Iberian peninsula ecosystem carbon fluxes: a model-data integration study

Dissertação apresentada para obtenção do Grau de Doutor em Engenharia do Ambiente pela Universidade Nova de Lisboa,Faculdade de Ciências e TecnologiaTerrestrial ecosystems play a key role within the context of the global carbon cycle. Characterizing and understanding ecosystem level responses and feedbacks to climate drivers is essential for diagnostic purposes as well as climate modelling projections. Consequently,numerous modelling and data driven approaches emerge, aiming the appraisal of biosphereatmosphere carbon fluxes. The combination of biogeochemical models with observations of ecosystem carbon fluxes in a model-data integration framework enables the recognition of potential limitations of modelling approaches. In this regard, the steady-state assumption represents a general approach in the initialization routines of biogeochemical models that entails limitations in the ability to simulate net ecosystem fluxes and in model development exercises. The present research addresses the generalized assumption of initial steady-state conditions in ecosystem carbon pools for modelling carbon fluxes of terrestrial ecosystems, from local to regional scales. At local scale, this study aims to evaluate the implications of equilibrium assumptions on modelling performance and on optimized parameters and uncertainty estimates based on a model-data integration approach. These results further aim to support the estimates of regional net ecosystem fluxes, following a bottom-up approach, by focusing on parameters governing net primary production (NPP) and heterotrophic respiration (RH)processes, which determine the simulation of the net ecosystem production fluxes in the CASA model. An underlying goal of the current research is addressed by focusing on Mediterranean ecosystem types, or ecosystems potentially present in Iberia, and evaluate the general ability of terrestrial biogeochemical models in estimating net ecosystem fluxes for the Iberian Peninsula region. At regional scales, and given the limited information available, the main objective is to minimize the implications of the initial conditions in the evaluation of the temporal dynamics of net ecosystem fluxes. Inverse model parameter optimizations at site level are constrained by eddy-covariance measurements of net ecosystem fluxes and driven by local observations of meteorological variables and vegetation biophysical variables from remote sensing products. Optimizations under steady-state conditions show significantly poorer model performance and higher parameter uncertainties when compared to optimizations under relaxed initial conditions. In addition, assuming initial steady-state conditions tend to bias parameter retrievals – reducing NPP sensitivity to water availability and RH responses to temperature – in order to prescribe sink conditions. But nonequilibrium conditions can be experienced in soil and/or vegetation carbon pools under alternative underlying dynamics, which are solely discernible through the integration of additional information sources, circumventing equifinality issues.Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT),the European Union under Operational Program “Science and Innovation” (POCI 2010), PhD grant ref. SFRH/BD/6517/2001, co-sponsored by the European Social Fund. Further support,concerning the final months of the PhD, was provided by a Max Planck Society research fellowship

Regarding value in digital serendipitous interactions

Digital technologies have become our privileged method of interacting with information. With their ubiquity, and focus on personalisation, optimisation and functionality, chance and accidental interactions in the Digital Medium are being replaced with filtered, predictable and known ones, limiting the scope of possible user experiences. In order to promote the design of richer experiences that go beyond the functionally-driven paradigm, we propose that digital systems be designed in order to favour serendipity. Through a literature-based analysis of serendipity, we explore the distinct meanings of value that are possible with serendipitous systems, offering examples of the current state of the art, observing the methods used to do so, and proposing a possible typology, while highlighting unexplored fields, experiences and interactions.&nbsp

Aesthetics after the Ontological Turn: An Ecological Approach to Artificial Creativity

The development of chatbots and other generative systems powered by AI, particularly the latest version of ChatGPT, rekindled many discussions on topics such as intelligence and creativity, even leading some to suggest that we may be undergoing a “fourth narcissistic wound”. Starting from Margaret Boden’s approach to creativity, we will argue that if computational systems have always excelled at combinatorial creativity, current AI systems stand out at exploratory creativity but are perceived as still falling flat regarding transformational creativity. This paper explores some of the reasons for this, including how, despite the immensity of the conceptual space that results from training of large language models and other machine learning systems, these systems do not, for the most part, share models of the world with us, thus becoming cognitively inaccessible. This paper argues that rather than trying to bring AI systems to imitate us, our umwelt and psychology, to understand their full creative potential, we need to understand them from an ecological and non-anthropocentric perspective that implies an ontological turn both in science and technology studies and in art studies

