Adjustments in channel morphology due to land‐use changes and check dam installation in mountain torrents of Calabria (southern Italy)

In Mediterranean semi‐arid conditions, the availability of studies monitoring channel adjustments as a response to reforestation and check dams over representative observation periods, could help develop new management strategies. This investigation is an integrated approach assessing the adjustments of channel morphology in a typical torrent of southern Italy after land‐use changes and check dam construction across a period of about 60 years. A statistical analysis of historical rainfall records, an analysis of land‐use changes in the catchment area and a geomorphological mapping of channel adjustments were carried out and combined with field surveys of bed surface grain‐size over a 5‐km reach including 14 check dams. The analysis of the historical rainfall records showed a slight decrease in the amount and erosivity of precipitation. Mapping of land‐use changes highlighted a general increase of vegetal coverage on the slopes adjacent to the monitored reaches. Together with the check dam network installation, this increase could have induced a reduction in water and sediment supply. The different erosional and depositional forms and adjustments showed a general narrowing between consecutive check dams together with local modifications detected upstream (bed aggradation and cross‐section expansion together with low‐flow realignments) and downstream (local incision) of the installed check dams. Changes in the torrent bends were also detected as a response to erosional and depositional processes with different intensities. The study highlighted: the efficiency of check dams against the disrupting power of intense floods by stabilizing the active channel and the influence of reforestation in increasing hillslope protection from erosion and disconnectivity of water and sediment flows towards the active channel. Only slight management interventions (for instance, the conversion of the existing check dams into open structures) are suggested, in order to mobilize the residual sediment avoiding further generalized incision of the active channel and coast line erosion. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Video-monitoring of wood discharge: first inter-basin comparison and recommendations to install video cameras

Wood in rivers plays a major role both ecologically and morphologically. In recent decades, due to human activities in the river channels and along the riparian zone, wood obstruction and jamming has exacerbated flooding hazards and infrastructure damage. Therefore, it is necessary to quantify the wood flux and discharge in rivers to improve wood hazard management. Among the various methods for monitoring the wood flux in a river, the streamside videography technique is effective given its high temporal and spatial resolution. Previous work monitored the wood discharge (m³/s) using this technique in the Ain River (France) during three floods (MacVicar and Piégay, 2012), and the same method is implemented on the Isère River (France) to obtain the statistics of wood discharge for two floods. Comparison between the two sites supports the generalization of both the monitoring technique and the link between wood discharge and flood characteristics. We first show that the maximum wood discharge is observed at bankfull discharge, and we confirm the three stage model proposed by MacVicar and Piégay (2012). Additionally, transverse distributions of the number of wood pieces and corresponding wood length appear to be similar for different flood magnitudes on each site. As a technical contribution, the use of the same technique on two sites allows for recommendations on key decisions related to the location and implementation of the equipment. Both statistical and technical contributions can be used by decision makers to implement this monitoring technique, acquire the wood transport parameters, and evaluate the potential wood hazards at local scale or along a river. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Effect of spatial resolution of satellite images on estimating the greenness and evapotranspiration of urban green spaces

Urban green spaces (UGS), like most managed land covers, are getting progressively affected by water scarcity and drought. Preserving, restoring and expanding UGS require sustainable management of green and blue water resources to fulfil evapotranspiration (ET) demand for green plant cover. The heterogeneity of UGS with high variation in their microclimates and irrigation practices builds up the complexity of ET estimation. In oversized UGS, areas too large to be measured with in situ ET methods, remote sensing (RS) approaches of ET measurement have the potential to estimate the actual ET. Often in situ approaches are not feasible or too expensive. We studied the effects of spatial resolution using different satellite images, with high-, medium- and coarse-spatial resolutions, on the greenness and ET of UGS using Vegetation Indices (VIs) and VI-based ET, over a 780-ha urban park in Adelaide, Australia. We validated ET with the ground-based ET method of Soil Water Balance. Three sets of imagery from WorldView2, Landsat and MODIS, and three VIs including the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI) and Enhanced Vegetation Index 2 (EVI2), were used to assess long-term changes of VIs and ET calculated from the different imagery acquired for this study (2011–2018). We found high correspondence between ET-MODIS and ET-Landsat (R² > 0.99 for all VIs). Landsat-VIs captured the seasonal changes of greenness better than MODIS-VIs. We used artificial neural network (ANN) to relate the RS-ET and ground data, and ET-MODIS (EVI2) showed the highest correlation (R² = 0.95 and MSE =0.01 for validation). We found a strong relationship between RS-ET and in situ measurements, even though it was not explicable by simple regressions; black box models helped us to explore their correlation. The methodology used in this research makes a strong case for the value of remote sensing in estimating and managing ET of green spaces in water-limited cities.     

