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Forests are currently experiencing an unprecedented period of progressively drier growing conditions around the globe, which is threatening many forest ecosystem functions. Trees as long-living organisms are able to withstand drought periods. Our understanding on critical drought severity resulting in substantial decline in net primary productivity and/or eventually tree mortality is underdeveloped. A wide range of remote sensing products and ground observations, including information on productivity, tree vitality, climate, and soil moisture with high temporal and spatial resolution are now available. Linking these data sources could improve our understanding of the complex relationship between forest growth and drought. We introduce here a conceptual framework using satellite remotely sensed net primary productivity (MOD17A3 and MODIS EURO), ground observations of tree mortality (ICP level I survey data), soil moisture anomaly (Copernicus European Drought Observatory), and spatially-downscaled daily climate data for entire Europe. This unique analysis will enable us to test the influence of biotic and abiotic covariates such as tree age, stand history, and drought legacy using historic droughts for model development. This conceptual framework, as evident from the preliminary results shown here, can help anticipating the effects of future droughts and optimize global climate models considering drought effects.

Actual evapotranspiration from typical Mediterranean crops has been assessed in a Sicilian study area by using surface energy balance (SEB) and soil-water balance models. Both modelling approaches use remotely sensed data to estimate evapotranspiration fluxes in a spatially distributed way. The first approach exploits visible (VIS), near-infrared (NIR) and thermal (TIR) observations to solve the surface energy balance equation whereas the soil-water balance model uses only VIS-NIR data to detect the spatial variability of crop parameters. Considering that the study area is characterized by typical spatially sparse Mediterranean vegetation, i.e. olive, citrus and vineyards, alternating bare soil and canopy, we focused the attention on the main conceptual differences between one-source and two-sources energy balance models. Two different models have been tested: the widely used one-source SEBAL model, where soil and vegetation are considered as the sole source (mostly appropriate in the case of uniform vegetation coverage) and the two-sources TSEB model, where soil and vegetation components of the surface energy balance are treated separately. Actual evapotranspiration estimates by means of the two surface energy balance models have been compared vs. the outputs of the agro-hydrological SWAP model, which was applied in a spatially distributed way to simulate one-dimensional water flow in the soil-plant-atmosphere continuum. Remote sensing data in the VIS and NIR spectral ranges have been used to infer spatially distributed vegetation parameters needed to set up the upper boundary condition of SWAP. Actual evapotranspiration values obtained from the application of the soil water balance model SWAP have been considered as the reference to be used for energy balance models accuracy assessment. Airborne hyperspectral data acquired during a NERC (Natural Environment Research Council, UK) campaign in 2005 have been used. The results of this investigation seem to prove a slightly better agreement between SWAP and TSEB for some fields of the study area. Further investigations are programmed in order to confirm these indications.

Funding Information: This open-access publication was funded by the University of Freiburg. Funding Information: Financial support. The project is supported by the Wassernetzwerk Baden-Württemberg (Water Research Network of the State Baden-Württemberg), which is funded by the Ministerium für Wissenschaft, Forschung und Kunst Baden-Württemberg (Ministry of Science, Research and the Arts of the State Baden-Württemberg) (grant no. AZ. 7532.21/2.1.6) and Maa-ja vesitekniikan tuki ry foundation. Doris E. Wendt acknowledges her support as part of the NERC-funded Groundwater Drought Initiative (NE/R004994/1). Lucy J. Barker was supported by the Natural Environment Research Council (NE/R016429/1) as part of the UK-SCAPE programme delivering National Capability. The contributions of Mirek Trnka, Lenka Bartošová, and Jaak Jaagus have been supported by SustES – Adaptation strategies for sustainable ecosystem services and food security under adverse environmental conditions (CZ.02.1.01/0.0/0.0/16_019/0000797). Publisher Copyright: © 2022 Veit Blauhut et al. Drought events and their impacts vary spatially and temporally due to diverse pedo-climatic and hydrologic conditions, as well as variations in exposure and vulnerability, such as demographics and response actions. While hazard severity and frequency of past drought events have been studied in detail, little is known about the effect of drought management strategies on the actual impacts and how the hazard is perceived by relevant stakeholders. In a continental study, we characterised and assessed the impacts and the perceptions of two recent drought events (2018 and 2019) in Europe and examined the relationship between management strategies and drought perception, hazard, and impact. The study was based on a pan-European survey involving national representatives from 28 countries and relevant stakeholders responding to a standard questionnaire. The survey focused on collecting information on stakeholders' perceptions of drought, impacts on water resources and beyond, water availability, and current drought management strategies on national and regional scales. The survey results were compared with the actual drought hazard information registered by the European Drought Observatory (EDO) for 2018 and 2019. The results highlighted high diversity in drought perception across different countries and in values of the implemented drought management strategies to alleviate impacts by increasing national and sub-national awareness and resilience. The study identifies an urgent need to further reduce drought impacts by constructing and implementing a European macro-level drought governance approach, such as a directive, which would strengthen national drought management and mitigate damage to human and natural assets.

