With the aim of contributing to the knowledge of soil organic carbon stocks in dry areas, this work is based on a quantification of SOC stocks in gypsum-bearing soils whose vertical and spatial heterogeneity greatly limits inferring the total SOC stocks solely from soil surface information. Public databases of soil profiles were key to this quantification, through which it was estimated which amounts of organic carbon can potentially be excluded from calculations associated with soil C cycle models in the absence of information regarding deep soil horizons. These databases include two key factors in the quantification of SOC stocks, which are often excluded: the volume of coarse fragments and the thickness of all sampled soil horizons where SOC concentration was determined. The observed average value of SOC stocks in the studied subsurface horizons reaches 73% of the whole soil. Climate, relief, and land use influence the quantity and heterogeneity of SOC stocks in these soils. Information based on the mere surface of the soil is not relevant to quantify the total SOC; however, the calculation of stocks through soil pits of medium depth (30 cm) has proven to be potentially useful as a complementary approach to these stocks.

Dmitry Dukhovskoy was not included as an author in the original publication [...]

This study aims to assess urban heat islands and land cover types in relation to vulnerable populations. The city of Richmond, Virginia was selected as the study area using the Census Block Group as the geographic unit of analysis. Regression analysis was carried out to examine the impacts of land cover types on ambient temperatures, while correlation analysis was used to assess the relationship between ambient temperature and vulnerable populations. Lastly, multivariate clustering analysis was performed to identify areas vulnerable to urban heat in the city. Findings suggest that: (1) impervious surfaces lead to higher ambient temperatures, while tree coverage has a cooling effect on urban heat; (2) vulnerable populations, except for older adults, tend to live in areas with higher ambient temperatures; and (3) vulnerable populations are spatially clustered in specific locations in the city. This study concludes with recommendations of mitigation measures to reduce the adverse effect of urban heat islands by applying high-albedo materials to urban surfaces and expanding tree coverage and green space.

The non-interconnected islands of Greece can benefit from the comprehensive use of RES to avoid water droughts and ensure energy autonomy. The present paper analyzes an HRES with two possible operating scenarios. Both of them include a wind park of 27.5 MW capacity, an 1175 m3/day desalination plant, and a 490,000 m3/day water tank in Lemnos, Greece. Regarding the wind power, 70% is used in the HRES, while the rest is channeled directly to the grid. The main difference comes down to how the wind energy is stored, either in the form of hydraulic energy or in the form of hydrogen. The lifespan of the system is 25 years, such as the produced stochastic series of rainfall, temperature, and wind of the area. Through the comparison of the operating scenarios, the following results arise: (i) the water needs of the island are fully covered and the irrigation needs have a reliability of 66%, in both scenarios. (ii) Considering the energy needs, the pumping storage seems to be the most reliable solution. (iii) However, depending on the amount of wind energy surplus, the use of hydrogen could produce more energy than the hydroelectric plant.

The implementation of the European Landscape Convention (ELC) at national and regional scales has brought with it the need to rethink landscape governance policies. In view of the disparity of possible methods for approaching landscape knowledge derived from the ELC, this article proposes the study of the three most ambitious landscape assessment methods developed in Spain at present. Specifically, those of Valencia, Galicia and Catalonia. Their study and comparative reading allow us to conclude that they have a similar structure imposed in part by the requirements of the Convention. Despite this, all three demonstrate a wide operational flexibility depending on the purpose of each one. As a derivative of the study, it is argued that a method seeking to fulfill both a sustainability and a public participation agenda would have to combine quantitative forms of socio-ecological assessment with a qualitative measurement of cultural appreciation of landscapes.

Forest height is a key parameter in forestry. SAR interferometry (InSAR) techniques have been extensively adopted to retrieve digital elevation models (DEM) to give a representation of the continuous variation of the Earth’s topography, including forests. Unfortunately, InSAR has been proven to fail over vegetation due to low coherence values; therefore, all phase unwrapping algorithms tend to avoid these areas, making InSAR-derived DEM over vegetation unreliable. In this work, a sensitivity analysis was performed with the aim of properly initializing the relevant operational parameters (baseline and multilooking factor) to maximize the theoretical accuracy of the height difference between the forest and reference point. Some scenarios were proposed to test the resulting “optimal values”, as estimated at the previous step. A simple model was additionally proposed and calibrated, aimed at predicting the optimal baseline value (and therefore image pair selection) for height uncertainty minimization. All our analyses were conducted using free available data from the Copernicus Sentinel-1 mission to support the operational transfer into the forest sector. Finally, the potential uncertainty affecting resulting height measures was quantified, showing that a value lower than 5 m can be expected once all user-dependent parameters (i.e., baseline, multilooking factor, temporal baseline) are properly tuned.

