Hydrocontrol (Italy)

Perennial wall rocket (Diplotaxis tenuifolia L.—DC.) exhibits genotype-dependent responses to biostimulant applications, which have not yet been deeply investigated. A two-year greenhouse factorial experiment was carried out to assess the interactions between five cultivars (Mars, Naples, Tricia, Venice, and Olivetta), three biostimulant formulations (Cystoseira tamariscifolia L. extract; a commercial legume-derived protein hydrolysate, “Dynamic”; and Spirulina platensis extract) plus an untreated control, and three crop cycles (autumn, autumn–winter, and winter) on leaf yield and dry matter, organic acids, colorimetric parameters, hydrophilic and lipophilic antioxidant activities, nitrate concentration, nitrogen use efficiency, and mineral composition, using a split plot design with three replicates. Protein hydrolysate significantly enhanced yield and nitrogen use efficiency in Mars (+26%), Naples (+25.6%), Tricia (+25%), and Olivetta (+26%) compared to the control, while Spirulina platensis increased the mentioned parameters only in Venice (+36.2%). Nitrate accumulation was reduced by biostimulant application just in Venice, indicating genotype-dependent nitrogen metabolism responses. The findings of the present research demonstrate that the biostimulant efficacy in perennial wall rocket is mainly ruled by genotypic factors, and the appropriate combinations between the two mentioned experimental factors allow for optimization of leaf yield and quality while maintaining nitrate concentration under the regulation thresholds.

Research has been increasingly focusing on the preservation of the biodiversity of vegetable crops under sustainable farming management. An experiment was carried out in southern Italy on Brassica oleracea L. var. botrytis, landrace Gigante di Napoli, to assess the effects of two transplanting times (9 September and 7 October), in factorial combination with five nitrogen–potassium ratios (0.6; 0.8; 1.0; 1.2; and 1.4) on plant growth, yield, and quality of cauliflower heads. A split-plot design was used for the treatment distribution in the field, with three replications. The earlier transplant and the 1.2 N:K ratio led to the highest yield, mean weight, and firmness of cauliflower heads which were not significantly affected by both transplanting time and N:K ratio in terms of colour components. The 1.2 N:K ratio led to the highest head diameter with the earlier transplant, whereas the 1.0 ratio was the most effective on this parameter in the later crop cycle. The highest nitrate, nitrogen, and potassium concentrations in the heads were recorded with the earlier transplanting time. Antioxidant activity, ascorbic acid, and polyphenol content increased with the rise of the N:K ratio. The element use efficiency was constantly negative with the N:K increase for nitrogen and was augmented until the 1.2 ratio for potassium. The results of our investigation showed that the optimal combination between transplanting time and N:K ratio is a key aspect to improve head yield and quality of the cauliflower landrace Gigante di Napoli, under the perspective of biodiversity safeguarding and valorisation.

As observed in the last years, flood and drought events are getting more likely to happen due to climate change and can cause significant environmental, social and economic damages.For this reason, already in 2021, the Po River District Authority (AdbPo) undertook the implementation of the GEOframe modelling system on the whole territory of the district in accordance with the GCU-M (Gruppo di Coordinamento Unificato-Magre) to update the existing numerical modelling for water resource management and with the objective of producing a better quantification and forecast of the spatial and temporal water availability across the entire river basin and, finally, to improve the planning activity of theAuthority.The GEOframe system was developed by a scientific international community, led by the University of Trento, and is a semi-distributed conceptual model, with high modularity and flexibility, completely open-source.The implementation of GEOframe in the Po River District has begun in the Valle d’Aosta Region, the most upstream part of the district.After an initial part of meteorological data collection, validation, spatial interpolation, and geomorphological analysis, a first running of the model to assess all the components of the hydrological balance (evapotranspiration, snow accumulation, water storage and discharge) was carried out.Consequently, the calibration phase started, consisting of the research of the values of the characteristic parameters of the model which fit the discharge evolution recorded in the hydrometers of the region in the best possible way, comparing the modelled discharge trend with the measured one.The calibration, based on KGE method, has been executed in 10 hydrometers in Valle d’Aosta across a 4 years period. The results were encouraging, with an objective function of 0.76 at the closure point of the region.The same process is now in progress in Piemonte, one of the biggest regions of Italy, which contains more than 100 hydrometers. The resulting objective functions are in general rather high and will be presented in this work.At the same time, thanks to the geomorphological analysis, most part of Po River District (up to Pontelagoscuro (FE)), which totally occupies more than 42,000 km2, has been divided into subbasins, the hydrological reference units where the simulation process takes place, and this dataset will be open-source and shared with the scientific community.On the other hand, the interpolation and spatialization of the meteorological data will be carried out according to the 1 km2 European Environmental Agency reference grid.In conclusion, in this initial stage of implementation of the model and calibration of its parameters, it was possible to assess the capacity of GEOframe to simulate not only the water discharge but also the other components of the water cycle, namely the evapotranspiration, the water storage and the snow accumulation. Furtheremore, implementing GEOframe in a mountainous area underlines the importance and the influence that snow and glaciers, especially in a higher temperature scenario due to climate change, can have on water availability and, therefore, a better modelling component of these elements will be implemented in the future developments of GEOframe.

