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La creació d’una guia visual mostrant el protocol de laboratori de separació i observació de microplàstics té l'objectiu global de generar activitats de divulgació de la Geologia i promocionar el trànsit Secundària-Universitat., Aquesta activitat està englobada en el projecte d'innovació docent 2020PID-UB/039 de la Universitat de Barcelona i ha sigut subvencionada pel projecte de National Geographic Society COVID-19 Remote Learning Emergency., L’activitat presentada forma part del projecte MICROPLASTICS IN TABLE SALTS?: How to easily study them (National Geographic Society's COVID‐19 Remote Learning Emergency Fund for Educators) que ofereix una aproximació de l’alumnat de secundària a la ciència a partir d’un experiment enfocat a la problemàtica global sobre els residus plàstics en el medi ambient i la seva influència directa sobre l’ésser humà., A partir de la col·laboració entre professorat universitari de Geologia i Belles Arts, s’ha creat una guia visual que mostra el protocol de laboratori per a l’estudi dels microplàstics a les sals de taula. La funció principal d’aquesta guia visual és il·lustrar el procediment per separar, observar i quantificar els microplàstics i altres partícules insolubles presents en sals de taula. A més, aquestes activitats tenen com a fonament quatre dels Objectius de Desenvolupament Sostenible (ODS): 3, 4, 6 i 12. El públic destinatari és alumnat d'educació secundària i batxillerat (12-17 anys) en centres educatius que disposin de laboratori químic. A més, la guia inclou una secció amb un protocol lleugerament modificat, per a aquells centres educatius que tenen un laboratori químic desproveït de certs materials. Aquesta activitat pot ser emprada per al professorat per contextualitzar una lliçó del temari de Ciències de la Terra, o bé per introduir-lo de forma amena i pràctica i aprofitar els seus continguts per presentar els conceptes teòrics associats. Les instruccions detallades en poden trobar en l'arxiu associat o a http://www.ub.edu/sedimentary-geology/microplastics-salt (en anglès) o a http://www.ub.edu/sedimentary-geology/microplastics-salt-cat/ (català)., Amb el suport de la subvenció de National Geographic Society COVID-19 Remote Learning Emergency Fund for Educators i el Projecte 2020PID-UB/039.

Es presenta un conjunt de material de suport per a la realització d'una jornada de treball per a l'orientació del professorat i membres de grups d'innovació docent en la creació de projectes d'innovació docent o en la preparació de publicacions docents sencilles. L'exemple s'han aplicat al grup d'innovació docent de Geoquímica, Roques Ígnies, Metarmòrfiques i Sedimentàries (GI-GRIMS).

In the last two decades, both the amount and quality of geoinformation in the geosciences field have improved substantially due to the increasingly more widespread use of techniques such as Laser Scanning (LiDAR), digital photogrammetry, unmanned aerial vehicles, geophysical reconnaissance (seismic, electrical, geomagnetic), and ground-penetrating radar (GPR), among others. Furthermore, the advances in computing, storage and visualization resources allow the acquisition of 3D terrain models (surface and underground) with unprecedented ease and versatility. However, despite these scientific and technical developments, it is still a common practice to simplify the 3D data in 2D static images, losing part of its communicative potential. The objective of this paper is to demonstrate the possibilities of extended reality (XR) for communication and sharing of 3D geoinformation in the field of geosciences. A brief review of the different variants within XR is followed by the presentation of the design and functionalities of headset-type mixed-reality (MR) devices, which allow the 3D models to be investigated collaboratively by several users in the office environment. The specific focus is on the functionalities of Microsoft’s HoloLens 2 untethered holographic head mounted display (HMD), and the ADA Platform App by Clirio, which is used to manage model viewing with the HMD. We demonstrate the capabilities of MR for the visualization and dissemination of complex 3D information in geosciences in data rich and self-directed immersive environment, through selected 3D models (most of them of the Montserrat massif). Finally, we highlight the educational possibilities of MR technology. Today MR has an incipient and reduced use; we hope that it will gain popularity as the barriers of entry become lower. This research was funded by MCIN/ AEI/10.13039/501100011033: PID2019-103974RB-I00 and by Interreg V-A, POCTEFA: EFA364/19.

Codi del Projecte: 2020PID-UB/039, El projecte proposa la creació de diverses activitats virtuals, dinàmiques i vives, allotjades en el servidor de la UB, i que serveixin com a plataforma de llançament per a la incorporació, la difusió i la implementació de noves propostes futures amb un marcat caire innovador. Totes s’emmarquen en l’àmbit de l’educació i divulgació científica dins de les assignatures de Treball de Final de Grau (TFG) i de màster (TFM) que es realitzen a les facultats de Ciències de la Terra i Biologia de la Universitat de Barcelona. Aquesta actuació ha impulsat definitivament la metodologia docent d’Aprenentatge-Servei (ApS) a la Facultat de Ciències de la Terra i en ensenyaments que continguin assignatures relacionades amb les Ciències de la Terra i el Medi Ambient, i han millorat la transferència de coneixements geològics cap a la Societat., S’han generat 3 projectes virtuals d'accés gratuït que inclouran conceptes de ciències de caire transversal i dinamitzador, Aquests projectes han estat dissenyats per l’alumnat del grau de geologia, el grau de ciències ambientals i el màster de formació del professorat de l’especialitat de Biologia i Geologia en el marc dels seus TFG i TFM. Les activitats estan relaciones amb el currículum de Ciències de la Terra, i destinades a l’estudiat d’ESO i Batxillerat. El desenvolupament de les activitats, així, implica també la seva implementació i avaluació en almenys un institut pilot., En definitiva, es vol demostrar que la resposta a la pregunta proposada al títol del projecte “Podem fer ApS virtual?” és clarament sí, tot i les aparents restriccions i contradiccions que sembla implicar el propi concepte ApS amb la metodologia docent virtual.