Thermal infrared (TIR) remote sensing of land-surface temperature (LST) provides valuable information about the sub-surface moisture status required for estimating evapotranspiration (ET) and detecting the onset and severity of drought. While empirical indices measuring anomalies in LST and vegetation amount (e.g., as quantified by the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index; NDVI) have demonstrated utility in monitoring ET and drought conditions over large areas, they may provide ambiguous results when other factors (e.g., air temperature, advection) are affecting plant functioning. A more physically based interpretation of LST and NDVI and their relationship to sub-surface moisture conditions can be obtained with a surface energy balance model driven by TIR remote sensing. The Atmosphere-Land Exchange Inverse (ALEXI) model is a multi-sensor TIR approach to ET mapping, coupling a two-source (soil + canopy) land-surface model with an atmospheric boundary layer model in time-differencing mode to routinely and robustly map daily fluxes at continental scales and 5 to 10-km resolution using thermal band imagery and insolation estimates from geostationary satellites. A related algorithm (DisALEXI) spatially disaggregates ALEXI fluxes down to finer spatial scales using moderate resolution TIR imagery from polar orbiting satellites. An overview of this modeling approach is presented, along with strategies for fusing information from multiple satellite platforms and wavebands to map daily ET down to resolutions on the order of 10 m. The ALEXI/DisALEXI model has potential for global applications by integrating data from multiple geostationary meteorological satellite systems, such as the US Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites, the European Meteosat satellites, the Chinese Fen-yung 2B series, and the Japanese Geostationary Meteorological Satellites. Work is underway to further evaluate multi-scale ALEXI implementations over the US, Europe, Africa and other continents with geostationary satellite coverage.

For open orchard and vineyard canopies containing significant fractions of exposed soil (>50%), typical of Mediterranean agricultural regions, the energy balance of the vegetation elements is strongly influenced by heat exchange with the bare soil/substrate. For these agricultural systems a "two-source" approach, where radiation and turbulent exchange between the soil and canopy elements are explicitly modelled, appears to be the only suitable methodology for reliably assessing energy fluxes. In strongly clumped canopies, the effective wind speed profile inside and below the canopy layer can highly influence the partitioning of energy fluxes between the soil and vegetation components. To assess the impact of in-canopy wind profile on model flux estimates, an analysis of three different formulations is presented, including algorithms from Goudriaan (1977), Massman (1987) and Lalic et al. (2003). The in-canopy wind profile formulations are applied to the thermal-based Two-Source Energy Balance (TSEB) model developed by Norman et al. (1995) and modified by Kustas and Norman (1999). High resolution airborne remote sensing images, collected over an agricultural area located in the western part of Sicily (Italy) comprised primarily of vineyards, olive and citrus orchards, are used to derive all the input parameters need to apply the TSEB. The images were acquired from June to October 2008 and include a relatively wide range of meteorological and soil moisture conditions. A preliminary sensitivity analysis of the three wind profile algorithms highlight the dependence of wind speed just above the soil/substrate to leaf area index and canopy height over the typical canopy properties range of these agricultural area. It is found that differences in wind just above surface among the models is most significant under sparse and medium fractional cover conditions (20–60%). The TSEB model heat flux estimates are compared with micrometeorological measurements from a small aperture scintillometer and an eddy covariance tower collected over an olive orchard characterized by moderate fractional vegetation cover (≈35%) and relatively tall crop height (≈3.5 m). TSEB fluxes for the 7 image acquisition dates generated using both the Massman and Goudriaan in-canopy wind profile formulations give close agreement with measured fluxes, while the Lalic et al. equations yield poor results. The Massman wind profile scheme slightly outperforms that of Goudriaan, but it requires an additional parameter describing the roughness of the underlying vegetative surface. This parameter is not directly obtainable using remote sensing, hence this study suggests that the Goudriaan formulation for landscape applications is most suitable when detailed site-specific information regarding canopy architecture is unavailable.

