Publications

Publications found: 2022

Pixel Tracking to Estimate RiversWater Flow Elevation Using Cosmo-SkyMed SAR data

Biondi Filippo, Tarpanelli Angelica, Addabbo Pia, Clemente Carmine, Orlando Danilo, 2019, Pixel Tracking to Estimate RiversWater Flow Elevation Using Cosmo-SkyMed SAR data, Remote sensing (Basel) 11 (2019): 2574–2592. doi_10.3390/rs11212574,

DOI: 10.3390%2Frs11212574

Abstract
The lack of availability of historical and reliable river water level information is an issue ...
The lack of availability of historical and reliable river water level information is an issue that can be overcome through the exploitation of modern satellite remote sensing systems. This research has the objective of contributing in solving the information-gap problem of river flow monitoring through a synthetic aperture radar (SAR) signal processing technique that has the capability to perform water flow elevation estimation. This paper proposes the application of a new method for the design of a robust procedure to track over the time double-bounce reflections from bridges crossing rivers to measure the gap space existing between the river surface and bridges. Specifically, the difference in position between the single and double bounce is suitably measured over the time. Simulated and satellite temporal series of SAR data from COSMO-SkyMed data are compared to the ground measurements recorded for three gauges sites over the Po and Tiber Rivers, Italy. The obtained performance indices confirm the effectiveness of the method in the estimation of water level also in narrow or ungauged rivers.
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Preparing first-time slope failures hazard maps_ from pixel-based to slope unit-based

Guillem Domènech(1), Massimiliano Alvioli(2), Jordi Corominas (1), 2019, Preparing first-time slope failures hazard maps_ from pixel-based to slope unit-based, Landslides (Berl., Print) 17 (2019): 249–265. doi_10.1007/s10346-019-01279-4,

DOI: 10.1007%2Fs10346-019-01279-4

Abstract
In this work, we present a novel quantitative geographical information system-based procedure to obtain the ...
In this work, we present a novel quantitative geographical information system-based procedure to obtain the magnitude (area) and frequency of medium to large first-time shallow slope failures. The procedure has been set up at the Barcedana Valley, in the Tremp Basin (Eastern Pyrenees). First, pixel-based susceptibility classes were defined using a slope stability index obtained with the physically based model SINMAP. The frequency calculated from the number of first-time failures recorded during the last 60 years was then assigned to each susceptibility class. We devised a procedure to estimate the size of potential failures by means of the aggregation of pixels within the boundaries of morphological slope units, optimized for the purpose. Finally, the landslide hazard was prepared using the magnitude-frequency matrix. Results show that a proper pixel clustering has been carried which avoids the generation of small groups of pixels with different susceptibility degrees within the same slope unit. For a given hill slope, the area of the cluster of pixels depends on the size of the slope unit, which is not unique as it depends on the criterion used to delineate them. Therefore, the latter is a key factor in the final results. In this study, we validated our results with the size distribution of the observed landslides. The methodology presented in this work can be applied using any susceptibility assessment method with a pixel-based output.
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Automatic Delineation of Slope Units and Terrain Classification of Italy (poster)

M. Alvioli, F. Guzzetti, I. Marchesini, 2019, Automatic Delineation of Slope Units and Terrain Classification of Italy (poster), Congresso Nazionale Parma 2019 - Il tempo del pianeta Terra e il tempo dell'uomo: le geoscienze tra passato e futuro, Parma, 16-19/09/2019,

Abstract
Automatic delineation of slope units and terrain classification of Italy Automatic subdivision of landscapes into terrain ...
Automatic delineation of slope units and terrain classification of Italy Automatic subdivision of landscapes into terrain units, in large areas and with homogeneous criteria, remains a challenge. Slope units (SUs) are irregular terrain units bounded by drainage and divide lines, with the requirement of maximizing geomorphological homogeneity within a single unit and heterogeneity between different ones (Guzzetti et al., 1999). SUs are suitable to describe a variety of processes_ to assess different natural hazards, for hydrological and erosion modelling, for geo-environmental, ecological, forestry, agriculture, and in general for studies requiring the identification of homogeneous terrain domains facing distinct directions. Nevertheless, their use has been hampered because of the lack of reliable software for their automatic delineation. For a given digital landscape, no unique SU partition exists. Any such partition is characterized by a granularity i.e., the size distribution of the SUs. Granularity varies in different landscapes and for different purpose of the terrain partition. We recently developed the r.slopeunits software (Alvioli et al, 2016), which can draw slope unit polygons on a digital surface. It provides an unambiguous and reproducible definition of slope units based on quantitative hydrologic and topographic criteria, allowing for a flexible yet well-defined SU delineation through an adaptive algorithm. The code is designed to quickly produce results on large areas. It requires a digital elevation model and a few input parameters, whose values must be optimized in a sound way, by means of multiple software runs and a proper objective function to be maximized. We propose a parameter-free SU map of the entire Italian territory, containing about 300,000 SU polygons. We optimized the map considering only objective morphometric quantities. To assess the validity of the nation-wide SU partition, we classified the whole of Italy into different categories using a clustering procedure, initialized using only morphometric properties of the SUs. We compared the classification form clustering with zonal statistics of independent quantities_ terrain elevation and slope, drainage density and lithology. The analysis confirmed that the SU partition was geomorphologically sound, suggesting that the proposed method is effective for a general-purpose SU delineation of a large, complex and heterogeneous landscape. The whole SU map is available for download (CNR-IRPI URL).
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Preparing first-time slope failures hazard maps_ form pixel-based to slope-unit based

G. Domènech (1), M. Alvioli (2), J. Corominas (3), 2019, Preparing first-time slope failures hazard maps_ form pixel-based to slope-unit based, Landslides (Berl., Print) (2019).,

Abstract
In this work, we present a novel quantitative geographical information system-based procedure to obtain the ...
In this work, we present a novel quantitative geographical information system-based procedure to obtain the magnitude (area) and frequency of medium to large first-time shallow slope failures. The procedure has been set up at the Barcedana Valley, in the Tremp Basin (Eastern Pyrenees). First, pixel-based susceptibility classes were defined using a slope stability index obtained with the physically-based model SINMAP. The frequency calculated from the number of first-time failures recorded during the last 60 years was thenis assigned to each susceptibility class. We have devised a procedure to estimate the size of potential failures by means of the aggregation of pixels within the boundaries of morphological slope units, optimized for the purpose. Finally, the landslide hazard wasis prepared using the magnitude-frequency matrix. Results show that a proper pixel clustering has been carried which avoids the generation of small groups of pixels with different susceptibility degrees within the same slope unit. For a given hillslope, the area of the cluster of pixels depends on the size of the slope unit, which is not unique as it depends on the criterion used to delineate them. Therefore, the latter is a key factor in the final results. In this study, we validated our results with the size distribution of the observed landslides. The methodology presented in this work can be applied using any susceptibility assessment method with a pixel-based output.
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Quantification of irrigation water using remote sensing of soil moisture in a semi-arid region

Jalilvand, Ehsan; Tajrishy, Masoud; Ghazi Zadeh Hashemi, Sedigheh Alsadat; Brocca, Luca, 2019, Quantification of irrigation water using remote sensing of soil moisture in a semi-arid region, Remote sensing of environment 231 (2019): 111226. doi_10.1016/j.rse.2019.111226,

DOI: 10.1016%2Fj.rse.2019.111226

Abstract
Irrigated agriculture is the principal consumer of fresh water resources. Most countries do not have ...
Irrigated agriculture is the principal consumer of fresh water resources. Most countries do not have a precise measurement of water consumption for irrigation. In this study, an innovative approach is proposed that allows for estimation of irrigation water use at the catchment scale based on satellite soil moisture data. To this end, the SM2RAIN algorithm, which had been originally developed for estimation of rainfall from the soil moisture observations, is adopted. The satellite soil moisture observations obtained from Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer 2 (AMSR2) along with different rainfall and evapotranspiration (ET) products in the period 2012-2015 are used as the input to the model. The methodology is tested in the agricultural plains of southern Urmia Lake, which is one of the main agricultural plains in Iran for which actual irrigation data is available. The results reveal that the proposed approach can capture the overall irrigation pattern, although; it is systematically overestimating irrigation volume compared to observed irrigation data. Thus the bias is calculated over largely non-irrigated pixels and used to modify the model estimates. The bias-corrected results show good agreement with the in situ irrigation data. In particular, the average model performance in the irrigated pixels in terms of R and RMSE (mm/month) are (0.86 and 12.895) respectively. Accuracy varied depending on the inputs, with improvement in order of 11% and 42% in R and RMSE depending on the inputs chosen. The method is also applied to less irrigated areas that result in obtaining significantly lower irrigation rates. The low spatial resolution of soil moisture products (i.e. ~50 km) makes it difficult to capture the irrigation water of small irrigated croplands. Unreliable rainfall and ET data can also lead to the over/underestimation of irrigation. In spite of the above limitations (particularly lack of reliable ET dataset), the proposed model can still capture the irrigation pattern, given that strong soil moisture signal from irrigation is detected by the satellite.
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Twenty-three unsolved problems in hydrology (UPH) – a community perspective

