Reconstrucción del alud de febrero de 2018 en la carretera BV-4024, Coll de Pal, y definición y caracterización del correspondiente escenario de referencia de T100.

Màster Oficial en Recursos Minerals i Riscos Geològics, Universitat de Barcelona - Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Facultat de Geologia, Curs: 2018-2019, Tutorsr: Pere Oller Figueras i Glòria Furdada Bellavista.[eng] In mountain areas, natural phenomena such as avalanches generate risk when they affect infrastructures. On February 10, 2018, a wind slab avalanche triggered from an unknown release area, occurred within the “Zona de Alud RIT051”, which caused the temporary closure of the BV-4024 local road, on Coll de Pal, Catalonia, and therefore avoiding damage to vehicles in transit and their passengers. In order to facilitate a future risk management associated to the RIT051 avalanche, a 2-D simulation of the February 2018 snow avalanche and its T100 reference scenario was carried out. The snow avalanche module of free software IBER 2.5, still in development, was used. The February 2018 snow avalanche simulation was based on the analysis of the Allaus Control field data, the interpretation of 13 possible release zones and a nivological and meteorological analysis to determinate the return period (T). Despite of the simulation of the February 2018 avalanche was not completely successful on reconstructing the snow avalanche path and run-out zone, the results were considered consistent with recent damage to vegetation and representative of the event. The February 2018 snow avalanche was classified by a Size 2 (Canadian Snow Avalanche Size-Classification System) and would have a T among 15 and 20 years. The T100 snow avalanche simulation, designed and calibrated based on the February 2018 snow avalanche, set up a snow avalanche that, in its dense phase, would reach a maximum width and run-out distance of 115 and 594 m; respectively. The T100 snow avalanche would carry to 8140 m3 and reach a maximum speed of 25 m/s, just as the head reaches the BV-4024 local road, impacting with a dynamic pressure among 93.75 to 187.50 kPa. The T100 snow avalanche was classified by a Size 3, could be able to bury a car, destroy a small building or break trees. Measures such as snowpack-stabilizing and snowdrift control structures or avalanche guiding and deflecting structures can be considered, based on the present work, for future risk management. The simulation of both snow avalanches did not incorporate the existence of a less cohesive phase (powder component).[spa] En áreas de montaña, los fenómenos naturales como los aludes generan riesgo cuando afectan infraestructuras. El pasado 10 de febrero de 2018 se produjo un alud de placa de viento, de zona de salida desconocida, dentro de la Zona de Alud RIT051; el cual no causó daños gracias al cierre temporal preventivo de la carretera BV-4024, en su paso por Coll de Pal, Cataluña. Con tal de posibilitar una futura gestión del riesgo asociada a la activación de la RIT051, se generó la simulación 2-D del alud de febrero de 2018 y de su escenario de referencia de T100, mediante el uso del módulo de aludes, en desarrollo, del free software IBER 2.5. La simulación consideró información levantada en terreno por Allaus Control, la interpretación de 13 posibles zonas de salida y un análisis nivometeorológico para determinar su periodo de retorno (T). Si bien la simulación del alud de febrero de 2018 no logró reconstruir fielmente el recorrido y depósito del alud, los resultados fueron considerados consistentes y representativos del evento, destacando su coherencia con daños recientes en la vegetación. Este alud fue clasificado con un Tamaño 2 (Canadian Snow Avalanche Size-Classification System), y tendría un T de entre 15 a 20 años. La simulación del alud T100, diseñada y calibrada en base al alud de feb de 2018, muestra un alud de nieve que, en su fase densa, lograría un ancho y alcance máximo de 115 y 594 m; respectivamente. El alud T100 movilizaría hasta 8140 m3 y podría alcanzar una velocidad máxima de 25 m/s, justo cuando la cabecera llega a la carretera BV-4024, impactando con una presión dinámica de entre 93.75 a 187.50 kPa. El alud T100 fue clasificado con un Tamaño 3, pudiendo enterrar un auto, destruir un pequeño edificio o romper árboles. Medidas cómo la retención del manto nivoso o el desvío, freno o parada del alud, pueden ser consideradas, a partir de este estudio, para una futura gestión del riesgo. La simulación de ambos aludes no consideró la existencia de una fase menos cohesiva (aerosol)

Reconstructing the Snow Avalanche of Coll de Pal 2018 (SE Pyrenees).