For open orchard and vineyard canopies containing significant fractions of exposed soil (>50%), typical of Mediterranean agricultural regions, the energy balance of the vegetation elements is strongly influenced by heat exchange with the bare soil/substrate. For these agricultural systems a "two-source" approach, where radiation and turbulent exchange between the soil and canopy elements are explicitly modelled, appears to be the only suitable methodology for reliably assessing energy fluxes. In strongly clumped canopies, the effective wind speed profile inside and below the canopy layer can strongly influence the partitioning of energy fluxes between the soil and vegetation components. To assess the impact of in-canopy wind profile on model flux estimates, an analysis of three different formulations is presented, including algorithms from Goudriaan (1977), Massman (1987) and Lalic et al. (2003). The in-canopy wind profile formulations are applied to the thermal-based two-source energy balance (TSEB) model developed by Norman et al. (1995) and modified by Kustas and Norman (1999). High resolution airborne remote sensing images, collected over an agricultural area located in the western part of Sicily (Italy) comprised primarily of vineyards, olive and citrus orchards, are used to derive all the input parameters needed to apply the TSEB. The images were acquired from June to October 2008 and include a relatively wide range of meteorological and soil moisture conditions. A preliminary sensitivity analysis of the three wind profile algorithms highlights the dependence of wind speed just above the soil/substrate to leaf area index and canopy height over the typical range of canopy properties encountered in these agricultural areas. It is found that differences among the models in wind just above the soil surface are most significant under sparse and medium fractional cover conditions (15–50%). The TSEB model heat flux estimates are compared with micro-meteorological measurements from a small aperture scintillometer and an eddy covariance tower collected over an olive orchard characterized by moderate fractional vegetation cover (≈35%) and relatively tall crop (≈3.5 m). TSEB fluxes for the 7 image acquisition dates generated using both the Massman and Goudriaan in-canopy wind profile formulations give close agreement with measured fluxes, while the Lalic et al. equations yield poor results. The Massman wind profile scheme slightly outperforms that of Goudriaan, but it requires an additional parameter accounting for the roughness sub-layer of the underlying vegetative surface. The analysis also suggests that within-canopy wind profile model discrepancies become important, in terms of impact on modelled sensible heat flux, only for sparse canopies with moderate vegetation coverage.

Climate change is anticipated to alter the demand and supply of water at the earth's surface. Since many societal impacts from a lack of water happen under drought conditions, it is important to understand how droughts may develop with climate change. This study shows how hydrological droughts will change across Europe with increasing global warming levels (GWLs of 1.5, 2, and 3 K above pre-industrial temperature). We employed a low-flow analysis based on river discharge simulations of the LISFLOOD (De Roo et al., 2000) spatially distributed physically based hydrological and water use model, which was forced with a large ensemble of regional climate model projections under high emissions (RCP8.5) and moderate mitigation (RCP4.5) Representative Concentration Pathways. Different traits of drought, including severity, duration, and frequency, were investigated using the threshold level method. The projected changes in these traits identify four main sub-regions in Europe that are characterized by somehow homogeneous and distinct behaviours with a clear south-west–north-east contrast. The Mediterranean and Boreal sub-regions (defined in Sect. 3.1.1) of Europe show strong but opposite changes at all three GWLs, with the former area mostly characterized by stronger droughts (with larger differences at 3 K), while the latter is expected to experience a reduction in all drought traits. In the Atlantic and Continental sub-regions, the changes are expected to be less marked and characterized by a larger uncertainty, especially at the 1.5 and 2 K GWLs. Combining the projections in drought hazard with population and agricultural information shows that with 3 K global warming an additional 11 million people and 4.5 ×106 ha of agricultural land are projected to be exposed to droughts every year, on average, with the most affected areas located in the Mediterranean and Atlantic regions of Europe.

The outcomes of the 2015 Paris Agreement triggered a number of climate impact assessments, such as for floods and droughts, to focus on future time frames corresponding to the years of reaching specific levels of global warming. Yet, the links between the timing of the warming levels and the corresponding greenhouse gas concentration pathways to reach them remain poorly understood. To address this gap, we compared projected changes of annual mean, extreme high, and extreme low river discharges in Europe at 1.5 &deg, C and 2 &deg, C under Representative Concentration Pathways RCP8.5 and RCP4.5 from an ensemble of regional climate model (RCM) simulations. The statistical significance of the difference between the two scenarios for both warming levels was then evaluated. The results show that in the majority of Europe (&gt, 95% of the surface area for the annual mean discharge, &gt, 98% for high and low extremes), the changes projected in the two pathways were statistically indistinguishable. These results suggest that in studies of changes at global warming levels, the projections of the two pathways can be merged into a single ensemble without major loss of information. With regard to the uncertainty of the unified ensemble, the findings show that the projected changes of annual mean, extreme high, and extreme low river discharge were statistically significant in large portions of Europe.

