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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.

Large area estimations of land surface fluxes can be a useful operational tool for up-scaling local measurements and can serve as an upper-boundary condition for higher spatial resolution applications. Given hourly measurements of radiometric surface temperature from a geostationary satellite, it is possible to derive the partitioning of energy fluxes based on the influence of the evapotranspiration process on morning surface temperature rise. In this work, the Atmosphere-Land Exchange Inverse (ALEXI) model and the Dual Temperature Difference (DTD) approach were applied in order to relate the sensible heat flux to time-differential remote observations of surface temperature obtained from Meteosat satellite data. Copyright © 2012 IAHS Press.

The two-source energy balance (TSEB) model uses remotely sensed maps of land–surface temperature (LST) along with local air temperature estimates at a nominal blending height to model heat and water fluxes across a landscape, partitioned between dual sources of canopy and soil. For operational implementation of TSEB, however, it is often difficult to obtain representative air temperature data that are compatible with the LST retrievals, which may themselves have residual errors due to atmospheric and emissivity corrections. To address this issue, two different strategies in applying the TSEB model without requiring local air temperature data were tested over a typical Mediterranean agricultural area using a set of high-resolution multispectral airborne remote sensing images. Alleviating the need for accurate local air temperature data as input, these two approaches estimate the surface-to-air temperature gradient that drives the sensible heat flux by directly exploiting the information available in the image. The two approaches include: 1) a scene-based internal calibration (TSEB-IC) procedure that estimates air temperature over a well-watered and fully vegetated pixel in the LST image, and 2) a disaggregation scheme (DisALEXI) that uses air temperature estimates from a time-differential coupled TSEB-atmospheric boundary layer model of atmosphere–land exchange (ALEXI). A comparison of the air temperatures modeled by TSEB-IC and DisALEXI with in situ weather station observations shows good agreement, with average differences on the order of 1 K, comparable with the uncertainties in the remotely sensed surface temperature maps. Surface fluxes estimated by each method agree well with micro-meteorological measurements acquired over an olive orchard within the aircraft imaging domain. In comparison with fluxes generated with TSEB using local measurements of air temperature, instantaneous fluxes from these alternative methods show good spatial agreement, with differences of less than 10 W m − 2 across the domain. Finally, a sensitivity analysis of the three models, performed by introducing artificial errors into the model inputs, demonstrates that the DisALEXI and TSEB-IC approaches are relatively insensitive to errors in absolute surface temperature calibration, while turbulent fluxes from TSEB applications using local air temperature measurements show sensitivity of approximately 30 W m − 2 per degree temperature perturbation. This highlights the value of both internal calibration and time-differential estimation of the surface-to-air temperature gradient within a surface energy balance framework.

Estimation of evapotranspiration (ET) in Sicilian vineyard is an emerging issue since these agricultural systems are more and more converted from rainfed to irrigated conditions, with significant impacts on the management of the scarce water resources of the region. The choice of the most appropriate methodology for assessing water use in these systems is still an issue of debating, due to the complexity of canopy and root systems and for their high spatial fragmentation. In vineyards, quality and quantity of the final product are dependent on the controlled stress conditions to be set trough irrigation. This paper reports an application of the well-known Penman-Monteith approach, applied in a distributed way, using high resolution remote sensing data to map the potential evapotranspiration (ET p ). In 2008 a series of airborne multispectral images were acquired on "Tenute Rapitala", a wine farm located in the northwest of Sicily. Five airborne remote sensing scenes were collected using a SKY ARROW 351 650 TC/TCNS aircraft, at a height of about 1000 m a.g.l.. The acquisitions were performed encompassing a whole phenological period, period between June and September 2008 (approximately every three weeks). The platform had on board a multi-spectral camera with 3 spectral bands at green (G, 530-570 nm), red (R, 650-690 nm) and near infrared (NIR, 767-832 nm) wavelengths, and a thermal camera with a broad band in the range 7.5-13 µm. The nominal pixel resolution was approximately 0.7 m for VIS/NIR acquisitions, and 1.7 m for the thermal-IR data. Field data were acquired simultaneously to airborne acquisitions. These data include spectral reflectances in VIS-NIR-SWIR (shortwave infrared), leaf area index (LAI), soil moisture at different depths (both in row and below plants). Moreover, meteo variables were measured by a standard weather station whereas fluxes were measured by means of an Eddy correlation tower located within the field. The VIS-NIR bands were atmospherically corrected and calibrated in order to calculate albedo, NDVI and LAI, which represented the distributed inputs of the Penman-Monteith algorithm. Moreover a sensitivity analysis has been carried out on input parameters (such as albedo). A sensitivity analysis was carried out to highlight the variability of outputs (such as ET p ) on the accuracy in the parameters assessment obtainable using high spatial resolution airborne images. Scale effects have been also investigated by means of an artificial degradation of images spatial resolution. Finally the relationship between stress factor evaluated as the ratio between actual and reference ET and pre-dawn leaf water potential has been also investigated.

