On the key role of droughts in the dynamics of summer fires in Mediterranean Europe

Summer fires frequently rage across Mediterranean Europe, often intensified by high temperatures and droughts. According to the state-of-the-art regional fire risk projections, in forthcoming decades climate effects are expected to become stronger and possibly overcome fire prevention efforts. However, significant uncertainties exist and the direct effect of climate change in regulating fuel moisture (e.g. warmer conditions increasing fuel dryness) could be counterbalanced by the indirect effects on fuel structure (e.g. warmer conditions limiting fuel amount), affecting the transition between climate-driven and fuel-limited fire regimes as temperatures increase. Here we analyse and model the impact of coincident drought and antecedent wet conditions (proxy for the climatic factor influencing total fuel and fine fuel structure) on the summer Burned Area (BA) across all eco-regions in Mediterranean Europe. This approach allows BA to be linked to the key drivers of fire in the region. We show a statistically significant relationship between fire and same-summer droughts in most regions, while antecedent climate conditions play a relatively minor role, except in few specific eco-regions. The presented models for individual eco-regions provide insights on the impacts of climate variability on BA, and appear to be promising for developing a seasonal forecast system supporting fire management strategies.We thank the European Forest Fire Information System-EFFIS (http://effis.jrc.ec.europa.eu) of the European Commission Joint Research Centre for the fire data. We acknowledge the SPEI data providers (http://sac.csic. es/spei/database.html). Special thanks to Joaquín Bedia, Esteve Canyameras, Xavier Castro and Andrej Ceglar for helpful discussions on the study. This work was partially funded by the Project of Interest “NextData” of the Italian Ministry for Education, University and Research and by the EU H2020 Project 641762 “ECOPOTENTIAL: Improving Future Ecosystem Benefits through Earth Observations”. Ricardo Trigo was supported by IMDROFLOOD funded by Portuguese FCT (WaterJPI/0004/2014).Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Pulmonary hypertension in AIDS/HIV infection: a rare disease

A Hipertensão pulmonar (HTP) é uma patologia rara mas que condiciona elevada morbilidade e mortalidade. É conhecida a sua associação com o Vírus da Imunodeficiência Humana (VIH), mas muitos dos mecanismos implicados na sua patogénese bem como o impacto da terapêutica antiretroviral (TARV) no tratamento e prognóstico desta doença ainda se encontram por definir. Apresenta-se um caso clínico de uma doente de 62 anos com infecção VIH internada por um quadro interpretado inicial- mente como infecção respiratória. A má evolução e os exames adicionais permitiram o diagnóstico de Hipertensão pulmonar grave que viria a determinar o falecimento da doente em poucos dias. Atendendo à elevada prevalência de doentes com infecção VIH, é expectável o aumento do número de casos de Hipertensão pulmonar, pelo que se chama a atenção para a necessidade de um diagnóstico precoce antes da evolução da mesma.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Cardiac Arrest in the Pediatric Population

Apresenta-se o caso clínico de uma criança de 10 anos com paragem cardíaca em repouso que foi reanimada, com sucesso. A investigação etiológica do acidente mostrou uma Cardiomiopatia Hipertrófica (CMH). Foi colocado um Cardiodesfibrilhador Implantável (CDI) para profilaxia secundária da Morte Súbita (MS). A Morte Súbita em idade pediátrica é uma situação rara, de muito mau prognóstico (sobrevida sem sequelas inferior a 5%) e com um impacto social significativo. A Cardiomiopatia Hipertrófica é uma causa conhecida de Morte Súbita, com possibilidade de prevenção. O caso apresentado serve para levantar questões sobre a necessidade e forma de estratégias para prevenir a MS de etiologica cardíaca em idade pediátrica

SMEs and internationalization: an empirical study of SMEs in Portugal

This paper presents the results of a survey of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Portugal drawn from a database of 2500 SMEs supplied by COFACE – the holder of the largest company database in Portugal. It is an exploratory study presenting descriptive results on their export drive, competitiveness in external markets, analysis of the environment, and innovation concerns vis-à-vis global markets and information needs for these markets. We draw from recent literature to identify the main features global markets require of companies if they are to operate successfully and compare them with our findings. Portugal was selected as the basis of our study not only because local companies have faced great changes in the last three decades following the transition from a closed and protected economy to full membership within the European Union and the current very open economy, but also because the country and population are so small that companies face tremendous pressures to internationalize as the domestic market for many types of goods is very limited

Reference crop evapotranspiration derived from geo-stationary satellite imagery: a case study for the Fogera flood plain, NW-Ethiopia and the Jordan Valley, Jordan

First results are shown of a project aiming to estimate daily values of reference crop evapotranspiration ET0 from geo-stationary satellite imagery. In particular, for Woreta, a site in the Ethiopian highland at an elevation of about 1800 m, we tested a radiation-temperature based approximate formula proposed by Makkink (MAK), adopting ET0 evaluated with the version of the Penman-Monteith equation described in the FAO Irrigation and Drainage paper 56 as the most accurate estimate. More precisely we used the latter with measured daily solar radiation as input (denoted by PMFAO-Rs). Our data set for Woreta concerns a period where the surface was fully covered with short green non-stressed vegetation. Our project was carried out in the context of the Satellite Application Facility on Land Surface Analysis (LANDSAF) facility. Among others, the scope of LANDSAF is to increase benefit from the EUMETSAT Satellite Meteosat Second Generation (MSG). In this study we applied daily values of downward solar radiation at the surface obtained from the Spinning Enhanced Visible and Infrared Imager (SEVIRI) radiometer. In addition, air temperature at 2m was obtained from 3-hourly forecasts provided by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF). Both MAK and PMFAO-Rs contain the psychrometric "constant", which is proportional to air pressure, which, in turn, decreases with elevation. In order to test elevation effects we tested MAK and its LANDSAF input data for 2 sites in the Jordan Valley located about 250 m b.s.l. Except for a small underestimation of air temperature at the Ethiopian site at 1800 m, the first results of our LANDSAF-ET0 project are promising. If our approach to derive ET0 proves successfully, then the LANDSAF will be able to initiate nearly real time free distribution of ET0 for the full MSG disk