Among the indirect estimation approaches of soil water content in the upper layer of the soil, the &ldquo, triangle method&rdquo, is one of the most common that relies on the simple relationship between the optical and thermal features sensed via Earth Observation. These features are controlled by water content at the surface and within the root zone but also by meteorological forcing including air temperature and humidity, as well as solar radiation. Night- and day-time MODIS composites of land-surface temperature (LST) allowed applying a version of the triangle method that takes into account the temporal admittance of the soil. In this study, it has been applied to a long time-series of pair images to analyze the seasonal influence of the meteorological forcing on a triangle method index (or temperature&ndash, vegetation index, TVX), as well as to discuss extra challenges of the diachronic approach including seasonality effects and the variability of environmental forcing. The Imera Meridionale basin (Sicily, Italy) has been chosen to analyze the method over a time-series of 12 years. The analysis reveals that, under these specific environmental and climatic conditions (strong seasonality and rainfall out of phase with vegetation growth), Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and LST pairs move circularly in time within the optical vs. thermal feature space. Concordantly, the boundaries of the triangle move during the seasons. Results showed a strong correlation between TVX and rainfall normalized amplitudes of the power spectra (r2 ~0.8) over the range of frequencies of the main harmonics.

The essay makes a comment on the articles 54, 55 and 56 of the Act of the legislative provisions on the protection and support of maternity and paternity

Correct estimation of crop actual transpiration plays a key-role in precision irrigation scheduling, since crop growth and yield are associated to the water passing through the crop. Objective of the work was to assess how the combined use of micro-meteorological techniques (eddy covariance, EC) and physiological measurements (sap flow, SF) allows a better comprehension of the processes involving in the Soil–Plant–Atmosphere continuum. To this aim, an experimental dataset of actual evapotranspiration, plant transpiration, and soil water content measurements was collected in an olive orchard during the midseason phenological period of 2009 and 2010. It was demonstrated that the joint use of EC and SF techniques is effective to evaluate the components of actual evapotranspiration in an olive orchard characterized by sparse vegetation and a significant fraction of exposed bare soil. The availability of simultaneous soil water content measurements allowed to estimate the crop coefficients and to assess a simple crop water stress index, depending on actual transpiration that can be evaluated even in the absence of direct measurements of actual transpiration. The crop coefficients experimentally determined resulted very similar to those previously evaluated; in particular, in the absence of water stress, a seasonal average value of about 0.65 was obtained for the “single” crop coefficient, whereas values of a 0.34 and 0.41 were observed under limited water availability in the root zone. The comparison between the values of crop water stress index evaluated during the investigated periods evidenced systematically lower values (less crop water stress) in the first year compared to the second, according to the general trend of soil waters content in the root zone. Further researches are however necessary to extent the experimental dataset to periods characterized by values of soil evaporation higher than those observed, in order to verify the crop coefficients even under different conditions than those investigated.

Equations based on surface renewal (SR) analysis to estimate the sensible heat flux (H) require as input the mean ramp amplitude and period observed in the ramp‐like pattern of the air temperature measured at high frequency. A SR‐based method to estimate sensible heat flux (HSR‐LST) requiring only low‐frequency measurements of the air temperature, horizontal mean wind speed, and land‐surface temperature as input was derived and tested under unstable conditions over a heterogeneous canopy (olive grove). HSR‐LST assumes that the mean ramp amplitude can be inferred from the difference between land‐surface temperature and mean air temperature through a linear relationship and that the ramp frequency is related to a wind shear scale characteristic of the canopy flow. The land‐surface temperature was retrieved by integrating in situ sensing measures of thermal infrared energy emitted by the surface. The performance of HSR‐LST was analyzed against flux tower measurements collected at two heights (close to and well above the canopy top). Crucial parameters involved in HSR‐LST, which define the above mentioned linear relationship, were explained using the canopy height and the land surface temperature observed at sunrise and sunset. Although the olive grove can behave as either an isothermal or anisothermal surface, HSR‐LST performed close to H measured using the eddy covariance and the Bowen ratio energy balance methods. Root mean square differences between HSR‐LST and measured H were of about 55 W m−2. Thus, by using multitemporal thermal acquisitions, HSR‐LST appears to bypass inconsistency between land surface temperature and the mean aerodynamic temperature. The one‐source bulk transfer formulation for estimating H performed reliable after calibration against the eddy covariance method. After calibration, the latter performed similar to the proposed SR‐LST method. This research was funded by project CGL2012‐37416‐C04‐01 and CGL2015‐65627‐C3‐1‐R (Ministerio de Ciencia y Innovación of Spain), CEI Iberus, 2014 (Proyecto financiado por el Ministerio de Educación en el marco del Programa Campus de Excelencia Internacional of Spain), and Ayuda para estancias en centros extranjeros (Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte of Spain).