Remotely sensed observations in the visible to the shortwave infrared (VSWIR) and thermal infrared (TIR) regions of the electromagnetic spectrum can be used synergistically to provide valuable products of land surface properties for reliable assessments of carbon and water fluxes. The high spatial, spectral and temporal resolution VSWIR and TIR observations provided by the proposed Hyperspectral - InfraRed (HyspIRI) mission will enable a new era of global agricultural monitoring, critical for addressing growing issues of food insecurity. To enable predictions at fine spatial resolution (

Si analizza l'anomala dimensione del mercato del lavoro siciliano nel settore della sanità, e le sue conseguenze sull'accumulo del deficit strutturale degli anni duemila.

We are proposing a new method for estimating soil surface water content from thermal inertia distributions retrieved from visible–near infrared (VISNIR)and thermal infrared (TIR) images. A drying experiment was conducted on three fi ne-textured soils while acquiring multispectral VIS-NIR and TIR images. Simultaneous measurements of soil water content and thermal inertia were conducted by the thermogravimetric method and the heat pulse technique, respectively. Direct measurements were used to test the thermal inertia approach proposed by Murray and Verhoef that requires only knowledge of soil porosity and can be easily inverted to derive soil water content from thermal inertia. For the three considered soils, the performance of the Murray and Verhoef model was practically equal to that of the traditional approach based on the direct estimation of thermal conductivity and heat capacity, which requires more detailed information about soil properties. With the aim of simplifying the estimation of thermal inertia from remotely sensed images,a modified Kersten function was proposed in which the normalized thermal inertia is substituted by the normalized apparent thermal inertia. Comparison between the two modifi ed Kersten functions was satisfactory. The proposed approach allowed predictions of the surface soil moisture from apparent thermal inertia distributions with an acceptable level of accuracy for practical purposes (0.028 ≤ RMSE ≤ 0.043 m3 m−3) and therefore it can be considered a simple and effective tool for estimating the spatial and temporal distribution of surface soil moisture from VIS-NIR and TIR remotely sensed data.

In the last years, modeling of surface processes - such as water, energy and carbon budgets, as well as vegetation growth- seems to be focused on integrated approaches that combine aspects of hydrology, biology and meteorology into unified analyses. In this context, remotely sensed data often have a core role due to the cross-cutting impact of this novel source of spatially distributed information on all these research areas. However, several applications - such as drought monitoring, yield forecasting and crop management - require spatially detailed products at sub-field scales, which can be obtained only with support of adequately fine resolution remote sensing data (< 100 m). In particular, observations in the visible to the near infrared (VIS/NIR) spectral region can be used to derive biophysical and biochemical properties of the vegetation (i.e., leaf area index and leaf chlorophyll). Complementarily, the thermal infrared (TIR) signal provides valuable information about land surface temperature, which in turn represents an accurate proxy indicator of the subsurface moisture status by means of surface energy budget analysis. Additionally, the strong link between crop water stress and stomatal closure allows inference of crop carbon assimilation using the same tools. In this work, an integrated approach is proposed to model both carbon and water budgets at field scale by means of a joint use of a thermal-based Two Source Energy Budget (TSEB) model and an analytical, Light-Use-Efficiency (LUE) based model of canopy resistance. This suite of models allows integration of information retrieved by both fine and coarse resolution satellites by means of a data fusion procedure. A set of Landsat and MODIS images are used to investigate the suitability of this approach, and the modeled fluxes are compared with observations made by several flux towers in terms of both water and carbon fluxes.

