854 research outputs found

    Mapping Congo Basin vegetation types from 300 m and 1 km multi-sensor time series for carbon stocks and forest areas estimation

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    This study aims to contribute to the understanding of the Congo Basin forests by delivering a detailed map of vegetation types with an improved spatial discrimination and coherence for the whole Congo Basin region. A total of 20 land cover classes were described with the standardized Land Cover Classification System (LCCS) developed by the FAO. Based on a semi-automatic processing chain, the Congo Basin vegetation types map was produced by combining 19 months of observations from the Envisat MERIS full resolution products (300 m) and 8 yr of daily SPOT VEGETATION (VGT) reflectances (1 km). Four zones (north, south and two central) were delineated and processed separately according to their seasonal and cloud cover specificities. The discrimination between different vegetation types (e.g. forest and savannas) was significantly improved thanks to the MERIS sharp spatial resolution. A better discrimination was achieved in cloudy areas by taking advantage of the temporal consistency of the SPOT VGT observations. This resulted in a precise delineation of the spatial extent of the rural complex in the countries situated along the Atlantic coast. Based on this new map, more accurate estimates of the surface areas of forest types were produced for each country of the Congo Basin. Carbon stocks of the Basin were evaluated to a total of 49 360 million metric tons. The regional scale of the map was an opportunity to investigate what could be an appropriate tree cover threshold for a forest class definition in the Congo Basin countries. A 30% tree cover threshold was suggested. Furthermore, the phenology of the different vegetation types was illustrated systematically with EVI temporal profiles. This Congo Basin forest types map reached a satisfactory overall accuracy of 71.5% and even 78.9% when some classes are aggregated. The values of the Cohen's kappa coefficient, respectively 0.64 and 0.76 indicates a result significantly better than random

    Draw me a Neutrino: the first KM3NeT art contest

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    [EN] While the KM3NeT neutrino detector is being deployed in the Mediterranean Sea, the Collaboration launched a contest searching for illustrations of the neutrinos it will detect. The participants in the contest were invited to submit their interpretation of a neutrino, using any technique. More than 500 drawings were submitted from sixteen different countries. The winners were selected by a jury of scientists, artists and science communicators based on the originality and creativity of the drawings, as well as the harmony with the properties and origin of the neutrinos. After announcing the results in an online ceremony with a large international audience, the winning drawings have been put on display in a dedicated KM3NeT Virtual Neutrino Art Centre. In this contribution, we will explain the motivation for the contest and will describe how it was organized. We will also show the winning drawings and present the results of an impact study carried out during the contest.We thank Angelo Ceres of Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN), Sezione di Bari, for setting up the contest website. The contest was supported in France from Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) and LabEx UnivEarthS (ANR-10-LABX-0023 and ANR-18-IDEX0001). G. de Wasseige acknowledges support from the European UnionÂżs Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No 844138.Circella, M.; Ardid RamĂ­rez, M.; Bendahman, M.; Bozza, C.; Coyle, P.; Wasseige, G.; Distefano, C.... (2022). Draw me a Neutrino: the first KM3NeT art contest. PoS. Proceedings of Science. 1-10. https://doi.org/10.22323/1.395.140011

    The IceCube Neutrino Observatory - Contributions to ICRC 2015 Part II: Atmospheric and Astrophysical Diffuse Neutrino Searches of All Flavors

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    Papers on atmospheric and astrophysical diffuse neutrino searches of all flavors submitted to the 34th International Cosmic Ray Conference (ICRC 2015, The Hague) by the IceCube Collaboration.Comment: 66 pages, 36 figures, Papers submitted to the 34th International Cosmic Ray Conference, The Hague 2015, v2 has a corrected author lis
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