Reference evapotranspiration (ET 0 ) is widely used for irrigation scheduling, to promote an efficient use of water resources for a sustainable agro-ecosystem productivity, as well as to manage water quality and to face other environmental concerns. As suggested by ASCE-EWRI and FAO, standard Penman–Monteith methods are generally applied for an accurate estimation of ET 0 from hourly to daily scale. In absence of detailed meteorological information several simplified equations, using a limited number of variables, have been proposed as alternative. In this paper, the performance of different reference evapotranspiration methods, at hourly (Penman–Monteith, Pristley–Taylor, Makkink and Turc) and daily scale (Penman–Monteith, Blaney and Criddle, Hargreaves, Pristley–Taylor, Makkink and Turc), was evaluated against scintillometer measurements collected during six month in 2005 in an experimental plot maintained under “reference” conditions (alfalfa crop). The daily values of ET 0 obtained with the examined methodologies were then used as input in the FAO-56 agro-hydrological model, in order to evaluate, for an olive grove in a Mediterranean environment, the impact on simulated actual evapotranspiration. The experiment was carried out in South-West Sicily, in an area where olive groves are the major crop. The comparison between estimated and measured fluxes confirmed that FAO-56 Penman–Monteith (PM) standardized equation is characterized by the lowest mean bias error (−0.15 mm d −1 and 0.06 mm d −1 using daily or hourly data, respectively). Additionally, the analysis also highlighted that the Pristley–Taylor equation can be considered a valid alternative for an accurate estimation of ET 0 (mean bias error of 0.35 mm d −1 and 0.43 mm d −1 using daily or hourly data, respectively). The application of the FAO-56 water balance model on the investigated olive grove evidenced that the best estimations of actual evapotranspiration are obtained when the Pristley–Taylor ET 0 data are used as input, confirming that this approach can be considered a valid alternative to the standard Penman–Monteith.

In this work a set of time-series of inter-arrival times of rainfall events, at daily scale, was analysed, with the aim to verify the issue of increasing duration of dry periods. The set consists of 12 time-series recorded at rain gauges in 1926–2005, six of them belong to an Italian Sub-Alpine area (Piedmont) and six to a Mediterranean one (Sicily). In order to overcome the problem related to limited sample size for high values of inter-arrival times, the discrete probability polylog-series distribution was used to fit the empirical data from partial (20 yr) time-series. Moreover, a simple qualitative trend analysis was applied to some high quantiles of inter-arrival times as well as to the average extent of rain clusters. The preliminary analysis seems to confirm the issue of increasing duration of dry periods for both environments, which is limited to the ''cold'' season.

The paper critically addresses the origins of flexicurity and argues that it lacks an archetypical definition, especially in the formulation of the EU Commission. Hence, the paper, basing on a multidisciplinary literature, considers flexicurity as any balance between flexibility and security and, therefore, proposes ordering any set of contracts, providing the same balance and with the same regulatory framework, in “communities”. It is assumed, therefore, that communities can differ either in terms of a “protective” trade-off, where the differential is not a surrogate measure of security, or in terms of an economic trade-off, where it is met by the provision of social insurance or security. One of these sets is called community 0 and it corresponds to undeclared work, not only illegal, but also completely devoid of security and fully flexible. After identifying from ILO, EU and constitutional sources the foundation of the “incompressibility” of rights which guarantee decent work, the paper likens decent work to a public good of general interest, in the same way as laws generally recognize the natural environment. On the basis of this comparative axiom, the paper proposes considering the dispersion of security produced by undeclared work as “un-decent” work and, therefore, as a form of “pollution”. Because an environment can be little or very polluted, the paper proposes considering as social pollution any form, even legal, of security leakage - such as that induced by the precarious and atypical jobs. Any form of employment is, therefore, considered in an nth community and every community is ordered from the least secure to the most secure, using as tertium comparationis standard employment, which is itself a point of balance between flexibility and security, and it is therefore a community of flexicurity. In this way, each community expresses a degree of social participation in environmental pollution: from the maximum produced by undeclared work to the minimum produced by labour standard. The adopted economic approach allows defining this pollution as a negative externality and, therefore, refer to its contrast in terms of internalization. Among the techniques of internalization, the preferred one is the Pigovian tax, because it can overcome the difficulties associated with the identification of taxable income in the undeclared work and in the informal sector. It has been observed, in fact, that the insurance mechanism creates a regressive effect on the competitiveness of labour standards, making it less competitive in favour of precarious and atypical work and, thus, triggering a vicious cycle that increases social pollution. In this way, it is believed that on one hand you lose your interest in hiding most of the black job. On the other hand, a mechanism would be enforced that forces polluters to contribute to the financing of the security needed to address the pollution created. Because of the adopted ordering of communities, this positive effect would also impact on precarious forms of employment and atypical work in proportion to the security dispersed

