INTEGRATING OPTICAL AND RADAR IMAGERY TO ENHANCE RIVER DROUGHT MONITORING

Drought events are growingly affecting European and Italian territories, hampering local environments and biodiversity, such as the ones relying on rivers for their subsistence. Monitoring of rivers is becoming an important issue to face drought crisis and may be exploited with different tools. Among the most commons, satellite imagery is exploited to map water coverage, basing on optical or radar sources. This work proposes a combination of the two sensors to overcome possible limitations of the single dataset exploitation, reaching a reliable result. The methodology is applied to a stretch of Po River in Lombardy region (Italy). Through Google Earth Engine platform, optical satellite Sentinel-2 and radar satellite Sentinel-1 data are processed. The combination of the radar data and of the optical spectral indices is carried out through a pixel-based supervised classification, with a Random Forest classifier. Maps of water coverage are obtained, numerical outcomes of water surface evaluation are recorded and validated by the mean of reference hydrometric data. A multitemporal analysis is then reported, aiming to prove the efficiency of the procedure. All iterations show reliable accuracies and correlation among water surface estimation and water table measurements in two sections of interest. In perspective, the proposed methodology will be implemented in tools for supporting drought monitoring to be integrated in environmental public administration policies

Large Spatial Scale Variability in Bathyal Macrobenthos Abundance, Biomass, a- and b-Diversity along the Mediterranean Continental Margin

The large-scale deep-sea biodiversity distribution of the benthic fauna was explored in the Mediterranean Sea, which can beseen as a miniature model of the oceans of the world. Within the framework of the BIOFUN project (‘‘Biodiversity andEcosystem Functioning in Contrasting Southern European Deep-sea Environments: from viruses to megafauna’’), weinvestigated the large spatial scale variability (over .1,000 km) of the bathyal macrofauna communities that inhabit theMediterranean basin, and their relationships with the environmental variables. The macrofauna abundance, biomass,community structure and functional diversity were analysed and the a-diversity and b-diversity were estimated across sixselected slope areas at different longitudes and along three main depths. The macrobenthic standing stock and a-diversitywere lower in the deep-sea sediments of the eastern Mediterranean basin, compared to the western and central basins. Themacrofaunal standing stock and diversity decreased significantly from the upper bathyal to the lower bathyal slope stations.The major changes in the community composition of the higher taxa and in the trophic (functional) structure occurred atdifferent longitudes, rather than at increasing water depth. For the b-diversity, very high dissimilarities emerged at all levels:(i) between basins; (ii) between slopes within the same basin; and (iii) between stations at different depths; this thereforedemonstrates the high macrofaunal diversity of the Mediterranean basins at large spatial scales. Overall, the food sources(i.e., quantity and quality) that characterised the west, central and eastern Mediterranean basins, as well as sediment grainsize, appear to influence the macrobenthic standing stock and the biodiversity along the different slope areas

Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) in the Marine Coastal Environment: Basic Concepts and Keystones from the Plankton Communities.

not availabl

Poly-essential and general Hyperelastic World (brane) models

This article provides a unified treatment of an extensive category of non-linear classical field models whereby the universe is represented (perhaps as a brane in a higher dimensional background) in terms of a structure of a mathematically convenient type describable as hyperelastic, for which a complete set of equations of motion is provided just by the energy-momentum conservation law. Particular cases include those of a perfect fluid in quintessential backgrounds of various kinds, as well as models of the elastic solid kind that has been proposed to account for cosmic acceleration. It is shown how an appropriately generalised Hadamard operator can be used to construct a symplectic structure that controles the evolution of small perturbations, and that provides a characteristic equation governing the propagation of weak discontinuities of diverse (extrinsic and extrinsic) kinds. The special case of a poly-essential model - the k-essential analogue of an ordinary polytropic fluid - is examined and shown to be well behaved (like the fluid) only if the pressure to density ratio $w$ is positive.Comment: 16 pages Latex, Contrib. to 10th Peyresq Pysics Meeting, June 2005: Micro and Macro Structures of Spacetim

Towards automation of river water surface detection

European rivers are increasingly impacted by frequent and lasting dry periods, with consequences on jeopardized ecosystems and local economies. Tools for monitoring the evolution of such impacts may be profitable exploited by public administration to assess environmental conditions and draw safeguard policies. This work presents the evolution of a methodology which integrates optical and radar imagery, by Copernicus Sentinel constellations, to map river water surfaces. Despite the base methodology being developed as a man-supervised classification, with necessity for the user to manually define training polygons, the proposed advancements will allow the system to automate training sample extraction. The process is based on the realization of binary masks, originated by processing optical and radar imagery with a BMax Otsu algorithm for image segmentation. The masks are then furtherly refined to obtain a reliable set of classified pixels, from which the training samples are extracted. A sensitivity analysis is performed for assessing the optimal amount of pixels to be considered, with respect to the total area of interest. Furthermore, the performances of several Machine Learning supervised classification algorithms are compared, leading to the selection of the best algorithm to be considered for future developments of the methodology

