Suchergebnisse

"This third edition covers the most recent advances incorporated since the publication of the previous book, relating to the acquisition and interpretation of remotely-sensed data. It includes updated EO missions, such as the third generations of geostationary meteorological satellites, the new polar orbiting platforms (Suomi), the ESA Sentinels program, and high-resolution commercial systems. Low-altitude sensing systems and improved coverage of digital techniques used to extract environmental information from remote sensing will be included as well; particularly, new machine learning classification techniques. Extended coverage of radar and LIDAR processing methods will also be included"--

Wildland fires are becoming one of the most critical environmental factors affecting a wide range of ecosystems worldwide. In Mediterranean ecosystems (including also South-Africa, California, parts of Chile and Australia), wildland fires are recurrent phenomena every summer, following the seasonal drought. As a result of changes in traditional land use practices, and the impact of recent climate warming, fires have more negative impacts in the last years, threatening lives, socio-economic and ecological values. The book describes the ecological context of fires in the Mediterranean ecosystems, and provides methods to observe fire danger conditions and fire impacts using Earth Observation and Geographic Information System technologies.

Abstract. Fire is a natural phenomenon that has played a critical
role in transforming the environment and maintaining biodiversity at a
global scale. However, the plants in some habitats have not developed
strategies for recovery from fire or have not adapted to the changes taking
place in their fire regimes. Maps showing ecological vulnerability to fires
could contribute to environmental management policies in the face of global
change scenarios. The main objective of this study is to assess and map
ecological vulnerability to fires on a global scale. To this end, we created
ecological value and post-fire regeneration delay indices on the basis of
existing global databases. Two ecological value indices were identified:
biological distinction and conservation status. For the post-fire
regeneration delay index, various factors were taken into account, including
the type of fire regime, the increase in the frequency and intensity of
forest fires, and the potential soil erosion they can cause. These indices
were combined by means of a qualitative cross-tabulation to create a new
index evaluating ecological vulnerability to fire. The results showed that
global ecological value could be reduced by as much as 50 % due to fire
perturbation of poorly adapted ecosystems. The terrestrial biomes most
affected are the tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forest, tundra,
mangroves, tropical and subtropical coniferous forests, and tropical and
subtropical dry broadleaf forests.

In this paper, the authors examine whether the more environmental-aggressive attitude of Christianity suggested by Lynn White (1967) could be sustained based on environmental indicators. The religious beliefs were obtained from a World database on religious practices, and the environmental variables from the Environmental Performance Index. Several controlling factors were generated to decouple the influence of religious traditions from other external variables, such as economic wealth or governance. The analysis was done worldwide at country level and for the African continent at provincial level. The results of our analysis demonstrate opposite trends to White's conclusions, since Christian territories, both at country and provincial level, had better environmental indicators than territories dominated by other religious traditions, particularly compared to Muslim-dominant areas. Religious practice showed little explanatory power regarding environmental performance for all religions, although Christianity showed a higher positive correlation. Environmental performance of countries in all religious traditions showed a strong dependence from other controlling factors, particularly the human development index and the per capita income.

Quantitative estimate of observational uncertainty is an essential ingredient to correctly interpret changes in climatic and environmental variables such as wildfires. In this work we compare four state-of-the-art satellite fire products with the gridded, ground-based EFFIS dataset for Mediterranean Europe and analyse their statistical differences. The data are compared for spatial and temporal similarities at different aggregations to identify a spatial scale at which most of the observations provide equivalent results. The results of the analysis indicate that the datasets show high temporal correlation with each other (0.5/0.6) when aggregating the data at resolution of at least 1.0° or at NUTS3 level. However, burned area estimates vary widely between datasets. Filtering out satellite fires located on urban and crop land cover classes greatly improves the agreement with EFFIS data. Finally, in spite of the differences found in the area estimates, the spatial pattern is similar for all the datasets, with spatial correlation increasing as the resolution decreases. Also, the general reasonable agreement between satellite products builds confidence in using these datasets and in particular the most-recent developed dataset, FireCCI51, shows the best agreement with EFFIS overall. As a result, the main conclusion of the study is that users should carefully consider the limitations of the satellite fire estimates currently available, as their uncertainties cannot be neglected in the overall uncertainty estimate/cascade that should accompany global or regional change studies and that removing fires on human-dominated land areas is key to analyze forest fires estimation from satellite products. ; The authors thank EFFIS (European Forest Fire Information System of the European Commission Joint Research Centre, http://effis.jrc.ec.europa.eu) for providing access to fire series EFFIS. M.T. and E.T. have received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 740073 (CLIM4CROP project) and grant agreement No. 748750 (SPFireSD project), respectively. The work of A.P. has been supported by the European Union's Horizon 2020 ECOPOTENTIAL project (grant agreement No. 641762).

Abstract
This study explores: a) what is being done by religions present in Catalonia (Spain) to address climate change; b) what the worldviews of the different religions are with regard to climate change, and, c) if commonalities exist between religions, which elements they have in common when addressing climate change. We focus on SDG 12 (sustainable consumption) and 13 (climate action), two of the 17 global goals that represent an urgent call for action. We employ a qualitative phenomenological methodology involving discussion groups of fourteen different religions present in Catalonia. The results show that the religions implement good practices that contribute to climate action, and all of them have laid down principles to take care of the planet. All groups hold that a change in values is required to address the climate crisis, and translate it into action. Moreover, a clear intention to establish interfaith partnerships for climate action is observed.