Background and aims The quantitative retrieval of soil organic carbon (SOC) storage, particularly for soils with a large potential for carbon sequestration, is of global interest due to its link with the carbon cycle and the mitigation of climate change. However, complex ecosystems with good soil qualities for SOC storage are poorly studied. Methods The interrelation between SOC and various vegetation remote sensing drivers is understood to demonstrate the link between the carbon stored in the vegetation layer and SOC of the top soil layers. Based on the mapping of SOC in two horizons (0–30 cm and 30–60 cm) we predict SOC with high accuracy in the complex and mountainous heterogeneous páramo system in Ecuador. A large SOC database (in weight % and in Mg/ha) of 493 and 494 SOC sampling data points from 0–30 cm and 30–60 cm soil profiles, respectively, were used to calibrate GPR models using Sentinel-2 and GIS predictors (i.e., Temperature, Elevation, Soil Taxonomy, Geological Unit, Slope Length and Steepness (LS Factor), Orientation and Precipitation). Results In the 0–30 cm soil profile, the models achieved a R2 of 0.85 (SOC%) and a R2 of 0.79 (SOC Mg/ha). In the 30–60 cm soil profile, models achieved a R2 of 0.86 (SOC%), and a R2 of 0.79 (SOC Mg/ha). Conclusions The used Sentinel-2 variables (FVC, CWC, LCC/Cab, band 5 (705 nm) and SeLI index) were able to improve the estimation accuracy between 3–21% compared to previous results of the same study area. CWC emerged as the most relevant biophysical variable for SOC prediction.

Identifying the SOC levels and revealing the potential of SOC storage of ecosystems difficult to sample and study are necessary contributions to the understanding of the global reserves of SOC. Wetlands store large amounts of SOC within their soils. They have an important role in water regulation and have great biological and floristic diversity. Therefore, this study aimed to assess the SOC stock in Atillo micro-watershed in the Ecuadorian Andean wetlands at two soil depths (0–30 cm and 30–60 cm below ground) and to assess the importance of the ecosystem and its conservation in favor of reducing emissions due to degradation processes. For that, we sampled the study zone with 101 composite samples of soil to obtain the SOC storage for each sample point in Mg/ha. A SOC estimation to evaluate its spatial distribution was performed using the geostatistical method Kriging. The results show a high storage capacity of the study zone with SOC values of 126 to 454 Mg/ha in the 0–30 cm soil profile and 148 to 350 Mg/ha in the 30–60 cm soil profile. The preservation and protection mechanisms of high SOC reserves should be taken into account to prevent the emission of CO2.

Es presenten diversos documents de treball que poden servir de suport o inspiració per al disseny de tallers de formació del professorat, específicament pensats per a Ciències de la Terra.

© 2018 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes,creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works. This paper discusses an image processing architecture and tools to address the problem of ship detection in synthetic-aperture radar images. The detection strategy relies on a tree-based representation of images, here a Maxtree, and graph signal processing tools. Radiometric as well as geometric attributes are evaluated and associated with the Maxtree nodes. They form graph attribute signals which are processed with graph filters. The goal of this filtering step is to exploit the correlation existing between attribute values on neighboring tree nodes. Considering that trees are specific graphs where the connectivity toward ancestors and descendants may have a different meaning, we analyze several linear, nonlinear, and morphological filtering strategies. Beside graph filters, two new filtering notions emerge from this analysis: tree and branch filters. Finally, we discuss a ship detection architecture that involves graph signal filters and machine learning tools. This architecture demonstrates the interest of applying graph signal processing tools on the tree-based representation of images and of going beyond classical graph filters. The resulting approach significantly outperforms state-of-the-art algorithms. Finally, a MATLAB toolbox allowing users to experiment with the tools discussed in this paper on Maxtree or Mintree has been created and made public.

The EC-Earth earth system model has been recently developed to include the dynamics of vegetation. In its original formulation, vegetation variability is simply operated by the Leaf Area Index (LAI), which affects climate basically by changing the vegetation physiological resistance to evapotranspiration. This coupling has been found to have only a weak effect on the surface climate modeled by EC-Earth. In reality, the effective sub-grid vegetation fractional coverage will vary seasonally and at interannual time-scales in response to leaf-canopy growth, phenology and senescence. Therefore it affects biophysical parameters such as the albedo, surface roughness and soil field capacity. To adequately represent this effect in EC-Earth, we included an exponential dependence of the vegetation cover on the LAI. By comparing two sets of simulations performed with and without the new variable fractional-coverage parameterization, spanning from centennial (twentieth century) simulations and retrospective predictions to the decadal (5-years), seasonal and weather time-scales, we show for the first time a significant multi-scale enhancement of vegetation impacts in climate simulation and prediction over land. Particularly large effects at multiple time scales are shown over boreal winter middle-to-high latitudes over Canada, West US, Eastern Europe, Russia and eastern Siberia due to the implemented time-varying shadowing effect by tree-vegetation on snow surfaces. Over Northern Hemisphere boreal forest regions the improved representation of vegetation cover tends to correct the winter warm biases, improves the climate change sensitivity, the decadal potential predictability as well as the skill of forecasts at seasonal and weather time-scales. Significant improvements of the prediction of 2 m temperature and rainfall are also shown over transitional land surface hot spots. Both the potential predictability at decadal time-scale and seasonal-forecasts skill are enhanced over Sahel, North American Great Plains, Nordeste Brazil and South East Asia, mainly related to improved performance in the surface evapotranspiration. This work was supported by the European Union Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-13) under Grant 308378 (SPECS Project; http://specs-fp7.eu/). The ECMWF experiments were supported by the EU-FP7 ImagineS project (http://fp7-imagines. eu/) in support to the Copernicus Global land. Further support was provided to this work by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement N. 641816 (CRESCENDO project; http://crescendoproject.eu/) and under grant agreement N. 704585 (PROCEED project). Acknowledgement is made for the use of ECMWF’s computing and archive facilities in this research (special project SPITALES).

