Suchergebnisse

In this paper we examine the content of farm animal biodiversity conservation measures currently under implementation in the European Union (EU), as a result of the application of EC Regulations 1257/99 and 1750/99. We surveyed 69 Rural Development Plans (RDPs) set up in EU Member States. Our analysis focuses on six livestock mammalian species: asses, cattle, goats, horses, pigs, and sheep The starting point for our investigation is the Domestic Animals Diversity-Information System (DAD-IS) FAO database which monitors the status of breeds in the world. We compare breeds included in the DAD-IS FAO database with breeds covered by the various RDPs. The analysis highlights that many breeds at risk of extinction according the FAO are not included in the RDPs. The analysis also indicates that the main efforts of the RDPs are devoted to preserving local cattle and sheep breeds. As concerns the financial aspects of livestock biodiversity measures, we note that the payments offered to farmers do not take into account the different probabilities of extinction associated with each breed in each country. Furthermore, we observe that payments do not meet all of the relevant criteria stated in the EEC Regulations. In many cases, we observe that, in spite of the Union's support to farmers, it still remains unprofitable to rear local breeds. These anomalies suggest the need for a revision of the current EU supporting measures related to the conservation of livestock biodiversity. Finally, by using FAO indicators on the current population size of each breed, we estimate the level of expected public expenditure necessary to ensure the upgrading of breeds from their 'at-risk' status to a 'not-at-risk' status during the period 2000–2006.

Abstract. A hazard assessment has been performed on rock slopes impending over a segment of the Taorminese Road, which connects two popular tourist destinations in northeastern Sicily: the urban centers of Taormina and Castelmola. The road crosses steep rock slopes with a complex geological and tectonic history. The section of the road close to Castelmola is often affected by rockfall phenomena, causing injury to people and serious damage to buildings and traffic. The study analyzes the geostructural setting of the unstable rock masses, by evaluating their mechanical properties and the kinematics of potential failures. Rockfall simulations confirm that falling rocks would involve the Taorminese Road with different kinetic energy rates and prove useful for suggesting the most suitable mitigation technologies for future remedial works. The modified Rockfall Hazard Rating System has been applied to highlight the different levels of hazard along the road. The compiled hazard map shows that portions of the slopes need urgent remedial works, especially because Taorminese is the only access road to Castelmola and its interruption would lead to the isolation of the village.

Despite their differences from more advanced and more powerful lidars, the low construction and operation cost of ceilometers (originally designed for cloud base height monitoring) has fostered their use for the quantitative study of aerosol properties. The large number of ceilometers available worldwide represents a strong motivation to investigate both the extent to which they can be used to fill in the geographical gaps between advanced lidar stations and also how their continuous data flow can be linked to existing networks of the more advanced lidars, like EARLINET (European Aerosol Research Lidar Network). In this paper, multi-wavelength Raman lidar measurements are used to investigate the capability of ceilometers to provide reliable information about atmospheric aerosol properties through the INTERACT (INTERcomparison of Aerosol and Cloud Tracking) campaign carried out at the CNR-IMAA Atmospheric Observatory (760 m a.s.l., 40.60◦ N, 15.72◦ E), in the framework of the ACTRIS (Aerosol Clouds Trace gases Research InfraStructure) FP7 project. This work is the first time that three different commercial ceilometers with an advanced Raman lidar are compared over a period of 6 months. The comparison of the attenuated backscatter coefficient profiles from a multiwavelength Raman lidar and three ceilometers (CHM15k, CS135s, CT25K) reveals differences due to the expected discrepancy in the signal to noise ratio (SNR) but also due to changes in the ambient temperature on the short and midterm stability of ceilometer calibration. Therefore, technological improvements are needed to move ceilometers towards operational use in the monitoring of atmospheric aerosols in the low and free troposphere ; The financial support for EARLINET by the European Union under grant RICA 025991 in the Sixth Framework Programme is gratefully acknowledged. Since 2011 EARLINET is integrated in the ACTRIS Research Infrastructure Project supported by the European Union Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreement n. 262254. The authors would also like to thank Campbell Scientific, Ltd. for contributing the CS135s for this campaign. ; Peer-reviewed ; Publisher Version

The eruption of the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökull in April–May 2010 represents a "natural experiment" to study the impact of volcanic emissions on a continental scale. For the first time, quantitative data about the presence, altitude, and layering of the volcanic cloud, in conjunction with optical information, are available for most parts of Europe derived from the observations by the European Aerosol Research Lidar NETwork (EARLINET). Based on multi-wavelength Raman lidar systems, EARLINET is the only instrument worldwide that is able to provide dense time series of high-quality optical data to be used for aerosol typing and for the retrieval of particle microphysical properties as a function of altitude. In this work we show the four-dimensional (4-D) distribution of the Eyjafjallajökull volcanic cloud in the troposphere over Europe as observed by EARLINET during the entire volcanic event (15 April–26 May 2010). All optical properties directly measured (backscatter, extinction, and particle linear depolarization ratio) are stored in the EARLINET database available at http://www.earlinet.org. A specific relational database providing the volcanic mask over Europe, realized ad hoc for this specific event, has been developed and is available on request at http://www.earlinet.org. During the first days after the eruption, volcanic particles were detected over Central Europe within a wide range of altitudes, from the upper troposphere down to the local planetary boundary layer (PBL). After 19 April 2010, volcanic particles were detected over southern and south-eastern Europe. During the first half of May (5–15 May), material emitted by the Eyjafjallajökull volcano was detected over Spain and Portugal and then over the Mediterranean and the Balkans. The last observations of the event were recorded until 25 May in Central Europe and in the Eastern Mediterranean area. The 4-D distribution of volcanic aerosol layering and optical properties on European scale reported here provides an unprecedented data set for evaluating satellite data and aerosol dispersion models for this kind of volcanic events. ; 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 in the ACTRIS Research Infrastructure Project supported by the European Union Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreement no. 262254. The authors acknowledge the ESA financial support under the ESRIN contract 21769/08/I-OL and 22202/09/I-EC. Additional financial support has been received from the Andalusia Regional Government through project P10-RNM-6299 and from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology through projects CGL2010-18782, and CSD2007-00067.