According to the opinion accepted by most, labour law was born in the late nineteenth century in connection with the production processes delivered by the Industrial Revolution. Its genesis follows the paradigm for which is the main feature of this new production model to generate both socioeconomic and legal subordination. So, keeping this basic assumption, a research that wanted to investigate the origins of the employment, back-links from this period, it seems to stand outside of the legal framework that constitute generally its reference system. For the same reason, also the new post-industrial work organisation in the era of globalisation, although for different reasons and yet paradoxical, it tends to stand outside the natural riverbed of labor law and it tends to breaking free from it. This is the reason why there is the current tendency to talk about the labor market law, jobs law, job protections, rather than labour law and employment law. You can not escape that in every age, however, the concern of the law has been, and it always is, to assign the protection to who, by himself, that protection can not give it to himself. Well, this situation is an essential common need of the labour law both pre-industrial and industrial and post-industrial. Thus, the basic concerns of labour law in the era of globalisation are not different from those of previous eras. Let's change the superstructure of utilisation / exploitation of the labor of others - and correspondingly the legal structures that govern them - but it do not change the structures on which those forms are inserted; - in fact, at the root of it all there is the person, in one of its many most qualifying natural phenomena: that of work. Now, the Bible (both the Hebrew and Christian, in its different denominations) is - of course - a common humus to the whole so called the West and - in part - even to the Islam. As you know, the inextricable intertwining of theological requirements with social requirements, that are typical of theocratic societies, on the one side whether it does not make it easy to distinguish the one from the other (even supposing that such hermeneutic approach it can be useful and accessible); on the other side it might help to identify protection structures that, as referring to man in his relationship with creation - ( in the secular sense for non-believers ) and the creator - could likely to be erected to universal rules, without space or time, rules good to delineate the outer limits of regulation of employment at any time and any where. The purpose of this research is to catalogue the biblical texts - notably in a first phase those which are in the first (or old) testament of the Christian Bible - which contain both prescriptive structures and pathways, designed to protect the position of social weakness and minority of the worker, understood in its broadest sense and in its various and diverse facets: of worker, of salaried, of servant, even of slave, and so on. The starting point and most immediate objective of this work is therefore to find the biblical sources - and to get ready one first critical apparatus - which they refer to, directly or indirectly, to work in broad sense, that is a personal relationship in which one of the two subjects of it, is in a position of weakness, comparable to that which the Bible considers typical for orphans , widows, the poor and in some respects for foreigners: a one word the Weaks.

Daily precipitation records exist spanning several decades. A valuable amount of climatic information exists in the time-series of interarrival times (IT), defined as the succession of times (number of days) elapsed from a rainy (or snowy) day to the one immediately preceding it.In a previous work, Agnese et al. (2014) have been successfully tested some probabilistic modelling of rain occurrence on Sicily rainfall data; particularly, the better fitting of IT’s observed frequencies was obtained by 3-parameter Lerch-series distribution. In this work thisdistribution is tested on 70 years of 20 precipitation time-series taken in the North-West Italy, both in the plain and in the mountains, up to the 2000 meters altitude. In such Mediterranean climatetwo markedly different behaviours were observed in the dry semester (April to September) and in the wet one (October to March). A better fit was obtained with that simple subdivision of the year, in comparison with the whole year modelling. However, the NW Italy climate is both more similar to the Central Europe one, and it is deeply influenced by the higher peaks of the Alps. Therefore the seasonality of daily precipitation data is much more complicated. Usually spring and fall are the seasons characterized by the higher precipitations, but the convective vs. frontal events also play a role in the IT distributions. In this work, different subdivisions were compared with the whole year fitting. The whole year Lerch distributions successfully fitted the data in a part of the time series, opening the way to interesting climate applications.

