Modelling crop hail damage footprints with single-polarization radar: the roles of spatial resolution, hail intensity, and cropland density

Hail represents a major threat to agriculture in Switzerland, and assessments of current and future hail risk are of paramount importance for decision-making in the insurance industry and the agricultural sector. However, relating observational information on hail with crop-specific damage is challenging. Here, we build and systematically assess an open-source model to predict hail damage footprints for field crops (wheat, maize, barley, rapeseed) and grapevine from the operational radar product Maximum Expected Severe Hail Size (MESHS) at different spatial resolutions. To this end, we combine the radar information with detailed geospatial information on agricultural land use and geo-referenced damage data from a crop insurer for 12 recent hail events in Switzerland. We find that for field crops model skill gradually increases when the spatial resolution is reduced from 1 km down to 8 km. For even lower resolutions, the skill is diminished again. In contrast, for grapevine, decreasing model resolution below 1 km tends to reduce skill, which is attributed to the different spatial distribution of field crops and grapevine in the landscape. It is shown that identifying a suitable MESHS thresholds to model damage footprints always involves trade-offs. For the lowest possible MESHS threshold (20 mm) the model predicts damage about twice as often as observed (high frequency bias and false alarm ratio), but it also has a high probability of detection (80 %). The frequency bias decreases for larger thresholds and reaches an optimal value close to 1 for MESHS thresholds of 30–40 mm. However, this comes at the cost of a substantially lower probability of detection (around 50 %), while overall model skill, as measured by the Heidke skill score (HSS), remains largely unchanged (0.41–0.44). We argue that, ultimately, the best threshold therefore depends on the relative costs of a false alarm versus a missed event. Finally, the frequency of false alarms is substantially reduced and skill is improved (HSS = 0.54) when only areas with high cropland density are considered. Results from this simple, open-source model show that modelling of hail damage footprints to crops from single-polarization radar in Switzerland is skilful and is best done at 8 km resolution for field crops and 1 km for grapevine.</p

Process-based modelling of the nutritive value of forages: a review

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Impact of Climate Change on Voltinism and Prospective Diapause Induction of a Global Pest Insect – Cydia pomonella (L.)

Global warming will lead to earlier beginnings and prolongation of growing seasons in temperate regions and will have pronounced effects on phenology and life-history adaptation in many species. These changes were not easy to simulate for actual phenologies because of the rudimentary temporal (season) and spatial (regional) resolution of climate model projections. We investigate the effect of climate change on the regional incidence of a pest insect with nearly worldwide distribution and very high potential for adaptation to season length and temperature – the Codling Moth, Cydia pomonella. Seasonal and regional climate change signals were downscaled to the hourly temporal scale of a pest phenology model and the spatial scale of pest habitats using a stochastic weather generator operating at daily scale in combination with a re-sampling approach for simulation of hourly weather data. Under future conditions of increased temperatures (2045–2074), the present risk of below 20% for a pronounced second generation (peak larval emergence) in Switzerland will increase to 70–100%. The risk of an additional third generation will increase from presently 0–2% to 100%. We identified a significant two-week shift to earlier dates in phenological stages, such as overwintering adult flight. The relative extent (magnitude) of first generation pupae and all later stages will significantly increase. The presence of first generation pupae and later stages will be prolonged. A significant decrease in the length of overlap of first and second generation larval emergence was identified. Such shifts in phenology may induce changes in life-history traits regulating the life cycle. An accordingly life-history adaptation in photoperiodic diapause induction to shorter day-length is expected and would thereby even more increase the risk of an additional generation. With respect to Codling Moth management, the shifts in phenology and voltinism projected here will require adaptations of plant protection strategies to maintain their sustainability

Rate and duration of hospitalisation for acute pulmonary embolism in the real-world clinical practice of different countries : Analysis from the RIETE registry

publishersversionPeer reviewe

Data handling of CYGNO experiment using INFN-Cloud solution

The INFN Cloud project was launched at the beginning of 2020, aiming to build a distributed Cloud infrastructure and provide advanced services for the INFN scientific communities. A Platform as a Service (PaaS) was created inside INFN Cloud that allows the experiments to develop and access resources as a Software as a Service (SaaS), and CYGNO is the betatester of this system. The aim of the CYGNO experiment is to realize a large gaseous Time Projection Chamber based on the optical readout of the photons produced in the avalanche multiplication of ionization electrons in a GEM stack. To this extent, CYGNO exploits the progress in commercial scientific Active Pixel Sensors based on Scientific CMOS for Dark Matter search and Solar Neutrino studies. CYGNO, like many other astroparticle experiments, requires a computing model to acquire, store, simulate and analyze data typically far from High Energy Physics (HEP) experiments. Indeed, astroparticle experiments are typically characterized by being less demanding of computing resources with respect to HEP ones but have to deal with unique and unrepeatable data, sometimes collected in extreme conditions, with extensive use of templates and montecarlo, and are often re-calibrated and reconstructed many times for a given data set. Moreover, the varieties and the scale of computing models and requirements are extremely large. In this scenario, the Cloud infrastructure with standardized and optimized services offered to the scientific community could be a useful solution able to match the requirements of many small/medium size experiments. In this work, we will present the CYGNO computing model based on the INFN cloud infrastructure where the experiment software, easily extendible to similar experiments to similar applications on other similar experiments, provides tools as a service to store, archive, analyze, and simulate data