Phoenix canariensis represents one of the most relevant ornamental plants within Mediterranean environment. In the last few years the infestation of a curculio coleopteron, namely the Rhynchophorus ferrugineus, caused a widespread decimation of these palms. Unluckily damages caused by the insect are evident only in the advanced phase of the disease making futile almost any plant treatment. Early warning of this disease may represents the only way to setup efficient actions to fight the coleopteron in trees where it takes over, thus limiting its spreading in contiguous palms. This research aims to achieve the former result by processing: i) short and long-wave images of the crown acquired during day-time by a balloon platform, and ii) a time series of thermal images of the trunk recorded during night-time on the field. The research is based on the hypotheses that: j) the disease induces changes of both transpiration processes and crown shape, because the damages of vascular tissues; jj) the local increase of temperature within the trunk, due to anaerobic fermentation established within the palm, extends up enough to surface to be diachronically analyzed to localize the disease core. © (2011) COPYRIGHT Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.

Agricultural water requirement in arid and semi-arid environments represents an important fraction of the total water consumption, suggesting the need of appropriate water management practices to sparingly use the resource. Furthermore the quality and quantity of some crops products, such as grape, is improved under a controlled amount of water stress. The latter is related, on a side to actual evapotranspiration (ET) through water demand, on the other side to plant water content through leaf water potential. Residual energy balance approaches based on remote sensing allow to estimate the spatial distribution of daily actual ET at plant scale, representing an useful tool to detect its spatial variability across different cultivars and even within each parcel. Moreover, the connection between actual ET and leaf water potential is still not well assessed, especially under water stress conditions, even if farmers use leaf water potential to plan irrigation. However residual energy balance methods are based on the hypothesis that storage terms are negligible, at least during the remote sensor overpass. Indeed, energy balance approaches estimate daily actual ET from the instantaneous value at the overpass time using a daily integration method. The paper first verifies this latter assumption using field data acquired by a flux tower on a whole phenological period. Then, the actual ET values measured by eddy covariance tower were analyzed together with water potential measured using a Scholander chamber; the analysis highlights that, under water stress conditions, daily actual ET is inversely linearly related with water potential. These results suggest the possibility to use remote sensing-based ET as support for irrigation management at plot scale.

Soil humidity plays a key-role in hydrological and agricultural processes. In the rainfall-runoff processes the knowledge of its spatial distribution is fundamental to accurately model these phenomena. Furthermore in agronomy and agricultural sciences, assessing the water content of the root zone is required in order to optimize the plant productivity and to improve the irrigation systems management. Despite the importance of this variable the in situ measurements techniques based on Time Domain Reflectometry (TDR) or on the standard thermo-gravimetric methods, are neither cost-effective nor representative of its spatial and temporal variability. Indirect estimations via Earth Observation (EO) images include the triangle method, which shows that Land Surface Temperature (LST) is prevalently controlled by surface and root zone humidity in bare and vegetated soils respectively. The effects of pre-processing techniques correcting for altimetry and seasonality are analyzed by means of shortwave and longwave airborne images acquired on a vineyard during a whole phenological period. The paper also discusses the advantages induced by replacing the absolute temperatures with relative values, that were obtained subtracting the temperatures measured by micrometeorological station or the surface temperature of high thermal inertia surfaces (as small irrigation reservoir) chosen as reference values. The validation with in situ data also highlights that a higher spatial resolution not necessarily imply a higher accuracy.