Bloeschl, Gunter; Bierkens, Marc F. P.; Chambel, Antonio; Cudennec, Christophe; Destouni, Georgia; Fiori, Aldo; Kirchner, James W.; McDonnell, Jeffrey J.; Savenije, Hubert H. G.; Sivapalan, Murugesu; Stumpp, Christine; Toth, Elena; Volpi, Elena; Carr, Gemma; Lupton, Claire; Salinas, Jose; Szeles, Borbala; Viglione, Alberto; Aksoy, Hafzullah; Allen, Scott T.; Amin, Anam; Andreassian, Vazken; Arheimer, Berit; Aryal, Santosh K.; Baker, Victor; Bardsley, Earl; Barendrecht, Marlies H.; Bartosova, Alena; Batelaan, Okke; Berghuijs, Wouter R.; Beven, Keith; Blume, Theresa; Bogaard, Thom; de Amorim, Pablo Borges; Boettcher, Michael E.; Boulet, Gilles; Breinl, Korbinian; Brilly, Mitja; Brocca, Luca; Buytaert, Wouter; Castellarin, Attilio; Castelletti, Andrea; Chen, Xiaohong; Chen, Yangbo; Chen, Yuanfang; Chifflard, Peter; Claps, Pierluigi; Clark, Martyn P.; Collins, Adrian L.; Croke, Barry; Dathe, Annette; David, Paula C.; de Barros, Felipe P. J.; de Rooij, Gerrit; Di Baldassarre, Giuliano; Driscoll, Jessica M.; Duethmann, Doris; Dwivedi, Ravindra; Eris, Ebru; Farmer, William H.; Feiccabrino, James; Ferguson, Grant; Ferrari, Ennio; Ferraris, Stefano; Fersch, Benjamin; Finger, David; Foglia, Laura; Fowler, Keirnan; Gartsman, Boris; Gascoin, Simon; Gaume, Eric; Gelfan, Alexander; Geris, Josie; Gharari, Shervan; Gleeson, Tom; Glendell, Miriam; Bevacqua, Alena Gonzalez; Gonzalez-Dugo, Maria P.; Grimaldi, Salvatore; Gupta, A. B.; Guse, Bjoern; Han, Dawei; Hannah, David; Harpold, Adrian; Haun, Stefan; Heal, Kate; Helfricht, Kay; Herrnegger, Mathew; Hipsey, Matthew; Hlavacikova, Hana; Hohmann, Clara; Holko, Ladislav; Hopkinson, Christopher; Hrachowitz, Markus; Illangasekare, Tissa H.; Inam, Azhar; Innocente, Camyla; Istanbulluoglu, Erkan; Jarihani, Ben; Kalantari, Zahra; Kalvans, Andis; Khanal, Sonu; Khatami, Sina; Kiesel, Jens; Kirkby, Mike; Knoben, Wouter; Kochanek, Krzysztof; Kohnova, Silvia; Kolechkina, Alla; Krause, Stefan; Kreamer, David; Kreibich, Heidi; Kunstmann, Harald; Lange, Holger; Liberato, Margarida L. R.; Lindquist, Eric; Link, Timothy; Liu, Junguo; Loucks, Daniel Peter; Luce, Charles; Mahe, Gil; Makarieva, Olga; Malard, Julien; Mashtayeva, Shamshagul; Maskey, Shreedhar; Mas-Pla, Josep; Mavrova-Guirguinova, Maria; Mazzoleni, Maurizio; Mernild, Sebastian; Misstear, Bruce Dudley; Montanari, Alberto; Mueller-Thomy, Hannes; Nabizadeh, Alireza; Nardi, Fernando; Neale, Christopher; Nesterova, Nataliia; Nurtaev, Bakhram; Odongo, Vincent O.; Panda, Subhabrata; Pande, Saket; Pang, Zhonghe; Papacharalampous, Georgia; Perrin, Charles; Pfister, Laurent; Pimentel, Rafael; Polo, Maria J.; Post, David; Sierra, Cristina Prieto; Ramos, Maria-Helena; Renner, Maik; Reynolds, Jose Eduardo; Ridolfi, Elena; Rigon, Riccardo; Riva, Monica; Robertson, David E.; Rosso, Renzo; Roy, Tirthankar; Sa, Joao H. M.; Salvadori, Gianfausto; Sandells, Mel; Schaefli, Bettina; Schumann, Andreas; Scolobig, Anna; Seibert, Jan; Servat, Eric; Shafiei, Mojtaba; Sharma, Ashish; Sidibe, Moussa; Sidle, Roy C.; Skaugen, Thomas; Smith, Hugh; Spiessl, Sabine M.; Stein, Lina; Steinsland, Ingelin; Strasser, Ulrich; Su, Bob; Szolgay, Jan; Tarboton, David; Tauro, Flavia; Thirel, Guillaume; Tian, Fuqiang; Tong, Rui; Tussupova, Kamshat; Tyralis, Hristos; Uijlenhoet, Remko; van Beek, Rens; van der Ent, Ruud J.; van der Ploeg, Martine; Van Loon, Anne F.; van Meerveld, Ilja; van Nooijen, Ronald; van Oel, Pieter R.; Vidal, Jean-Philippe; von Freyberg, Jana; Vorogushyn, Sergiy; Wachniew, Przemyslaw; Wade, Andrew J.; Ward, Philip; Westerberg, Ida K.; White, Christopher; Wood, Eric F.; Woods, Ross; Xu, Zongxue; Yilmaz, Koray K.; Zhang, Yongqiang, 2019, Twenty-three unsolved problems in hydrology (UPH) – a community perspective, Hydrological sciences journal 64 (2019): 1141–1158. doi_10.1080/02626667.2019.1620507,

DOI: 10.1080%2F02626667.2019.1620507

Abstract
This paper is the outcome of a community initiative to identify major unsolved scientific problems ...
This paper is the outcome of a community initiative to identify major unsolved scientific problems in hydrology motivated by a need for stronger harmonisation of research efforts. The procedure involved a public consultation through online media, followed by two workshops through which a large number of potential science questions were collated, prioritised, and synthesised. In spite of the diversity of the participants (230 scientists in total), the process revealed much about community priorities and the state of our science_ a preference for continuity in research questions rather than radical departures or redirections from past and current work. Questions remain focused on the process-based understanding of hydrological variability and causality at all space and time scales. Increased attention to environmental change drives a new emphasis on understanding how change propagates across interfaces within the hydrological system and across disciplinary boundaries. In particular, the expansion of the human footprint raises a new set of questions related to human interactions with nature and water cycle feedbacks in the context of complex water management problems. We hope that this reflection and synthesis of the 23 unsolved problems in hydrology will help guide research efforts for some years to come.
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CARTA INVENTARIO DELLE FRANE DI TIPO GEOMORFOLOGICO (MAPPATURA PRELIMINARE AL GIUGNO 2019) – WP5 – VALUTAZIONE INTEGRATA DI DISSESTI GEO-IDROLOGICI NEL TERRITORIO DELLA REGIONE PUGLIA, MODELLI INTERPRETATIVI DEI FENOMENI E DEFINIZIONE DI SOGLIE DI PIOGGIA PER IL POSSIBILE INNESCO DI FRANE SUPERFICIALI – P.O.R. PUGLIA 2014 – 2020

Ardizzone F., Bucci F., Cardinali M., Fiorucci F., Santangelo M., Salvati P., Reichenbach P., Pisano L., Zumpano V., 2019, CARTA INVENTARIO DELLE FRANE DI TIPO GEOMORFOLOGICO (MAPPATURA PRELIMINARE AL GIUGNO 2019) – WP5 – VALUTAZIONE INTEGRATA DI DISSESTI GEO-IDROLOGICI NEL TERRITORIO DELLA REGIONE PUGLIA, MODELLI INTERPRETATIVI DEI FENOMENI E DEFINIZIONE DI SOGLIE DI PIOGGIA PER IL POSSIBILE INNESCO DI FRANE SUPERFICIALI – P.O.R. PUGLIA 2014 – 2020, D05-03, 2019,

Abstract
Il presente documento illustra le attività realizzate nell'ambito dell'Accordo di Collaborazione tra la Regione Puglia e ...
Il presente documento illustra le attività realizzate nell'ambito dell'Accordo di Collaborazione tra la Regione Puglia e l'Istituto di Ricerca per la Protezione Idrogeologica (IRPI) del Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR) per la "Valutazione Integrata di Dissesti Geo - Idrologici nel Territorio della Regione Puglia, Modelli Interpretativi dei Fenomeni e Definizione di Soglie di Pioggia per il possibile innesco di frane superficiali". Il documento è stato realizzato nell'ambito del WP5_ Redazione di cartografia tematica su frane nel Sub-Appennino Dauno, e descrive "la Carta inventario delle frane di tipo geomorfologico nel Sub-Appennino Dauno", come stato di avanzamento al giugno 2019 (Mappatura preliminare)".
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RELAZIONE Identificazione degli scenari evolutivi e valutazione delle condizioni di pericolosità da frana per i comuni di Alberona, Celenza Valfortore, Motta Montecorvino, San Marco la Catola, Volturino – WP6 – valutazione integrata di dissesti geo-idrologici nel territorio della Regione Puglia, modelli interpretativi dei fenomeni e definizione di soglie di pioggia per il possibile innesco di frane superficiali – P.O.R. PUGLIA 2014 – 2020

Ardizzone F., Basso A., Bucci F., Cardinali M., Fiorucci F., Pisano L., Reichenbach P., Santaloia F., Santangelo M., Wasowski J., Zumpano V., 2019, RELAZIONE Identificazione degli scenari evolutivi e valutazione delle condizioni di pericolosità da frana per i comuni di Alberona, Celenza Valfortore, Motta Montecorvino, San Marco la Catola, Volturino – WP6 – valutazione integrata di dissesti geo-idrologici nel territorio della Regione Puglia, modelli interpretativi dei fenomeni e definizione di soglie di pioggia per il possibile innesco di frane superficiali – P.O.R. PUGLIA 2014 – 2020, D06-03, 2019,

Abstract
Il documento illustra le attività svolte dall'Istituto di Ricerca per la Protezione Idrogeologica (IRPI), Centro di ...
Il documento illustra le attività svolte dall'Istituto di Ricerca per la Protezione Idrogeologica (IRPI), Centro di Competenza (CC) del Dipartimento della Protezione Civile (DPC), nell'ambito del progetto dal titolo "Valutazione integrata di dissesti geo-idrologici nel territorio della regione Puglia, modelli interpretativi dei fenomeni e definizione di soglie di pioggia per il possibile innesco di frane superficiali" per la Sezione Protezione Civile della Regione Puglia. Il documento è stato realizzato nell'ambito del WP6_ Valutazione del rischio da frana per 10 centri abitati del Sub-Appennino Dauno, e descrive l'attività svolta nel primo semestre (periodo gennaio - giugno) del terzo anno (2019), finalizzata alla Identificazione degli scenari evolutivi ed alla valutazione delle condizioni di pericolosità da frana per cinque dei dieci centri abitati (Relazione ID00-06), ricadenti nel settore settentrionale dell'Appennino Dauno pugliese_ Alberona, Celenza Valfortore, Motta Montecorvino, San Marco La Catola e Volturino. Sarà dunque illustrata brevemente la metodologia, sviluppata dall'Istituto di Ricerca per la Protezione Idrogeologica (IRPI), per la zonazione geomorfologica della pericolosità da frana in aree urbanizzate, (Cardinali et al., 2002; Reichenbach et al., 2005), già illustrata in maniera dettagliata nella relazione D06-01 "Relazione metodologica" (Gennaio 2018). Verrà fornita una descrizione dei principali risultati ottenuti per cinque centri abitati e verranno illustrate le caratteristiche dell'archivio digitale che contiene i dati e le informazioni necessarie alla zonazione geomorfologica della pericolosità oggetto di consegna in concomitanza alla presente relazione.
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RELAZIONE Classificazione delle frane e carte inventario multi-temporali delle frane per i territori urbani di_ Celenza Valfortore, San Marco La Catola, Volturara Appula, Volturino e Motta Montecorvino – WP6 – VALUTAZIONE INTEGRATA DI DISSESTI GEO-IDROLOGICI NEL TERRITORIO DELLA REGIONE PUGLIA, MODELLI INTERPRETATIVI DEI FENOMENI E DEFINIZIONE DI SOGLIE DI PIOGGIA PER IL POSSIBILE INNESCO DI FRANE SUPERFICIALI – P.O.R. PUGLIA 2014 – 2020

