The DLR FireBIRD Small Satellite Mission: Evaluation of Infrared Data for Wildfire Assessment

Wildfires significantly influence ecosystem patterns and processes on a global scale. In many cases, they pose a threat to human lives and property. Through greenhouse gas emissions, wildfires also directly contribute to climate change. The monitoring of such events and the analysis of acquired data is crucial for understanding wildfire and ecosystem interactions. The FireBIRD small satellite mission, operated by the German Aerospace Center (DLR), was specifically designed for the detection of wildfires. It features a higher spatial resolution than available with other Earthobservation systems. In addition to the detection of active fire locations, the system also allows the derivation of fire intensity by means of the Fire Radiative Power (FRP). This indicator can be used as a basis to derive the amount of emitted pollutant, which makes it valuable for climate studies. With the FireBIRD mission facing its end of life in 2021, this study retrospectively evaluates the performance of the system through an inter-comparison with data from two satellite missions of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and discusses the potential of such a system. The comparison is performed regarding both geometrical and radiometric aspects, the latter focusing on the FRP. This study uses and compares two different methods to derive the FRP from FireBIRD data. The data are analyzed regarding six major fire incidents in different regions of the world. The FireBIRD results are in accordance with the reference data, showing a geometrical overlapping rate of 83% and 84% regarding MODIS (Moderate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) and VIIRS (Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite) overpasses in close temporal proximity. Furthermore, the results show a positive bias in FRP of about 11% compared to MODIS

Predicting the consequences of species loss using size-structured biodiversity approaches.

Understanding the consequences of species loss in complex ecological communities is one of the great challenges in current biodiversity research. For a long time, this topic has been addressed by traditional biodiversity experiments. Most of these approaches treat species as trait-free, taxonomic units characterizing communities only by species number without accounting for species traits. However, extinctions do not occur at random as there is a clear correlation between extinction risk and species traits. In this review, we assume that large species will be most threatened by extinction and use novel allometric and size-spectrum concepts that include body mass as a primary species trait at the levels of populations and individuals, respectively, to re-assess three classic debates on the relationships between biodiversity and (i) food-web structural complexity, (ii) community dynamic stability, and (iii) ecosystem functioning. Contrasting current expectations, size-structured approaches suggest that the loss of large species, that typically exploit most resource species, may lead to future food webs that are less interwoven and more structured by chains of interactions and compartments. The disruption of natural body-mass distributions maintaining food-web stability may trigger avalanches of secondary extinctions and strong trophic cascades with expected knock-on effects on the functionality of the ecosystems. Therefore, we argue that it is crucial to take into account body size as a species trait when analysing the consequences of biodiversity loss for natural ecosystems. Applying size-structured approaches provides an integrative ecological concept that enables a better understanding of each species' unique role across communities and the causes and consequences of biodiversity loss

Relatório de estágio em farmácia comunitária

Relatório de estágio realizado no âmbito do Mestrado Integrado em Ciências Farmacêuticas, apresentado à Faculdade de Farmácia da Universidade de Coimbr