Search results for "soil"

Soil is the best testifier of the diachronous dawn of the Anthropocene

2021

Humans act at worldwide scale as a growing geomorphic agent since mid‐Holocene (8,200–4,200 y BP) through the pervasive impacts of domestication, deforestation, agriculture, urbanization, and mining. The concept of Anthropocene has been introduced exactly to indicate the timespan in which humans have joined with other natural forces in impacting the outermost shell of the planet and the biosphere. Soils, which are the Earth's skin, are sensitive archives of any major human‐induced local to global change. Especially when buried, soils can permanently preserve the primordial traces of a significant impact of man on the environment, which occurred at different times and rates in different area…

ESA's sentinel missions in support of Earth system science

2012

Abstract The spatial and temporal characteristics of the new Sentinel missions, primarily designed to provide routine multidisciplinary observations for operational services, are also very suitable for addressing some of the challenges associated with advancing Earth System sciences. The Sentinels are ensuring long-term observational commitment and will operate a range of instruments with different spectral bands and spatial resolutions with global coverage and high revisit times. The complexity of Earth System models has been increasing gradually and most simulations of future climate and Earth system evolution are based on coupled models that include aspects of physics, bio/geo-chemistry,…

West African Monsoon water cycle: 1. A hybrid water budget data set

2010

International audience; This study investigates the West African Monsoon water cycle with the help of a new hybrid water budget data set developed within the framework of the African Monsoon Multidisciplinary Analyses. Surface water and energy fluxes are estimated from an ensemble of land surface model simulations forced with elaborate precipitation and radiation products derived from satellite observations, while precipitable water tendencies are estimated from numerical weather prediction analyses. Vertically integrated atmospheric moisture flux convergence is estimated as a residual. This approach provides an advanced, comprehensive atmospheric water budget, including evapotranspiration,…

Improvements in land surface temperature retrieval from the Landsat series thermal band using water vapor and air temperature

2009

[1] Land surface temperature (LST) is involved in many land surface processes such as evapotranspiration, net radiation, or air temperature modeling. In this paper we present an improved methodology to retrieve LST from Landsat 4 TM, Landsat 5 TM, and Landsat 7 ETM+ using four atmospheric databases covering different water vapor ranges (from 0 to 8 g cm−2) to build the LST retrieval models and using both water vapor and air temperature as input variables. We also compare this with LST retrievals using only water vapor or only air temperature, as well as with an existing LST retrieval algorithm. In order to validate the results, we have selected 77 Landsat images taken between 2002 and 2006 …

Effect of cobalt and silver nanoparticles and ions on Lumbricus rubellus health and on microbial community of earthworm faeces and soil

2016

The aim of this study was to investigate the impact of silver and cobalt, supplied both as ions and nanoparticles (Ag+, Co2+, AgNPs, CoNPs) through contaminated food to earthworms (Lumbricus rubellus), on their health as well as on microbial community of both soil and earthworm faeces. Earthworms and microbes were exposed to the contaminants in laboratory microcosms with artificial soil. Contaminants were supplied once a week for 5 weeks by spiking them on horse manure. The accumulation of CoNPs and Co2+ in earthworm tissues was two and three times greater than AgNPs and Ag+, respectively. Except for AgNPs, contaminants significantly affected microbial community structure of earthworm faece…

Ecohydrology in Mediterranean areas: a numerical model to describe growing seasons out of phase with precipitations

2007

ECOHYDROLOGICAL MODELLING IN MEDITERRANEAN AREAS AND WETLANDS

2010

La seguente dissertazione verte sul campo di ricerca noto come Ecoidrologia. Sebbene tale scienza, che studia le mutue interazioni fra ciclo idrologico e gli ecosistemi naturali, sia stata recentemente oggetto di svariati studi, alcuni dei suoi numerosi aspetti rimangono tuttavia ancora alquanto inesplorati. L’obiettivo principale della presente tesi è quello di rivisitare la letteratura scientifica esistente sull’argomento, cercando di adattare concetti e modelli sviluppati per certi ecosistemi anche alle peculiarità di altri ambienti meno studiati, come quelli aridi e semiaridi tipici della zona Mediterranea o le cosiddette “wetlands”, zone umide e paludose. In particolare, viene approfon…

Assessment of Ecological Risks at Former Landfill Site Using TRIAD Procedure and Multicriteria Analysis

2012

Old industrial landfills are important sources of environmental contamination in Europe, including Finland. In this study, we demonstrated the combination of TRIAD procedure, multicriteria decision analysis (MCDA), and statistical Monte Carlo analysis for assessing the risks to terrestrial biota in a former landfill site contaminated by petroleum hydrocarbons (PHCs) and metals. First, we generated hazard quotients by dividing the concentrations of metals and PHCs in soil by the corresponding risk-based ecological benchmarks. Then we conducted ecotoxicity tests using five plant species, earthworms, and potworms, and determined the abundance and diversity of soil invertebrates from additional…

Effects of isolation, area and predators on invasion: A field experiment with artificial islands

2007

Abstract The three most important ecological factors affecting the success of island invasions are the area of the island, isolation of the island and occurrence of predators on the island. Traditionally, invasion success has been studied on natural islands, which partly explains the rarity of controlled and replicated experiments. Here we report results from a field experiment investigating the influence of the above three factors in artificial islands. As an experimental system, we used predatory mites and a nematode community occurring naturally in boreal coniferous forests. We found that all three factors had an effect on invasion success, but surprisingly, that there were no interactio…

Effects of hard frost and freeze-thaw cycles on decomposer communities and N mineralisation in boreal forest soil

2003

Abstract Decomposition and mineralisation rates generally increase with increasing moisture and temperature. The expected global climate change may enhance precipitation and raise the temperatures at boreal latitudes, but absence of snow together with occasional low temperatures may cause disturbances in soil processes and faunal communities. To test the effects of disturbances such as hard frosts and freeze-thaw cycles on decomposer populations and N mineralisation, we performed two experiments. In the field experiment, carried out in a pine forest, we induced low soil temperatures by preventing snow covering the ground. In the laboratory test we established three “winter” temperature regi…