Ardizzone F., Basso A., Bucci F., Cardinali M., Fiorucci F., Pisano L., Reichenbach P., Santaloia F., Santangelo M., Wasowski J., Zumpano V., 2019, RELAZIONE Classificazione delle frane e carte inventario multi-temporali delle frane per i territori urbani di_ Celenza Valfortore, San Marco La Catola, Volturara Appula, Volturino e Motta Montecorvino – WP6 – VALUTAZIONE INTEGRATA DI DISSESTI GEO-IDROLOGICI NEL TERRITORIO DELLA REGIONE PUGLIA, MODELLI INTERPRETATIVI DEI FENOMENI E DEFINIZIONE DI SOGLIE DI PIOGGIA PER IL POSSIBILE INNESCO DI FRANE SUPERFICIALI – P.O.R. PUGLIA 2014 – 2020, D06-02, 2019,

Abstract
Il documento illustra le attività svolte dall'Istituto di Ricerca per la Protezione Idrogeologica (IRPI), Centro di ...
Il documento illustra le attività svolte dall'Istituto di Ricerca per la Protezione Idrogeologica (IRPI), Centro di Competenza (CC) del Dipartimento della Protezione Civile (DPC), nell'ambito del progetto dal titolo "Valutazione integrata di dissesti geo-idrologici nel territorio della regione Puglia, modelli interpretativi dei fenomeni e definizione di soglie di pioggia per il possibile innesco di frane superficiali" per la Sezione Protezione Civile della Regione Puglia. In particolare, le attività hanno riguardato la redazione di carte inventario multi-temporali redatte per cinque centri urbani dauni dei dieci selezionati (Relazione ID00-06), ricadenti nel settore settentrionale dell'Appennino Dauno pugliese_ Alberona, Celenza Valfortore, Motta Montecorvino, San Marco La Catola e Volturino. Oltre alla descrizione delle carte inventario multi-temporali ottenute per i suddetti territori, il presente documento riporta brevemente i criteri utilizzati per l'interpretazione delle foto aree e la documentazione esaminata. Al contempo, il presente documento riporta la classificazione delle frane, sulla quale sono state basate le carte inventario multi-temporale, insieme alle peculiarità dell'archivio digitale associato alle suddette carte.
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On the applicability of temporal stability analysis to raingauge network design

Renato Morbidelli, Carla Saltalippi, Alessia Flammini, Marco Cifrodelli, Jacopo Dari, Corrado Corradini, Amanda P. García-Marín & Tommaso Moramarco, 2019, On the applicability of temporal stability analysis to raingauge network design, Hydrological sciences journal (2019).,

Abstract
Determining "representative" rain gauge stations over a wide area is useful to optimize an existing ...
Determining "representative" rain gauge stations over a wide area is useful to optimize an existing rain gauge network, design a network in ungauged basins and calibrate a meteorological radar by ground measurements. Most available methodologies have been developed for specific watersheds and cannot be objectively transferred to other regions. This issue is addressed here through a reformulation of the temporal stability analysis for the areal-average cumulative rainfall depth, R, of single meteorological systems and an evaluation of its efficiency for application to common typologies of frontal systems with different physical characteristics. On this basis, our results suggest that, in each watershed, the combination of the measurements performed in the two stations with better ranking gives a fairly good representation of R derived from all the operative rain gauges, particularly for significant frontal systems, with the magnitude of the relative error generally less than 10%.
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River Bathymetry Estimate and Discharge Assessment from Remote Sensing

Tommaso Moramarco Silvia Barbetta David M. Bjerklie John W. Fulton Angelica Tarpanelli, 2019, River Bathymetry Estimate and Discharge Assessment from Remote Sensing, Water resources research (2019).,

Abstract
The NASA Surface Water Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission and ESA Sentinel-1, inter-alia, propose to monitor ...
The NASA Surface Water Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission and ESA Sentinel-1, inter-alia, propose to monitor inland waters from satellites. The radar altimeter and the microwave radiometer can be used to monitor water surface level and assess the cross-sectional mean flow velocity, respectively. However, for most river sites bathymetric data are lacking, preventing the direct computation of discharge. In this context, a new methodology for simulating the bathymetry and estimating the discharge is proposed. The approach is based on entropy theory and can be applied using ground and satellite observations. Four parameters are needed and include channel roughness, water surface slope, channel bottom elevation, and an entropy parameter of flow depth. These parameters are estimated using a genetic algorithm by minimizing the error in the observed maximum surface velocity. Parameter uncertainty is considered through 1000 random realizations based on different initial values. Eighteen streamflow measurements recorded from three different gauged river sites are used to benchmark the ground observations. The method included ENVISAT altimetry and MODIS data (2002-2010) at one river site. Relative to ground measurements, the method provides good results with an error in channel area and discharge that, on average, does not exceed 10% on the 50th percentile. Relative to satellite measurements, channel area is well simulated with an error, on average, lower than 9%; discharge is less well simulated and represented by an error greater than 30% on the 50th percentile.
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Applicability of Kinematic model for mud-flows: An unsteady analysis

Cristiana Di Cristo Michele Iervolino Tommaso Moramarco Andrea Vacca, 2019, Applicability of Kinematic model for mud-flows: An unsteady analysis, Journal of hydrology (Amst.) (2019). doi_10.1016/j.jhydrol.2019.123967,

DOI: 10.1016%2Fj.jhydrol.2019.123967

Abstract
The Kinematic Wave Model (KWM), representing a simplification of the Full Wave Model (FWM) under ...
The Kinematic Wave Model (KWM), representing a simplification of the Full Wave Model (FWM) under the shallow-water approximation, is often used in the one-dimensional formulation for describing the dynamics of debris/mud flood. The present work investigates the applicability conditions of the KWM to analyze mud floods, characterized by a rheological behaviour expressed through a power-law model. The study is carried out through the numerical solution of both the Full and Kinematic Wave models changing the characteristic time of hydrograph, i.e. the wave duration, imposed at the channel inlet. The predictions of the two models are compared in terms of maximum flow depth, maximum discharge and peak discharge at the downstream channel end. The study is performed for several values of the Froude (F) and the Kinematic Wave (K) numbers. Similarly to the clear-water case, present results show that higher errors in applying KWM pertain to shorter flood wave durations, but the performance of KWM appears to strongly depend on the value of the rheological index, becoming worse as the fluid rheology becomes more shear-thinning. The study furnishes applicability criteria representing a guideline for practical applications in terms of minimum wave duration above which the KWM error in reproducing the considered flood characteristics (the maximum flow depth, the maximum discharge and the peak discharge at the downstream channel end) is less or equal than 5%. Finally, it has been shown that the wave period criterion, obtained considering linearized wave dynamics, may be safely applied at least for fluid with moderate shear-thinning behavior and for moderate values of the dimensionless number KF2.
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Influence of the neutron skin effect on nuclear isobar collisions at RHIC

Jan Hammelmann(1,2), Alba Soto Ontoso(4), Massimiliano Alvioli(5), Hannah Elfner(1,2,3), 2019, Influence of the neutron skin effect on nuclear isobar collisions at RHIC, Quark Matter 2019, Wuhan, China, 03/11/2019, 09/11/2019,

Abstract
Recently there has been a measurement of the isobar nuclei 96Zr and 96Ru at RHIC ...
Recently there has been a measurement of the isobar nuclei 96Zr and 96Ru at RHIC at with the goal of studying the chiral magnetic effect. Underlying idea_ (i)Keep the background component (v2) fixed (ii)Handle on the magnetic field strength via the atomic number.
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RELAZIONE SEMESTRALE DI AGGIORNAMENTO SULLE ATTIVITÁ IN CORSO – WP0 – Periodo di riferimento_ Gennaio 2019 – Giugno 2019 (VALUTAZIONE INTEGRATA DI DISSESTI GEO-IDROLOGICI NEL TERRITORIO DELLA REGIONE PUGLIA, MODELLI INTERPRETATIVI DEI FENOMENI E DEFINIZIONE DI SOGLIE DI PIOGGIA PER IL POSSIBILE INNESCO DI FRANE SUPERFICIALI P.O.R. PUGLIA 2014 – 2020 ASSE V – AZIONE 5.1)

Lollino P., Santaloia F., Casarano D., Peruccacci S., Rossi M., Cardinali M., Wasowski J., Pagliarulo R., Giordan D., Allasia P., Longo L., Vennari C., Marchesini I., Ardizzone F., Bucci F., Fiorucci F., Santangelo M., Salvati P., Reichenbach P., Pisano L., Zumpano V., Basso A., Perrotti M., Fazio N.L., Godone D., Baldo M., Guenzi D., Wrzesniak A., 2019, RELAZIONE SEMESTRALE DI AGGIORNAMENTO SULLE ATTIVITÁ IN CORSO – WP0 – Periodo di riferimento_ Gennaio 2019 – Giugno 2019 (VALUTAZIONE INTEGRATA DI DISSESTI GEO-IDROLOGICI NEL TERRITORIO DELLA REGIONE PUGLIA, MODELLI INTERPRETATIVI DEI FENOMENI E DEFINIZIONE DI SOGLIE DI PIOGGIA PER IL POSSIBILE INNESCO DI FRANE SUPERFICIALI P.O.R. PUGLIA 2014 – 2020 ASSE V – AZIONE 5.1), D00-08, 2019,