Searching Meaning Through Procedurality in Computational Artefacts

Contemporary media and arts often deploy computational systems to develop complex algorithmic experiences. Many of these are created around somewhat conventional narrative structures, building on familiar media conventions. Others are related with videogames, drawing on game and interaction mechanics that have also been becoming increasingly familiar. Very often, however, we are confronted with artefacts that eschew these conventions to develop aesthetic experiences grounded in conceptual and mechanical principles that are not inherited from molar media but that are native to computational systems. Building on unconventional mechanics, these systems create new challenges not only to readers but also to artists and designers developing them. The interpretation of these systems and the processes of creation of meaning developed by readers/ audiences need to be understood if we intend to develop works capable of providing enough information regarding their procedural framework. Only then will these be able to ground their aesthetic potential on procedural structures rather than strictly on surface characteristics. Contingent behaviour, learning, adaptation, selection, etc., can now be common traits of media and artworks, but because they are not necessarily visible or immediately understandable, and because these media forms are still recent in the media landscape, procedural properties need to be framed in ways that allow them to be discovered and understood, that allow them to be enriched by the processes of interpretation and by the errors or deviations that may a ect them

Generative designing with biological systems - searching for production tools aimed at individualization

We intend to design and study systems that produce artifacts with biological generative systems, where nature’s randomness and physiological needs have an important role in defining form. To understand these systems we will develop, analyze and criticize experimental models with ants, bees and mushrooms. In these models the matrices of construction and the system are defined, but the outcomes will be uncertain due to their dependence on biological variables. Our goal is the development of artifacts in an embryonic stage as well as of the constraints for their development. By defining the matrix and some guidelines, we aim to make available to the general public systems that reproduce artifacts that are similar in their genesis, but which become unique due to their biological actuators. Among other factors, these artifacts seek to enhance an emotional bond between users and object; this bond happens due to the empathy that is generated by the proximity and the time that is required for their growth, and by the better comprehension of their morphogenesis and process. This nurturing is essential for the evolution of the matrix into the desired product. The final products are unique and unrepeatable, and the end result arises from the close relation between the cooperators: the designer that develops the system, the person that uses it and the actuators that execute it. We believe the deeper understanding of the artifacts geneses and the bond that is created with it may result in new aesthetic qualities. KEYWORDS: biological design; generative; customization; opensource; Open desig

Sistemas Generativos Biológicos: Ferramentas De Produção Para A Individualização (Generative Biological Systems: Production Tools For Individualization)

Este projecto pretende desenvolver modelos para a produção de artefactos em sistemas biológicos com potencial generativo,onde a aleatoriedade dos actuadores no preenchimento das suas necessidades fisiológicas, tem uma forte contribuição na definição da forma. Para entender os elementos conjunturais destes sistemas, temos vindo a desenvolver modelos para análise e crítica utilizando abelhas, cogumelos e formigas, onde as matrizes e sistemas são projectados, mas os resultados finais estão dependentes das variáveis dos actuadores biológicos e das opções de quem os manipula. Ao definirmos as matrizes e os processos produtivos, pretendemos disponibilizar para o público em geral sistemas que reproduzam artefactos similares e replicáveis, porém singulares,em consequência da intervenção dos actuadores biológicos. Sendo estes artefactos o resultado da proximidade entre os vários intervenientes: o designer que concebe os sistemas, o utilizador que nutre e cultiva o sistema, e dos actuadores que o executam, a necessidade de difundir os achados por forma a atrair pessoas que com eles queiram desenvolver as suas experiencias pessoais é da máxima importância. Ao não obteremos à partida formas finais polidas e livres de imperfeições, mas sim formas inconstantes, sinuosas e rudes, optamos por ensaios com geometria simples numa primeira fase no intuito de simplificar a sua compreensão. Pretende-se com um conhecimento mais aprofundado desenvolver ferramentas que permitam gradualmente ir aumentando a sua complexidade. Estes artefactos procuram reforçar as relações emocionais entre utilizador e objecto, procuramos que os elos emocionais surjam da empatia criada pela compreensão da sua génese e do seu processo de produção, mas também pelo acompanhamento do seu desenvolvimento da fase embrionária à interrupção do seu crescimento. A criação de uma plataforma digital que servirá para difundir os conhecimentos, terá que igualmente suportar a publicação dos resultados feitos por terceiros assim como o seu registo relacional com os sistemas e a sua avaliação qualitativa

