The impact of spatial resolution on area burned and fire occurrence projections in Portugal under climate change

In this study, we investigated the impact of future climate change on fire activity in 12 districts across Portugal. Using historical relationships and the HIRHAM (High Resolution Hamburg Model) 12 and 25 km climate simulations, we assessed the fire weather and subsequent fire activity under a 2 × CO₂ scenario. We found that the fire activity prediction was not affected by the spatial resolution of the climate model used (12 vs. 25 km). Future area burned is predicted to increase 478% for Portugal as a whole, which equates to an increase from 1.4% to 7.8% of the available burnable area burning annually. Fire occurrence will also see a dramatic increase (279%) for all of Portugal. There is significant spatial variation within these results; the north and central districts of the country generally will see larger increases in fire activity.     

Can PAHs influence Cu accumulation by salt marsh plants?

The presence of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) may change the mechanisms of metal uptake, thus influencing kinetics and extent of metal phytoextraction. Studies on the subject are scarce, particularly for salt marsh plants. The aim of this work was to investigate the effect of PAHs on the uptake of Cu by Halimione portulacoides, a plant commonly found in salt marshes. Experiments were carried out in the laboratory, either in hydroponics (sediment elutriate) or in sediment soaked in elutriate, which were prepared with sediment and water from a salt marsh of the Cavado river estuary (NW Portugal). Groups of H. portulacoides (grown in a greenhouse) were exposed to those media during six days. Cu(2+) (as Cu(NO(3))(2)), 10(2) and 10(4)mugl(-1), was added to the media as well as 1.6mugl(-1) of the sixteen EPA priority PAHs (0.1mugl(-1) of each PAHs). Cu was assayed in solutions, sediments and different plant tissues before and after experiments. After exposure, photosynthetic efficiency and levels of chlorophylls were also measured, indicating that plant stress indicators were identical in all plants independently of the media to which the plants were exposed. PAHs influenced both the soluble Cu fraction and Cu uptake by plants. The amounts of metal accumulated in both roots and stems were significantly higher when the 10(4)mugl(-1) of Cu enriched elutriate was amended with PAHs. Thus, results suggest that PAHs may modify Cu solubility, the Cu sorption by plants and/or the passive penetration of Cu into the root cells. Therefore, the combined effects of different types of pollutants should be taken in consideration when studying the remediation potential of plants, namely in terms of phytoextraction.     

Isoductile strengths and strength reduction factors of elasto‐plastic SDOF systems subjected to simple waveforms

The inelastic response of elasto‐plastic SDOF oscillators subjected to 24 simple waveforms was studied. The waveforms contain linear, quadratic, sinusoidal, and triangular acceleration components that repeat for not more than several cycles. Similarities and differences in oscillator response characteristics are presented, organized by a characteristic period. The strengths and corresponding strength reduction factors required for constant ductility responses are discussed. Response data are compared with expectations based on the concepts of equal energy, equal displacement, and preservation of force. Limitations on the applicability of the equal energy concept are identified. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Dollard canal thwarted

The inner bay of Lourenço Marques receives the untreated sewage of the city, the run-off from five rivers and metal and hydrocarbon pollution from the activities of the port. Iron ore handling results in an increase in iron and copper concentrations in the water, particularly since loading by slurry was introduced. Large quantities of metal pollutants are probably accumulating in muds and are likely to contaminate shellfish which are an important food source in the area. Untreated sewage discharges are at such a level that eutrophication of the bay is threatened, besides constituting a public health risk on bathing beaches.     

Closure of a seaway: stratigraphic record and facies (Guadix basin, Southern Spain)

During the late Tortonian (upper Miocene), the Guadix Basin in S Spain formed one of the Betic corridors that connected the Mediterranean Sea with the Atlantic Ocean. The closure of this connection occurred in a series of steps, documented by three sedimentary units. A lower unit, consisting of basinal marls, shallow-water calcarenites and sands records the formation of a wide seaway. During deposition of the following unit this narrowed to a strait no more than 2 km in wide, triggering an intensification of currents that caused migration of submarine dunes preserved as giant cross-beds in bioclastic sands and conglomerates. Current flowed from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic. The third unit constitutes the youngest marine episode of the filling of the Guadix Basin. At this stage, the connection between the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean was broken, and a system of coastal coral reefs was established in the northern part of the Basin.     

A new technique to estimate initial spill size using a modified fay-type spreading formula

Estimating oil spill size is important for a variety of economic, environmental and legal reasons. One attempt to determine oil spill size by visually assessing the extent of colour regimes in the spill and multiplying the areas of these regimes by thickness values leads to unsatisfactory results. Previous efforts to estimate oil spill size by inverting spreading using formulae like those of Blokker and Fay have also incurred difficulties related to environmental conditions which influence spill spread rate. Data obtained during a series of field experiments, conducted off the Saudi Arabian coastline during the fall of 1982, were used to devise a modification of Fay's spreading formula. The results agree significantly better with the observed areas of the oil spill than Fay's original formula. The modified area formula is then inverted to obtain a formula for initial volume spilled.     

Saharan Dust Transport and High-Latitude Glacial Climatic Variability: The Alboran Sea Record

Millennial to submillennial marine oscillations that are linked with the North Atlantic's Heinrich events and Dansgaard–Oeschger cycles have been reported recently from the Alboran Sea, revealing a close ocean-atmosphere coupling in the Mediterranean region. We present a high-resolution record of lithogenic fraction variability along IMAGES Core MD 95-2043 from the Alboran Sea that we use to infer fluctuations of fluvial and eolian inputs to the core site during periods of rapid climate change, between 28,000 and 48,000 cal yr B.P. Comparison with geochemical and pollen records from the same core enables end-member compositions to be determined and to document fluctuations of fluvial and eolian inputs on millennial and faster timescales. Our data document increases in northward Saharan dust transports during periods of strengthened atmospheric circulation in high northern latitudes. From this we derive two atmospheric scenarios which are linked with the intensity of meridional atmospheric pressure gradients in the North Atlantic region.     

Structural Alignment Methods with Applications to Geospatial Ontologies

We consider the problem of enabling interoperability and information sharing among geospatial applications that use ontologies to describe their concepts and the relationships among them. We present two fully automatic alignment methods that use the graph structures of a pair of ontologies to establish their alignment, that is, the semantic correspondences between their concepts. We have tested our methods on geospatial ontologies pertaining to wetlands and four other pairs that belong to a repository that has been used in the Ontology Alignment Evaluation Initiative (OAEI). Using these ontologies, we have compared the effectiveness (precision and recall) of our methods against the Similarity Flooding Algorithm that was proposed by others and show that for each of the tested ontologies one of our methods is at least as effective as their method. We have tuned the performance of our methods by introducing a greedy approach that reduces the number of concepts that get compared. This approach reduces runtime by approximately 30% with a minor compromise to the effectiveness of the results. To further validate our approach, we participated in the OAEI competition to align a pair of ontologies, each with a few thousand concepts.