Microwave remote sensing of plant water stress

The sensitivity of microwave (MW) emission to physical conditions of vegetation has been assessed by means of ground-based microwave and infrared radiometers. Measurements on corn and wheat have shown an inverse correlation between the normalized brightness temperature (T_N) from the Ka band (36 GHz) and the atmospheric water vapor pressure (VP) at the top of vegetation. From this observation, we show that a crop water stress index can be calculated by means of down-looking MW sensors, provided air temperature is known. A polarization index (PI) dependent only on microwave measurements was shown to be related to crop water stress.     

The SIR-C/X-SAR experiment on Montespertoli: Sensitivity to hydrological parameters

Multi-frequency and multi-temporal polarimetric SAR measurements, carried out during SIR-C/X-SAR missions over the Montespertoli area have been analysed and compared with data collected at the same frequency and polarization, but at different dates, with the NASA/JPL AIRSAR. This paper presents an analysis of the achieved results aiming at evaluating the contribution of SAR data for estimating some geophysical parameters which play a significant role in hydrological processes and in particular soil moisture and roughness. The study has pointed out that in the scale of surface roughness typical of agricultural areas, a co-polar L-bandsensor gives the highest information content for estimating soil moisture and surface roughness. The sensitivity to soil moisture and surface roughness for individual fields is rather low since both parameters affect the radar signal. However, considering data collected at different dates and averaged over a relatively wide area that includes several fields, the correlation to soil moisture is significant, since the effects of spatial roughness variations are smoothed. On the other hand the sensitivity to surface roughness is better manifested at a spatial scale, integrating on time to reduce the effects of moisture variation. The retrieval of both soil moisture and surface roughness has been performed with good results by means of a semi-empirical model.     

Microwave emission from dry snow: a comparison of experimental andmodel results

Field measurements of microwave emission from snow-covered soil were carried out in 1996, 1997, and 1999 on the Italian Alps using a three-frequency dual polarized microwave system. At the same time, nivological time measurements were carried out using standard methods and an electromagnetic contact probe. Collected data confirmed the possibility of separating wet from dry snow and of estimating the water equivalent of dry snow. Simulations performed by means of a model based on the dense medium radiative theory (DMRT) were able to reproduce experimental data very well     

Monitoring of melting refreezing cycles of snow with microwave radiometers: the Microwave Alpine Snow Melting Experiment (MASMEx 2002-2003)

A study of the melting cycle of snow was carried out by using ground-based microwave radiometers, which operated continuously 24 h/day from late March to mid-May in 2002 and from mid-February to early May in 2003. The experiment took place on the eastern Italian Alps and included micrometeorological and conventional snow measurements as well. The measurements confirmed the high sensitivity of microwave emission at 19 and 37 GHz to the melting-refreezing cycles of snow. Moreover, micrometeorological data made it possible to simulate snow density, temperature, and liquid water content through a hydrological snowpack model and provided additional insight into these processes. Simulations obtained with a two-layer electromagnetic model based on the strong fluctuation theory and driven by the output of the hydrological snowpack model were consistent with experimental data and allowed interpretation of both variation in microwave emission during the melting and refreezing phases and in discerning the contributions of the upper and lower layers of snow as well as of the underlying ground surface.     

Easily accessible oxygen‐containing derivatives of niobium pentachloride as catalytic precursors for ethylene polymerization

The low catalytic activity of NbCl₅ as an ethylene polymerization catalyst was significantly increased by the addition of a series of oxygen donors. The novel niobium derivatives NbCl₅(OPh₂) (1), NbCl₅(OEt₂) (3), NbCl₅(O?CPh₂) (5), NbCl₅(O?CHPh) (6), NbCl₅(O?CHMe) (7) and [NbCl₄(dppe)₂](NbCl₆) (18) (dppe is 1,2‐bis(diphenylphosphino)ethane) and the previously reported derivatives NbCl₅(OMePh) (2), NbCl₅(thf) (4) (thf is tetrahydrofuran), NbCl₅(O?CHOMe) (8), NbCl₅(O?CHNMe₂) (9), NbCl₅[O?C(NMe₂)₂] (10), NbCl₅(NCMe) (11), NbCl₄(κ²‐1,2‐OC₆H₄OMe) (12), NbCl₄[κ²‐O?C(Me)CH₂C(Me₂)O] (13), (14), [NbCl₄(O₂CMe)]₂ (15), NbCl₃(dme)(µ‐O)NbCl₅ (16) (dme is 1,2‐dimethoxyethane), [NbCl₄(κ²‐dmm)₂](NbCl₆) (17) (dmm is dimethylmaleate), TaCl₅(O?CMe₂) (19) and [TaCl₄(O₂CMe)]₂ (20) were tested as catalytic precursors in the ethylene polymerization reaction using AlMe₃‐depleted methylaluminoxane as co‐catalyst. Highly linear polyethylene was obtained. Compounds 1, 3, 5, 6 and 8–13 showed catalytic activities in the range 89–116 kg_polymer mol_Nb^?1 h^?1 bar^?1, i.e. comparable with the best performances reached with niobium pre‐catalysts up to now. However, the dinuclear compounds 14–16 and 18 were found to be less active, whereas17 and the tantalum derivatives 19 and 20 did not produce polymer. Relatively high molecular weights were achieved with the mononuclear compounds 1, 2, 8, 9, 10 and 12, the dinuclear 16 and the phosphine ionic 18. Copyright © 2011 Society of Chemical Industry     

Generation of soil moisture maps from ENVISAT/ASAR images in mountainous areas: a case study

A method for producing soil moisture maps in mountainous areas by using Environment Satellite Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar (ENVISAT/ASAR) images at C-band is described in this paper. For this purpose, experimental campaigns were carried out in 2004 in the Cordevole watershed in Italy during ENVISAT passes. Ground truth measurements of soil and vegetation parameters were obtained simultaneously using satellite surveys. A preliminary classification of the area was carried out to mask those zones in which soil moisture measurement was unobtainable. The performance of an inversion algorithm, based on artificial neural networks (ANNs), in retrieving soil moisture content (SMC) from the collected images was then tested and compared with ground measurements. The results obtained on a restricted portion of the watershed show reasonable agreement of backscattering (σ⁰) with ground truth data and meteorological conditions, thus making it possible to extend the algorithm to the entire test area. The contribution of vegetation cover was then simulated by using a discrete elements model based on radiative transfer theory. Three pixel-by-pixel soil moisture maps of the test site, with four levels of soil moisture, were generated from the available images by using a new ANN that took into account the effects of vegetation.     

Unified operator approach for deriving Hermite-Gaussian and Laguerre-Gaussian laser modes

A unified operator approach is described for deriving Hermite-Gaussian and Laguerre-Gaussian laser beams by using as a starting point a plane-wave-spectrum representation of the electromagnetic field. We show that by using the plane-wave representation of the fundamental Gaussian mode as a seed function, all higher-order beam modes can be derived by acting with differential operators on this fundamental solution. The approach presented can be easily generalized to nonparaxial situations and to include vector effects of the electromagnetic field.