Shifts in N-Efficiency of Different Farm Types in Response to Climate Change

Climate change may affect European farms, but in contrast to individual crops - the sensitivity of whole farming systems has not been the subject of much research. At the farm level, where different farm units are linked through the availability and flow of nitrogen (N), effects on individual crops are interlinked, and through shifts in grasslands and related animal production with altered nutrient flows. Ideally, N flows into the system and N-export with products should be equal, and thus N-use-efficiency (NUE), expressed as the ratio of N export to N loss, would be maximal. The objective of this study was to test the effect of gradually changing temperature (T) and precipitation (P) on NUE of two farm types under Swiss conditions

Climate Change Affects Farm Nitrogen Loss - A Swiss Case Study with a Dynamic Farm Model

The response of arable crops and grasslands to climatic changes and increasing CO2 concentration has implications for the operation of farms, in particular for the management of resources such as nitrogen. A simple dynamic farm model (Stella model and CH-Farm) was used to analyze the shift in the ratio of N lost via leaching, denitrification and volatilization to N exported with products from dairy or arable production(here defined as relative N loss). The model was run for two types of farms typical of Swiss conditions. Growth parameters for two sequentially grown crops (winter wheat and maize) and grass were determined with the process-oriented models Pasture Simulation Model (PaSim) and CropSyst, respectively. CH-Farm was forced with two assumptions about the transient change in temperature and precipitation, and with or without CO2 effects. Relative N loss for the baseline was around 1.33 for the dairy type farm and around 1.05 for the arable-type farm and increased progressively over the 100-year simulation period, with the largest shift in response to the dry/hot scenario. Soil N pools decreased with all scenarios, but at different rates. CO2 fertilization alleviated the effect of climate change due to increased productivity and N fixation in plants. Adjustment of the growth parameters to progressively increasing temperatures reduced the difference between farm types and positively affected relative N losses mainly through increased productivity and reduced fallow periods between crops. The results suggest that the impact of climate change on relative farm-level N loss depends on physiological adjustments to climatic scenarios, whereas the distribution of land between dairy and arable crop production is less important, and that simple cultivar adjustments can help to mitigate negative effects of climate change on farm-level N use.JRC.H.5-Rural, water and ecosystem resource

Improving Continuous Approximation of Sliding Mode Control

This paper proposes a continuous approximation of Sliding Mode Control (SMC) designed to fully reject constant disturbances. The main advantage of standard continuous approximation is knew to be chattering reduction while main- taining the state in a well defined boundary of the sliding surface. However, in classical implementations, the effect of even a simple constant disturbance causes the state to leave the sliding surface and move unpredictably in the boundary layer. The proposed solution is a first order SMC approximation, presented with a theoretical proof for the rejection of constant disturbances. The efficacy of the control law is demonstrated in a real-life implementation and comparisons with higher order SMC are carried on. Despite the simplicity of the proposed law, experiments in a robotic application show performances comparable with state of the art second order SMC

The PAD-adapted 30-20-10 during Nordic walking: A new exercise training session in patients with symptomatic peripheral artery disease.

This study aimed to investigate the feasibility of a peripheral artery disease (PAD)-adapted 30-20-10 Nordic walking session in patients with symptomatic PAD and to compare the cardiovascular response of this new training session to a traditional walking (TW) and 4 × 4 minutes Nordic walking session. This is a prospective observational study. Patients with Fontaine stage II PAD were included. Patients participated in Nordic walking sessions, which were randomly assigned as TW, 4 × 4 minute intervals, and peripheral artery disease adapted 30-20-10 exercise session (PAD-adapted 30-20-10 sessions). PAD-adapted 30-20-10 and 4 × 4 minutes sessions consisted of 4 repetitions of 4 minutes of effort followed by 3 minutes of passive recovery. PAD-adapted 30-20-10 session was characterized by 4 continuous 1-min repetitions at 3 different walking speeds [high (30 seconds), moderate (20 seconds) and low (10 seconds)]. During the 4 × 4 minutes session, patients were asked to cover the maximal distance at a constant speed. During TW session, patients were asked to walk at a speed inducing moderate-to-severe claudication pain. Heart rate, rating of perceived exertion (RPE) and claudication pain intensity using a visual analog scale were assessed. The perceived enjoyment of each session was assessed using a visual analog scale ranging from 0 (not enjoyable) to 10 (very enjoyable). Eleven patients with chronic symptomatic PAD were included (62 ± 13 years; 54% women). The mean heart rate during the time of effort was significantly higher in PAD-adapted 30-20-10 group than in 4 × 4 minutes and TW groups (127 ± 12, 122 ± 12, 114 ± 11 bpm, respectively; P ≤ .001). The mean rating of perceived exertion (16 ± 1, 15 ± 1, 13 ± 1; P ≤ .001) and claudication pain intensity (8 ± 1, 7 ± 1; 7 ± 1 mm; P ≤ .019) were significantly higher during PAD-adapted 30-20-10 sessions than during 4 × 4 minutes and TW sessions. The perceived enjoyment was similar among sessions (8.7 ± 1.6 for TW, 8.6 ± 1.7 for 4 × 4 minutes, and 8.8 ± 1.8 mm for PAD-adapted 30-20-10 sessions; P = .935). The PAD-adapted 30-20-10 session is feasible and induces higher cardiovascular stimulation and claudication pain than 4 × 4 minutes and TW procedures in patients with symptomatic PAD. Despite these different responses, a similar perceived enjoyment among the sessions has been shown. Future investigations are needed to examine the effects of this new training session in these patients