Martín-Neira, Manuel ... et al.-- Special issue ESA's Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity Mission - Achievements and Applications.-- 21 pages, 37 figures, ESA's Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) mission, launched 2-Nov-2009, has been in orbit for over 6 years, and its Microwave Imaging Radiometer with Aperture Synthesis (MIRAS) in two dimensions keeps working well. The calibration strategy remains overall as established after the commissioning phase, with a few improvements. The data for this whole period has been reprocessed with a new fully polarimetric version of the Level-1 processor which includes a refined calibration schema for the antenna losses. This reprocessing has allowed the assessment of an improved performance benchmark. An overview of the results and the progress achieved in both calibration and image reconstruction is presented in this contribution

The random walk model is studied with the objective to obtain a physical explanation for the texture of polarimetric synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data. A simulator is designed to imitate the scattering process under different circumstances, taking into account different distributions for the scatterer number and the scatterer response, as well as mixtures of scatterers. Statistical analysis of the simulated data shows that the distribution of the scatterer response has an effect only when the number of scatterers in a resolution cell is very small, which appears in very high resolution data. Moreover, it is found that both the fluctuation of the scatterer number and the mixture of different targets can give non-Gaussian-distributed data. The mixture of point targets and distributed targets will lead to an extremely heterogeneous appearance, which may be a clue to analyze the urban areas in polarimetric SAR data.

This paper presents and evaluates multitemporal LAI estimates derived from Sentinel-2A data on rice cultivated area identified using time series of Sentinel-1A images over the main European rice districts for the 2016 crop season. This study combines the information conveyed by Sentinel-1A and Sentinel-2A into a high-resolution LAI retrieval chain. Rice crop was detected using an operational multi-temporal rule-based algorithm, and LAI estimates were obtained by inverting the PROSAIL radiative transfer model with Gaussian process regression. Direct validation was performed with in situ LAI measurements acquired in coordinated field campaigns in three countries (Italy, Spain and Greece). Results showed high consistency between estimates and ground measurements, revealing high correlations (R2 > 0.93) and good accuracies (RMSE < 0.83, rRMSEm < 23.6% and rRMSEr < 16.6%) in all cases. Sentinel-2A estimates were compared with Landsat-8 showing high spatial consistency between estimates over the three areas. The possibility to exploit seasonally-updated crop mask exploiting Sentinel-1A data and the temporal consistency between Sentinel-2A and Landsat-7/8 LAI time series demonstrates the feasibility of deriving operationally high spatial-temporal decametric multi-sensor LAI time series useful for crop monitoring.

Previous work has shown that the emissivity of crude oil is lower than that of the seawater in the thermal-infrared (TIR) spectrum. Thus, oil slicks cause an emissivity decrease relative to the seawater in that region. The aim of this paper was to carry out experimental measurements to characterize the spectral and angular variations of crude oil and seawater emissivities. The results showed that the crude oil emissivity is lower than the seawater emissivity and that it is essentially flat in the atmospheric window of 8-13 μm. The crude oil emissivity has a marked emissivity decrease with the angle (from 0.956 ± 0.005 at 15 ° to 0.873 ± 0.007 at 65 °), which is even higher than that of the seawater, and thus, the seawater-crude emissivity difference increases with the angle (from +0.030 ±0.007 at close-to-nadir angles up to +0.068 ±0.010 in average at 65 °). In addition, the experimental results were checked by using the dual-angle viewing capability of the Environmental Satellite Advanced Along-Track Scanning Radiometer (ENVISAT-AATSR) images (i.e., 0 °-22 ° and 53 °-55 ° for the nadir and forward views, respectively), with the data acquired during the BP Deepwater Horizon oil slick in 2010. The objective was to explore its applicability to satellite observations. Nadir-forward emissivity differences of +0.028 and +0.017 were obtained for the oil slick and the surrounding clean seawater, respectively. The emissivity differences between the seawater and the oil slick were +0.035 and +0.046 for the nadir and forward views, respectively, which was in agreement with the experimental data. The increase in the seawater-crude emissivity difference with the angle gives significant differences for off-nadir observation angles, showing a new chance of crude oil slick identification from satellite TIR data.