Alla controversia di impugnazione del licenziamento, il cui ricorso sia stato depositato successivamente all'entrata in vigore della legge n. 92 del 2012, si applica il nuovo rito speciale, ancorché il licenziamento si sia perfezionato in data anteriore e ancorchè sia assoggettato alla tutela obbligatoria. L'inefficacia del licenziamento privo del requisito della forma scritta non comporta l'automatico riconoscimento, in capo al prestatore di lavoro, del diritto alla corresponsione delle retribuzioni non percepite in seguito alla interruzione di fatto del rapporto contrattuale. Poiché non integrano costituzione in mora accipiendi né l'impugnazione del licenziamento con la richiesta stragiudiziale di essere reintegrato, né la domanda giudiziale di condanna all'indennità ex art. 8 della legge n.604 del 1966 quest'ultima domanda deve essere rigettata. La domanda del ricorrente, con riferimento all'accertamento presupposto della natura subordinata del rapporto, volta alla corresponsione delle differenze retributive, deve esser dichiarata inammissibile, atteso che l'art. 1, comma 48 dispone che con il ricorso non possono essere proposte domande diverse da quelle di cui al comma 47 del presente articolo (salvo che siano fondate sugli identici fatti costitutivi).

La nuova formulazione dell'art. 434 c.p.c. impone precisi oneri di forma dell'appello che deve essere redatto quasi come una sentenza e occorrerà: articolare le modifiche che il giudice di appello deve apportare, anche di quelle formulate in via subordinata; indicare espressamente le parti del provvedimento che vuole impugnare (profilo volitivo); suggerire le modifiche che dovrebbero essere apportate al provvedimento con riguardo alla ricostruzione del fatto (profilo argomentativo); specificare il rapporto di causa ad effetto fra la violazione di legge che è denunciata e l'esito della lite (profilo di causalità); individuare il testo di una nuova pronuncia volta a modificare le argomentazioni del giudice di prime cure. Allorché siano contestati in quantum della condanna l'assolvimento dei suddetti precetti ricavabili dall'art. 434 c.p.c. deve altresì estrinsecarsi nella produzione di prospetti contabili alternativi rispetto posti a base della decisione impugnata

The author tackles one of the most controversial aspects of the "Brunetta Reform": the knot of effectiveness in the light of the problems of interpretation and application of the novel discipline. This means an examination of the most famous judicial decisions on the application of Article. 65 of the decree in question. In the paper we analyse also the rules and principles laid down in clarification of the reform: the decree n. 141/2011 and the ministerial circulars of 2011.

Application of FAO-56 methodology for the assessment of reference evapotranspiration, ET 0 , is challenging in areas of the world with sparse meteorological network stations. For this reason alternative procedures using remotely observed data have been proposed in the literature. In this work, a simplified version of the Makkink approach [J. Inst. Wat. Eng. 11: 277–288, 1957] was tested in a typical Mediterranean environment (Sicily, Italy). The implemented Makkink approach (MAK) uses remotely estimated solar radiation derived from Meteosat Second Generation (MSG) satellite data and in situ observations of air temperature to assess ET 0 at daily time scale. Alternatively, taking advantage of well-defined relationships that exist between seasonality, elevation and air temperature, a deterministic procedure for estimating air temperature inputs used in the MAK approach (named RS) was also tested. This approach allows the assessment of daily ET 0 without the need of auxiliary air temperature ground observations. A comparison between the FAO-56 and MAK approaches was performed for 45 sites in Sicily over the period 2007–2010. Assuming FA0-56 as the benchmark, the average accuracy of the MAK methodology was 0.4 mm d −1 , with a relative error of 12%. Similar to other applications of the same procedure, the MAK approach showed a slightly underestimation of ET 0 high values; however, an average regression slope of 0.96 (and negligible intercept) suggests a satisfactory agreement with the FAO-56 modeled values. Air temperature observations acquired during 2002–2006 were used to calibrate the deterministic relation between air temperature, seasonality (as a function of the DOY) and orography (as a function of elevation). For the period 2007–2010, the RS approach performs similarly to MAK, with an average difference of less than 0.05 mm d −1 . Analysis of monthly, seasonal and yearly ET 0 maps shows a slight decrease in RS performance during June and July; nevertheless, the differences between MAK and RS approaches are negligible at all analyzed temporal scales.

Benché il rito previsto dalla legge Fornero non sia facoltativo, non sussistono limiti di ordine legale, nell'ambito dello stesso rito, alla rinuncia alla fase sommaria, attesocchè l'interesse di entrambe le parti del rapporto di lavoro ad una sollecita definizione del processo inerente ai licenziamenti con tutela ex art. 18 st. lav. e quello pubblico alla sollecita definizione di tali processi non viene menomato. Nel caso di rinuncia concorde alla fase sommaria del giudizio introdotto con il nuovo rito dei licenziamenti e di compresenza di domande diverse il giudice deve separare i processi e contestualmente fissare distinte udienze ex art. 420 c.p.c..

