PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

Sentinel-2 constellation of satellites used for the ongoing monitoring of grasslands

Sentinel-2 constellation of satellites used for the ongoing monitoring of grasslands
2021-07-06
(Press-News.org) A research group at the University of Cordoba has conducted study focused on evaluating the potential of the Sentinel-2 sensor system's configuration to predict the amount of forage on permanent Mediterranean grasslands.

Pasture quality assessment in permanent grasslands is essential for their conservation and management, as it can facilitate real-time decision-making regarding livestock management. In this regard, the Sentinel-2 satellite constellation, launched in 2015, has proven to be a promising tool for permanent grassland monitoring. This is a sensor system developed by the European Space Agency (ESA) and that provides free and available data worldwide, with a review time of five days, and 13 spectral bands. The spectral configuration of Sentinel-2, featuring three red-edge bands and two of non-destructive NIR technology, boasts great potential for the study of grassland quality due to these regions' known sensitivity to changes in the nitrogen, chlorophyll and fibre content of plants.

A study carried out by a research group at the University of Cordoba evaluated the potential of the Sentinel-2 configuration to predict forage quality in permanent Mediterranean grasslands having a great diversity of open forests. There are very few studies that have focused on this area using remote sensing data. This study analysed the potential and limitations of the Sentinel-2 configuration to promote and facilitate the implementation of this technology in permanent Mediterranean grasslands.

The project was carried out on eight ranches of Andalusian dehesa, or wooded pasturelands. This region is characterized by a continental, Mediterranean climate, with hot summers and cold, rainy winters. The soil is mainlycomprised of cambisols featuring a clay-loam and sandy-loam texture and limited fertility. The topography generally flat, or characterized by rolling hills and plateaus, without steep slopes. Two of the ranches in question are dedicated to the breeding of Iberian sheep and pigs, and the other six to Iberian cattle and pigs.

The permanent pastures on the ranches include plant communities dominated by annual grasses featuring limitedgrowth. Irrigated and permanent grasslands are also present on the ranches, replanted with mixtures of commercial seeds, mainly legumes.

This evaluation system has made possible a qualitative analysis of the protein content of the pastures, yielding data on the pastures and the livestock on the dehesa farms, such that one knows where to move their livestock depending on forage quality. "It provides us with information every five days, with approximate values, qualitative information on the protein content of the adjacent plots," added researcher Jesús Fernández-Habas.

INFORMATION:

Reference Fernández-Habas, J., García Moreno, A. Mª., Hidalgo-Fernández, Mª. T., Leal-Murillo, J. R., AbellanasOar, B., Gómez-Giráldez, P. J., González-Dugo,Mª. P., Fernández-Rebollo, P. (2021). Investigating the potential of Sentinel-2 configuration to predict the quality of Mediterranean permanent grasslands in open woodlands. Science of The Total Environment, vol. 791. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.148101


[Attachments] See images for this press release:
Sentinel-2 constellation of satellites used for the ongoing monitoring of grasslands

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

High-throughput metabolic profiling of single cells

2021-07-06
Scientists from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) and the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) have presented a new method for generating metabolic profiles of individual cells. The method, which combines fluorescence microscopy and a specific form of mass spectroscopy, can analyze over a hundred metabolites and lipids from more than a thousand individual cells per hour. Researchers expect the method to better answer a variety of biomedical questions in the future. Today, many biomedical disciplines focus their attention on the metabolites of individual cells. While in the past these were considered simply as degradation products or else building blocks for the synthesis of complex cellular molecules, ...

Light pollution has complex effects on animal vision

Light pollution has complex effects on animal vision
2021-07-06
Changes in the colour and intensity of light pollution over the past few decades result in complex and unpredictable effects on animal vision, new research shows. Insect attraction to light is a well-known phenomenon, but artificial lighting can also have more subtle consequences for species that rely on night-time vision for their behaviour. To explore these effects, University of Exeter researchers examined the impact of more than 20 kinds of lighting on the vision of moths, and birds that eat them. The study found that elephant hawkmoth vision was enhanced by some types of lighting and disrupted by others, while the vision of birds ...

The bitumen puzzle

The bitumen puzzle
2021-07-06
While atomic force microscopy and scanning electron microscopy have already provided information on the morphology of bitumen surfaces in the past, for a long time it was not known whether surface and chemical composition correlate with each other. However, the chemical composition of the surface is of particular interest because oxidation processes take place there, triggered by oxygen-containing molecules in the air such as ozone, nitrogen oxides or hydroxyl radicals. The oxidation process accelerates the aging of the material - the bitumen becomes porous and damage develops. The materials ...

New characterisation strategy proves promising in high-purity metal separation

New characterisation strategy proves promising in high-purity metal separation
2021-07-06
Metals with similar chemical properties are usually extracted together, which limits the opportunities to separate high-purity metals. To increase those opportunities, it's important to understand how different metal species act during the solvent extraction process. Researchers from the Institute of Process Engineering (IPE), of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, have developed a new strategy to characterise polymeric transition metal species in acidic solution, which may help to separate those high-purity metals. Their study, which was published in the KeAi journal Green Chemical Engineering (GreenChE) employed a high-resolution electrospray ionization ...

A protein complex from plant stem cells regulates their division and response to stress

A protein complex from plant stem cells regulates their division and response to stress
2021-07-06
A multidisciplinary research team, led by the CSIC biologist at CRAG, Ana I. Caño Delgado, and the physicist from the University of Barcelona, Marta Ibañes, has discovered that two plant stem cell proteins, known for their role in the correct development of the root, physically interact and regulate each other to avoid cellular division. The study, result of fifteen years of continued research carried out by the two researchers, reveals that these two proteins, known as BRAVO and WOX5, act in a specific manner in a small group of stem cells, and that their interaction is key to the plant's survival under genomic and environmental stress factors like extreme cold, heat, or floods. The results, obtained with the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana, have recently been published in the ...