The Phase A study of the ESA M4 mission candidate ARIEL

ARIEL, the Atmospheric Remote sensing Infrared Exoplanet Large survey, is one of the three M-class mission candidates competing for the M4 launch slot within the Cosmic Vision science programme of the European Space Agency (ESA). As such, ARIEL has been the subject of a Phase A study that involved European industry, research institutes and universities from ESA member states. This study is now completed and the M4 down-selection is expected to be concluded in November 2017. ARIEL is a concept for a dedicated mission to measure the chemical composition and structure of hundreds of exoplanet atmospheres using the technique of transit spectroscopy. ARIEL targets extend from gas giants (Jupiter or Neptune-like) to super-Earths in the very hot to warm zones of F to M-type host stars, opening up the way to large-scale, comparative planetology that would place our own Solar System in the context of other planetary systems in the Milky Way. A technical and programmatic review of the ARIEL mission was performed between February and May 2017, with the objective of assessing the readiness of the mission to progress to the Phase B1 study. No critical issues were identified and the mission was deemed technically feasible within the M4 programmatic boundary conditions. In this paper we give an overview of the final mission concept for ARIEL as of the end of the Phase A study, from scientific, technical and operational perspectives.     

A hybrid deterministic and stochastic approach for tsunami hazard assessment in Iquique,Chile

Natural Hazards - This paper presents an investigation of the collapse of a 325-year-old multi-tiered heritage temple during the 2015 Gorkha earthquake in Kathmandu, Nepal. The research comprises a...     

Morphological Variation of the Sea Silverside Odontesthes regia in Regions with Dissimilar Upwelling Intensity along the Humboldt Current System

Ocean Science Journal - We evaluated the influence of areas with dissimilar upwelling intensity along the Humboldt Current System on the morphological variation of the economically important sea...     

Colony growth in the harvested octocoral Pseudopterogorgia acerosa in a Caribbean coral reef

Pseudopterogorgia acerosa is the tallest gorgonian octocoral found in the Caribbean. In the Cartagena area, Colombia, P. acerosa is commonly harvested as raw material for handicrafts, rendering important the study of its growth and population dynamics. Growth measurements of branches from multiple colonies at two different reefs during 1 year revealed that the main growth was due to rapid elongation of the main (‘mother’) branch and production of daughter branches from the same (or just a few) mother branch(es). Some small colonies doubled their original size in a year. The branches’ absolute growth rate was weakly correlated with size, with no significant relationships between branch size and percent growth. While the pinnate branching pattern in P. acerosa is similar to its congeners Pseudopterogorgia elisabethae and Pseudopterogorgia bipinnata, it produces taller colonies due to the faster growth rate in the primordial mother branch. This growth mode seems advantageous as it augments exposure to light and higher fluxes of suspended food in the benthic boundary layer. Post‐harvesting, clipped colonies exhibited clear signs of regeneration, even in cases where only the holdfast remained. Pseudopterogorgia acerosa seems to have similar regeneration capabilities respect to other Pseudopterogorgia species, where regenerating colonies may grow faster than intact ones.     

Nekhoroshev estimate for isochronous non resonant symplectic maps

We prove that non resonant isochronous symplectic maps in a neighborhood of an elliptic fixed point are stable for exponentially long times with the inverse of the distance from the fixed point. In the proof we make use of the majorant series method together with an idea for optimizing remainder estimates first applied to Hamiltonian problems by Nekhoroshev.