The wastewater industry is currently facing dramatic changes, shifting away from energy-intensive wastewater treatment towards low-energy, sustainable technologies capable of achieving energy positive operation and resource recovery. The latter will shift the focus of the wastewater industry to how one could manage and extract resources from the wastewater, as opposed to the conventional paradigm

The output power (30–150 W) and the periodicity (20–100%) of ultrasound emission were varied in a wide range to regulate and improve the crystallization process in the commonly used co-precipitation technique of chloride-intercalated CaFe-layered double hydroxides. The influence of ultrasound irradiation on the as-prepared materials was studied by X-ray diffractometry, dynamic light scattering, UV

Oncogenic non-vaccine human papillomavirus (HPV) types may conceivably fill the vacated ecological niche of the vaccine types. The likelihood of this may differ by the risk of acquiring HPV infections. We examined occurrence of HPV types among vaccinated and unvaccinated subgroups of 1992–1994 birth cohorts with differing acquisition risks up to 9 years post-implementation of HPV vaccination in 3

A decay spectroscopy experiment on proton-rich nuclei in the vicinity of the doubly magic Sn100 was carried out at RIKEN Nishina Center. More than 20 nuclei with 43≤Z≤50 and N≤51, produced by fragmentation reactions were investigated via analyses of β-decay, βp-decay, and subsequent γ-ray data. Owing to higher statistics, the precision on the half-lives of many of the ground states and isomers was

The GHG-CCI project is one of several projects of the European Space Agency's (ESA) Climate Change Initiative (CCI). The goal of the CCI is to generate and deliver data sets of various satellite-derived Essential Climate Variables (ECVs) in line with GCOS (Global Climate Observing System) requirements. The "ECV Greenhouse Gases" (ECV GHG) is the global distribution of important climate relevant ga

In this study, vegetation optical depth from ESA's Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) satellite mission is combined with other existing remote sensing, meteorological and literature data in order to obtain values of gravimetric vegetation water content (Mg). The methodology combines an effective medium model valid at passive microwave frequencies with a vegetation dielectric constant model. T

The study has developed an interactive mission benefit analysis (MBA) tool that allows instantaneous evaluation of a range of potential mission designs. The designs are evaluated in terms of their constraint on carbon and water fluxes through calibration of a terrestrial bisphere model. The constraint is quantified by methematically rigorous uncertainty propagation in CCDAS. Applying the MBA tool,

The likelihood and magnitude of the impacts of climate change on potential vegetation and the water cycle in Mesoamerica is evaluated. Mesoamerica is a global biodiversity hotspot with highly diverse topographic and climatic conditions and is among the tropical regions with the highest expected changes in precipitation and temperature under future climate scenarios. The biogeographic soil-vegetati

Subfossil pollen and plant macrofossil data derived from 14 C-dated sediment profiles can provide quantitative information on glacial and interglacial climates. The data allow climate variables related to growing-season warmth, winter cold, and plant-available moisture to be reconstructed. Continental-scale reconstructions have been made for the mid-Holocene (MH, around 6 ka) and Last Glacial Ma

We use a carbon-cycle data assimilation system to estimate the terrestrial biospheric CO2 flux until 2090. The terrestrial sink increases rapidly and the increase is stronger in the presence of climate change. Using a linearized model, we calculate the uncertainty in the flux owing to uncertainty in model parameters. The uncertainty is large and is dominated by the impact of soil moisture on heter

Photosynthesis by terrestrial plants is the main driver of the global carbon cycle, and the presence of actively photosynthesizing vegetation can now be observed from space. However, challenges remain when translating remotely sensed data into carbon fluxes. One reason is that the Fraction of Absorbed Photosynthetically Active Radiation (FAPAR), which documents the presence of photosynthetically a

ESA's Earth Explorer candidate mission A-SCOPE aims at observing CO2 from space with an active LIDAR instrument. This study employs quantitative network design techniques to investigate the benefit of A-SCOPE observations in a Carbon Cycle Data Assimilation System. The system links the observations to the terrestrial vegetation model BETHY via the fine resolution version of the atmospheric transpo

Satellite remote sensing, with its unique synoptic coverage capabilities, can provide accurate and immediately valuable information on fire analysis and post-fire assessment, including estimation of burnt areas. In this study the potential for burnt area mapping of the combined use of Artificial Neural Network (ANN) and Spectral Angle Mapper (SAM) classifiers with Landsat TM satellite imagery was

Remote sensing is increasingly being used as a cost-effective and practical solution for the rapid evaluation of impacts from wildland fires. The present study investigates the use of the support vector machine (SVM) classification method with multispectral data from the Advanced Spectral Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) for obtaining a rapid and cost effective post-fire assessment in a

This chapter provides a high-level summary of the state of knowledge regarding observations, processes and models of climate, terrestrial ecosystems and the global carbon cycle. We focus strongly on observations (at various timescales, including palaeo timescales as appropriate), and what can be learned from their interpretation in the light of the established principles of climate science and ter

Here, we discuss the feedback processes that determine the nature and rates of climatic changes in response to climate forcing. We explain the differences in the characteristic behaviour of biophysical and biogeochemical feedbacks, and describe the means by which feedbacks can be identified using models and observational data, and their strength quantified. Improved understanding of these kinds of