Abstract
La relazione propone un aggiornamento di cadenza semestrale sulle attività in corso relative all'Accordo tra ...
La relazione propone un aggiornamento di cadenza semestrale sulle attività in corso relative all'Accordo tra Sezione Protezione Civile della Regione Puglia e CNR - IRPI dal titolo "Valutazione integrata di dissesti geo-idrologici nel territorio della regione Puglia, modelli interpretativi dei fenomeni e definizione di soglie di pioggia per il possibile innesco di frane superficiali" e si riferisce nello specifico al periodo temporale compreso tra il 01 Gennaio 2019 ed il 30 Giugno 2019. Di seguito sono presentate le attività condotte nell'ambito dei diversi WP in cui è suddiviso il progetto che, nello specifico, riguardano_ (1) la gestione del progetto, (2) l'analisi critica dei risultati derivanti da progetti precedenti finanziati dalla Regione Puglia, (3) la raccolta e l'organizzazione di informazioni su eventi geo-idrologici,(4) l'aggiornamento delle soglie pluviometriche empiriche per il possibile innesco di frane indotte da pioggia nel territorio della regione Puglia, (5) l'implementazione del sistema di allertamento per la previsione del possibile innesco di frane nel territorio della regione Puglia (SARF Puglia), (6) la redazione di cartografia tematica su frane nel Sub-Appennino Dauno, (6) la valutazione del rischio da frana per 10 centri abitati del Sub-Appennino Dauno, (7) l'elaborazione di una banca dati e cartografia sui fenomeni di sinkhole nel territorio regionale, e l'analisi della relativa suscettibilità, (8) la definizione di procedure metodologiche per l'analisi dell'instabilità costiera, (9) la modellazione numerica di eventi geo-idrologici, (10) lo sviluppo di un Sistema di Supporto Decisionale, (11) il supporto alla Sezione di Protezione Civile della Regione Puglia, e (12) l'analisi di casi di studio, mediante studi di dettaglio, progettazione del monitoraggio, esecuzione e interpretazione delle misure.
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RELAZIONE SEMESTRALE DI AGGIORNAMENTO SULLE ATTIVITÁ IN CORSO – WP0 – Periodo di riferimento_ Luglio 2018 – Dicembre 2018 (VALUTAZIONE INTEGRATA DI DISSESTI GEO-IDROLOGICI NEL TERRITORIO DELLA REGIONE PUGLIA, MODELLI INTERPRETATIVI DEI FENOMENI E DEFINIZIONE DI SOGLIE DI PIOGGIA PER IL POSSIBILE INNESCO DI FRANE SUPERFICIALI)

Lollino P., Santaloia F., Casarano D., Peruccacci S., Rossi M., Cardinali M., Wasowski J., Pagliarulo R., Giordan D., Allasia P., Longo L., Vennari C., Marchesini I., Ardizzone F., Bucci F., Fiorucci F., Santangelo M., Salvati P., Reichenbach P., Pisano L., Zumpano V., Basso A., Perrotti M., Fazio N.L., Godone D., Baldo M., Guenzi D., 2019, RELAZIONE SEMESTRALE DI AGGIORNAMENTO SULLE ATTIVITÁ IN CORSO – WP0 – Periodo di riferimento_ Luglio 2018 – Dicembre 2018 (VALUTAZIONE INTEGRATA DI DISSESTI GEO-IDROLOGICI NEL TERRITORIO DELLA REGIONE PUGLIA, MODELLI INTERPRETATIVI DEI FENOMENI E DEFINIZIONE DI SOGLIE DI PIOGGIA PER IL POSSIBILE INNESCO DI FRANE SUPERFICIALI), D00-07, 2019,

Abstract
La relazione propone un aggiornamento di cadenza semestrale sulle attività in corso relative all'Accordo tra ...
La relazione propone un aggiornamento di cadenza semestrale sulle attività in corso relative all'Accordo tra Sezione Protezione Civile della Regione Puglia e CNR - IRPI dal titolo "Valutazione integrata di dissesti geo idrologici nel territorio della regione Puglia, modelli interpretativi dei fenomeni e definizione di soglie di pioggia per il possibile innesco di frane superficiali" e si riferisce nello specifico al periodo temporale compreso tra il 01 Luglio 2018 ed il 31 Dicembre 2018. Di seguito sono presentate le attività condotte nell'ambito dei diversi WP in cui è suddiviso il progetto che, nello specifico, riguardano_ (1) la gestione del progetto, (2) l'analisi critica dei risultati derivanti da progetti precedenti finanziati dalla Regione Puglia, (3) la raccolta e l'organizzazione di informazioni su eventi geo-idrologici,(4) l'aggiornamento delle soglie pluviometriche empiriche per il possibile innesco di frane indotte da pioggia nel territorio della regione Puglia, (5) l'implementazione del sistema di allertamento per la previsione del possibile innesco di frane nel territorio della regione Puglia (SARF Puglia), (6) la redazione di cartografia tematica su frane nel Sub-Appennino Dauno, (6) la valutazione del rischio da frana per 10 centri abitati del Sub-Appennino Dauno, (7) l'elaborazione di una banca dati e cartografia sui fenomeni di sinkhole nel territorio regionale, e l'analisi della relativa suscettibilità, (8) la definizione di procedure metodologiche per l'analisi dell'instabilità costiera, (9) la modellazione numerica di eventi geo-idrologici, (10) lo sviluppo di un Sistema di Supporto Decisionale, (11) il supporto alla Sezione di Protezione Civile della Regione Puglia, e (12) l'analisi di casi di studio, mediante studi di dettaglio, progettazione del monitoraggio, esecuzione e interpretazione delle misure.
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A new Alpine Geo-Lithological Map (Alpine Geo-LiM) and global carboncycle implications

Marco Donnini (1), Ivan Marchesini (1), Azzurra Zucchini (2), 2019, A new Alpine Geo-Lithological Map (Alpine Geo-LiM) and global carboncycle implications, EGU 2019, 7-12/04/2019,

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An Endorheic Lake in a Changing Climate_ Geochemical Investigations at Lake Trasimeno (Italy)

Francesco Frondini (1), Walter Dragoni (1), Nicola Morgantini (2), Marco Donnini (3), Carlo Cardellini (1), Stefano Caliro (4), Massimo Melillo (3), Giovanni Chiodini (5), 2019, An Endorheic Lake in a Changing Climate_ Geochemical Investigations at Lake Trasimeno (Italy), Water (Basel) 11 (2019). doi_10.3390/w11071319,

DOI: 10.3390%2Fw11071319

Abstract
Lake Trasimeno is a shallow, endorheic lake located in central Italy. It is the fourth ...
Lake Trasimeno is a shallow, endorheic lake located in central Italy. It is the fourth Italian largest lake and is one of the largest endorheic basins in western Europe. Because of its shallow depth and the absence of natural outflows, the lake, in historical times, alternated from periods of floods to strong decreases of the water level during periods of prolonged drought. Lake water is characterised by a NaCl composition and relatively high salinity. The geochemical and isotopic monitoring of lake water from 2006 to 2018 shows the presence of well-defined seasonal trends, strictly correlated to precipitation regime and evaporation. These trends are clearly highlighted by the isotopic composition of lake water (?18O and ?D) and by the variations of dissolved mobile species. In the long term, a progressive warming of lake water and a strong increase of total dissolved inorganic solids have been observed, indicating Lake Trasimeno as a paradigmatic example of how climate change can cause large variations of water quality and quantity. Furthermore, the rate of variation of lake water temperature is very close to the rate of variation of land-surface air temperature, LSAT, suggesting that shallow endorheic lakes can be used as a proxy for global warming measurements.
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B11SIC_AF1 – Affiancamento alla Regione Siciliana per la verifica dei contesti territoriali e per l’individuazione del set di indicatori

M. Donnini, M. Alvioli, F. Fiorucci, M. Melillo, P. Reichenbach, 2019, B11SIC_AF1 – Affiancamento alla Regione Siciliana per la verifica dei contesti territoriali e per l’individuazione del set di indicatori, 2019,

Abstract
Nel presente rapporto è riportato lo stato di attività, in relazione al percorso di affiancamento ...
Nel presente rapporto è riportato lo stato di attività, in relazione al percorso di affiancamento tecnico-scientifico realizzato all'interno della Regione Siciliana, con il fine di concretizzare le indicazioni emerse dalle linee di intervento dell'Attività A.1.1 del progetto
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U-geohaz. Deliverable D4.10: Rainfall thresholds for the Canary Islands

Silvia Peruccacci, Stefano Luigi Gariano, Maria Teresa Brunetti, Massimo Melillo, Paola Reichenbach, Ivan Marchesini, MAuro Rossi, Roberto Sarro, the IGME team, DGPCE team, CDCP team, 2019, U-geohaz. Deliverable D4.10: Rainfall thresholds for the Canary Islands, 2019,

Abstract
The document, which represents the fourth deliverable of WP4 "Tools and methods to support Early ...
The document, which represents the fourth deliverable of WP4 "Tools and methods to support Early Warning System for Rock falls", describes the actions performed in the Activity 4.5 "Rainfall thresholds for the possible initiation of rock falls". The main goal of this activity is the definition of empirical rainfall thresholds for the possible initiation of rock falls in the Canary Islands. The report describes the empirical cumulated event rainfall - rainfall duration (ED) thresholds for the Gran Canaria and Tenerife test sites. For the purpose, a tool for the objective and reproducible reconstruction of rainfall events and of rainfall conditions responsible for rock falls is used. A frequentist statistical method is adopted to define ED thresholds for different non-exceedance probabilities.
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U-geohaz. Deliverable D4.7: Map and report on updated rockfall source areas modelling

Paola Reichenbach, Mauro Rossi, Ivan MArchesini, Silvia Peruccacci, Maria Teresa Brunetti, Robert Sarro, the IGME team, 2019, U-geohaz. Deliverable D4.7: Map and report on updated rockfall source areas modelling, 2019,

Abstract
The document is an update of the deliverable "Map and report on rockfall source areas ...
The document is an update of the deliverable "Map and report on rockfall source areas modelling" (D4.6) released in December 2018, and introduces new data and inforation on observed source areas. The document describes an application of LAND-SUITE (LANDslide - SUsceptibility Inferential Tool Evaluator) to evaluate the spatial probability of rockfall source areas in El Hierro island.
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Formazione Personale RFI

Silvia Peruccacci, Massimiliano Alvioli, Maria Teresa Brunetti, Ivan Marchesini, Mauro Rossi, 2019, Formazione Personale RFI, PROGRAMMA FORMAZIONE PERSONALE RFI, 2019,

Abstract
Le attività di formazione hanno come obiettivo quello di illustrare il Sistema di Allertamento Nazionale ...
Le attività di formazione hanno come obiettivo quello di illustrare il Sistema di Allertamento Nazionale per la previsione del possibile innesco di fenomeni Franosi indotti da piogge lungo la rete ferroviaria di RFI (SANF-RFI) al personale di Rete Ferroviaria Italiana S.p.A. (RFI). Si ritiene infatti che SANF-RFI necessiti, per essere trasferito adeguatamente a RFI, di una fase di formazione finalizzata a un suo ottimale utilizzo.
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Carta della propensione al dissesto