In January 1980, during exceptional cyclonic rainfall, an atypical landslide, called déboulé, rapidly generated the permanent 700 m-long gully of the Ravine de l’Eglise on an inhabited plateau in Reunion Island (Indian Ocean). Retrieving the initial conditions that led to this historical process is both challenging and necessary for understanding the mechanism of gully incision and providing pointers for improving risk mitigation in relation to this phenomenon. In this study, we reconstruct the pre- and post-failure topographies using SFM (structure from motion) applied on archive aerial photographs. Based on the comparison of these digital elevation models, we estimate the volume of material eroded to be ca. 0.63 Mm3. Groundwater level increase, part of the triggering mechanism, is hindcast in the catchment of the gully using a lumped hydrological model. This model shows that in only a fortnight the groundwater level probably rose by 36 m, which could have caused a progressive increase in pore pressure and triggered formation of the gully by retrogressive landslides. We test this hypothesis by considering the pre-failure topography and the hindcast groundwater level in a deterministic model based on limit equilibrium equations to explore ground stability. The evolution of ground stability with a rise in the water table shows that the gully may have extended in a headward direction by retrogressive landslides. This is the first quantitative reconstruction of an exceptional historical event affecting the territory of Reunion Island. The methods used to investigate the Ravine de L’Eglise incision thus offer new complementary insights and challenges for understanding the mechanism and the temporality of gully formation.

The health of human-being and our planet are incessantly interlinked, and such links often exist in the context of cities. This article articulates urban intelligence as an essential capacity for cities to be more adaptive and responsive to face the risks in the context of climate change and global pandemics. Urban intelligence includes data intelligence, design intelligence, and crowd intelligence, which collectively contribute to planetary health with better understandings in cities’ complex physical-environmental-technical-social dynamics. In the long run, urban intelligence supports cities by enabling a better conceptual understanding of human-earth conflicts, transdisciplinary research in the science of the cities, and governmental collaborations at the local and global scale.

The City of Palma de Mallorca has been historically affected by flood events, with the latest flood of great magnitude occurring in 1962. After decades without large flooding events, since the start of the 21st century, 28 floods have been identified within the city boundaries. As change in the spatial location of these events has been observed, a research to identify where the floods are located nowadays and which causes can be related to such distribution has been undertaken. Six types of floods were identified and the events classified accordingly, with the deficient planned infrastructures, flat urban areas without defined drainage and coastal sectors the three most common types. The results highlight the importance of the urban sprawl and malpractices related to flood risk areas, thus increasing the occurrence of floods of less spatial impact but with greater disturbance on the daily activity of the city inhabitants. Nevertheless, some uncertainties are identified in this research, demonstrating the need of further investigations.

Disaster risk management (DRM) has always been important, but nowadays, with the increasing number of disasters due to climate changes, it is becoming even more so. Every phase of DRM is heavily reliant on geodata. First of all, each disaster occurs at a specific location, and this location contains geodata, which can be used in DRM, e.g., cadastral data, GNSS data, aerial images, topographic data, elevation data, etc. Geodata are important for making faster and more accurate decisions in disaster situations. It is possible to collect these geodata from many different sources, e.g., the public sector, private sector and citizens. Nevertheless, official geodata coming from competent authorities should be the most accurate and reliable. In this paper, we investigate the importance of official geodata in DRM on several examples from recent disasters in Croatia. Official geodata produced by the Croatian State Geodetic Administration (SGA) were used in managing disasters such as floods, forest fires, earthquakes and war. Our research findings show that DRM is an area in which National Mapping and Cadastral Authorities (NMCAs) should focus more on collecting and sharing geodata and provide more dynamic and innovative products. In these challenging times, more and more geodata are becoming available from different sources, besides official ones. With this plethora of geodata, in order to be relevant and competitive, NMCAs must change their business models and offer more attractive and useful services in order to satisfy the increasing user needs and demands. This paper shows that the SGA in Croatia is on the path towards achieving this goal.