Developments in mountain areas prone to natural hazards produce undesired impacts and damages. Thus, disaster assessment is mandatory to understand the physics of dangerous events and to make decisions to prevent hazardous situations. This work focusses on the practical implementation of methods and tools to assess a snow avalanche that affected a road at the Coll de Pal in 2018 (SE Pyrenees). This is a quite common situation in mountain roads and the assessment has to focus specially in the avalanche-road interaction, on the return periods considered and on the dynamics of the phenomena. This assessment presents the field recognition, snow and weather characterization and numerical modelling of the avalanche. Field campaigns revealed evidences of the avalanche triggering, runout trajectory and general behavior. An unstable situation of the snowpack due to a relatively large snowfall fallen some days before over a previous snowpack with weak layers, caused the avalanche triggering when an additional load was added by a strong wind-drift episode. A medium size (<2500 m3) soft slab avalanche, corresponding to a return period of 15-20 years, occurred and crossed the road of the Coll de Pal pass. The event was reproduced numerically by means of the 2D-SWE based numerical tool Iber aiming to analyze the avalanche behavior. Results of the simulation corresponded with the observations (runout trajectory and snow deposit); thus, relevant information about the avalanche dynamics could be obtained. Identified differences probably come from the terrain elevation data, which represent 'snow free' topography and do not consider the snowpack on the terrai

Limites e possibilidades para desenvolvimento de pesquisas em saúde pública no judiciário

OBJETIVO: Caracterizar as bases de dados dos tribunais de justiça do Brasil como potencial ferramenta para a pesquisa em Saúde Coletiva em suas interfaces com as ciências jurídicas. MÉTODOS: Estudo transversal de natureza quantitativa e descritiva com foco em análise de gestão estratégica e sistemas judiciários. RESULTADOS: Foram identificadas e analisadas bases de dados utilizadas pela Justiça Comum nas Unidades da Federação para sistematizar processos judiciais. Verificou-se um total de 123 bases de dados nos tribunais de justiça por unidade de federação, com destaque para as regiões Sul e Nordeste, em contraste à região Norte que apresenta menor número de sistemas. Esse grande número de sistemas judiciais limita o acesso a operadores do direito, e dificulta levantamento de evidências por pesquisadores em saúde e, consequentemente, com impactos na gestão estratégica do Poder Executivo. Constatou-se limitações desde o design à extração transparente e democrática de dados pelos próprios usuários, bem como restrita integração entre bases. CONCLUSÕES: Embora avanços tenham sidos empreendidos nos últimos anos pelos tribunais de justiça para unificação dessas bases, a multiplicidade de sistemas de informação utilizados na Justiça Comum estadual complexifica a gestão do conhecimento, limita o desenvolvimento de pesquisas, mesmo quando realizados por advogados ou pesquisadores da área jurídica, gera lentidão na extração de dados para a gestão pública. Reconhece-se a necessidade de esforços adicionais para a padronização, bem como para aprimoramento dessas bases de dados, ampliando acesso, transparência e integração com vistas a um olhar transdisciplinar entre o campo do Direito e da Saúde Coletiva.OBJECTIVE To characterize databases of the courts of justice of Brazil as a potential tool for research in Collective Health, in its interface with the legal sciences. METHODS Cross-sectional study of quantitative and descriptive nature, focusing on analysis of strategic management and judicial systems. RESULTS Databases used by the Common Justice in the Federation Units to systematize judicial processes were identified and analyzed. A total of 123 databases were found in the courts of justice per state, with emphasis on the South and Northeast regions, in contrast to the North region, which has a smaller number of systems. This large number of judicial systems limits access to legal operators, and hinders the collection of evidence by health researchers and, consequently, impacts the strategic management of the Executive Branch. There were limitations from design to transparent and democratic data extraction by the users themselves, as well as restricted integration between bases. CONCLUSIONS Although advances have been made in recent years by the courts of justice to unify these databases, the multiplicity of information systems used in the Common State Justice complicates the management of knowledge, limits the development of research, even when carried out by lawyers or researchers in the legal area, as well as generates slow data extraction for public management. It is recognized the need for additional efforts for standardization, as well as for improvement of these databases, expanding access, transparency and integration with a view to a transdisciplinary look between the field of Law and Collective Health

Estimating the global conservation status of more than 15,000 Amazonian tree species

