thermal inertia approach
2009
Summary The spatial distribution of soil surface water content in a bare soil was evaluated by a thermal inertia approach from high resolution visible/near infrared (VIS/NIR) and thermal infrared (TIR) airborne data. Given that the relationship between the thermal inertia and the soil water content strongly depends on the accurate estimation of the soil thermal conductivity, two different empirical models were applied to estimate it. Remotely estimated water contents were tested with time domain reflectometry (TDR) measurements collected on a 110 × 90 m 2 bare field in coincidence with airborne over-flights. The thermal conductivity model by Johansen (1975) produced more accurate estimates …
Effects of climate, land cover and topography on soil erosion risk in a semiarid basin of the Andes
2016
Understanding soil erosion processes in the Ecuadorian Andes with a tropical wet-dry climate and a variable topography, is fundamental for research on agriculture sustainable, environmental management, as well as for a stable water supply for the local populations. This work proposes method to estimate soil erosion risk in the semiarid Catamayo basin with limited data. The results show that the rainfall distribution and the erosivity along with the rugged topography, followed by the land cover (C-factor), are the most important factors to estimate soil erosion risk. The soil erodibility is the most important factor in the dry season for agricultural areas and where the ground cover is spars…
Crop Coefficient Curve for Paddy Rice from Residual Energy Balance Calculations
2017
AbstractThe crop coefficient (Kc) values of rice paddy are important for estimating accurate rice crop evapotranspiration (ETc), water transfers planning, efficient irrigation management, and hydrological studies. In this study, ETc was measured and a generalized Kc curve was calculated for paddy rice in the Sacramento Valley, California. Field experiments were conducted in three rice paddy fields during the 2011–2013 growing seasons. Surface renewal analysis, after calibration using eddy covariance method, was applied to obtain sensible heat flux values from high-frequency temperature readings; latent heat flux densities were characterized by the residual of the energy balance method. The …
SCS Curve Number and Green-Ampt Infiltration Models
2019
Soil Conservation Service curve number (SCS-CN) and Green-Ampt (GA) infiltration models are probably the most applied equations in practical hydrology to compute the amount of direct runoff from rainfall. Both models are very simple, require few parameters, and present drawbacks and advantages. The empirical CN model concentrates the infiltration effect in the curve number and in the so-called soil hydrological groups, which have been widely characterized for different soil types, land cover, and antecedent soil moisture conditions (ASMCs), although the latter was considered ambiguous, whereas soil hydrological characteristics, including ASMC, are taken into account for the simplified physi…
Probability Distribution of Peak Discharge at the Hillslope Scale Generated by Hortonian Runoff
2016
In this work, the probability distribution of peak discharge at the hillslope bottom is determined hypothesizing a prevalent Hortonian mechanism of runoff production for a given rainfall duration. As is well known, the probability distribution of peak discharge depends on the probability of both the rainfall event as well as that of the antecedent soil moisture conditions. In particular, the probability of the rainfall event is calculated according to the familiar rainfall duration-intensity-frequency approach, whereas the ecohydrological method from the literature is used here to define the probability of the antecedent soil moisture conditions. The latter depends on a set of parameters de…