Evapotranspiration estimation by micrometeorological techniques through the assessment of mass and energy exchanges in the soil-plant-atmosphere continuum (SPAC) is a very active research area, involving both well-known and novel measurement techniques. A crucial aspect in validating experimental results is the integration of independent measurements of mass and energy exchanges in the SPAC. To this aim, the development and validation of an integrated approach in major tree crop species, involving different independent techniques, are presented. Eddy covariance estimates of ET fluxes were compared to up-scaled sap flow measurements in olive, orange and grapevine, three important Mediterranean tree crop species with contrasting ecophysiological characteristics and responses to water deficits. These differences can affect directly the degree of coupling of the tree to the environment and, consequently, the degree of correspondence between instantaneous transpirational flux at tree level and the micrometeorological measurement of ET at orchard level. Data were analyzed to verify to what extent, in the three species, transpirational flow at orchard level is regulated by tree conductance, capacitance effects related to tree size or by environmental demand. Hourly observations were helpful in detecting physiological processes of the three species only when data were analyzed taking into consideration their diurnal changes.

L'articolo, prendendo spunto dall'ordinanza del Tribunale di Bologna, analizza criticamente il tema, introdotto dalla novella all'art. 18 st. lav., della differenziazione delle sanzioni contro il licenziamento illegittimo in finzione della ti­pologia di illegittimità. Nell'aderire ai presupposti enunciati nell'ordinanza lo studio propone una propria lettura della no­vellazione avanzando la tesi della modificazione indiretta delle fattispecie giustificatrici. The study, starting from case law Trib. Bologna October 15, 2012 CP v. A., critically addresses interpretation problems posed by the new law of individual dismissal.

Thermal infrared (TIR) remote sensing of land-surface temperature (LST) provides valuable information about the sub-surface moisture status required for estimating evapotranspiration (ET) and detecting the onset and severity of drought. While empirical indices measuring anomalies in LST and vegetation amount (e.g., as quantified by the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index; NDVI) have demonstrated utility in monitoring ET and drought conditions over large areas, they may provide ambiguous results when other factors (soil moisture, advection, air temperature) are affecting plant stress. A more physically based interpretation of LST and NDVI and their relationship to sub-surface moisture conditions can be obtained with a surface energy balance model driven by TIR remote sensing. The Atmosphere-Land Exchange Inverse (ALEXI) model is a multi-sensor TIR approach to ET mapping, coupling a two-source (soil+canopy) land-surface model with an atmospheric boundary layer model in time-differencing mode to routinely and robustly map daily fluxes at continental scales and 5–10 km resolution using thermal band imagery and insolation estimates from geostationary satellites. A related algorithm (DisALEXI), spatially disaggregates ALEXI fluxes down to finer spatial scales using moderate resolution TIR imagery from polar orbiting satellites. An overview of this modeling approach is presented, along with strategies for fusing information from multiple satellite platforms and wavebands to map daily ET down to resolutions of 30 m. The ALEXI/DisALEXI model has potential for global applications by integrating data from multiple geostationary meteorological satellite systems, such as the US Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites, the European Meteosat satellites, the Chinese Fen-yung 2B series, and the Japanese Geostationary Meteorological Satellites. Work is underway to further evaluate multi-scale ALEXI implementations over the US, Europe and, Africa and other continents with geostationary satellite coverage.

Actual evapotranspiration from typical Mediterranean crops has been assessed in a Sicilian study area by using Surface Energy Balance and Agro-Hydrological models. Both modelling approaches require remotely sensed data to estimate evapotranspiration fluxes in a spatially distributed way. The first approach exploits visible (VIS), near-infrared (NIR) and thermal (TIR) observations to solve the surface energy balance equation. To this end two different schemes have been tested: the two-sources TSEB model, where soil and vegetation components of the surface energy balance are treated separately, and the widely used one-source SEBAL model, where soil and vegetation are considered as a sole source. Actual evapotranspiration estimates by means of the two surface energy balance models have been compared with the results of the Agro-Hydrological model SWAP, applied in a spatially distributed way to simulate one-dimensional water flow in the soil-plant-atmosphere continuum. In this latter model, remote sensing data in the VIS and NIR spectral ranges have been used to infer spatially distributed vegetation parameters needed to set up the upper boundary condition of SWAP. In the comparison presented here, actual evapotranspiration values obtained from the application of the soil water balance model SWAP have been considered as the reference. Considering that the study area is characterized by typical Mediterranean sparse vegetation, i.e. olive, citrus and vineyards, we focused the attention on the main conceptual differences between SEBAL and TSEB. Airborne hyperspectral data acquired during a NERC campaign in 2005 have been used. The results of the investigation evidenced that the remote sensing two-sources approach used in TSEB model describes turbulent and radiative surface fluxes in a more realistic way than the one-source approach.