Reflectometry of signals of opportunity such as those emitted by a global navigation satellite system, known as GNSS-R, has been developed over the past years as a technique with great potential for ocean scatterometry, among other applications. Different approaches have been proposed to use GNSS-R for remote sensing of ocean surface roughness. One of them is based on deriving some descriptor/metric from the measured delay-Doppler map (DDM) and directly relating it to a geophysical property of the scattering surface. For instance, different descriptors have been proposed in the literature to measure the DDM spreading caused by the increase in ocean surface mean square slopes due to surface winds. In this paper, a new descriptor based on the DDM is proposed for wind direction retrieval. This descriptor, designated as the skewness angle 1,skew, measures the asymmetry in the DDM power distribution along the Doppler frequency axis, and it was modeled as a function of wind direction by means of a simulation study. Then, that model was validated using real GNSS-R data from an airborne experiment. After validation, the DDM skewness model was successfully used for wind direction retrieval, with a resulting rms error on the order of 20°

15 pages, 17 figures, Soil moisture and ocean salinity (SMOS) brightness temperature (TB) images and calibrated visibilities are related by the so-called G-matrix. Due to the incomplete sampling at some spatial frequencies, sharp transitions in the TB scenes generate a Gibbs-like contamination ringing and spread sidelobes. In the current SMOS image reconstruction strategy, a Blackman window is applied to the Fourier components of the TBs to diminish the amplitude of artifacts such as ripples, as well as other Gibbs-like effects. In this paper, a novel image reconstruction algorithm focused on the reduction of Gibbs-like contamination in TB images is proposed. It is based on sampling the TB images at the nodal points, that is, at those points at which the oscillating interference causes the minimum distortion to the geophysical signal. Results show a significant reduction of ripples and sidelobes in strongly radio-frequency interference contaminated images. This technique has been thoroughly validated using snapshots over the ocean, by comparing TBs reconstructed in the standard way or using the nodal sampling (NS) with modeled TBs. Tests have revealed that the standard deviation of the difference between the measurement and the model is reduced around 1 K over clean and stable zones when using NS technique with respect to the SMOS image reconstruction baseline. The reduction is approximately 0.7 K when considering the global ocean. This represents a crucial improvement in TB quality, which will translate in an enhancement of the retrieved geophysical parameters, particularly the sea surface salinity

This paper introduces the recent European Aerosol Research Lidar Network (EARLINET) quality-assurance efforts at instrument level. Within two dedicated campaigns and five single-site intercomparison activities, 21 EARLINET systems from 18 EARLINET stations were intercompared between 2009 and 2013. A comprehensive strategy for campaign setup and data evaluation has been established. Eleven systems from nine EARLINET stations participated in the EARLINET Lidar Intercomparison 2009 (EARLI09). In this campaign, three reference systems were qualified which served as traveling standards thereafter. EARLINET systems from nine other stations have been compared against these reference systems since 2009. We present and discuss comparisons at signal and at product level from all campaigns for more than 100 individual measurement channels at the wavelengths of 355, 387, 532, and 607 nm. It is shown that in most cases, a very good agreement of the compared systems with the respective reference is obtained. Mean signal deviations in predefined height ranges are typically below ±2 %. Particle backscatter and extinction coefficients agree within ±2 × 10−4 km−1 sr−1 and ± 0.01 km−1, respectively, in most cases. For systems or channels that showed larger discrepancies, an in-depth analysis of deficiencies was performed and technical solutions and upgrades were proposed and realized. The intercomparisons have reinforced confidence in the EARLINET data quality and allowed us to draw conclusions on necessary system improvements for some instruments and to identify major challenges that need to be tackled in the future.

Leaf area index (LAI) is a key biophysical parameter used to determine foliage cover and crop growth in environmental studies in order to assess crop yield. Frequently, plant canopy analyzers (LAI-2000) and digital cameras for hemispherical photography (DHP) are used for indirect effective plant area index (PAI(eff)) estimates. Nevertheless, these instruments are expensive and have the disadvantages of low portability and maintenance. Recently, a smartphone app called PocketLAI was presented and tested for acquiring PAI(eff) measurements. It was used during an entire rice season for indirect PAI(eff) estimations and for deriving reference high-resolution PAI(eff) maps. Ground PAI(eff) values acquired with PocketLAI, LAI-2000, and DHP were well correlated (R-2 = 0.95, RMSE = 0.21 m(2)/m(2) for Licor-2000, and R-2 = 0.94, RMSE = 0.6 m(2)/m(2) for DHP). Complementary data such as phenology and leaf chlorophyll content were acquired to complement seasonal rice plant information provided by PAI(eff). High-resolution PAI(eff) maps, which can be used for the validation of remote sensing products, have been derived using a global transfer function (TF) made of several measuring dates and their associated satellite radiances.