Digital Image as a Semiotic Agent

In the context of the computational and algorithmic revolution, the digital image more than ever elevates the status of representations to the sphere of processes and operations. In a more general context, images can be seen as cultural agents, progressively developing new habits by promoting mediations between multiple subjects, whether human or nonhuman. From this perspective, we may question what characterizes the dynamics of those images. Can we consider digital images to be semiotic agents? Admitting this premise implies highlighting images not only as results or instruments but as integrated participants in processes. In light of this, we explore the digital image as a semiotic agent, from a Peircean semiotic perspective, from which the digital image can be seen as a sign, a dialogical being inserted in a network of relations

Antagonising explanation and revealing bias directly through sequencing and multimodal inference

Deep generative models produce data according to a learned representation, e.g. diffusion models, through a process of approximation computing possible samples. Approximation can be understood as reconstruction and the large datasets used to train models as sets of records in which we represent the physical world with some data structure (photographs, audio recordings, manuscripts). During the process of reconstruction, e.g., image frames develop each timestep towards a textual input description. While moving forward in time, frame sets are shaped according to learned bias and their production, we argue here, can be considered as going back in time; not by inspiration on the backward diffusion process but acknowledging culture is specifically marked in the records. Futures of generative modelling, namely in film and audiovisual arts, can benefit by dealing with diffusion systems as a process to compute the future by inevitably being tied to the past, if acknowledging the records as to capture fields of view at a specific time, and to correlate with our own finite memory ideals. Models generating new data distributions can target video production as signal processors and by developing sequences through timelines we ourselves also go back to decade-old algorithmic and multi-track methodologies revealing the actual predictive failure of contemporary approaches to synthesis in moving image, both as relevant to composition and not explanatory.Comment: 3 pages, no figures. ACM C&C 23 Workshop pape

Designing with biological generative systems : choice by emotion

Consumers as co-producers or co-designers are frequently presented as the solution for mass-customization, but the success of these systems as enhancing emotional bonds between user and object seems to be questionable. Making choices may not be enough to generate a bigger connection between people and their things. Artifacts produced using biological systems with generative potential, where nature’s randomness and physiological processes have an important role in the definition of form, may have the capacity to foster the emotional connections that are missing, arising from nurturing and from an understanding of their morphogenesis, from the proximity and time required for their growth and development

Aspects for cultivating creative literacy through play: an analysis on primary literature review and preliminary laboratorial work

This article inspects theory emerging from literature review and laboratory work on games for cultivating creative literacy. Whether games can or cannot instil or alienate one’s creativity is debatable. On one hand, they can be risk- and stress-free exploring grounds for people to interact in ways without parallel; on another, they can disengage players from the real world. Nevertheless, they have the potential to be turned into tools for thinking, for learning and for articulating knowledge between individuals. With that into consideration, we pinpointed two main groups that branch into four major categories: Behaviours – comprised of Attitudes and Competencies – and Conditions – comprised of Procedures and Resources – which we are structuring into a framework from which we draw hypotheses that undergo validation through play-testing sessions, in order to improve the framework. Keywords: creative literacy; games; play; game design