Soil moisture is difficult to quantify because of its high spatial variability. Consequently, great efforts have been undertaken by the research community to develop practical remote sensing approaches to estimate the spatial distribution of surface soil moisture over large areas and with high spatial detail. Many methodologies have been developed using remote sensing data acquiring information in different parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. Conventional field measurement techniques (including gravimetric and time-domain reflectometry) are point-based, involve on-site operators, are time expensive and, in any case, do not provide exhaustive information on the spatial distribution of soil moisture because it strongly depends on pedology, soil roughness and vegetation cover. The technological development of imaging sensors acquiring in the visible (VIS), near infrared (NIR) and thermal infrared (TIR), renewed the research interest in setting up remote sensed based techniques aimed to retrieve soil water content variability in the soil-plant-atmosphere system (SPA). In this context different approaches have been widely applied at regional scale throughout synthetic indexes based on VIS, NIR and TIR spectral bands. A laboratory experiment has been carried out to verify a physically based model based on the remote estimation of the soil thermal inertia, P, to indirectly retrieve the soil surface water content, θ. The paper shows laboratory retrievals using simultaneously a FLIR A320G thermal camera, a six bands customized TETRACAM MCA II (Multiple Camera Array) multispectral camera working in the VIS/NIR part of the spectrum. Using these two type of sensors a set of VIS/NIR and TIR images were acquired as the main input dataset to retrieve the spatial variability of the thermal inertia values. Moreover, given that the accuracy of the proposed approach strongly depends on the accurate estimation of the soil thermal conductivity, a Decagon Device KD2 PRO thermal analyzer was used to verify the remotely estimate of thermal conductivity. Remotely estimated water contents were validated using the gravimetric method. The considered thermal inertia approach allowed prediction of the spatial distribution of the soil water with a satisfactory level of accuracy.

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.

During last two decades the increasing availability of remotely sensed acquisitions in the thermal infrared part of the spectrum has encouraged hydrologist community to develop models and methodologies based on these kind of data. The aim of this paper is to compare three methods developed to assess the actual evapotranspiration spatial distribution by means of remote sensing data. The comparison was focused on the differences between the "single" (SEBAL) and "two" source (TSEB) surface energy balance approaches and the S-SEBI semi-empirical method. The first assumes a semiempirical internal calibration for the sensible heat flux assessment; the second uses a physically based approach in order to assess separately the soil and vegetation fluxes. Finally, the last one is based on the correlation between albedo and surface temperature for evaporative fraction estimations. The models were applied using 7 high resolution images, collected by an airborne platform between June and October 2008, approximately every 3 weeks. The acquired data include multi-spectral images (red, green and near infrared) and thermal infrared images for surface temperature estimation. The study area, located in the south-west cost of Sicily (Italy), is characterised by the presence of typical Mediterranean cultivations: olive, vineyard and citrus. Due to irrigation supplies and rainfall events, the water availability for the crops varies in time and this allowed to perform the comparison in a wide range of the modelled variables. Additionally, the availability of high spatial resolution images allowed the testing of the models performances at field scale despite the high vegetation fragmentation of the study area. The comparison of models performance highlights a good agreements of model estimations, analyzed by means of MAD (Mean Absolute Differences) and MAPD (Mean Absolute Percent Differences) indices, especially in terms of study area averaged fluxes. The analysis in correspondence of various crop fields highlights higher differences for low vegetation coverage and for scarce water availability.