La erosión es el principal problema que afecta a los suelos en Chile, lo cual, conlleva a que éste pierda paulatinamente su capacidad para generar bienes y servicios con consecuencias económicas y sociales para los gobiernos locales. Por ello, la Corporación nacional forestal (CONAF) solicitó cooperación técnica al gobierno de Japonés a través de la "Agencia de cooperación internacional de Japón" (JICA) en 1993. Producto de dicha cooperación fue el desarrollo del proyecto "Restauración de cuencas hidrográficas en la zona semiárida de Chile", implementado en la comuna de San Pedro de Melipilla en la región metropolitana en la zona central de Chile. En el marco de este proyecto se llevó a cabo esta investigación, cuyo perfil está enfocado en los servicios ambientales proponiendo un modelo de restauración centrado en la fijación de carbono atmosférico considerando que el número y diversidad de las obras de restauración es directamente proporcional al carbono fijado en las microcuencas considerando que estas contribuyen significativamente al crecimiento de la biomasa vegetal. El sitio de trabajo fue el sector de Alto Loica en la comuna de San Pedro de Melipilla. La propuesta metodología se basó en la "Ingeniería de requerimientos" considerando 4 pasos: extracción, análisis, especificación y evaluación. Inicialmente se determinó la situación inicial de las microcuencas antes de la instalación del proyecto con el fin de efectuar un análisis comparativo de 20 años; en segundo lugar se determinó el problema a solucionar así como la formulación del modelo de requerimientos; en tercer lugar se definieron los dispositivos así como los estándares y finalmente se evaluó el modelo en función de cuatro resultados básicos: análisis de la situación actual, análisis integral de suelos, formulación del modelo integro diferencial de las obras de restauración (específicamente zanjas de infiltración) y formulación del modelo de fijación de carbono basado en redes neuronales artificiales. Los resultados indicaron que existe un aumento de la biomasa vegetal en zonas donde se implementaron las obras de restauración cambiando el paisaje del entorno. La comparación mapas entre los años 1990 (antes del proyecto) y 2010 muestran un aumento cualitativo de la biomasa, además los valores del NDVI muestran un aumento sostenido en las microcuencas 1, 2 y 3 (por ejemplo, muestra un aumento de 0,06 en el año 1990 a 0,22 en el año 2010 en la microcuenca 2), lo que implica un aumento tanto en la extensión como en la vigorosidad de la vegetación en las microcuencas. El análisis de suelos demostró que son suelos de carácter forestal de naturaleza granítica que son comunes en la zona central de Chile, donde predominan los suelos delgados y de textura franco arenosa y arenas francas, con una densidad aparente que fluctúa en los 1,40 gr/cc y una densidad real que oscila alrededor de 2,80 gr/cc. Se formuló además un modelo integro—diferencial que explica el funcionamiento de las zanjas de infiltración, contrario a los modelos lineales existentes. Finalmente la formulación del modelo de fijación de carbono determinó que el agua es el factor más importante para el desarrollo de la biomasa arbórea; siendo determinante la presencia de la obra de restauración, en este caso, el modelo indicó que la obra presente (zanja de infiltración) es determinante para la fijación de carbono atmosférico debido a un aumento de la biomasa arbórea cuando la obra está presente; los eucaliptus con zanjas alcanzan un altura promedio de 14 metros, mientras que eucaliptus localizados en sectores sin obras alcanzan en promedio 8 metros. La formulación de esta metodología puede ser extrapolada y aplicada a diferentes escenarios futuros en la zona semiárida de Chile para restaurar suelos erosionados., Erosion is the main problem affecting soil in Chile. Due to that, the National Forest Corporation (CONAF) asked the Japanese Government for technical cooperation through the Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA) in 1993. This investigation was carried out within the framework of this project, and its profile is focused on environmental services, proposing a restoration model aiming at the fixation of atmospheric carbon, considering that the number and diversity of the restoration work is proportional to the carbon fixed in the micro basins, taking into account that these contribute significantly to the growth of vegetable biomass. The working place is located in the area of Alto Loica, in the area of San Pedro de Melipilla. The methodological proposal was based on 'requirement engineering', considering four basic aspects: extraction, analysis, specification and evaluation. The initial situation of the micro basins was first determined before the installation of the project; in the second place, the problem to solve was determined, and also the formulation of the requirement model. In third place, devices, standards and application measures were defined; finally, the model was evaluated based on four basic results: analysis of the final situation of the micro basins, integral soil analysis, formulation of the integral differential model for the restoration works, and formulation of the carbon fixation model based on artificial neuronal networks. Results showed there is an increase of the vegetable biomass in areas where restoration works were implemented, changing significantly the surrounding landscape. Soil analysis showed that it belonged to forest soils of granitic nature, common in the central area of Chile, with a predominance of thin soils with a sandy loam texture and loam sands, with an apparent density fluctuating between 1.40 gr/cc and a real density oscillating around 2.80 gr/cc. Besides, and integral differential model was formulated, explaining the functioning of specific works, contrary to the existing lineal models. Finally, the formulation of the carbon fixation model determined water as the most important factor for the development of the arboreal biomass, being determinant the presence of the restoration work.

A synergetic approach for the estimation of stable boundary-layer height (SBLH) using lidar and microwave radiometer (MWR) data is presented. Vertical variance of the backscatter signal from a ceilometer is used as an indicator of the aerosol stratification in the nocturnal stable boundary-layer. This hypothesis is supported by a statistical analysis over one month of observations. Thermodynamic information from the MWR-derived potential temperature is incorporated as coarse estimate of the SBLH. Data from the two instruments is adaptively assimilated by using an extended Kalman filter (EKF). A first test of the algorithm is performed by applying it to collocated Vaisala CT25K ceilometer and Humidity-and-Temperature Profiler (HATPRO) MWR data collected during the HD(CP)2 Observational Prototype Experiment (HOPE) campaign at Julich, Germany. The application of the algorithm to different atmospheric scenarios reveals the superior performance of the EKF compared to a non-linear least-squares estimator especially in non-idealized conditions.

