ESTG - Artigos em revistas internacionais
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Browsing ESTG - Artigos em revistas internacionais by Field of Science and Technology (FOS) "Ciências Naturais::Ciências da Terra e do Ambiente"
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- Degradation of Oxytetracycline in Aqueous Solutions: Application of Homogeneous and Heterogeneous Advanced Oxidative ProcessesPublication . Giler-Molina, José Miguel; Zambrano-Intriago, Luis Angel; Quiroz-Fernández, Luis Santiago; Napoleão, Daniella Carla; Vieira, Judite dos Santos; Oliveira, Nelson Simões; Rodríguez-Díaz, Joan ManuelOxytetracycline is one of the antibiotics most frequently used in the Shrimp Industry during the control of bacterial diseases. These emerging pollutants, which appear in low concentrations, are persistent and alternative treatments and are required for their elimination. The degradation of oxytetracycline was evaluated in an aqueous solution by applying homogeneous (UV/H2O2 and photo-Fenton) and heterogeneous (UV/TiO2 /H2O2) advanced oxidative processes (AOPs). The studies were carried out using a bench reactor with short-wave ultraviolet lamps (UV-C). We quantified the extent to which the degradation of the drug had been efficient by employing highly efficient liquid chromatography (HPLC) and a PDA detector with a wavelength of 354 nm and a C18 column. The best results were obtained when applying the UV/H2O2 treatment, which attained a degradation of 97% under the initial conditions of a dose of 8 µL of H2O2 and 120 min of radiation. The pseudo-first order kinetic model proposed by Chan and Chu showed that the experimental results had an adequate fit, with values greater than R2 ≥ 0.95. Toxicity tests were applied to verify the effect of AOPs employed, when the drug was present in low concentrations. The test results demonstrated a decrease in the root growth of the species Lactuca sativa and Daucus carota.
- Effectiveness of Nature-Based Solutions in Mitigating Flood Hazard in a Mediterranean Peri-Urban CatchmentPublication . Ferreira, Carla S.; Mourato, Sandra; Kasanin-Grubin, Milica; Ferreira, António J. D.; Destouni, Georgia; Kalantari, ZahraUrbanization alters natural hydrological processes and enhances runoff, which affects flood hazard. Interest in nature-based solutions (NBS) for sustainable mitigation and adaptation to urban floods is growing, but the magnitudes of NBS effects are still poorly investigated. This study explores the potential of NBS for flood hazard mitigation in a small peri-urban catchment in central Portugal, prone to flash floods driven by urbanization and short but intense rainfall events typical of the Mediterranean region. Flood extent and flood depth are assessed by manually coupling the hydrologic HEC-HMS and hydraulic HEC-RAS models. The coupled model was run for single rainfall events with recurrence periods of 10−, 20−, 50−, and 100−years, considering four simulation scenarios: current conditions (without NBS), and with an upslope NBS, a downslope NBS, and a combination of both. The model-simulation approach provides good estimates of flood magnitude (NSE = 0.91, RMSE = 0.08, MAE = 0.07, R2 = 0.93), and shows that diverting streamflow into abandoned fields has positive impacts in mitigating downslope flood hazard. The implementation of an upslope NBS can decrease the water depth at the catchment outlet by 0.02 m, whereas a downslope NBS can reduce it from 0.10 m to 0.23 m for increasing return periods. Combined upslope and downslope NBS have a marginal additional impact in reducing water depth, ranging from 0.11 m to 0.24 m for 10− and 100−year floods. Decreases in water depth provided by NBS are useful in flood mitigation and adaptation within the peri-urban catchment. A network of NBS, rather than small isolated strategies, needs to be created for efficient flood-risk management at a larger scale.
- Energy efficiency assessment of a public building resourcing a BIM modelPublication . Rodrigues, Fernanda; Isayeva, Anastasiya; Rodrigues, Hugo; Pinto, ArmandoThe construction sector high energy consumption and GHG emissions lead to the development of easier methodologies to achieve low carbon buildings. Currently, the use of Building Information Modeling (BIM) is growing in the Architecture, Engineering, Construction and Operation (AECO) sector, and it assumes relevance in buildings energy simulation. Therefore, this work aims to explore the potential and limitations of applying BIM to energy management and simulation in the operation life cycle phase of a service building, and comparing it with a specific and customized tool for energy efficiency assessment of public buildings. A service building BIM model was developed in Autodesk Revit showing its utility when used as an asset for storing and organize energy-related data. The add-in Energy Analysis for Autodesk Revit allowed automatically generating the Building Energy Model (BEM) from the BIM model and performing a cloud-based simulation in Autodesk Green Building Studio (GBS). The energy consumption results obtained in GBS were compared with the results obtained with the energy simulation tool ECO.AP developed in the Portuguese National Laboratory of Civil Engineering (LNEC). It was possible to infer that the input limitations of GBS, mainly in HVAC systems customization, compromise the representation and energy performance evaluation of the building under actual operating conditions, making GBS more adequate for early buildings life cycle stages where energy simulation results may support decisions that aim to improve the buildings energy performance during the operation phase.