Michele Santangelo, Massimiliano Alvioli, Francesca Ardizzone, Francesco Bucci, Mauro Cardinali, Federica Fiorucci, Ivan Marchesini, Paola Reichenbach, Mauro Rossi, 2019, Carta della propensione al dissesto, P-06-1, 2019,

Abstract
Il documento illustra i risultati della modellazione della suscettibilità da frana (i.e. probabilità spaziale di ...
Il documento illustra i risultati della modellazione della suscettibilità da frana (i.e. probabilità spaziale di occorrenza o propensione al dissesto) per frane di crollo, colata detritica e scivolamento, e per la loro combinazione lungo la rete ferroviaria gestita da Rete Ferroviaria Italiana S.p.A. (RFI).
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Landslide mapping from multi-sensor data through improved change detection-based Markov random field

Ping Lu Yuanyuan Qin Zhongbin Li Alessandro C. Mondini NicolaCasagli, 2019, Landslide mapping from multi-sensor data through improved change detection-based Markov random field, Remote sensing of environment (2019).,

Abstract
Accurate landslide inventory mapping is essential for quantitative hazard and risk assessment. Although multi-temporal change ...
Accurate landslide inventory mapping is essential for quantitative hazard and risk assessment. Although multi-temporal change detection techniques have contributed greatly to landslide inventory preparation, it is still challenging to generate quality change detection images (CDIs) for accurate landslide mapping. The recently proposed change detection-based Markov random field (CDMRF) provides an effective approach for rapid mapping of landslides with minimum user interventions. However, when CDI is generated by change vector analysis (CVA) alone, the CDMRF method may suffer from noise especially when the pre- and post-event remote sensing images are acquired under different atmospheric, illumination, and phenological conditions. This paper improved such CDMRF approach by integrating normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), principal component analysis (PCA), and independent component analysis (ICA) generated CDIs with MRF for landslide inventory mapping from multi-sensor data. To justify the effectiveness and applicability, the improved methods were applied to map rainfall-, typhoon-, and earthquake-triggered landslides from the pre- and post-event satellite images acquired by very high resolution QuickBird, high resolution FORMOSAT-2, and moderate resolution Sentinel-2. Moreover, they were tested on pre-event Landsat-8 and post-event Sentinel-2 datasets, indicating that they are operational for landslide inventory mapping from combined multi-temporal and multi-sensor data. The results demonstrate that the improved ?NDVI-, PCA-, and ICA-based approaches perform much better than CVA-based CDMRF in terms of completeness, correctness, Kappa coefficient, and F-measures. To the best of our knowledge, it is the first time that NDVI, PCA, and ICA are integrated with MRF for landslide inventory mapping from multi-sensor data. It is anticipated that this research can be a starting point for developing new change detection techniques that can readily generate quality CDI and for applying advanced machine learning algorithms (e.g., deep learning) to automatic detection of natural hazards from multi-sensor time series data.
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Influence of neutron skin in heavy ion collisions at RHIC energies

Jan Hammelmann(1,2), Alba Soto Ontoso(4), Massimiliano Alvioli(5), Hannah Elfner(1,2,3), 2019, Influence of neutron skin in heavy ion collisions at RHIC energies, Initial Stages 2019, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA, 24/06/2019, 28/06/2019,

Abstract
Recently there has been a measurement of the isobar nuclei 96Zr and 96Ru at RHIC ...
Recently there has been a measurement of the isobar nuclei 96Zr and 96Ru at RHIC at with the goal of studying the chiral magnetic effect. Underlying idea_ (i)Keep the background component (v2) fixed (ii)Handle on the magnetic field strength via the atomic number.
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A predictive model of societal landslide risk in Italy

Mauro Rossi, Fausto Guzzetti?, Paola Salvati, Marco Donnini, Elisabetta Napolitano, Cinzia Bianchi, 2019, A predictive model of societal landslide risk in Italy, Earth-science reviews 196 (2019). doi_10.1016/j.earscirev.2019.04.021,

DOI: 10.1016%2Fj.earscirev.2019.04.021

Abstract
We propose a novel approach to evaluate the spatial and the temporal distribution of societal ...
We propose a novel approach to evaluate the spatial and the temporal distribution of societal landslide risk from historical, sparse, point information on fatal landslides and their direct human consequences. We test the ap- proach using a record of 5571 fatalities caused by 1017 landslides at 958 sites across Italy, in the 155-year period 1861-2015. Adopting a Zipf distribution, we model societal landslide risk for the whole of Italy, and for seven physiographic and 20 administrative subdivisions of Italy. Results confirm that the Zipf distribution is adequate to describe the frequency (and the probability) of fatal landslides, and show that societal landslide risk varies in Italy depending on the largest magnitude landslide F, the number of fatal events E, and the scaling exponent of the Zipf distribution s, which controls the relative proportion of low vs. large magnitude landslides. To model societal landslide risk, we then test different grid spacings, g and circular kernel sizes, r finally adopting g = 10 km and r = 55 km. Using such geometrical constraints, we prepare maps of the variables F, E and s, revealing the complexity of landslide risk in Italy, which cannot be described properly with a single metric. For each grid cell, we assign the {F, E, s} variables to the red, green and blue bands of a composite image to obtain a single view of landslide risk to the population of Italy. Next, we prepare risk scenarios for landslides of increasing magnitudes, which we validate checking the anticipated return period of the fatal events against information on 130 fatal landslides between 1000 and 1860, and eleven fatal landslides between January 2016 and August 2018. Despite incompleteness in the old part of the record for the low magnitude landslides, and the short length and limited number of events in the recent period 2016-2018, the anticipated return periods are in good agreement with the occurrence of fatal landslides in both validation periods. Despite the known difficulty in modelling sparse datasets, the approach provided a coherent and realistic representation of societal landslide risk in Italy. Our results give new insight on the spatial and temporal variations of societal landslide risk in Italy. We expect this to contribute to improve existing zonings of landslide risk in Italy; to foster the efficacy of national and regional landslide early warning systems; and to design and implement better landslide commu- nication, mitigation and adaptation strategies. Our approach is general and not constrained to the information on fatal landslides available for Italy. We therefore expect the approach to be used to model societal landslide risk in other geographical areas for which adequate information is available, and to model the fatal consequences of other hazards.
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Activities of the Research Institute for Geo-Hydrological Protection, of the Italian National Research Council, World Centre of Excellence on landslide risk

Fausto Guzzetti, Stefano Luigi Gariano, 2019, Activities of the Research Institute for Geo-Hydrological Protection, of the Italian National Research Council, World Centre of Excellence on landslide risk, Landslides (Berl., Internet) (2019): 1–4. doi_10.1007/s10346-019-01184-w,

DOI: 10.1007%2Fs10346-019-01184-w

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Geotechnical map of Gran Canaria (Canary Islands, Spain): Application to rockfall modelling in a volcanic environment.

R. Sarro(1), R. M. Mateos(1), P. Reichenbach(2), A. Riquelme(3), A. Martín(1), L. E. Hernández-Gutiérrez(4), A. Barra(5), L. Solari(6), O. Montserrat(5), M. Alvioli(2), J. A. Fernández-Merodo(1), G. Herrera(1), 2019, Geotechnical map of Gran Canaria (Canary Islands, Spain): Application to rockfall modelling in a volcanic environment., Journal of maps (2019).,

Abstract
We present a geotechnical map of Gran Canaria (Canary Islands, Spain) based on the laboratory ...
We present a geotechnical map of Gran Canaria (Canary Islands, Spain) based on the laboratory and field characterization of 344 samples collected in the main 7 islands of the Archipelago. The map is obtained grouping the 109 lithologies of the official geological map into 7 geotechnical classes, taking into account the value of the uniaxial compressive strength of the intact rock. The new map shows a majority of hard and very hard rocks, which is consistent with the intra-plate volcanic geology of the island. As an application of the geotechnical map, and taking into account that rockfalls represent a severe threat in Gran Canaria, we develop a rockfall-runout map by applying STONE, a three-dimensional simulation program that generates simple colour maps useful to assess rockfall hazard. The accuracy of the simulation depends on the appropriate identification of the friction and energy restitution coefficients, which are derived from the geotechnical map and calibrated using two well-known rockfall cases occurred in the island. The runout map provides useful information at regional scale to evaluate and mitigate rockfall hazards, and represent a replicable application in other volcanic environments.
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SM2RAIN-ASCAT (2007-2018): global daily satellite rainfall from ASCAT soil moisture

Brocca, L., Filippucci, P., Hahn, S., Ciabatta, L., Massari, C., Camici, S., Schüller, L., Bojkov, B., Wagner, W., 2019, SM2RAIN-ASCAT (2007-2018): global daily satellite rainfall from ASCAT soil moisture, Earth system science data. Papers in open discussion (2019). doi_10.5194/essd-2019-48,

DOI: 10.5194%2Fessd-2019-48

Abstract
Long-term gridded precipitation products are crucial for several applications in hydrology, agriculture and climate sciences. ...
Long-term gridded precipitation products are crucial for several applications in hydrology, agriculture and climate sciences. Currently available precipitation products obtained from rain gauges, remote sensing and meteorological modelling suffer from space and time inconsistency due to non-uniform density of ground networks and the difficulties in merging multiple satellite sensors. The recent bottom up approach that uses satellite soil moisture observations for estimating rainfall through the SM2RAIN algorithm is suited to build long-term and consistent rainfall data record as a single polar orbiting satellite sensor is used. We exploit here the Advanced SCATterometer (ASCAT) on board three Metop satellites, launched in 2006, 2012 and 2018. The continuity of the scatterometer sensor on European operational weather satellites is ensured until mid-2040s through the Metop Second Generation Programme. By applying SM2RAIN algorithm to ASCAT soil moisture observations a long-term rainfall data record can be obtained, also operationally available in near real time. The paper describes the recent improvements in data pre-processing, SM2RAIN algorithm formulation, and data post-processing for obtaining the SM2RAIN-ASCAT global daily rainfall dataset at 12.5 km sampling (2007-2018). The quality of SM2RAIN-ASCAT dataset is assessed on a regional scale through the comparison with high-quality ground networks in Europe, United States, India and Australia. Moreover, an assessment on a global scale is provided by using the Triple Collocation technique allowing us also the comparison with other global products such as the latest European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts reanalysis (ERA5), the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission, and the gauge-based Global Precipitation Climatology Centre (GPCC) product. Results show that the SM2RAIN-ASCAT rainfall dataset performs relatively well both at regional and global scale, mainly in terms of root mean square error when compared to other datasets. Specifically, SM2RAIN-ASCAT dataset provides better performance better than GPM and GPCC in the data scarce regions of the world, such as Africa and South America. In these areas we expect the larger benefits in using SM2RAIN-ASCAT for hydrological and agricultural applications. The SM2RAIN-ASCAT dataset is freely available at https_//doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.2591215.
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Complementing near-real time satellite rainfall products with satellite soil moisture-derived rainfall through a Bayesian Inversion approach

