Precipitation comparison for the CFSR, MERRA, TRMM3B42 and Combined Scheme datasets in Bolivia

AbstractAn overwhelming number of applications depend on reliable precipitation estimations. However, over complex terrain in regions such as the Andes or the southwestern Amazon, the spatial coverage of rain gauges is scarce. Two reanalysis datasets, a satellite algorithm and a scheme that combines surface observations with satellite estimations were selected for studying rainfall in the following areas of Bolivia: the central Andes, Altiplano, southwestern Amazonia, and Chaco. These Bolivian regions can be divided into three main basins: the Altiplano, La Plata, and Amazon. The selected reanalyses were the Modern-Era Retrospective Analysis for Research and Applications, which has a horizontal resolution (~50km) conducive for studying rainfall in relatively small precipitation systems, and the Climate Forecast System Reanalysis and Reforecast, which features an improved horizontal resolution (~38km). The third dataset was the seventh version of the Tropical Rainfall Measurement Mission 3B42 algorithm, which is conducive for studying rainfall at an ~25km horizontal resolution. The fourth dataset utilizes a new technique known as the Combined Scheme, which successfully removes satellite bias. All four of these datasets were aggregated to a coarser resolution. Additionally, the daily totals were calculated to match the cumulative daily values of the ground observations. This research aimed to describe and compare precipitations in the two reanalysis datasets, the satellite-algorithm dataset, and the Combined Scheme with ground observations. Two seasons were selected for studying the precipitation estimates: the rainy season (December–February) and the dry season (June–August). The average, bias, standard deviation, correlation coefficient, and root mean square error were calculated. Moreover, a contingency table was generated to calculate the accuracy, bias frequency, probability of detection, false alarm ratio, and equitable threat score.All four datasets correctly depicted the spatial rainfall pattern. However, CFSR and MERRA overestimated precipitation along the Andes' eastern-facing slopes and exhibited a dry bias over the eastern Amazon; TRMM3B42 and the Combined Scheme depicted a more realistic rainfall distribution over both the Amazon and the Andes. When separating the precipitation into classes, MERRA and CFSR overestimated light to moderate precipitation (1–20mm/day) and underestimated very heavy precipitation (>50mm/day). TRMM3B42 and CoSch depicted behaviors similar to the surface observations; however, CoSch underestimated the precipitation in very intense systems (>50mm/day).The statistical variables indicated that CoSch's correlation coefficient was highest for every season and basin. Additionally, the bias and RMSE values suggested that CoSch closely represented the surface observations

Estimativa da Evapotranspiração sobre a Bacia do Prata Utilizando Climatologia do IAF

Este trabalho teve por objetivo gerar uma mapa daevapotranspiração anual na área delimitada pela Bacia do Prata através dométodo de Penman-Monteith, escrito de forma que a vegetação seja representadapelo índice de área foliar (IAF). Este índice foi obtido atravésde dados de sensoriamento remoto, utilizando uma climatologiacorrespondente ao período de 1987 a 2007, estimada pelo sensor AVHRR.Os forçantes atmosféricos são obtidos do South American Land DataAssimilation System (SALDAS), e referem-se ao ano de 2000. Os resultadosdemonstram que o método aqui utilizado tem superestimado aevapotranspiração média anual sobre a Bacia do Prata, enquanto sua representaçãoespacial está de acordo com demais estimativas

Estimativa dos Fluxos Superficiais de Energia e Massa na Região do Pampa Gaúcho

As trocas de energia e massa entre o pampa gaúcho e a atmosferasão estimadas através do modelo de superfície SiB2 e comparados comdados experimentais obtidos no sito experimental de Candiota-RS. Asestimativas dos fluxos superficiais descrevem satisfatoriamente a interaçãoentre a superfície e a atmosfer

Seasonality of soil water exchange in the soybean growing season in southern Brazil

The processes of water transfer in the soil-plant-atmosphere system are strongly affected by soil use and management. Differences in the dynamics of soil water transfer between no-tillage (NT) and conventional tillage (CT) practices during a soybean (Glycine max) growing season in southern Brazil were assessed in this study. All the water balance components were analyzed during the soybean growing season (2009/2010). Rainfall, runoff, soil water storage and hydro-physical soil properties were analyzed under two tillage systems. The land-atmosphere water vapor exchanges, obtained from eddy covariance stations, were analyzed with regard to the soybean agroecosystem. Characterizations of soil water storage were also formulated in the 2006/2007 and 2008/2009 soybean growing seasons under the NT system. During the periods without rain, the soil water content under NT was greater than under CT. The soil superficial layer, more porous under NT, contributed to less runoff during rainy events. Moreover, under NT conditions the water supply was always high, between 0.2 - 0.5 m. The total evapotranspiration in the soybean agroecosystem growing season was 410.8 mm

