Cup anemometer response to the wind turbulence-measurement of the horizontal wind variance

International audienceThis paper presents some dynamic characteristics of an opto-electronic cup anemometer model in relation to its response to the wind turbulence. It is based on experimental data of the natural wind turbulence measured both by an ultrasonic anemometer and two samples of the mentioned cup anemometer. The distance constants of the latter devices measured in a wind tunnel are in good agreement with those determined by the spectral analysis method proposed in this study. In addition, the study shows that the linear compensation of the cup anemometer response, beyond the cutoff frequency, is limited to a given frequency, characteristic of the device. Beyond this frequency, the compensation effectiveness relies mainly on the wind characteristics, particularly the direction variability and the horizontal turbulence intensity. Finally, this study demonstrates the potential of fast cup anemometers to measure some turbulence parameters (like wind variance) with errors of the magnitude as those deriving from the mean speed measurements. This result proves that fast cup anemometers can be used to assess some turbulence parameters, especially for long-term measurements in severe climate conditions (icing, snowing or sandy storm weathers)

Les cours d'eau récepteurs de rejets de stations d'épuration : le cas de la Mauldre (Île-de-France), un milieu sous très haute pression

L'étude des impacts des rejets des stations d'épuration communales sur les cours d'eau récepteurs est généralement conduite selon des méthodes d'analyses ponctuelles en rivière. Mais ces méthodes ne donnent pas des résultats satisfaisants car elles ne tiennent pas compte à la fois de la qualité des cours d'eau et des rejets, et nient le continuum de la rivière en analysant des points successifs. D'autres méthodes, globales, tiennent compte des flux en rivière et en station et fournissent des résultats plus représentatifs des phénomènes qui se produisent en rivière. Une étude de cas a été menée sur la Mauldre et ses affluents. Deux méthodes de calcul d'impact ponctuel ont été utilisées, le ratio de dilution et le taux de pollution. Un bilan des flux en rivière et en station a été mis au point pour l'analyse globale. Celle-ci a été complétée par un bilan global des impacts, issu d'une approche systémique qui élargit le périmètre des investigations. Cette dernière méthode demande l'acquisition de peu de données en comparaison des autres. Elle est également plus intégratrice, replace le problème posé dans un contexte plus vaste et permet ainsi d'y apporter une réponse intéressante.A case study was undertaken on the river Mauldre and its tributaries. The Mauldre is a small river in the Seine catchment, the ecological and biochemical functioning of which is highly damaged by human activities. This type of impact study is generally carried out according to methods involving specific point analyses. We used two of these calculation methods: the ratio of dilution and the rate of pollution. However, their applications do not give satisfactory results because they do not take into account the quality of the rivers and of the wastewater treatment plant effluents. Furthermore, they ignore the river continuum concept by analysing successive episodes. Both calculation methods provide similar results: impacts are decreasing downstream. On the contrary, river pollution measurements show an increasing impact downstream. Therefore we used global methods that take into account more of the river phenomena. First we developed a more satisfactory assessment of pollutant loads from the river and wastewater treatment plants. This method consists of a one-dimensional basic model and gives a global description of the river behaviour. This analysis was enhanced by a global assessment of the impacts, resulting from a systems analysis approach (cf. Joël de Rosnay's work, " Le macroscope "). This approach consists of identifying structural and functional aspects of the studied system, using a new vocabulary: we talk of elements, frontiers and internal or external links. The usual framework is broadened - the central question of the paper is posed in a larger context, considering the whole catchment and its components, and affords brief answers. This method provides many points of view on our studied subject, and highlights new components and new relations among them. At the end of the study we found a very interesting relation between inhabitants of the catchment and low flow, which found expression in the population stress index. The last method we used needs fewer data than the others do but still give us accurate and high significant indices of the impact of wastewater treatment plant effluents

The WELSONS experiment: overview and presentation of first results on the surface atmospheric boundary-layer in semiarid Spain

International audienceThis study presents the preliminary results of the local energy budget and dynamic characteristics of the surface atmospheric boundary-layer (SBL) during the WELSONS (wind erosion and losses of soil nutrients in semiarid Spain) experiment. Some Mediterranean regions suffer land degradation by wind erosion as a consequence of their particular soil and climate conditions and inappropriate agricultural practice. In Spain, where land degradation by water erosion is well known, the lack of field studies to quantify soils losses by wind erosion resulted in the European Community organizing a scientific program for this specific issue. The European programme known as WELSONS was devoted to study the wind erosion process in central Aragon (NE Spain). This multidisciplinary experiment, which began in 1996 and finished in 1998, was carried out over an agricultural soil which was left fallow. Within the experimental field, two plots were delimited where two tillage treatments were applied, a mould-board ploughing (or conventional tillage denoted CT) and chisel ploughing (reduced tillage denoted RT). This was to study on bare soil the influence of tillage method on surface conditions, saltation flux, vertical dust flux, erosion rates, dynamics characteristics such as friction velocity, roughness length, etc., and energy budget. The partitioning of the available energy, resulting from the dynamics of the SBL, are quite different over the two plots because of their own peculiar soil and surface properties. The first results show that the RT treatment seems to provide a wind erosion protection. Because of the long data recording time and particular phenomena (formation of a crust at the soil surface, very dry conditions, high wind speed for instance), these microclimatological data acquired during the WELSONS programmes may be helpful to test atmospheric boundary-layer models coupled with soil models