Correcting the extended-source calibration for the <i>Herschel</i>-SPIRE Fourier-transform spectrometer

We describe an update to the Herschel-Spectral and Photometric Imaging Receiver (SPIRE) Fourier-transform spectrometer (FTS) calibration for extended sources, which incorporates a correction for the frequency-dependent far-field feedhorn efficiency, ηff. This significant correction affects all FTS extended-source calibrated spectra in sparse or mapping mode, regardless of the spectral resolution. Line fluxes and continuum levels are underestimated by factors of 1.3–2 in thespectrometer long wavelength band (447–1018 GHz; 671–294 μm) and 1.4–1.5 in the spectrometer short wavelength band (944–1568 GHz; 318–191 μm). The correction was implemented in the FTS pipeline version 14.1 and has also been described in the SPIRE Handbook since 2017 February. Studies based on extended-source calibrated spectra produced prior to this pipeline version should be critically reconsidered using the current products available in the Herschel Science Archive. Once the extended-source calibrated spectra are corrected for ηff, the synthetic photometry and the broad-band intensities from SPIRE photometer maps agree within 2–4 per cent – similar levels to the comparison of point-source calibrated spectra and photometry from point-source calibrated maps. The two calibration schemes for the FTS are now self-consistent: the conversion between the corrected extended-source and point-source calibrated spectra can be achieved with the beam solid angle and a gain correction that accounts for the diffraction loss

HerMES: Current Cosmic Infrared Background Estimates Can be Explained by Known Galaxies and their Faint Companions at z < 4

We report contributions to cosmic infrared background (CIB) intensities originating from known galaxies and their faint companions at submillimeter wavelengths. Using the publicly-available UltraVISTA catalog, and maps at 250, 350, and 500 {\mu}m from the \emph{Herschel} Multi-tiered Extragalactic Survey (HerMES), we perform a novel measurement that exploits the fact that uncatalogued sources may bias stacked flux densities --- particularly if the resolution of the image is poor --- and intentionally smooth the images before stacking and summing intensities. By smoothing the maps we are capturing the contribution of faint (undetected in K_S ~ 23.4) sources that are physically associated, or correlated, with the detected sources. We find that the cumulative CIB increases with increased smoothing, reaching 9.82 +- 0.78, 5.77 +- 0.43, and 2.32 +- 0.19$\, \rm nW m^{-2} sr^{-1}$ at 250, 350, and 500 {\mu}m at 300 arcsec FWHM. This corresponds to a fraction of the fiducial CIB of 0.94 +- 0.23, 1.07 +- 0.31, and 0.97 +- 0.26 at 250, 350, and 500 {\mu}m, where the uncertainties are dominated by those of the absolute CIB. We then propose, with a simple model combining parametric descriptions for stacked flux densities and stellar mass functions, that emission from galaxies with log(M/Msun) > 8.5 can account for the most of the measured total intensities, and argue against contributions from extended, diffuse emission. Finally, we discuss prospects for future survey instruments to improve the estimates of the absolute CIB levels, and observe any potentially remaining emission at z > 4.Comment: Accepted to ApJL. 6 Pages, 3 figure

Measurement of the Crab nebula polarization at 90 GHz as a calibrator for CMB experiments

CMB experiments aiming at a precise measurement of the CMB polarization, such as the Planck satellite, need a strong polarized absolute calibrator on the sky to accurately set the detectors polarization angle and the cross-polarization leakage. As the most intense polarized source in the microwave sky at angular scales of few arcminutes, the Crab nebula will be used for this purpose. Our goal was to measure the Crab nebula polarization characteristics at 90 GHz with unprecedented precision. The observations were carried out with the IRAM 30m telescope employing the correlation polarimeter XPOL and using two orthogonally polarized receivers. We processed the Stokes I, Q, and U maps from our observations in order to compute the polarization angle and linear polarization fraction. The first is almost constant in the region of maximum emission in polarization with a mean value of alpha_Sky=152.1+/-0.3 deg in equatorial coordinates, and the second is found to reach a maximum of Pi=30% for the most polarized pixels. We find that a CMB experiment having a 5 arcmin circular beam will see a mean polarization angle of alpha_Sky=149.9+/-0.2 deg and a mean polarization fraction of Pi=8.8+/-0.2%.Comment: Accepted for publication in A&A, 9 pages, 4 figure