The performance and scalability of atmospheric transport models on high performance computing environments is often far from optimal for multiple reasons including, for example, sequential input and output, synchronous communications, work unbalance, memory access latency or lack of task overlapping. We investigate how different software optimizations and porting to non general-purpose hardware architectures improve code scalability and execution times considering, as an example, the FALL3D volcanic ash transport model. To this purpose, we implement the FALL3D model equations in the WARIS framework, a software designed from scratch to solve in a parallel and efficient way different geoscience problems on a wide variety of architectures. In addition, we consider further improvements in WARIS such as hybrid MPI-OMP parallelization, spatial blocking, auto-tuning and thread affinity. Considering all these aspects together, the FALL3D execution times for a realistic test case running on general-purpose cluster architectures (Intel Sandy Bridge) decrease by a factor between 7 and 40 depending on the grid resolution. Finally, we port the application to Intel Xeon Phi (MIC) and NVIDIA GPUs (CUDA) accelerator-based architectures and compare performance, cost and power consumption on all the architectures. Implications on time-constrained operational model configurations are discussed. We thank M.S. Osores from the Argentinean National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET) for providing hourly column heights for the Cordón Caulle eruption simulation and the constructive comments from two anonymous reviewers. This work was supported by NVIDIA through the UPC/BSC GPU Center of Excellence, and the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology through the TIN2012-34557 project. Finally, we dedicate this work to our colleague and co-author Nacho Navarro, who sadly passed away during the reviewing process.

19 pges, 10 figures, 6 tables, L-band radiometry is considered to be one of the most suitable techniques to estimate surface soil moisture (SSM) by means of remote sensing. Brightness temperatures are key in this process, as they are the main input in the retrieval algorithm which yields SSM estimates. The work exposed compares brightness temperatures measured by the SMOS mission to two different sets of modelled ones, over the Iberian Peninsula from 2010 to 2012. The two modelled sets were estimated using a radiative transfer model and state variables from two land-surface models: (i) ORCHIDEE and (ii) H-TESSEL. The radiative transfer model used is the CMEM. Measured and modelled brightness temperatures show a good agreement in their temporal evolution, but their spatial structures are not consistent. An empirical orthogonal function analysis of the brightness temperature's error identifies a dominant structure over the south-west of the Iberian Peninsula which evolves during the year and is maximum in autumn and winter. Hypotheses concerning forcing-induced biases and assumptions made in the radiative transfer model are analysed to explain this inconsistency, but no candidate is found to be responsible for the weak spatial correlations at the moment. Further hypotheses are proposed and will be explored in a forthcoming paper. The analysis of spatial inconsistencies between modelled and measured TBs is important, as these can affect the estimation of geophysical variables and TB assimilation in operational models, as well as result in misleading validation studies, This work contributes to the FP7 Earth2Observe project under grant agreement no. 603608

High-spatial-resolution satellites usually have the constraint of a low temporal frequency, which leads to long periods without information in cloudy areas. Furthermore, low-spatial-resolution satellites have higher revisit cycles. Combining information from high- and low- spatial-resolution satellites is thought a key factor for studies that require dense time series of high-resolution images, e.g., crop monitoring. There are several fusion methods in the bibliography, but they are time-consuming and complicated to implement. Moreover, the local evaluation of the fused images is rarely analyzed. In this paper, we present a simple and fast fusion method based on a weighted average of two input images (H and L ), which are weighted by their temporal validity to the image to be fused. The method was applied to two years (2009-2010) of Landsat and MODIS (MODerate Imaging Spectroradiometer) images that were acquired over a cropped area in Brazil. The fusion method was evaluated at global and local scales. The results show that the fused images reproduced reliable crop temporal profiles and correctly delineated th e boundaries between two neighboring fields. The great est advantages of the proposed method are the execution time and ease of use, which allow us to obtain a fused image in less than five minutes.

[CATALÀ] Aquest document explica les anàlisis i optimitzacions que s'han dut a terme per tal de millorar el temps d'execució de l'etapa de postprocés de l'aplicació NMMB/BSC-CTM. Els resultats obtinguts són favorables, ja que el temps d'execució de postprocés quasi bé es redueix a 0. [ANGLÈS] This paper explains the analysis and optimizations which have been done in order to improve execution time of postprocess stage of the NMMB/BSC-CTM application. The achieved results are favourable, because the execution time of postprocess is virtually reduced to 0.

We discuss the effects of the clutter on geosynchronous SAR systems exploiting long integration times (from minutes to hours) to counteract for two-way propagation losses and increase azimuth resolution. Only stable targets will be correctly focused whereas unstable targets will spread their energy along azimuth direction. We derive here a generic model for the spreading of the clutter energy based on the power spectral density of the clutter itself. We then assume the Billingsley Intrinsic Clutter Motion model, representing the clutter power spectrum as an exponential decay, and derive the expected GEOSAR signal-to-clutter ratio. We also provide some results from a Ground Based RADAR experiment aimed at assessing the long-term clutter statistics for different scenarios to complement the Internal Clutter Motion model, mainly derived for windblown trees. Finally, we discuss the expected performances of two GEOSAR systems with different acquisition geometries.

We address the problem of detecting building dominant scatterers using a reduced number of measurements with applications to through-the-wall radar (TWR) and urban sensing. We consider oblique illumination, which specially enhances the radar returns from the corners formed by the orthogonal intersection of two walls. This letter uses a novel type of image descriptor, named correlogram, which encodes information about spatial correlation of complex amplitudes of each TWR image pixel. The proposed technique compares the known correlogram of the scattering response of an isolated canonical corner reflector with the correlogram of the received radar signal. The feature-based nature of the proposed detector enables corner separation from other indoor scatterers, such as humans. © 2004-2012 IEEE.

Forest fires are one of the most dangerous natural hazards, especially when they are recurrent. In areas such as Galicia (Spain), forest fires are frequent and devastating. The development of fire risk models becomes a very important prevention task for these regions. Vegetation and moisture indices can be used to monitor vegetation status; however, the different indices may perform differently depending on the vegetation species. Eight different spectral indices were selected to determine the most appropriate index in Galicia. This study was extended to the adjacent region of Asturias. Six years of MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) images, together with ground fire data in a 10 × 10 km grid basis were used. The percentage of fire events met the variations suffered by some of the spectral indices, following a linear regression in both Galicia and Asturias. The Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI) was the index leading to the best results. Based on these results, a simple fire danger model was established, using logistic regression, by combining the EVI variation with other variables, such as fire history in each cell and period of the year. A seventy percent overall concordance was obtained between estimated and observed fire frequency.

