Research

A new University of Maryland study suggests that Washington, D.C.’s most socioeconomically vulnerable neighborhoods are less equipped to handle runoff from heavy rainfalls made more frequent by climate change. Published this month in Cities, the study reveals that the most densely populated communities in the District of Columbia, particularly in historically Black Southeast D.C., lack ...

Powerful new digital mapping tools developed by University of Nevada, Reno researchers hold promise to improve management of rangeland, particularly public lands in the far-flung Western United States. The significant improvements in mapping of vegetation enabled by the University’s research provide managers of rangeland, ranchers as well as federal managers of public lands, with better ...

Farmland is often a battleground in the fight against climate change. Solar panels and energy crops are pitted against food production, while well-intended policy choices can create incentives for farmers to till up new lands, releasing even more heat-trapping gas into the atmosphere. That’s why strategies for sustainable plant-based fuels focus on marginal lands — ...

Un equipo de especialistas del grupo de Recursos Naturales de la Estación Experimental Agropecuaria Corrientes del INTA junto con la Subsecretaría de Sistemas y Tecnologías de la Información de la Provincia de Corrientes, desarrolló una plataforma web que permite conocer la superficie ganadera útil con el fin de calcular y establecer de manera más eficiente ...

Enquanto viajava, quantas vezes você já se deparou com placas de avisos sobre o perigo de animais na estrada? A partir de uma pesquisa que utiliza da Inteligência Artificial (I.A.), esses alertas podem chegar na palma da sua mão, via smartphone, por exemplo. Isso porque, pesquisadores desenvolveram um sistema, baseado na arquitetura Yolo (You Only ...

NASA has selected Carbon-I, a proposal to map carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4) emissions globally at a higher-than-ever resolution, as a finalist for an upcoming space mission. Carbon-I, which is short for the Carbon Investigation, was among four proposals selected to receive $5 million for a one-year feasibility study. After the feasibility studies are ...

University of Liverpool researchers have been awarded funding from Smart Data Research UK (SDR UK) for a new project that aims to quantify and adjust existing biases in smart data on human mobility. Called DEBIAS, the project is led by Professor Francisco Rowe, who specialises in population data science with specific expertise in human mobility, ...

The new Tandem Dual-Antenna Spaceborne Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) Interferometry (TDA-InSAR) system, addresses the limitations of current spaceborne Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) systems by providing a more reliable and efficient method for 3D surface mapping. The system’s innovative design allows for single-pass acquisitions, significantly reducing the time required for data collection and enhancing the precision ...

A research team has recently published a comprehensive review on the innovative integration of spectral data and phylogeographic patterns to study plant genetic variation. The findings demonstrate the effectiveness of remote sensing technology in identifying and analyzing genetic variations in plants across different geographical regions. This methodology not only deepens our understanding of plant diversity ...

Satellite laser ranging (SLR) is one of the space geodetic techniques that uses lasers to measure the distance between ground stations and satellites with retroreflectors. This precise measurement provides critical data for determining the geocenter motion, terrestrial scale and Earth Rotation Parameters (ERP)—parameters fundamental to the International Terrestrial Reference Frame (ITRF). In an innovative study ...

Driving at night might be a scary challenge for a new driver, but with hours of practice it soon becomes second nature. For self-driving cars, however, practice may not be enough because the lidar sensors that often act as these vehicles’ “eyes” have difficulty detecting dark-colored objects. New research published in ACS Applied Materials & ...

One natural strategy to reduce heat-related deaths is to increase tree coverage in urban areas, which helps lower temperatures. A recent study highlights the disparities in health and energy consumption across the United States, stemming from insufficient urban tree coverage. It also details the potential health and economic advantages that increased tree presence can offer ...

When scientists look at the Earth’s available water for ecosystem services, they don’t just look at precipitation. They must also account for water moving from the ground to the atmosphere, a process known as evapotranspiration (ET). ET includes evaporation from soil and open water pools such as lakes, rivers, and ponds, as well as transpiration ...

Researchers have developed a compact and lightweight single-photon airborne lidar system that can acquire high-resolution 3D images with a low-power laser. This advance could make single-photon lidar practical for air and space applications such as environmental monitoring, 3D terrain mapping and object identification. Single-photon lidar uses single-photon detection techniques to measure the time it takes ...

Researchers from the University of Alaska Fairbanks have developed a new technology using synthetic-aperture radar (SAR) to detect hazardous sections of open water in frozen rivers in Alaska during winter. This technology can also be applied across the Arctic, where open water zones pose similar dangers. By identifying these open water zones, researchers hope to ...