ENVRI-FAIR is a recently launched project of the European Union's Horizon 2020 program (EU H2020), connecting the cluster of European Environmental Research Infrastructures (ENVRI) to the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC). The overarching goal of ENVRI-FAIR is that all participating research infrastructures (RIs) will provide a set of interoperable FAIR data services that enhance the efficiency and productivity of researchers, support innovation, enable data-And knowledge-based decisions and connect the ENVRI cluster to the EOSC. This goal will be reached by: (1) defining community policies and standards across all stages of the data life cycle, aligned with the wider European policies and with international developments; (2) creating for all participating RIs sustainable, transparent and auditable data services for each stage of the data life cycle, following the FAIR principles; (3) implementing prototypes for testing pre-production services at each RI, leading to a catalogue of prepared services; (4) exposing the complete set of thematic data services and tools of the ENVRI cluster to the EOSC catalogue of services. © 2019 IEEE. ; Peer reviewed

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.

Numerical prediction of aerosol particle properties has become an important activity at many research and operational weather centers. This development is due to growing interest from a diverse set of stakeholders, such as air quality regulatory bodies, aviation and military authorities, solar energy plant managers, climate services providers, and health professionals. Owing to the complexity of atmospheric aerosol processes and their sensitivity to the underlying meteorological conditions, the prediction of aerosol particle concentrations and properties in the numerical weather prediction (NWP) framework faces a number of challenges. The modeling of numerous aerosol-related parameters increases computational expense. Errors in aerosol prediction concern all processes involved in the aerosol life cycle including (a) errors on the source terms (for both anthropogenic and natural emissions), (b) errors directly dependent on the meteorology (e.g., mixing, transport, scavenging by precipitation), and (c) errors related to aerosol chemistry (e.g., nucleation, gas–aerosol partitioning, chemical transformation and growth, hygroscopicity). Finally, there are fundamental uncertainties and significant processing overhead in the diverse observations used for verification and assimilation within these systems. Indeed, a significant component of aerosol forecast development consists in streamlining aerosol-related observations and reducing the most important errors through model development and data assimilation. Aerosol particle observations from satellite- and ground-based platforms have been crucial to guide model development of the recent years and have been made more readily available for model evaluation and assimilation. However, for the sustainability of the aerosol particle prediction activities around the globe, it is crucial that quality aerosol observations continue to be made available from different platforms (space, near surface, and aircraft) and freely shared. This paper reviews current requirements for ...

During the ADRIMED (Aerosol Direct Radiative Impact on the regional climate in the Mediterranean region) special observation period (SOP-1a), conducted in June 2013 in the framework of the ChArMEx (Chemistry-Aerosol Mediterranean Experiment) project, a moderate Saharan dust event swept the Western and Central Mediterranean Basin (WCMB) from west to east during a 9-day period between 16 and 24 June. This event was monitored from the ground by six EARLINET/ACTRIS (European Aerosol Research Lidar Network/Aerosols, Clouds, and Trace gases Research Infrastructure Network) lidar stations (Granada, Barcelona, Naples, Potenza, Lecce and Serra la Nave) and two ADRIMED/ChArMEx lidar stations specially deployed for the field campaign in Cap d'en Font and Ersa, in Minorca and Corsica Islands, respectively. The first part of the study shows the spatio-temporal monitoring of the dust event during its transport over the WCMB with ground-based lidar and co-located AERONET (Aerosol Robotic Network) Sun-photometer measurements. Dust layer optical depths, Ångström exponents, coarse mode fractions, linear particle depolarization ratios (LPDRs), dust layer heights and the dust radiative forcing estimated in the shortwave (SW) and longwave (LW) spectral ranges at the bottom of the atmosphere (BOA) and at the top of the atmosphere (TOA) with the Global Atmospheric Model (GAME), have been used to characterize the dust event. Peak values of the AERONET aerosol optical depth (AOD) at 440 nm ranged between 0.16 in Potenza and 0.37 in Cap d'en Font. The associated Ångström exponent and coarse mode fraction mean values ranged from 0.43 to 1.26 and from 0.25 to 0.51, respectively. The mineral dust produced a negative SW direct radiative forcing at the BOA ranging from −56.9 to −3.5 W m−2. The LW radiative forcing at the BOA was positive, ranging between +0.3 and +17.7 W m-2. The BOA radiative forcing estimates agree with the ones reported in the literature. At the TOA, the SW forcing varied between −34.5 and +7.5 W m−2. In seven cases, the forcing at the TOA resulted positive because of the aerosol strong absorbing properties (0.83 < single-scattering albedo (SSA) < 0.96). The multi-intrusion aspect of the event is examined by means of air- and space-borne lidar measurements, satellite images and back trajectories. The analysis reported in this paper underline the arrival of a second different intrusion of mineral dust observed over southern Italy at the end of the considered period which probably results in the observed heterogeneity in the dust properties. ; Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (project TEC2012-34575 and TEC2015-63832-P) ; Science and Innovation (project UNPC10-4E-442) ; Andalusia Regional Government through projects P12-RNM-2409 and P10-RNM-6299