Estimates of extinction risk for Amazonian plant and animal species are rare and not often incorporated into land-use policy and conservation planning. We overlay spatial distribution models with historical and projected deforestation to show that at least 36% and up to 57% of all Amazonian tree species are likely to qualify as globally threatened under International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List criteria. If confirmed, these results would increase the number of threatened plant species on Earth by 22%. We show that the trends observed in Amazonia apply to trees throughout the tropics, and we predict thatmost of the world’s >40,000 tropical tree species now qualify as globally threatened. A gap analysis suggests that existing Amazonian protected areas and indigenous territories will protect viable populations of most threatened species if these areas suffer no further degradation, highlighting the key roles that protected areas, indigenous peoples, and improved governance can play in preventing large-scale extinctions in the tropics in this century

Geography and ecology shape the phylogenetic composition of Amazonian tree communities

Aim: Amazonia hosts more tree species from numerous evolutionary lineages, both young and ancient, than any other biogeographic region. Previous studies have shown that tree lineages colonized multiple edaphic environments and dispersed widely across Amazonia, leading to a hypothesis, which we test, that lineages should not be strongly associated with either geographic regions or edaphic forest types. Location: Amazonia. Taxon: Angiosperms (Magnoliids; Monocots; Eudicots). Methods: Data for the abundance of 5082 tree species in 1989 plots were combined with a mega-phylogeny. We applied evolutionary ordination to assess how phylogenetic composition varies across Amazonia. We used variation partitioning and Moran\u27s eigenvector maps (MEM) to test and quantify the separate and joint contributions of spatial and environmental variables to explain the phylogenetic composition of plots. We tested the indicator value of lineages for geographic regions and edaphic forest types and mapped associations onto the phylogeny. Results: In the terra firme and várzea forest types, the phylogenetic composition varies by geographic region, but the igapó and white-sand forest types retain a unique evolutionary signature regardless of region. Overall, we find that soil chemistry, climate and topography explain 24% of the variation in phylogenetic composition, with 79% of that variation being spatially structured (R$^{2}$ = 19% overall for combined spatial/environmental effects). The phylogenetic composition also shows substantial spatial patterns not related to the environmental variables we quantified (R$^{2}$ = 28%). A greater number of lineages were significant indicators of geographic regions than forest types. Main Conclusion: Numerous tree lineages, including some ancient ones (>66 Ma), show strong associations with geographic regions and edaphic forest types of Amazonia. This shows that specialization in specific edaphic environments has played a long-standing role in the evolutionary assembly of Amazonian forests. Furthermore, many lineages, even those that have dispersed across Amazonia, dominate within a specific region, likely because of phylogenetically conserved niches for environmental conditions that are prevalent within regions

Geographic patterns of tree dispersal modes in Amazonia and their ecological correlates

Aim: To investigate the geographic patterns and ecological correlates in the geographic distribution of the most common tree dispersal modes in Amazonia (endozoochory, synzoochory, anemochory and hydrochory). We examined if the proportional abundance of these dispersal modes could be explained by the availability of dispersal agents (disperser-availability hypothesis) and/or the availability of resources for constructing zoochorous fruits (resource-availability hypothesis). Time period: Tree-inventory plots established between 1934 and 2019. Major taxa studied: Trees with a diameter at breast height (DBH) ≥ 9.55 cm. Location: Amazonia, here defined as the lowland rain forests of the Amazon River basin and the Guiana Shield. Methods: We assigned dispersal modes to a total of 5433 species and morphospecies within 1877 tree-inventory plots across terra-firme, seasonally flooded, and permanently flooded forests. We investigated geographic patterns in the proportional abundance of dispersal modes. We performed an abundance-weighted mean pairwise distance (MPD) test and fit generalized linear models (GLMs) to explain the geographic distribution of dispersal modes. Results: Anemochory was significantly, positively associated with mean annual wind speed, and hydrochory was significantly higher in flooded forests. Dispersal modes did not consistently show significant associations with the availability of resources for constructing zoochorous fruits. A lower dissimilarity in dispersal modes, resulting from a higher dominance of endozoochory, occurred in terra-firme forests (excluding podzols) compared to flooded forests. Main conclusions: The disperser-availability hypothesis was well supported for abiotic dispersal modes (anemochory and hydrochory). The availability of resources for constructing zoochorous fruits seems an unlikely explanation for the distribution of dispersal modes in Amazonia. The association between frugivores and the proportional abundance of zoochory requires further research, as tree recruitment not only depends on dispersal vectors but also on conditions that favour or limit seedling recruitment across forest types