Massari, Christian; Maggioni, Viviana; Barbetta, Silvia; Brocca, Luca; Ciabatta, Luca; Camici, Stefania; Moramarco, Tommaso; Coccia, Gabriele; Todini, Ezio, 2019, Complementing near-real time satellite rainfall products with satellite soil moisture-derived rainfall through a Bayesian Inversion approach, Journal of hydrology (Amst.) 573 (2019): 341–351. doi_10.1016/j.jhydrol.2019.03.038,

DOI: 10.1016%2Fj.jhydrol.2019.03.038

Abstract
This work investigates the potential of using the Bayesian-based Model Conditional Processor (MCP) for complementing ...
This work investigates the potential of using the Bayesian-based Model Conditional Processor (MCP) for complementing satellite precipitation products with a rainfall dataset derived from satellite soil moisture observations. MCP - which is a Bayesian Inversion approach - was originally developed for predictive uncertainty estimates of water level and discharge to support real-time flood forecasting. It is applied here for the first time to precipitation to provide its probability distribution conditional on multiple satellite precipitation estimates derived from TRMM Multi-Satellite Precipitation Analysis real-time product v.7.0 (3B42RT) and the soil moisture-based rainfall product SM2RAIN-CCI. In MCP, 3B42RT and SM2RAIN-CCI represent a priori information (predictors) about the "true" precipitation (predictand) and are used to provide its real-time a posteriori probabilistic estimate by means of the Bayes theorem. MCP is tested across Italy during a 6-year period (2010-2015) at daily/0.25 deg temporal/spatial scale. Results demonstrate that the proposed methodology provides rainfall estimates that are superior to both 3B42RT (as well as its successor IMERG-early run) and SM2RAIN-CCI in terms of both median bias, random errors and categorical scores. The study confirms that satellite soil moisture-derived rainfall can provide valuable information for improving state-of-the-art satellite precipitation products, thus making them more attractive for water resource management and large scale flood forecasting applications.
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Testing of observation operators designed to estimate profile soil moisture from surface measurements

Gao, Xiaodong; Zhao, Xining; Brocca, Luca; Pan, Daili; Wu, Pute, 2019, Testing of observation operators designed to estimate profile soil moisture from surface measurements, Hydrological processes (Print) 33 (2019): 575–584. doi_10.1002/hyp.13344,

DOI: 10.1002%2Fhyp.13344

Abstract
The accurate estimation of profile soil moisture is usually difficult due to the associated costs, ...
The accurate estimation of profile soil moisture is usually difficult due to the associated costs, strong spatiotemporal variability, and nonlinear relationship between surface and profile moisture. Here, we used data sets from the Soil and Climate Analysis Network to test how reliably observation operators developed based on the cumulative distribution function matching method can predict profile soil moisture from surface measurements. We first analysed how temporal resolution (hourly, daily, and weekly) and data length (half year, 1 year, 2 years, and 4 years) affected the performance of observation operators. The results showed that temporal resolution had a negligible influence on the performance of observation operators. However, a leave-one-year-out cross-validation showed that data length affected the performance of observation operators; a 2-year interval was identified as the most suitable duration due to its low uncertainty in prediction accuracy. The robustness of the observation operators was then tested in three primary climates (humid continental, humid subtropical, and semiarid) of the continental United States, with the exponential filter employed as an independent method. The results indicated that observation operators reliably predicted profile soil moisture for most of the tested stations and performed almost equally well as the exponential filter method. The presented results verified the feasibility of using the cumulative distribution function matching method to predict profile soil moisture from surface measurements.
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Integrating multiple satellite observations into a coherent dataset to monitor the full water cycle – application to the Mediterranean region

Pellet, Victor; Aires, Filipe; Munier, Simon; Prieto, Diego Fernandez; Jorda, Gabriel; Dorigo, Wouter Arnoud; Polcher, Jan; Brocca, Luca, 2019, Integrating multiple satellite observations into a coherent dataset to monitor the full water cycle – application to the Mediterranean region, Hydrology and earth system sciences 23 (2019): 465–491. doi_10.5194/hess-23-465-2019,

DOI: 10.5194%2Fhess-23-465-2019

Abstract
The Mediterranean region is one of the climate hotspots where the climate change impacts are ...
The Mediterranean region is one of the climate hotspots where the climate change impacts are both pronounced and documented. The HyMeX (Hydrometeorological Mediterranean eXperiment) aims to improve our understanding of the water cycle from the meteorological to climate scales. However, monitoring the water cycle with Earth observations (EO) is still a challenge_ EO products are multiple, and their utility is degraded by large uncertainties and incoherences among the products. Over the Mediterranean region, these difficulties are exacerbated by the coastal/mountainous regions and the small size of the hydrological basins. Therefore, merging/integration techniques have been developed to reduce these issues. We introduce here an improved methodology that closes not only the terrestrial but also the atmospheric and ocean budgets. The new scheme allows us to impose a spatial and temporal multiscale budget closure constraint. A new approach is also proposed to downscale the results from the basin to pixel scales (at the resolution of 0.25 degrees). The provided Mediterranean WC budget is, for the first time, based mostly on observations such as the GRACE water storage or the netflow at the Gibraltar Strait. The integrated dataset is in better agreement with in situ measurements, and we are now able to estimate the Bosporus Strait annual mean netflow.
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Near-Real-Time Flood Forecasting Based on Satellite Precipitation Products

Belabid, Nasreddine; Zhao, Feng; Brocca, Luca; Huang, Yanbo; Tan, Yumin, 2019, Near-Real-Time Flood Forecasting Based on Satellite Precipitation Products, Remote sensing (Basel) 11 (2019). doi_10.3390/rs11030252,

DOI: 10.3390%2Frs11030252

Abstract
Floods, storms and hurricanes are devastating for human life and agricultural cropland. Near-real-time (NRT) discharge ...
Floods, storms and hurricanes are devastating for human life and agricultural cropland. Near-real-time (NRT) discharge estimation is crucial to avoid the damages from flood disasters. The key input for the discharge estimation is precipitation. Directly using the ground stations to measure precipitation is not efficient, especially during a severe rainstorm, because precipitation varies even in the same region. This uncertainty might result in much less robust flood discharge estimation and forecasting models. The use of satellite precipitation products (SPPs) provides a larger area of coverage of rainstorms and a higher frequency of precipitation data compared to using the ground stations. In this paper, based on SPPs, a new NRT flood forecasting approach is proposed to reduce the time of the emergency response to flood disasters to minimize disaster damage. The proposed method allows us to forecast floods using a discharge hydrograph and to use the results to map flood extent by introducing SPPs into the rainfall-runoff model. In this study, we first evaluated the capacity of SPPs to estimate flood discharge and their accuracy in flood extent mapping. Two high temporal resolution SPPs were compared, integrated multi-satellite retrievals for global precipitation measurement (IMERG) and tropical rainfall measurement mission multi-satellite precipitation analysis (TMPA). The two products are evaluated over the Ottawa watershed in Canada during the period from 10 April 2017 to 10 May 2017. With TMPA, the results showed that the difference between the observed and modeled discharges was significant with a Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency (NSE) of -0.9241 and an adapted NSE (ANSE) of -1.0048 under high flow conditions. The TMPA-based model did not reproduce the shape of the observed hydrographs. However, with IMERG, the difference between the observed and modeled discharges was improved with an NSE equal to 0.80387 and an ANSE of 0.82874. Also, the IMERG-based model could reproduce the shape of the observed hydrographs, mainly under high flow conditions. Since IMERG products provide better accuracy, they were used for flood extent mapping in this study. Flood mapping results showed that the error was mostly within one pixel compared with the observed flood benchmark data of the Ottawa River acquired by RadarSat-2 during the flood event. The newly developed flood forecasting approach based on SPPs offers a solution for flood disaster management for poorly or totally ungauged watersheds regarding precipitation measurement. These findings could be referred to by others for NRT flood forecasting research and applications.
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Spatial-temporal variability of soil moisture_ Addressing the monitoring at the catchment scale

Dari, Jacopo; Morbidelli, Renato; Saltalippi, Carla; Massari, Christian; Brocca, Luca, 2019, Spatial-temporal variability of soil moisture_ Addressing the monitoring at the catchment scale, Journal of hydrology (Amst.) 570 (2019): 436–444. doi_10.1016/j.jhydrol.2019.01.014,

DOI: 10.1016%2Fj.jhydrol.2019.01.014

Abstract
Soil moisture plays a fundamental role in the mass and energy balance between the land ...
Soil moisture plays a fundamental role in the mass and energy balance between the land surface and the atmosphere, making its knowledge essential for several hydrological and climatic applications. The aim of this study is to extend the current knowledge of soil moisture spatial-temporal variability at the catchment scale (up to 500 km(2)). The main implication is to provide guidelines to obtain soil moisture values representative of the mean behaviour at the medium-sized river basin scale, which is useful for remote sensing validation analysis and rainfall-runoff modeling. To this end, 23 measurements campaigns were carried out during a time span of 14 months at 20 sites located within the Upper Chiascio River Basin, a catchment with a drainage area of about 460 km(2) in the Umbria Region (central Italy). The data set allowed the analysis of both soil moisture temporal stability and its dynamics. On the basis of statistical and temporal stability approaches, it was investigated how factors such as climatic regime and geomorphology influence soil moisture behaviour. For the investigated area, the spatial variability of soil moisture was higher in dry periods with respect to wet periods, mainly due to the rainfall pattern characteristics during different periods of the year. Soil moisture values recorded during wet periods showed a better correlation than those recorded during dry periods. The maximum number of required samples, to obtain the mean areal soil moisture with an absolute error of 3% vol/vol, was found equal to 12. The temporal stability analysis showed that during wet periods just one "optimal" measurement point can provide values of soil moisture representative of the catchment-mean behaviour, while during dry periods the number of "optimal" measurement points became equal to two. Therefore, at the adopted spatial scale the use of a single measurement point can lead to significant errors. From the perspective of soil moisture dynamics, the decomposition of the spatial variance showed that the contribution of the time-invariant component (temporal mean of each site) was predominant on respect to the total spatial variance of absolute soil moisture data, for almost the whole observation period. Results provided guidance to optimize soil moisture sampling by performing targeted measurements at a few selected points representative of the catchment-mean behaviour.
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Predicting Rainfall and Runoff Through Satellite Soil Moisture Data and SWAT Modelling for a Poorly Gauged Basin in Iran