Pervasive gaps in Amazonian ecological research

Biodiversity loss is one of the main challenges of our time,1,2 and attempts to address it require a clear un derstanding of how ecological communities respond to environmental change across time and space.3,4 While the increasing availability of global databases on ecological communities has advanced our knowledge of biodiversity sensitivity to environmental changes,5–7 vast areas of the tropics remain understudied.8–11 In the American tropics, Amazonia stands out as the world’s most diverse rainforest and the primary source of Neotropical biodiversity,12 but it remains among the least known forests in America and is often underrepre sented in biodiversity databases.13–15 To worsen this situation, human-induced modifications16,17 may elim inate pieces of the Amazon’s biodiversity puzzle before we can use them to understand how ecological com munities are responding. To increase generalization and applicability of biodiversity knowledge,18,19 it is thus crucial to reduce biases in ecological research, particularly in regions projected to face the most pronounced environmental changes. We integrate ecological community metadata of 7,694 sampling sites for multiple or ganism groups in a machine learning model framework to map the research probability across the Brazilian Amazonia, while identifying the region’s vulnerability to environmental change. 15%–18% of the most ne glected areas in ecological research are expected to experience severe climate or land use changes by 2050. This means that unless we take immediate action, we will not be able to establish their current status, much less monitor how it is changing and what is being lostinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Pediatric trauma and emergency surgery: an international cross-sectional survey among WSES members

Background: In contrast to adults, the situation for pediatric trauma care from an international point of view and the global management of severely injured children remain rather unclear. The current study investigates structural management of pediatric trauma in centers of different trauma levels as well as experiences with pediatric trauma management around the world. Methods: A web-survey had been distributed to the global mailing list of the World Society of Emergency Surgery from 10/2021-03/2022, investigating characteristics of respondents and affiliated hospitals, case-load of pediatric trauma patients, capacities and infrastructure for critical care in children, trauma team composition, clinical work-up and individual experiences with pediatric trauma management in response to patients´ age. The collaboration group was subdivided regarding sizes of affiliated hospitals to allow comparisons concerning hospital volumes. Comparable results were conducted to statistical analysis. Results: A total of 133 participants from 34 countries, i.e. 5 continents responded to the survey. They were most commonly affiliated with larger hospitals (> 500 beds in 72.9%) and with level I or II trauma centers (82.0%), respectively. 74.4% of hospitals offer unrestricted pediatric medical care, but only 63.2% and 42.9% of the participants had sufficient experiences with trauma care in children ≤ 10 and ≤ 5 years of age (p = 0.0014). This situation is aggravated in participants from smaller hospitals (p < 0.01). With regard to hospital size (≤ 500 versus > 500 in-hospital beds), larger hospitals were more likely affiliated with advanced trauma centers, more elaborated pediatric intensive care infrastructure (p < 0.0001), treated children at all ages more frequently (p = 0.0938) and have higher case-loads of severely injured children < 12 years of age (p = 0.0009). Therefore, the majority of larger hospitals reserve either pediatric surgery departments or board-certified pediatric surgeons (p < 0.0001) and in-hospital trauma management is conducted more multi-disciplinarily. However, the majority of respondents does not feel prepared for treatment of severe pediatric trauma and call for special educational and practical training courses (overall: 80.2% and 64.3%, respectively). Conclusions: Multi-professional management of pediatric trauma and individual experiences with severely injured children depend on volumes, level of trauma centers and infrastructure of the hospital. However, respondents from hospitals at all levels of trauma care complain about an alarming lack of knowledge on pediatric trauma management

Photography-based taxonomy is inadequate, unnecessary, and potentially harmful for biological sciences

The question whether taxonomic descriptions naming new animal species without type specimen(s) deposited in collections should be accepted for publication by scientific journals and allowed by the Code has already been discussed in Zootaxa (Dubois & Nemésio 2007; Donegan 2008, 2009; Nemésio 2009a–b; Dubois 2009; Gentile & Snell 2009; Minelli 2009; Cianferoni & Bartolozzi 2016; Amorim et al. 2016). This question was again raised in a letter supported by 35 signatories published in the journal Nature (Pape et al. 2016) on 15 September 2016. On 25 September 2016, the following rebuttal (strictly limited to 300 words as per the editorial rules of Nature) was submitted to Nature, which on 18 October 2016 refused to publish it. As we think this problem is a very important one for zoological taxonomy, this text is published here exactly as submitted to Nature, followed by the list of the 493 taxonomists and collection-based researchers who signed it in the short time span from 20 September to 6 October 2016