Turbulent characteristics of a semiarid atmospheric surface layer from cup anemometers – effects of soil tillage treatment (Northern Spain)

International audienceThis paper deals with the characteristics of turbulent flow over two agricultural plots with various tillage treatments in a fallow, semiarid area (Central Aragon, Spain). The main dynamic characteristics of the Atmospheric Surface Layer (ASL) measured over the experimental site (friction velocity, roughness length, etc.), and energy budget, have been presented previously (Frangi and Richard, 2000). The current study is based on experimental measurements performed with cup anemometers located in the vicinity of the ground at 5 different levels (from 0.25 to 4 m) and sampled at 1 Hz. It reveals that the horizontal wind variance, the Eulerian integral scales, the frequency range of turbulence and the turbulent kinetic energy dissipation rate are affected by the surface roughness. In the vicinity of the ground surface, the horizontal wind variance logarithmically increases with height, directly in relation to the friction velocity and the roughness length scale. It was found that the time integral scale (and subsequently the length integral scale) increased with the surface roughness and decreased with the anemometer height. These variations imply some shifts in the meteorological spectral gap and some variations of the spectral peak length scale. The turbulent energy dissipation rate, affected by the soil roughness, shows a z-less stratification behaviour under stable conditions. In addition to the characterization of the studied ASL, this paper intends to show which turbulence characteristics, and under what conditions, are accessible through the cup anemometer

Detection of curved lines with B-COSFIRE filters: A case study on crack delineation

The detection of curvilinear structures is an important step for various computer vision applications, ranging from medical image analysis for segmentation of blood vessels, to remote sensing for the identification of roads and rivers, and to biometrics and robotics, among others. %The visual system of the brain has remarkable abilities to detect curvilinear structures in noisy images. This is a nontrivial task especially for the detection of thin or incomplete curvilinear structures surrounded with noise. We propose a general purpose curvilinear structure detector that uses the brain-inspired trainable B-COSFIRE filters. It consists of four main steps, namely nonlinear filtering with B-COSFIRE, thinning with non-maximum suppression, hysteresis thresholding and morphological closing. We demonstrate its effectiveness on a data set of noisy images with cracked pavements, where we achieve state-of-the-art results (F-measure=0.865). The proposed method can be employed in any computer vision methodology that requires the delineation of curvilinear and elongated structures.Comment: Accepted at Computer Analysis of Images and Patterns (CAIP) 201

Nature based solutions to mitigate soil sealing in urban areas: Results from a 6-year study comparing permeable, porous, and impermeable pavements

A long-term research was started in 2011 to evaluate the effects on four different pavement systems on two woody species and on soil physical traits. 48 plants of Celtis australis and Fraxinus ornus were planted in a 1 m2 planting pit surrounded by 50 m2 of: 1- impermeable pavement (asphalt on concrete sub-base); 2- permeable pavement (pavers on a crushed rock sub-base); 3- porous pavement (monolithic porous pavement on a crushed rock sub-base); 4- no pavement (bare soil kept free of weeds by herbicides). Effects of the different pavements on growth and physiology of establishing trees have been described in a previous work. Trees have now fully established, showing most of their roots outside the planting pit, right under the pavements. The presentation will describe the results of the long-term measurements of tree growth (shoot and diameter growth, canopy size), phenology (leaf shedding, dormancy outbreak), and physiology (leaf gas exchange, water relations), which have been carried out on regular basis on 6 replicate trees per treatment. Effects observed on trees have been related to changes induced by pavements on soil characteristics (e.g. oxygen, CO2, water availability). Also, interestingly, the effect of pavements on the emission of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) by tree species has been investigated. Results have shown that soil physical traits have been largely affected by impermeable pavements, with a significant reduction of evaporation of water from soil resulting in the onset of a subterranean urban heat island. On the contrary, porous pavements were extremely effective in maintaining soil temperature similar to that of unpaved soil. Furthermore, under impermeable pavements CO2 accumulates, with negative effects on root activity, but porous pavements can largely mitigate this CO2 enrichment. Indeed, the effects of the different on growth and physiology of ash and hackberry will be discussed in detail in the presentation