A team of researchers has unveiled a novel approach to accurately characterizing tree height composition in forests using the Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation (GEDI) Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) technology. This study marks a significant advancement in our understanding of forest ecosystems, shedding light on the intricacies of tree height variability and its implications for ...

Wildfires present complex socio-economic and ecological challenges, as they devastate vegetation, endanger communities, and cause extensive environmental, wildlife, and human health impacts. These consequences include severe air pollution and soaring firefighting costs. Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI) areas, which are transition zones between wilderness and human-developed land, are particularly susceptible to wildfires. The risk is heightened due ...

Organic agriculture may be as old as dirt, but that doesn’t mean its impacts are fully understood. A team of scientists in the United States and Canada are doing their part to change that. Researchers at UC Santa Barbara, University of British Columbia, and University of Colorado Boulder discovered that organic farming significantly affects the ...

With the development of shipborne echo sounders in the early 20th century, bathymetric surveys saw massive leaps in both accuracy and convenience. However, even with modern echo sounders, there are still many hardships to overcome when conducting bathymetric surveys. These include high cost, unpredictable weather, high ship traffic, and potential geographic or diplomatic issues, to ...

Enquanto o governo federal discute a criação de um polo agrícola na confluência entre Amazonas, Acre e Rondônia – popularmente conhecida pelo acrônimo Amacro –, o desmatamento nos municípios da região avança e já representa 76,5% do total da área devastada nos três Estados entre 2018 e 2022. A conclusão é de um estudo publicado ...

Indoor positioning is transforming with applications demanding precise location tracking. Traditional methods, including fingerprinting and sensor-based techniques, though widely used, face significant drawbacks, such as the need for extensive training data, poor scalability, and reliance on additional sensor information. Recent advancements have sought to leverage deep learning, yet issues such as low scalability and high ...

An exceptionally severe storm swept over Zurich on 13 July 2021 shortly before 2 a.m., with howling squalls, constant lightning and torrential rain that awakened people with a start. Benedikt Soja, Professor of Space Geodesy, got little sleep that night. “It was one of the most severe storms I’ve ever witnessed. I woke up in ...

Recent research highlights a significant rise in Southwest China’s aboveground carbon levels between 2013 and 2021, showcasing the area’s capacity to counterbalance the negative impacts of severe droughts. This development emphasizes the vital role of Southwest China as a carbon sink, attributed to substantial ecological efforts and the deployment of cutting-edge remote sensing methodologies. For ...

A new scientific endeavour has taken to the sky using high-tech drones and satellite images to understand better the annual spring herring spawn vital to salmon and wildlife on the West Coast. Between February and March each year, frigid ocean waters transform to a milky tropical-looking turquoise green when male herring release milt to fertilize ...

Researchers from Unmanned Valley, Greenport DB, and NL Space Campus in the Netherlands have successfully developed an AI model that enables drones to identify the disease botrytis. The model leverages artificial intelligence to analyze vast amounts of drone data, resulting in a detailed map that pinpoints, with millimeter precision, which plants are diseased or at ...

Imagens de satélite são usadas para diversos fins, entre os quais o mapeamento de uso e cobertura do solo (Lulc, na sigla em inglês). Segundo um grupo de pesquisadores do Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais (Inpe), o uso dessas “fotografias” pode ser aperfeiçoado se esse material passar pelo crivo de experts antes de ser analisado ...

Una experiencia piloto en el Campus de Rabanales será la base del proyecto GEDIER, que busca crear un sistema de apoyo a la toma de decisiones para una gestión más eficiente de los recursos Avanzar hacia un uso plenamente eficiente de los recursos es el reto más ambicioso al que se enfrenta la agricultura, tanto ...

Researchers at The University of Western Australia have led the development of a new technique for accurately mapping shallow and coastal marine habitats. Dr Sharyn Hickey and Dr Stan Mastrantonis, from UWA’s School of Agriculture and Environment, School of Biological Sciences and Oceans Institute, were co-authors of the research published in the ISPRS Journal of ...

The water cycle looks simple in theory—but human impacts, climate change, and complicated geography mean that in practice, floods and droughts remain hard to predict. To model water on Earth, you need incredibly high-resolution data across an immense expanse, and you need modeling sophisticated enough to account for everything from snowcaps on mountains to soil ...

Wildfire fighting and forest management decisions are potentially being hampered by inaccurate government data that misrepresents forest fuel loads in British Columbia’s Interior, a new study has found. The B.C. government says the provincial wildfire service is working with the study’s lead author and others to close the data gap, which involves “mismatches” between remotely-sensed ...