Extreme-temperature events have a great impact on human society. Thus, knowledge of summer temperatures can be very useful both for the general public and for organizations whose workers operate in the open. An accurate forecasting of summer maximum and minimum temperatures could help to predict heatwave conditions and permit the implementation of strategies aimed at minimizing the negative effects that high temperatures have on human health. The objective of this work is to evaluate the skill of the regional atmospheric and modelling system (RAMS) model in determining daily summer maximum and minimum temperatures in the Valencia Region. For this, we have used the real-time configuration of this model currently running at the Centro de Estudios Ambientales de Mediterráneo Foundation. This operational system is run twice a day, and both runs have a 3-day forecast range. To carry out the verification of the model in this work, the information generated by the system has been broken into individual simulation days for a specific daily run of the model. Moreover, we have analysed the summer forecast period from 1 June to 31 August for 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010. The results indicate good agreement between observed and simulated maximum temperatures, with RMSE in general near 2 °C both for coastal and inland stations. For this parameter, the model shows a negative bias around −1.5 °C in the coast, while the opposite trend is observed inland. In addition, RAMS also shows good results in forecasting minimum temperatures for coastal locations, with bias lower than 1 °C and RMSE below 2 °C. However, the model presents some difficulties for this parameter inland, where bias higher than 3 °C and RMSE of about 4 °C have been found. Besides, there is little difference in both temperatures forecasted within the two daily RAMS cycles and that RAMS is very stable in maintaining the forecast performance at least for three forecast days.

The present study investigates the radiative effects of dust aerosols in the Mediterranean region during summer 2012 using a coupled regional aerosol–atmosphere–ocean model (CNRM-RCSM5). A prognostic aerosol scheme, including desert dust, sea salt, organic, black-carbon and sulphate particles, has been integrated to CNRM-RCSM5 in addition to the atmosphere, land surface and ocean components. An evaluation of this aerosol scheme of CNRM-RCSM5, and especially of the dust aerosols, has been performed against in situ and satellite measurements, showing its ability to reproduce the spatial and temporal variability of aerosol optical depth (AOD) over the Mediterranean region in summer 2012. The dust vertical and size distributions have also been evaluated against observations from the TRAQA/ChArMEx campaign. Three simulations have been carried out for summer 2012 with CNRM-RCSM5, including the full prognostic aerosol scheme, only monthly-averaged AOD means from the aerosol scheme or no aerosols at all, in order to focus on the radiative effects of dust particles and the role of the prognostic scheme. Surface short-wave aerosol radiative forcing variability is found to be more than twice as high over regions affected by dust aerosols, when using a prognostic aerosol scheme instead of monthly AOD means. In this case downward surface solar radiation is also found to be better reproduced according to a comparison with several stations across the Mediterranean. A composite study over 14 stations across the Mediterranean, designed to identify days with high dust AOD, also reveals the improvement of the representation of surface temperature brought by the use of the prognostic aerosol scheme. Indeed the surface receives less radiation during dusty days, but only the simulation using the prognostic aerosol scheme is found to reproduce the observed intensity of the dimming and warming on dusty days. Moreover, the radiation and temperature averages over summer 2012 are also modified by the use of prognostic aerosols, mainly because of the differences brought in short-wave aerosol radiative forcing variability. Therefore this first comparison over summer 2012 highlights the importance of the choice of the representation of aerosols in climate models.

Sun–sky radiometers are instruments created for aerosol study, but they can measure in the water vapour absorption band allowing the estimation of columnar water vapour in clear sky simultaneously with aerosol characteristics, with high temporal resolution. A new methodology is presented for estimating calibration parameters (i.e. characteristic parameters of the atmospheric transmittance and solar calibration constant) directly from the sun–sky radiometer measurements. The methodology is based on the hypothesis that characteristic parameters of the atmospheric transmittance are dependent on vertical profiles of pressure, temperature and moisture occurring at each site of measurement. To obtain the parameters from the proposed methodology some seasonal independent measurements of columnar water vapour taken over a large range of solar zenith angle simultaneously with the sun–sky radiometer measurements, are needed. In this work high time resolution columnar water vapour measurements by GPS were used as independent data set, but also the case when such measurements are not available was considered by developing the surface humidity method (SHM). This methodology makes it possible to retrieve the needed independent data set of columnar water vapour using the standard surface meteorological observations (temperature, pressure and relative humidity) more readily available. The time pattern of columnar water vapour from sun–sky radiometer retrieved using both the methodologies was compared with simultaneous measurements from microwave radiometer, radiosondings and GPS. Water vapour from sun–sky radiometer, obtained using GPS independent measurements, was characterized by an error varying from 1% up to 5%, whereas water vapour from SHM showed an error from 1% up to 11%, depending on the local columnar water occurring at the site during the year. These errors were estimated by comparing water vapour series from sun–sky radiometer against measurements taken by GPS at a nearby station. The accordance between retrievals from sun–sky radiometer and simultaneous measurements from the other instruments was found always within the error both in the case of SHM and of the GPS independent data set. Water vapour obtained using characteristic parameters of the atmospheric transmittance dependent on water vapour was also compared against GPS retrievals, showing a clear improvement with respect to the case when these parameters are kept fixed.