Activity of glycolytic enzymes in the gut of Hormogaster elisae (Oligochaeta, Hormogastridae)

The glycolytic enzymatic activities in the gut of the endogeic earthworm #Hormogaster elisae from El Molar (Madrid, Spain) were studied in order to determine its digestive capacity and to assess its alimentary regime. Most endogeic earthworms have weak enzymatic complement and they usually establish mutualistic relationships with soil microflora to digest some organic compounds. Therefore, the intestinal wall tissues were cultured in vitro to assess the origin of the glycolytic enzymes found in the gut and enzymatic activities were measured in both cultured tissues and culture media. #H. elisae had a wide but not very strong enzyme complement, since all substrates were degraded but most of them at a low rate. This species cannot produce cellulase and mannamase, so for the digestion of these substrates it probably uses the digestive enzymatic capabilities of the ingested microflora. (Résumé d'auteur

Subaortic Stenosis Following Anatomic Correction for Transposition of the Great Arteries

Os autores descrevem o caso clínico de uma criança do sexo masculino, com 12 anos de idade, com diagnóstico pós-natal de transposição das grandes artérias com comunicação interventricular, submetida a switch arterial e encerramento da comunicação interventricular. Durante o seguimento pós-operatório detectou-se um obstáculo entre o ventrículo esquerdo e a aorta ascendente que foi, inicialmente, de grau ligeiro. No último ano começou a referir sintomatologia (cansaço para esforços moderados). Na avaliação efectuada detectou-se uma estenose aórtica subvalvular grave, tendo o doente sido submetido a tratamento cirúrgico, com bom resultado. A estenose aórtica subvalvular é uma complicação rara, que tem sido descrita em estudos de follow-up de switch arterial, sobretudo nas situações em que o defeito primário é a transposição das grandes artérias com comunicação interventricular

Modelling post-fire vegetation recovery in Portugal

Wildfires in Mediterranean Europe have been increasing in number and extension over the last decades and constitute one of the major disturbances of these ecosystems. Portugal is the country with more burnt area in the last decade and the years of 2003 and 2005 were particularly devastating, the total burned areas of 425 000 and 338 000 ha being several times higher than the corresponding average. The year of 2005 further coincided with one of the most severe droughts since early 20th century. Due to different responses of vegetation to diverse fire regimes and to the complexity of landscape structures, fires have complex effects on vegetation recovery. Remote sensing has revealed to be a powerful tool in studying vegetation dynamics and in monitoring post-fire vegetation recovery, which is crucial to land-management and to prevent erosion. <br><br> The main goals of the present work are (i) to assess the accuracy of a vegetation recovery model previously developed by the authors; (ii) to assess the model's performance, namely its sensitivity to initial conditions, to the temporal length of the input dataset and to missing data; (iii) to study vegetation recovery over two selected areas that were affected by two large wildfire events in the fire seasons of 2003 and 2005, respectively. <br><br> The study relies on monthly values of NDVI over 11 years (1998–2009), at 1 km × 1 km spatial resolution, as obtained by the VEGETATION instrument. According to results from sensitivity analysis, the model is robust and able to provide good estimations of recovery times of vegetation when the regeneration process is regular, even when missing data is present. In respect to the two selected burnt scars, results indicate that fire damage is a determinant factor of regeneration, as less damaged vegetation recovers more rapidly, which is mainly justified by the high coverage of <i>Pinus pinaster</i> over the area, and by the fact that coniferous forests tend to recover slower than transitional woodland-shrub, which tend to dominate the areas following the fire event

Drought impacts on vegetation in the pre- and post-fire events over Iberian Peninsula

The present work aims to study the combined effect of drought and large wildfires in the Iberian Peninsula relying on remotely sensed data of vegetation dynamics and leaf moisture content, in particular monthly NDVI, NDWI and NDDI time series from 1999–2009, derived from VEGETATION dataset. The impact of the exceptional 2004/2005 drought on vegetation was assessed for vegetation recovering from the extraordinary fire season of 2003 and on the conditions that contributed to the onsetting of the fire season of 2005. Drought severity was estimated by the cumulative negative effect on photosynthetic activity (NDVI) and vegetation dryness (NDDI), with about 2/3 of Iberian Peninsula presenting vegetative stress and low water availability conditions, in spring and early summer of 2005. Furthermore, NDDI has shown to be very useful to assess drought, since it combines information on vegetation and water conditions. Moreover, we show that besides looking at the inter-annual variability of NDVI and NDDI, it is useful to evaluate intra-annual changes (δNDVI and δNDDI), as indicators of change in vegetation greenness, allowing a detailed picture of the ability of the different land-cover types to resist to short-term dry conditions. In order to assess drought impact on post-fire regeneration, recovery times were evaluated by a mono-parametric model based on NDVI data and values corresponding to drought months were set to no value. Drought has shown to delay recovery times for several months in all the selected scars from 2003. The analysis of vegetation dynamics and fire selectivity in 2005 suggests that fires tended to occur in pixels presenting lower vegetative and water stress conditions during spring and early summer months. Additionally, pre-fire vegetation dynamics, in particular vegetation density and water availability during spring and early summer, has shown to influence significantly the levels of fire damage. These results stress the role of fuel availability in fire occurrence and impact on the Iberian Peninsula