Fereidoon, Majid; Koch, Manfred; Brocca, Luca, 2019, Predicting Rainfall and Runoff Through Satellite Soil Moisture Data and SWAT Modelling for a Poorly Gauged Basin in Iran, Water (Basel) 11 (2019): 594. doi_10.3390/w11030594,

DOI: 10.3390%2Fw11030594

Abstract
Hydrological models are widely used for many purposes in water sector projects, including streamflow prediction ...
Hydrological models are widely used for many purposes in water sector projects, including streamflow prediction and flood risk assessment. Among the input data used in such hydrological models, the spatial-temporal variability of rainfall datasets has a significant role on the final discharge estimation. Therefore, accurate measurements of rainfall are vital. On the other hand, ground-based measurement networks, mainly in developing countries, are either nonexistent or too sparse to capture rainfall accurately. In addition to in-situ rainfall datasets, satellite-derived rainfall products are currently available globally with high spatial and temporal resolution. An innovative approach called SM2RAIN that estimates rainfall from soil moisture data has been applied successfully to various regions. In this study, first, soil moisture content derived from the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer for the Earth observing system (AMSR-E) is used as input into the SM2RAIN algorithm to estimate daily rainfall (SM2R-AMSRE) at different sites in the Karkheh river basin (KRB), southwest Iran. Second, the SWAT (Soil and Water Assessment Tool) hydrological model was applied to simulate runoff using both ground-based observed rainfall and SM2R-AMSRE rainfall as input. The results reveal that the SM2R-AMSRE rainfall data are, in most cases, in good agreement with ground-based rainfall, with correlations R ranging between 0.58 and 0.88, though there is some underestimation of the observed rainfall due to soil moisture saturation not accounted for in the SM2RAIN equation. The subsequent SWAT-simulated monthly runoff from SM2R-AMSRE rainfall data (SWAT-SM2R-AMSRE) reproduces the observations at the six gauging stations (with coefficient of determination, R-2 > 0.71 and NSE > 0.56), though with slightly worse performances in terms of bias (Bias) and root-mean-square error (RMSE) and, again, some systematic flow underestimation compared to the SWAT model with ground-based rainfall input. Additionally, rainfall estimates of two satellite products of the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM), 3B42 and 3B42RT, are used in the calibrated SWAT- model after bias correction. The monthly runoff predictions obtained with 3B42- rainfall have 0.42 < R-2 < 0.72 and-0.06 < NSE < 0.74 which are slightly better than those obtained with 3B42RT- rainfall, but not as good as the SWAT-SM2R-AMSRE. Therefore, despite the aforementioned limitations, using SM2R-AMSRE rainfall data in a hydrological model like SWAT appears to be a viable approach in basins with limited ground-based rainfall data.
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Preface: Remote sensing for flood mapping and monitoring of flood dynamics

Domeneghetti A.; Schumann G.J.; Tarpanelli A., 2019, Preface: Remote sensing for flood mapping and monitoring of flood dynamics, Remote sensing (Basel) 11 (2019). doi_10.3390/rs11080940,

DOI: 10.3390%2Frs11080940

Abstract
This Special Issue is a collection of papers that focus on the use of remote ...
This Special Issue is a collection of papers that focus on the use of remote sensing data and describe methods for flood monitoring and mapping. These articles span a wide range of topics; present novel processing techniques and review methods; and discuss limitations and challenges. This preface provides a brief overview of the content.
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Estimating irrigation water use over the contiguous United States by combining satellite and reanalysis soil moisture data

Zaussinger, Felix; Dorigo, Wouter; Gruber, Alexander; Tarpanelli, Angelica; Filippucci, Paolo; Brocca, Luca, 2019, Estimating irrigation water use over the contiguous United States by combining satellite and reanalysis soil moisture data, Hydrology and earth system sciences 23 (2019): 897–923. doi_10.5194/hess-23-897-2019,

DOI: 10.5194%2Fhess-23-897-2019

Abstract
Effective agricultural water management requires accurate and timely information on the availability and use of ...
Effective agricultural water management requires accurate and timely information on the availability and use of irrigation water. However, most existing information on irrigation water use (IWU) lacks the objectivity and spatiotemporal representativeness needed for operational water management and meaningful characterization of land-climate interactions. Although optical remote sensing has been used to map the area affected by irrigation, it does not physically allow for the estimation of the actual amount of irrigation water applied. On the other hand, microwave observations of the moisture content in the top soil layer are directly influenced by agricultural irrigation practices and thus potentially allow for the quantitative estimation of IWU. In this study, we combine surface soil moisture (SM) retrievals from the spaceborne SMAP, AMSR2 and ASCAT microwave sensors with modeled soil moisture from MERRA-2 reanalysis to derive monthly IWU dynamics over the contiguous United States (CONUS) for the period 2013-2016. The methodology is driven by the assumption that the hydrology formulation of the MERRA-2 model does not account for irrigation, while the remotely sensed soil moisture retrievals do contain an irrigation signal. For many CONUS irrigation hot spots, the estimated spatial irrigation patterns show good agreement with a reference data set on irrigated areas. Moreover, in intensively irrigated areas, the temporal dynamics of observed IWU is meaningful with respect to ancillary data on local irrigation practices. State-aggregated mean IWU volumes derived from the combination of SMAP and MERRA-2 soil moisture show a good correlation with statistically reported state-level irrigation water withdrawals (IWW) but systematically underestimate them. We argue that this discrepancy can be mainly attributed to the coarse spatial resolution of the employed satellite soil moisture retrievals, which fails to resolve local irrigation practices. Consequently, higher-resolution soil moisture data are needed to further enhance the accuracy of IWU mapping.
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Physically-based assessment of the effects of climate change on landslide hazards in Central Italy

M. Alvioli, M. Melillo, F. Guzzetti, M. Rossi, E. Palazzi, J. von Hardenberg, M. T. Brunetti, S. Peruccacci, 2019, Physically-based assessment of the effects of climate change on landslide hazards in Central Italy, EGU General Assembly 2019, pp. 1–1, Vienna, 7-12 Aprile, 2019,

Abstract
Potential effects on the stability of slopes due to climate change remains an open issue. ...
Potential effects on the stability of slopes due to climate change remains an open issue. For rainfall induced landslides, the point consists in determining the effects of the projected changes in the duration and amounts of rainfall that can initiate slope failures. We investigated the relationship between fine-scale climate projections obtained by downscaling and the expected modifications in landslide occurrence in Central Italy, using a deterministic landslide model within rainfall events extracted from measured and downscaled precipitation data. We used rainfall measurements taken by 56 rain gauges in the 9-year period 2003-2011, and the RainFARM technique to generate downscaled synthetic rainfall fields from regional climate model projections for the 14- year calibration period 2002-2015, and for the 40-year projection period 2010-2049. Downscaled precipitation data for the future scenario was obtained in RainFARM from WRF RPC4.5 model data. Using a specific algorithm, we extracted a number of rainfall events, i.e. rainfall periods separated by dry periods of no or negligible amount of rain, from the measured and the synthetic rainfall series. Out of the many thousands of extracted rainfall events, we selected a subset of 50 representative events from the measured series, and a subset of 50 events from the synthetic series for each decadal time period, amounting to a total of 250 events from the downscaled precipitation data. Then, we used each of the selected rainfall events to force the Transient Rainfall Infiltration and Grid-Based Regional Slope-Stability Model TRIGRS v. 2.1. We analyzed the results in terms of variations in the rainfall thresholds for the possible initiation of landslides, in the probability distribution of landslide size (area), and in landslide hazard. Analyzing results in terms of rainfall thresholds and size distributions is a novel approach to investigate the effects of climate change on landslide hazard, which allows to mitigate the uncertainties introduced by the specific modeling chain adopted in this study. Results showed that the downscaled rainfall fields obtained by RainFARM can be used to single out rainfall events, and to force the slope stability model. Results further showed that while the rainfall thresholds for landslide occurrence are expected to change in future scenarios, the probability distribution of landslide areas is not. We infer that landslide hazard in the study area is expected to change in response to the projected variations in the rainfall conditions, within the scenario considered in this study. We expect our results to contribute to regional investigations of the expected impact of projected climate variations on slope stability conditions and on landslide hazards.
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Landslide event inventory maps from satellite imagery with an automatic, topography-driven algorithm

M. Alvioli, A. C. Mondini, F. Fiorucci, M. Cardinali, I. Marchesini, 2019, Landslide event inventory maps from satellite imagery with an automatic, topography-driven algorithm, EGU General Assembly 2019, pp. 1–1, Vienna, 7-12 Aprile 2019,

Abstract
We describe an automatic procedure for the classification of satellite imagery into landslide or no ...
We describe an automatic procedure for the classification of satellite imagery into landslide or no landslide categories, aimed at preparing inventory maps for a landslide event. We devised a two-steps procedure, which requires knowledge of the occurrence of a landslide event, availability of a pre- and post- event pseudo-stereo pair and a digital elevation model. The first step consists in the evaluation of a discriminant function, applied to a combination of well-known change detection indices tuned on landslide spectral response. The second step is devoted to discriminant function classification, aimed at distinguishing the only landslide class, through an improvement of the usual 'thresholding' method. The novel feature of the approach is represented by the use of slope units as topographic-aware subsets of the scene within which we apply a multiple thresholding method to classify a landslide class membership tuned on the sole landslide spectral response. SUs are morphological terrain units, bounded by drainage and divide lines delineated in such a way that terrain homogeneity is maximized within the units, and inhomogeneity is maximized across neighboring units. We obtained SUs for our study area using the r.slopeunits specialized software. The software is adaptive, in that SUs are delineated with varying sizes and shapes in different regions of the study area. SUs are particularly suited in the present context, since they encompass areas with similar slope-facing direction (aspect), accounting for the fact that locations located in regions homogeneously facing the same direction likely provide consistent spectral response in satellite imagery. The proposed method was tested in an area of about 1000 m2 in Myanmar, where torrential rainfall triggered extensive landslides in 2015, which made the news due to the occurrence of the massive Tonzang landslide and the large number of fatalities. Results of our automatic mapping were calibrated and validated against a landslide inventory map prepared through photo-interpretation by expert geomorphologists. The numerical results of the comparison of the automatic, multi-threshold mapping procedure with the ground-truth of the inventory map prepared by visual interpretation reveal that the topographic-aware subdivision of the territory allows for a better classification performance both than thresholding applied globally, or within a topographic-blind subdivision. This is particularly true in the validation area, where the grid-based method shows little gain with respect to the global thresholding method. The method is fully automatic after site-dependent operations, required only once, are performed, and exhibits improved classification performance with limited training requirements. We argue that the improved classification performance and limited training requirements represent a step forward towards an automatic, real-time landslide mapping from satellite imagery.
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Sentinel-1 SAR Amplitude Imagery for Rapid Landslide Detection