Al inicio de este siglo XXI ha comenzado a desarrollarse un nuevo dominio científico, la Ciencia de la Sostenibilidad (KATES et al., 2001), con el objetivo de integrar las aportaciones a la Sostenibilidad de distintas disciplinas que están dando una respuesta positiva a los numerosos llamamientos realizados para que la comunidad científica contribuya a hacer frente a la grave situación de emergencia planetaria (LUBCHENCO, 1998). Una integración necesaria debido a la estrecha vinculación de los problemas que se pretende resolver (DIAMOND, 2006; DUARTE, 2006), que incluyen desde el agotamiento de recursos esenciales y una contaminación que está degradando todos los ecosistemas, a una explosión demográfica que ha sobrepasado ya la capacidad de carga del planeta, pasando por el desarreglo climático, la pérdida de diversidad biológica y cultural, desigualdades inaceptables o conflictos y violencias fruto de un sistema socioeconómico insolidario, guiado por la búsqueda del máximo beneficio particular a corto plazo.

The Regional Atmospheric Modeling System (RAMS) has been used in order to perform a high-resolution numerical simulation of two meteorological events related to the most common atmospheric environments during the summer over the Western Mediterranean coast: mesoscale circulations and western synoptic advections. In this regard, we take advantage of the operational RAMS configuration running within the real-time forecasting system environment already implemented over this Mediterranean area, precisely in the Valencia Region and nearby areas. The attention of this paper is especially focused on identifying the main features of both events and the ability of the model in resolving the associated characteristics as well as in performing a comprehensive evaluation of the model by means of diverse meteorological observations available within the selected periods over the area of study. Additionally, as this paper is centred in RAMS-based forecasts, two simulations are operated applying the most two recent versions of the RAMS model implemented in the above-mentioned system: RAMS 4.4 and RAMS 6.0. Therefore, a comparison among both versions of the model has been performed as well. Finally, it is our intention to contrast the RAMS forecasts for two completely different atmospheric conditions common with the area of study in the summer. A main difference between the simulation of both meteorological situations has been found in the humidity. In this sense, whilst the model underestimates this magnitude considering the mesoscale event, especially at night time, the model reproduces the daily humidity properly under the western synoptic advection.

The European Aerosol Research Lidar Network, EARLINET, was founded in 2000 as a research project for establishing a quantitative, comprehensive, and statistically significant database for the horizontal, vertical, and temporal distribution of aerosols on a continental scale. Since then EARLINET has continued to provide the most extensive collection of ground-based data for the aerosol vertical distribution over Europe. This paper gives an overview of the network's main developments since 2000 and introduces the dedicated EARLINET special issue, which reports on the present innovative and comprehensive technical solutions and scientific results related to the use of advanced lidar remote sensing techniques for the study of aerosol properties as developed within the network in the last 13 years. Since 2000, EARLINET has developed greatly in terms of number of stations and spatial distribution: from 17 stations in 10 countries in 2000 to 27 stations in 16 countries in 2013. EARLINET has developed greatly also in terms of technological advances with the spread of advanced multiwavelength Raman lidar stations in Europe. The developments for the quality assurance strategy, the optimization of instruments and data processing, and the dissemination of data have contributed to a significant improvement of the network towards a more sustainable observing system, with an increase in the observing capability and a reduction of operational costs. Consequently, EARLINET data have already been extensively used for many climatological studies, long-range transport events, Saharan dust outbreaks, plumes from volcanic eruptions, and for model evaluation and satellite data validation and integration. Future plans are aimed at continuous measurements and near-real-time data delivery in close cooperation with other ground-based networks, such as in the ACTRIS (Aerosols, Clouds, and Trace gases Research InfraStructure Network) www.actris.net, and with the modeling and satellite community, linking the research community with the operational world, with the aim of establishing of the atmospheric part of the European component of the integrated global observing system., The financial support for EARLINET by the European Union under grant RICA 025991 in the Sixth Framework Programme is gratefully acknowledged. Since 2011, EARLINET has been integrated into the ACTRIS Research Infrastructure project, supported by the European Union Seventh Framework Programme (fp7/2007-2013) under grant agreement no. 262254. The financial support within the framework of the EU FP7 project WEZARD (Weather Hazards for Aeronautics), grant agreement no: 285050, is also acknowledged. The authors acknowledge the ESA financial support under the ESRIN contracts 21769/08/I-OL and 22202/09/I-EC and the ESTEC contracts 21487/08/NL/HE and 4000104106/11/NL/FF/fk.

The knowledge of the spatial and temporal patterns of surface air temperature (SAT) is essential to monitor a region's climate and meteorology, to quantify surface exchange processes, to improve climatic and meteorological model results, and to study health and economic impacts. This letter analyzed correlations between SAT and geophysical land surface variables, mainly land surface temperature (LST), to establish operative techniques to obtain spatially continuous land SAT maps from satellite data, unlike data provided by meteorological station networks. The correlations were analyzed by using EOS-MODIS images, meteorological station network data, and geographical variables. Linear regressions with MODIS-retrieved LST data gave SAT with uncertainties higher than ±2 K during daytime and of ±1.8 K at nighttime. Nevertheless, SAT uncertainties decreased up to ±1.2 K when other satellite-retrieved surface parameters, i.e., vegetation index and albedo, together with meteorological and geographical data, were considered as terms of multivariable regressions. The equations finally proposed were shown to work properly for different land covers.