Transportation and portable applications already use hydrogen as fuel, but it is essential to use highly-efficient hydrogen storage methods to increase its usage in the future. The compressed form is the most utilized for transportation applications, but mechanical compressors have low efficiency when compressing low quantities of gas to high pressure. The most suitable device for hydrogen compression is the Electrochemical Hydrogen Compressor (EHC). It has the same structure as a Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell (PEM-FC), but it works at very high-pressure ( 700 bar). The present work analyses the monopolar plate of an Electrochemical Hydrogen Compressor prone to hydrogen embrittlement. Irregular shape variations generate peaks of stress magnitude and triaxiality, further contributing to decreasing metal ductility at the local scale. The calculation of the stress field in such components is essential due to the possibility of failure due to the material embrittlement caused by hydrogen. The paper presents a conceptual design of an EHC operating at 700 bar and focuses on the shape and the mechanical stress of the end-plates to have conservative levels of the nominal stress states, which then are taken as the design parameter for providing adequate structural integrity and mechanical reliability to the component. The FEM analysis with Marc software—of MSC Software Corporation—identified the optimal end-plates configuration in circular plan view and active area. The plate, sized to have a deflection no greater than 0.1mm when the EHC works at 700 bar, should have the minimum thickness of 17 mm.

This study sums up the first estimates of the young water fraction (Fyw; here understood as the percentage proportion of groundwater passing through the well’s screen and younger than approximately 2–3 months) from groundwater collected in 75 wells from alluvial fans facing the northern Italian Apennines of Italy. The Fyw estimates were based on a monthly dataset of water-stable isotopes (oxygen-18 (18O)) from surficial water (9 rivers), while the dataset of groundwater (75 wells) consisted of three-monthly isotopic data. In the cases of surficial water and stable isotopes, these lasted over the period of January 2003 to December 2007, while in the case of groundwater, the data were collected from January 2005 to December 2007. The values of Fyw were estimated by means of a sine-wave fitting technique; the results made evident the presence of unexpectedly reduced differences between groundwater. In particular, shallower groundwater hosted in aquifers from the apical parts of the alluvial fans (i.e., aquifers characterized by the coarsest materials such as gravels and sands, and closest to the recharge areas) showed similar values of Fyw to the deepest aquifers from the distal parts; however, former studies mentioned here evidenced the existence of poorly recharged old groundwater. Our results seem to confirm a complex behavior of these aquifers compared with what had previously been thought.

ABSTRACTIn this study, the particle swarming optimization procedure was applied to parametrize two Local Maxima (LM) algorithms in order to extract treetops from LiDAR-data in a test area (10 km2) of heterogeneous forest structures of conifers in the Alps. The obtained results were compared with those of a widely used variable-size window LM algorithm calibrated using literature values. Quantitative statistical parameters like matching, extraction, omission, and commission rates were calculated. The experimental results showed the effectiveness of the proposed method, which was capable to identify the 91% of the trees and estimate the 92% of the real above ground biomass with a total extraction rate close to 1. Almost all the dominant and codominant trees were extracted, while the extraction rate of the dominated trees averaged over 50%