The rate at which the net radiation is transferred to the soil as ground heat flux varies with surface characteristics. Surface energy balance algorithms use empirical relationships taking into account the effects of the canopy cover to insulate the soil through vegetation indexes, the soil capacity to absorb incoming net radiation via the albedo, and the surface temperature promoting the energy transfer. However empirical relationships are often dependent on local conditions, such as the soil humidity and vegetation type. Ground heat flux assumes a minimum value in case of full canopy cover and a maximum value for dry bare soil. Aim of the present research is the critical analysis of some ground heat flux equations on a homogeneous field of cereal using measured data acquired between February and May 2008. The study period covers almost a full phenological cycle, including phases characterised by a significant change in both reflected radiation and vegetation cover. The dataset begins with the emergence phase, in November, within which shoots emerge from the ground and finishes with the flowering phase, in May, when tiny white stems begin to come-out; moreover the dataset includes a bare soil period (from September up to November). The daily evapotranspiration is calculated in energy balance models under the hypotheses of negligible daily ground heat flux and constant daily evaporative fraction. Actually micrometeorological data show that daily average ground heat flux is not null but characterised by an increasing or decreasing transient. As a consequence, it is particular important to assess the effects of neglecting the daily ground heat flux on daily evapotranspiration estimation.

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.

An alternative way to map the actual evapotranspiration (ET) spatial distribution at daily scale is the application of residual surface energy balance models to satellite images that are characterised by high temporal frequency and moderate spatial resolution, like those acquired by the MODIS sensors on board of TERRA and AQUA platforms. Within this research the well-known SEBAL model has been applied on an area located in the southern part of Sicily (Imera Meridionale catchment) using four images acquired between the 27th of March and the 11th of April 2007. The catchment extends for about 2000 km2 and includes both mountains and hill areas: the first are located in the northern part (the Madonie Mountains), while the latter characterise the southern area. The altitude ranges between 0 and 1900 m a.s.l., with an average altitude of 500 m a.s.l.. In order to validate the outputs of the energy balance model, a flux tower has been installed within a homogeneous field of cereal located in the valley part of the basin (close to Licata town within the Quignones Farm), characterised by semi-arid conditions. The selected images have been acquired before and after a three-rainfall events period (5 mm during the night between the 2nd and the 3rd of April, 17 mm on the 3rd evening, 8 mm on the 4th thoroughly all the day). The study area is mostly cultivated with cereals that, during the study period, were characterised by flag and bolting phenological phases. In the first, the leaf at the stem apex assumes a flag shape, while during the latter, the terminal part of the stem a barrel shape enlargement containing the ear appears. The study aim is the evaluation of the energy partition between sensible and latent heat fluxes, due to the increased water availability in a period characterised by a significant vegetation growth. The comparison between model results and flux tower measurements shows that both the latent heat flux and the other energy balance components are modelled with high accuracy. Moreover, the model well represents the variation in time of energy partition, which increases from 0.5 up to 0.65 in terms of evaporative fraction (Λ). Therefore a greater percent of energy is used to evapotranspiration after the rainfall events.