Geography and ecology shape the phylogenetic composition of Amazonian tree communities

AimAmazonia hosts more tree species from numerous evolutionary lineages, both young and ancient, than any other biogeographic region. Previous studies have shown that tree lineages colonized multiple edaphic environments and dispersed widely across Amazonia, leading to a hypothesis, which we test, that lineages should not be strongly associated with either geographic regions or edaphic forest types.LocationAmazonia.TaxonAngiosperms (Magnoliids; Monocots; Eudicots).MethodsData for the abundance of 5082 tree species in 1989 plots were combined with a mega-phylogeny. We applied evolutionary ordination to assess how phylogenetic composition varies across Amazonia. We used variation partitioning and Moran's eigenvector maps (MEM) to test and quantify the separate and joint contributions of spatial and environmental variables to explain the phylogenetic composition of plots. We tested the indicator value of lineages for geographic regions and edaphic forest types and mapped associations onto the phylogeny.ResultsIn the terra firme and várzea forest types, the phylogenetic composition varies by geographic region, but the igapó and white-sand forest types retain a unique evolutionary signature regardless of region. Overall, we find that soil chemistry, climate and topography explain 24% of the variation in phylogenetic composition, with 79% of that variation being spatially structured (R2 = 19% overall for combined spatial/environmental effects). The phylogenetic composition also shows substantial spatial patterns not related to the environmental variables we quantified (R2 = 28%). A greater number of lineages were significant indicators of geographic regions than forest types.Main ConclusionNumerous tree lineages, including some ancient ones (&gt;66 Ma), show strong associations with geographic regions and edaphic forest types of Amazonia. This shows that specialization in specific edaphic environments has played a long-standing role in the evolutionary assembly of Amazonian forests. Furthermore, many lineages, even those that have dispersed across Amazonia, dominate within a specific region, likely because of phylogenetically conserved niches for environmental conditions that are prevalent within regions

Mapping density, diversity and species-richness of the Amazon tree flora

Using 2.046 botanically-inventoried tree plots across the largest tropical forest on Earth, we mapped tree species-diversity and tree species-richness at 0.1-degree resolution, and investigated drivers for diversity and richness. Using only location, stratified by forest type, as predictor, our spatial model, to the best of our knowledge, provides the most accurate map of tree diversity in Amazonia to date, explaining approximately 70% of the tree diversity and species-richness. Large soil-forest combinations determine a significant percentage of the variation in tree species-richness and tree alpha-diversity in Amazonian forest-plots. We suggest that the size and fragmentation of these systems drive their large-scale diversity patterns and hence local diversity. A model not using location but cumulative water deficit, tree density, and temperature seasonality explains 47% of the tree species-richness in the terra-firme forest in Amazonia. Over large areas across Amazonia, residuals of this relationship are small and poorly spatially structured, suggesting that much of the residual variation may be local. The Guyana Shield area has consistently negative residuals, showing that this area has lower tree species-richness than expected by our models. We provide extensive plot meta-data, including tree density, tree alpha-diversity and tree species-richness results and gridded maps at 0.1-degree resolution

Consistent patterns of common species across tropical tree communities

Trees structure the Earth’s most biodiverse ecosystem, tropical forests. The vast number of tree species presents a formidable challenge to understanding these forests, including their response to environmental change, as very little is known about most tropical tree species. A focus on the common species may circumvent this challenge. Here we investigate abundance patterns of common tree species using inventory data on 1,003,805 trees with trunk diameters of at least 10 cm across 1,568 locations1,2,3,4,5,6 in closed-canopy, structurally intact old-growth tropical forests in Africa, Amazonia and Southeast Asia. We estimate that 2.2%, 2.2% and 2.3% of species comprise 50% of the tropical trees in these regions, respectively. Extrapolating across all closed-canopy tropical forests, we estimate that just 1,053 species comprise half of Earth’s 800 billion tropical trees with trunk diameters of at least 10 cm. Despite differing biogeographic, climatic and anthropogenic histories7, we find notably consistent patterns of common species and species abundance distributions across the continents. This suggests that fundamental mechanisms of tree community assembly may apply to all tropical forests. Resampling analyses show that the most common species are likely to belong to a manageable list of known species, enabling targeted efforts to understand their ecology. Although they do not detract from the importance of rare species, our results open new opportunities to understand the world’s most diverse forests, including modelling their response to environmental change, by focusing on the common species that constitute the majority of their trees.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe