Geostatistical interpolation of daily rainfall at catchment scale: the use of several variogram models in the Ourthe and Ambleve catchments, Belgium

Spatial interpolation of precipitation data is of great importance for hydrological modelling. Geostatistical methods (kriging) are widely applied in spatial interpolation from point measurement to continuous surfaces. The first step in kriging computation is the semi-variogram modelling which usually used only one variogram model for all-moment data. The objective of this paper was to develop different algorithms of spatial interpolation for daily rainfall on 1 km2 regular grids in the catchment area and to compare the results of geostatistical and deterministic approaches. This study leaned on 30-yr daily rainfall data of 70 raingages in the hilly landscape of the Ourthe and Ambleve catchments in Belgium (2908 km2). This area lies between 35 and 693 m in elevation and consists of river networks, which are tributaries of the Meuse River. For geostatistical algorithms, seven semi-variogram models (logarithmic, power, exponential, Gaussian, rational quadratic, spherical and penta-spherical) were fitted to daily sample semi-variogram on a daily basis. These seven variogram models were also adopted to avoid negative interpolated rainfall. The elevation, extracted from a digital elevation model, was incorporated into multivariate geostatistics. Seven validation raingages and cross validation were used to compare the interpolation performance of these algorithms applied to different densities of raingages. We found that between the seven variogram models used, the Gaussian model was the most frequently best fit. Using seven variogram models can avoid negative daily rainfall in ordinary kriging. The negative estimates of kriging were observed for convective more than stratiform rain. The performance of the different methods varied slightly according to the density of raingages, particularly between 8 and 70 raingages but it was much different for interpolation using 4 raingages. Spatial interpolation with the geostatistical and Inverse Distance Weighting (IDW) algorithms outperformed considerably the interpolation with the Thiessen polygon, commonly used in various hydrological models. Integrating elevation into Kriging with an External Drift (KED) and Ordinary Cokriging (OCK) did not improve the interpolation accuracy for daily rainfall. Ordinary Kriging (ORK) and IDW were considered to be the best methods, as they provided smallest RMSE value for nearly all cases. Care should be taken in applying UNK and KED when interpolating daily rainfall with very few neighbourhood sample points. These recommendations complement the results reported in the literature. ORK, UNK and KED using only spherical model offered a slightly better result whereas OCK using seven variogram models achieved better result

L’assimilation de l’embryon à l’enfant ?

Le terme d’enfant désigne communément l’« être humain dans l’âge de l’enfance », l’enfance étant considérée comme « la première période de la vie humaine, de la naissance à l’adolescence ». Le tout premier élément de définition de l’enfant est donc a priori la naissance, considérée comme point de départ de la vie humaine. À l’ouverture d’un lexique de termes juridiques, l’enfant, quel que soit le qualificatif qui l’accompagne ou l’expression dont il fait partie, sous-entend au préalable la na..

L’ingérence de l’État dans les pratiques de soins dans le cadre de la Covid-19

Dans le cadre de l’urgence sanitaire déclarée en raison de la pandémie de Covid-19, l’État français a adopté un certain nombre de mesures dans l’objectif d’enrayer la propagation du virus. La plupart d’entre elles contraignent fortement les professionnels de santé dans leurs pratiques. Visant l’organisation du système de santé et la protection des professionnels, elles sont d’abord d’ordre structurel. Touchant à l’exercice même de la médecine et des soins, elles sont également d’ordre matériel. Toutes ont des répercussions considérables sur les prises en charge des patients. Les interrogations sur leur pertinence, leur proportionnalité et leur atteinte aux droits et libertés ont donné lieu à de nombreux recours devant le juge des référés. Chaque fois, celui-ci a validé l’extension des prérogatives des pouvoirs publics en situation d’urgence sanitaire.As part of the state of health emergency that was declared following the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the French state passed a number of measures aiming to tackle the spread of the virus. Most of them strongly constrained health professionals in their practices. These measures were directed toward the health sector’s framework itself and the protection of its personnel. There were primarily structural. Being logistical in nature, they also directly affected medical and care practices. They all had considerable consequences on patient care. The questions on their relevance, their proportionality and their breaches of basic rights and liberties led to a great number of appeals before application judges. Every time, these judges approved the expansion of those public authorities’ prerogatives in emergency public health situations

Soft Skills: how to make the young engineers aware of their new talents?

peer reviewedThe competency framework attached to the Life science engineering Master at Gembloux Agro-Bio Tech, University of Liege (Belgium) is composed of technical and scientific skills but also soft skills which are not connected to academic courses. For the training of these skills, university needs the collaboration of the professional world. Therefore, the role of our teachers evolves towards a guiding or mentoring role. They will help students to analyse their professional experiences in order to shape their professional identity, to bring to light their acquired skills. This article describes how the portfolio, used as internship’s report, will help students to gain the self-confidence about their abilities and how professors can use these reflexive analyses to evaluate the acquisition of these soft skills

Profiling Citizens in the Smart City: A Quantitative Study in Wallonia

peer reviewedBased on the assumption that citizens can participate in smart city development, this paper aims to capture the diversity of their profiles and their positioning towards smart city dynamics. The article starts with a literature review of some models of citizens to better understand how they could be portrayed in the smart city era. Considering that there is no “general citizen” and that usual typologies remain restrictive, we construct tailor-made personas, i.e., fictitious profiles based on real data. To this end, we present the results of a large-scale survey distributed to highly educated Walloon people in the framework of a general public exhibition. The profiling focuses on three aspects: (1) perception of smart city dimensions, (2) intended behavior regarding smart city solutions, and (3) favorite participatory methods. The collected answers were first analyzed with descriptive and nonparametric statistics, then classified with a k-means cluster analysis. The main results are five personas, which highlight the coexistence of different citizen groups that think and behave in a specific way. This process of profiling citizens’ priorities, behaviors, and participatory preferences can help professional designers and local governments to consider various citizens’ perspectives in the design of future smart solutions and participatory processes

Binding of serum response factor to cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator CArG-like elements, as a new potential CFTR transcriptional regulation pathway

CFTR expression is tightly controlled by a complex network of ubiquitous and tissue-specific cis-elements and trans-factors. To better understand mechanisms that regulate transcription of CFTR, we examined transcription factors that specifically bind a CFTR CArG-like motif we have previously shown to modulate CFTR expression. Gel mobility shift assays and chromatin immunoprecipitation analyses demonstrated the CFTR CArG-like motif binds serum response factor both in vitro and in vivo. Transient co-transfections with various SRF expression vector, including dominant-negative forms and small interfering RNA, demonstrated that SRF significantly increases CFTR transcriptional activity in bronchial epithelial cells. Mutagenesis studies suggested that in addition to SRF other co-factors, such as Yin Yang 1 (YY1) previously shown to bind the CFTR promoter, are potentially involved in the CFTR regulation. Here, we show that functional interplay between SRF and YY1 might provide interesting perspectives to further characterize the underlying molecular mechanism of the basal CFTR transcriptional activity. Furthermore, the identification of multiple CArG binding sites in highly conserved CFTR untranslated regions, which form specific SRF complexes, provides direct evidence for a considerable role of SRF in the CFTR transcriptional regulation into specialized epithelial lung cells

Éditorial

Le colloque « Le corps humain saisi par le droit : entre liberté et propriété » qui s’est tenu à la faculté de droit de l’université Caen Normandie le 14 octobre 2016 a eu pour objet l’étude de la relation de la personne à son corps. Après une analyse théorique, plusieurs conflits d’intérêts suscitant aujourd’hui des difficultés particulières ont été spécialement étudiés. On présente traditionnellement le corps humain comme un aspect de la personne juridique, le principe de dignité constituan..

Monitoring the temporal evolution of soil structure of three innovative production systems in the field

editorial reviewedAlternative agricultural practices emerge to provide more sustainable productions systems and to meet tomorrow's diets. These practices and varying climatic conditions will have impacts on soil structure and thus on soil hydraulic properties. However, most models do not consider the temporal variability of soil hydraulic properties, which can lead to poor decision making. Thus, quantifying the temporal evolution of hydraulic properties is essential to better understand the impact of emerging agricultural practices on soil structure (Chandrasekhar et al., 2018). In most studies, temporal variation of soil hydraulic properties is investigated using punctual measurements in the field or in the laboratory (Alskaf et al., 2021; Geris et al., 2021). Results are often inconsistent between studies due to the timing and type of measurement performed (Chandrasekhar et al., 2018; Strudley et al., 2008). In addition, most research focuses on the topsoil layers and does not consider the longer term effects on the deeper layers of the soil (Wahren et al., 2009). In this research, temporal evolution of the hydraulic properties of three innovative production systems is continuously monitored up to 90 cm depth. The three systems are designed to disrupt current agronomic trials and aim to produce the ingredients of tomorrow’s diets. They are pesticide-free and have long-term rotations of 8 years with intercrops. These systems are implemented on 8 parcels of the University of Gembloux Agro-Bio Tech on a typical loamy soil in Belgium. The innovative systems were instrumented with 24 Teros 12 water content and 24 Teros 21 water potential sensors from MeterGroup. Both types of sensor are robust and highly accurate. The Teros 12 probes also measure soil temperature and salinity. Potential probes can measure potential over a wide range of values from -9 to -2000 kPa. All probes are connected to MeterGroup's ZL6 data loggers which allow real-time data collection. The water content and potential probes are placed in parallel in the first three soil layers at 30, 60 and 90 cm depth in 8 plots. Intact soil cores are also taken every two months to determine bulk density and total soil porosity. The simultaneous determination of both water content and water potential over time under natural conditions allows the temporal evolution of the hydrodynamic properties to be captured at the level of the first three horizons. This monitoring will make it possible to quantify the temporal evolution of the structure of a loamy soil under the effect of alternative agricultural practices and varying climate conditions. The firsttwo years were contrasted in climatic conditions with a wet and a dry year. In addition, a diverse range of agricultural practices with different crops such as beet, camelina, corn, rapeseed and winter wheat were grown in both years. The results of these first two years of monitoring will be presented at the EGU 2023 General Assembly and compared to theoretical properties that would be obtained using classical PTF.AIL4WaterQualit

Soil structure changes over time, and it matters!

The emergence of alternative agricultural practices aims to create sustainable production systems to meet future dietary needs. These practices and climate changes (Linnerooth-Bayer et al., 2015) will affect soil structure and hydraulic properties (Chandrasekhar et al., 2018). However, most models do not consider changes in hydraulic properties over time, leading to incorrect decisions. Therefore, understanding these changes is crucial. This study aimed to monitor the temporal evolution of hydraulic properties in three innovative production systems up to 90 cm depth. The project focuses on the value and resilience of innovative rotation systems (vegan, agro-ecological, off-soil). For this purpose, different theoretical water retention curves (WRCs) such as pedotransfer functions (PTFs) (HYPRES and ROSETTA 1,2,3 and EUHYDI) were evaluated and compared. The EU-HYDI WRC were then compared with i) experimental WRC determined by an evaporation method (Schindler et al., 2006); ii) continuous measurements taken in situ. Results showed that theoretical EU-HYDI WRCs were overestimated, and there were technical limitations in visualizing soil dynamics below the sensor threshold. Continuous measurements were analysed for each plot's three horizons (30, 60 and 90 cm) at different time scales, highlighting the impact of annual rainfall on the soil retention profile and the influence of agronomic itineraries. A comparative analysis of WRC and yield was performed. The communication will present the first results