- Quantifying Marine Macro Litter Abundance on a Sandy Beach Using Unmanned Aerial Systems and Object-Oriented Machine Learning MethodsPublication . Gonçalves, Gil; Andriolo, Umberto; Gonçalves, Luisa; Sobral, Paula; Bessa, FilipaUnmanned aerial systems (UASs) have recently been proven to be valuable remote sensing tools for detecting marine macro litter (MML), with the potential of supporting pollution monitoring programs on coasts. Very low altitude images, acquired with a low-cost RGB camera onboard a UAS on a sandy beach, were used to characterize the abundance of stranded macro litter. We developed an object-oriented classification strategy for automatically identifying the marine macro litter items on a UAS-based orthomosaic. A comparison is presented among three automated object-oriented machine learning (OOML) techniques, namely random forest (RF), support vector machine (SVM), and k-nearest neighbor (KNN). Overall, the detection was satisfactory for the three techniques, with mean F-scores of 65% for KNN, 68% for SVM, and 72% for RF. A comparison with manual detection showed that the RF technique was the most accurate OOML macro litter detector, as it returned the best overall detection quality (F-score) with the lowest number of false positives. Because the number of tuning parameters varied among the three automated machine learning techniques and considering that the three generated abundance maps correlated similarly with the abundance map produced manually, the simplest KNN classifier was preferred to the more complex RF. This work contributes to advances in remote sensing marine litter surveys on coasts, optimizing the automated detection on UAS-derived orthomosaics. MML abundance maps, produced by UAS surveys, assist coastal managers and authorities through environmental pollution monitoring programs. In addition, they contribute to search and evaluation of the mitigation measures and improve clean-up operations on coastal environments.
- The role of beliefs, expectations and values in decision-making favoring climate change adaptation - Implications for communications with European forest professionalsPublication . Blennow, K.; Persson, J.; Gonçalves, Luísa M.S.; Borys, A.; Dutcă, I.; Hynynen, J.; Janeczko, E.; Lyubenova, M.; Merganič, J.; Merganičová, K.; Peltoniemi, M.; Petr, M.; Reboredo, F.; Vacchiano, G.; Reyer, C. P. O.Beliefs, expectations and values are often assumed to drive decisions about climate change adaptation. We tested hypotheses based on this assumption using survey responses from 508 European forest professionals in ten countries. We used the survey results to identify communication needs and the decision strategies at play, and to develop guidelines on adequate communications about climate change adaptation. We observed polarization in the positive and negative values associated with climate change impacts accepted by survey respondents. We identified a mechanism creating the polarization that we call the 'blocked belief' effect. We found that polarized values did not correlate with decisions about climate change adaptation. Strong belief in the local impacts of climate change on the forest was, however, a prerequisite of decision-making favoring adaptation. Decision-making in favor of adaptation to climate change also correlated with net values of expected specific impacts on the forest and generally increased with the absolute value of these in the absence of 'tipping point' behavior. Tipping point behavior occurs when adaptation is not pursued in spite of the strongly negative or positive net value of expected climate change impacts. We observed negative and positive tipping point behavior, mainly in SW Europe and N-NE Europe, respectively. In addition we found that advice on effective adaptation may inhibit adaptation when the receiver is aware of effective adaptation measures unless it is balanced with information explaining how climate change leads to negative impacts. Forest professionals with weak expectations of impacts require communications on climate change and its impacts on forests before any advice on adaptation measures can be effective. We develop evidence-based guidelines on communications using a new methodology which includes Bayesian machine learning modeling of the equivalent of an expected utility function for the adaptation decision problem.
- Young People’s Perceptions about the Difficulties of Entrepreneurship and Developing Rural Properties in Family AgriculturePublication . Yamaguchi, Cristina Keiko; Stefenon, Stéfano Frizzo; Ramos, Ney Kassiano; Santos, Vanessa Silva dos; Forbici, Fernanda; Klaar, Anne Carolina Rodrigues; Ferreira, Fernanda Cristina Silva; Cassol, Alessandra; Marietto, Marcio Luiz; Yamaguchi, Shana Kimi Farias; Borba, Marcelo Leandro deThis article aims to understand the perceptions of young rural entrepreneurs about the difficulties in investing in family farms in which they work. Ninety-eight people were interviewed at the event “Meeting of Young Entrepreneurs of the Rural Environment of Santa Catarina: the rural youth leading the sustainable development”, held in May 2019. The methodology applied in this paper is qualitative and quantitative, through a bibliographic review and a numerical analysis on work conditions and workers’ profile. A brief theoretical background is presented to facilitate the understanding of the results and their relation to family farming, entrepreneurship and its reality in Brazil. As a result, the economic issue was pointed out with 34% of the cases, as a hinter to undertake in rural properties, followed by the lack and low qualification of the workforce available with 12.6% of the cases and the lower selling price for the producer with 7.6% of the cases.