Innovative method for producing complex molecules

2021-07-06
A team of researchers at the Department of Chemistry and Pharmacy at Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU) has successfully solved the problem of finding a straightforward, cost-effective process for producing hexaarylbenzene molecules with six different aromatic rings. These molecules are important functional materials. The results were published in the reputable journal Angewandte Chemie. Until now, it has been possible to use certain chemical procedures to produce simple, symmetrical hexaarylbenzene (HAB) molecules, in which the hydrogen atoms of the benzene are replaced by the same atomic groups. However, only very little HAB was produced in this way. The team of researchers led by Prof. Dr. Svetlana Tsogeva and Prof. Dr. Norbert Jux, both professors of organic ...

Amperometric biosensors used to control diclofenac content in food

Amperometric biosensors used to control diclofenac content in food
2021-07-06
The paper describes amperometric biosensors developed for the determination of diclofenac based on planar platinum electrodes modified with carbon nanotubes (CNTs) in chitosan, fullerene C60 in Boltorn H20, gold nanoparticles (Au NPs) in chitosan, and immobilized tyrosinase enzyme. It was found that diclofenac is a reversible tyrosinase inhibitor (a decrease in the analytical signal is observed), which makes it possible to determine it using appropriate biosensors modified with nanomaterials in the concentration range from 10 pM to 1 μM with CH 5 pM. Modification with composites of CNT / Au NPs and fullerene C60 / Au NPs made it possible to improve the analytical characteristics of the developed biosensors, in particular, ...

New blood test for the diagnostics of frontotemporal dementia

2021-07-06
A new study by researchers at the University of Eastern Finland shows for the first time that blood-based measurement of glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP) enables distinguishing patients with frontotemporal dementia from those with primary psychiatric disorders or healthy individuals. Frontotemporal dementia is the second most common cause of dementia in the working age population. Its diagnostics are complicated by the similar symptoms presented by patients with psychiatric disorders or other neurodegenerative diseases as well as the lack of reliable diagnostic tools for differentiating these patients from each other. A new study by researchers at the University of Eastern Finland ...

A new understanding of patterns in fluid flow

A new understanding of patterns in fluid flow
2021-07-06
The international collaborative team of Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology (TUAT) in Japan and Indian Institute of Technology Ropar (IIT Ropar) in India has explored, for the first time, viscous fingering (VF, one of classical interfacial hydrodynamics) of annular ring where VF in fluid of finite volume grow radially through combination of experiment and numerical simulation. They demonstrate that the VF of an annular ring is a persistent phenomenon in contrast to the transient nature of VF of a slice where VF in fluid of finite volume grow rectilinearly. The researchers published their results ...

New advice on arthritis drugs

2021-07-06
New research evaluating the drugs commonly used by rheumatoid arthritis patients suggests two combinations could reduce the risk of heart attack and strokes. The new publication in Frontiers in Cardiovascular Medicine has found that anti-rheumatic drug regimens that include either tumour necrosis factor inhibitors or hydroxychloroquine might significantly protect the endothelium in rheumatoid arthritis. Occurring in about one in 100 people, rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a common autoimmune disease which leads to inflammation and pain in the connective tissue of a patient's joints. "Rheumatoid arthritis patients have an increased ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

Ferroptosis in regulating treatment tolerance of digestive system tumors

A promising future in pancreatic incidentaloma detection

Stabilizing lithium-ion batteries: The vanadium touch

Innovative approaches to the surgical challenges in the management of gastroschisis

Mouse models for the study of liver fibrosis regression in vivo and ex vivo

At Fortune Global Forum 2024, Alex Zhavoronkov PhD, Founder and CEO of Insilico Medicine, discusses AI business potential

Exploring circulating tumor cells: Detection methods and biomarkers for clinical evaluation in hepatocellular carcinoma

New material to make next generation of electronics faster and more efficient

Research update: Chalk-coated textiles cool in urban environments

New take on immunotherapy reinvigorates T cells by blocking uptake of energy-sapping cancer byproducts

How much climate change is in the weather?

Flagship AI-ready dataset released in type 2 diabetes study

Shaking it up: An innovative method for culturing microbes in static liquid medium

Greener and cleaner: Yeast-green algae mix improves water treatment

Acquired immune thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura (TTP) associated with inactivated COVID-19 vaccine CoronaVac

CIDEC as a novel player in abdominal aortic aneurysm formation

Artificial intelligence: a double-edged sword for the environment?

Current test accommodations for students with blindness do not fully address their needs

Wide-incident-angle wideband radio-wave absorbers boost 5G and beyond 5G applications

A graph transformer with boundary-aware attention for semantic segmentation

C-Path announces key leadership appointments in neurodegenerative disease research

First-of-its-kind analysis of U.S. national data reveals significant disparities in individual well-being as measured by lifespan, education, and income

Exercise programs help cut new mums’ ‘baby blues’ severity and major depression risk

Gut microbiome changes linked to onset of clinically evident rheumatoid arthritis

Signals from the gut could transform rheumatoid arthritis treatment

Pioneering research reveals some of the world’s least polluting populations are at much greater risk of flooding fuelled by climate change

UK’s health data should be recognized as critical national infrastructure, says independent review

A 36-gene predictive score of anti-cancer drug resistance anticipates cancer therapy outcomes

Someone flirts with your spouse. Does that make your partner appear more attractive?

Hourglass-shaped stent could ease severe chest pain from microvascular disease

[Press-News.org] Sentinel-2 constellation of satellites used for the ongoing monitoring of grasslands