Obiettivo della ricerca è la messa a punto di tecniche di elaborazione d’immagini telerilevate al fine di analizzare le caratteristiche evapotraspirative e di umidità del sistema suolo-vegetazione. La valutazione di tali grandezze è, infatti, di notevole interesse poiché consente alle aziende viticole di ottimizzare i processi di produzione nonché la qualità del prodotto. L’evapotraspirazione effettiva del sistema suolo-vegetazione (ETa) è stata stimata mediante l’applicazione del SEBAL (Surface Energy Balance Algorithm for Land), un modello di bilancio energetico facente uso d’immagini telerilevate nel campo riflessivo ed emissivo dello spettro. Il modello, implementato nella versione Mountain, stima l’ETa del sistema viticolo su morfologia comunque accidentata. L’umidità superficiale è stata stimata tramite Triangle Method, un modello che consente di valutare il contenuto idrico superficiale nel caso di suoli nudi e nella zona dell’apparato radicale nel caso di aree vegetate. Sono state eseguite delle acquisizioni tramite sensori aviotrasportati nei giorni 11/06, 03/07, 22/07, 22/08 e 03/09 2008 sul sito d’indagine Azienda Agricola “Tenuta Rapitalà” (Camporeale-San Cipirrello, TP). In particolare, le immagini nel visibile-infrarosso vicino (Vis-NIr) sono state riprese tramite un sensore multispettrale Duncantech MS4100 (NIr 767-832 nm, Red 650- 690 nm e Green 530-570 nm), mentre quelle nel campo dell’infrarosso termico (TIr) sono state effettuate mediante camera Flir SC500/A40M. Alla quota di volo media di 1000 m sul piano di campagna, la risoluzione geometrica è pari a 70 cm nel Vis-NIr ed a 170 cm nel Tir. Contestualmente alle acquisizioni da aereo sono stati rilevati dati di pieno campo; in particolare sono state eseguite misure spettroradiometriche per la calibrazione radiometrica delle immagini nelle onde corte, misure con termometro a infrarossi non a contatto per la calibrazione delle immagini termiche, misure con una stazione microclimatica (del tipo Eddy Covariance) per la verifica del flusso di calore latente, misure di Leaf Area Index per la caratterizzazione della chioma della pianta, e infine misure di umidità con tecnica TDR (Time Domain Reflectometer) per la validazione del metodo triangolare. Le mappe di evapotraspirazione effettiva sono state confrontate con le misure puntuali della stazione microclimatica, mentre le mappe di umidità del suolo sono state validate con le misure ottenute da TDR e metodo gravimetrico. Il modello SEBAL, tenendo conto delle reali condizioni di stress colturale, ha evidenziato che, in condizioni di stress idrico, il valore reale di evapotraspirazione si può discostare anche di molto dal suo valore potenziale. Il confronto fra dati di umidità misurati in campo e le mappe ottenute dall’elaborazione delle immagini telerilevate riporta una correlazione media (r2=0.63) alla risoluzione di 1.7 m, una correlazione soddisfacente (r2=0.73) per dati aggregati a 5.0 m, ed elevata (r2=0.80) per dati aggregati a 10.0 m.

Recent studies showed that the sensible heat flux (H) measured with an array of eddy-correlation system has an high spatial and temporal variability over sparse tall vegetation, such as olive trees, whereas H determined with a displaced-beam laser scintillometer (DBLS) appeared to behave more stable. In this study, the results are shown of two field experiments performed over an olive tree plantation in Sicily in 2007 and 2008, in order to investigate the applicability of a DBSL in combination with remote sensing techniques for the actual evapotranspiration assessment. In 2007 the laser beams was closer to the top of the canopy than in 2008. Various aspects of the scintillation method will be discussed, such as uncertainty about Monin-Obukhov similarity relations for dissipation of kinetic turbulence energy (e), the structure parameter of temperature (CT2), effects of the roughness sub-layer and the outer scale of turbulence. Finally, a practical method will be proposed for routine applications in agriculture of the DBLS over sparse tall Mediterranean vegetation.

Daily high spatial resolution assessment of actual evapotranspiration is essential for water management and crop water requirement estimation under stress conditions. The application of energy balance models usually requires satellite observations of radiometric surface temperat ure with high geometrical and temporal resolutions. By now, however, high spatial resolution (~ 100 m) is available with low time fre quency (approximately every two weeks); at the opposite daily acquisition are characterised by poor spatial resolution. The analysis of vegetation index (VI) and land surface temperature (LST) spatial relationship, shows in substance a scale invariant behaviour [1] ; this consideration allows the application of spatial sharpening algorithms of thermal data, by means of a combination of high spatial resolution data in VIS/NIR range with high temporal acquisition on TIR. In this paper, a sharpening algorithm was applied using the thermal bands of MODIS ( MOderate resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer ) and vegetation indices derived by ASTER (Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer ) sensor; the choice of this sensors is justified by the simultaneous acquisition time. The results of this sharpening process was firstly compared against LST estimation (at the same spatial resolution) by means of the ASTER simultaneous data; then the derived high spatial resolution LST distribution was used in order to investigate the effect of the disaggregation on the outputs of surface energy balance models. The above described application was performed on a Sicilian study area. Keywords: land surface temperature, disaggregation, actual ev apotranspiration, surface energy balance models.