Alessandro C. Mondini, Michele Santangelo, Margherita Rocchetti, Enrica Rossetto, Andrea Manconi and Oriol Monserrat., 2019, Sentinel-1 SAR Amplitude Imagery for Rapid Landslide Detection, Remote sensing (Basel) (2019).,

Abstract
Despite landslides impact the society worldwide every day, landslide information is inhomogeneous and lacking. When ...
Despite landslides impact the society worldwide every day, landslide information is inhomogeneous and lacking. When landslides occur in remote areas or where the availability of optical images is rare due to cloud persistence, they might remain unknown, or unnoticed for long time, preventing studies and hampering civil protection operations. The unprecedented availability of SAR C-band images provided by the Sentinel-1 constellation offers the opportunity to propose new solutions to detect landslides events. In this work, we perform a systematic assessment of Sentinel-1 SAR C-band images acquired before and after known events. We present the results of a pilot study on 32 worldwide cases of rapid landslides entailing different types, sizes, slope expositions, as well as pre-existing land cover, triggering factors and climatic regimes. Results show that in about eighty-four percent of the cases, changes caused by landslides on SAR amplitudes are unambiguous, whereas only in about thirteen percent of the cases there is no evidence. On the other hand, the signal does not allow for a systematic use to produce inventories because only in 8 cases, a delineation of the landslide borders (i.e., mapping) can be manually attempted. In a few cases, cascade multi-hazard (e.g., floods caused by landslides) and evidences of extreme triggering factors (e.g., strong earthquakes or very rapid snow melting) were detected. The method promises to increase the availability of information on landslides at different spatial and temporal scales with benefits for event magnitude assessment during weather-related emergencies, model tuning, and landslide forecast model validation, in particular when accurate mapping is not required.
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Revealing minijet dynamics via centrality dependence of double parton interactions in proton-nucleus collisions

M. Alvioli(1), M. Azarkin(2), B. Blok(3), M. Strikman(4), 2019, Revealing minijet dynamics via centrality dependence of double parton interactions in proton-nucleus collisions, European physical journal. C, Particles and fields (Print) 79 (2019): 1–9. doi_10.1140/epjc/s10052-019-6998-7,

DOI: 10.1140%2Fepjc%2Fs10052-019-6998-7

Abstract
One of the main challenges hampering an accurate measurement of the double parton scattering (DPS) ...
One of the main challenges hampering an accurate measurement of the double parton scattering (DPS) cross sections is the difficulty in separating the DPS from the leading twist (LT) contributions. We argue that such a separation can be achieved, and cross section of DPS measured, in proton--nucleus scattering by exploiting the different centrality dependence of DPS and LT processes. We developed a Monte Carlo implementation of the DPS processes which includes realistic nucleon--nucleon (NN) correlations in nuclei, and an accurate description of transverse geometry of both hard and soft NN collisions. Our method allows the calculation of probability distributions of single and double dijet events as a function of centrality, also distinguishing double hard scatterings originating from a single target nucleon and from two different nucleons. We present numerical results for the rate of DPS as a function of centrality, which relates the number of wounded nucleons and the sum of transverse energy of hadrons produced at large negative (along the nucleus direction) rapidities, which is experimentally measurable. We suggest a new quantity which allows to test the geometry of DPS and we argue that it is a universal function of centrality for different DPS processes. This quantity can be tested by analyzing existing LHC data. The method developed in this work can be extended to the search for triple parton interactions.
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Rapid prediction of the magnitude scale of landslide events triggered by an earthquake

H. Tanyas (1), C. J. van Westen (1), C. Persello (1), M. Alvioli (2), 2019, Rapid prediction of the magnitude scale of landslide events triggered by an earthquake, Landslides (Berl., Print) 16 (2019): 661–676. doi_10.1007/s10346-019-01136-4,

DOI: 10.1007%2Fs10346-019-01136-4

Abstract
The severity of earthquake-induced landslide-events can be quantified by the landslide-event magnitude, a metric derived ...
The severity of earthquake-induced landslide-events can be quantified by the landslide-event magnitude, a metric derived from the frequency-size distribution of landslide inventories. However, inventories for all earthquakes do not exist, because the preparation of a suitable inventory requires data, time and expertise. Prediction of landslide-event magnitude immediately following an earthquake provides an estimate of total landslide area and volume based on empirical relations, allows the assessment of the severity of a landslide-event in near real-time and to estimate the frequency-size distribution curve of the landslides. In this study, we use 23 earthquake-induced landslide inventories and propose a method to predict landslide-event magnitude. We select five predictors, both morphometric and seismogenic, which are globally and readily available. We use the predictors within a stepwise linear regression, validated using the leave-one-out technique. We show that our approach successfully predicts landslide-event magnitude values and provides results along with their statistical significance and confidence levels. However, to test the validity of the approach globally, it should be calibrated using a larger and more representative dataset. A global, near real-time assessments regarding landslide-event magnitude scale can then be achieved by retrieving the readily available ShakeMaps, along with topographic and thematic information, and applying the calibrated model. The results may provide valuable information regarding landscape evolution processes, landslide hazard assessments and contribute to the rapid emergency response after earthquakes in mountainous terrain.
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Debris-flow volumes in northeastern Italy_ Relationship with drainage area and size probability

Marchi L.; Brunetti M.T.; Cavalli M.; Crema S., 2019, Debris-flow volumes in northeastern Italy_ Relationship with drainage area and size probability, Earth surface processes and landforms (Print) 44 (2019): 933–943. doi_10.1002/esp.4546,

DOI: 10.1002%2Fesp.4546

Abstract
A dataset of 809 debris flows that occurred in 537 basins in mountainous areas of ...
A dataset of 809 debris flows that occurred in 537 basins in mountainous areas of northeastern Italy between the mid-19th century and 2015 is collected and analyzed. A remarkable increase in the number of events is observed in the last four decades and is mainly ascribed to more systematic data collection. The correlation between debris-flow volume and drainage basin area is obtained assuming a power-law relationship. The exponent of the power-law curve at the 50th percentile (0.67 ± 0.02) indicates negative allometry, which means that basin area grows out of proportion to debris-flow volume. In contrast, the exponents at the 98th and 99th percentiles are close to one, implying that debris-flow volumes grow linearly with basin areas. The isometric relationship between the largest debris flows and the corresponding basin areas is due to the enhanced debris supply provided by the activation of widespread sediment sources, the extent of which is proportional to the basin size. The probability density function of debris-flow volume for a subset of the collected dataset is calculated using the kernel density estimation function, which permits estimating the probability of the occurrence of debris flows that exceed a given threshold volume. The comparison with debris flows in other hydroclimatic regions shows that, although debris-flow volumes in northeastern Italy may attain high values, they are often exceeded by debris flows that occur in seismically active regions and/or are triggered by more intense rainstorms. © 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
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Spin-isospin correlated configurations in complex nuclei and neutron skin effect in W± production in high-energy proton-lead collisions

M. Alvioli(1), M. Strikman(2), 2019, Spin-isospin correlated configurations in complex nuclei and neutron skin effect in W± production in high-energy proton-lead collisions, Physical review. C. Nuclear physics (Print) 100 (2019): 024912-1–024912-1. doi_10.1103/PhysRevC.100.024912,

DOI: 10.1103%2FPhysRevC.100.024912

Abstract
We extend our Monte Carlo generator of global configurations in nuclei to include different spatial ...
We extend our Monte Carlo generator of global configurations in nuclei to include different spatial distributions of protons and neutrons in heavy nuclei taking into account the difference of spatial correlations between two protons, two neutrons and proton-neutron pairs. These configurations are used for building an event generator for proton-heavy nucleus collisions at the LHC for final states with a hard interaction in the channels where cross section for p-p and p-n scattering differ. Soft interactions are taken into account in the color fluctuation extension of the Glauber algorithm taking into account the inherently different transverse geometry of soft and hard p-N collisions. We use the new event generator to test an interesting observation of Physics Letters B745 (2015) 73-78, that the ratio of W+/W- production rates in p-Pb collisions should significantly deviate from the inclusive value for peripheral collisions due to the presence of a neutron skin. We qualitatively confirm expectation of Physics Letters B745 (2015) 73-78, though for a realistic centrality trigger, we find the effect to be a factor of two smaller than the original estimate.
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Visual interpretation of stereoscopic NDVI satellite images to map rainfall-induced landslidesosco

Federica Fiorucci, Francesca Ardizzone, Alessandro Cesare Mondini, Alessia Viero, Fausto Guzzetti, 2019, Visual interpretation of stereoscopic NDVI satellite images to map rainfall-induced landslidesosco, Landslides (Berl., Print) (2019).,

Abstract
Landslide inventory maps are commonly prepared through the visual interpretation of stereoscopic aerial photographs and field checks. ...
Landslide inventory maps are commonly prepared through the visual interpretation of stereoscopic aerial photographs and field checks. Stereoscopic satellite images can also be interpreted visually to recognize and map landslides. When interpreting stereoscopic imagery, shadows can conceal the photographic elements typical of landslides, hampering the recognition and mapping of the landslides. To mitigate the problem, we propose a method that exploits normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) images and digital stereoscopy for the 3D visual recognition and mapping of landslides in shadowed areas. We tested the method in the 25 km2 Pogliaschina catchment, northern Italy, where intense rainfall caused abundant landslides on 25 October 2011. Using a PLANAR® StereoMirror(TM) digital stereoscope, we prepared an event landslide inventory map (E-LIM) through the visual interpretation of a pair of NDVI images obtained from a WorldView-2 stereoscopic multispectral bundle. We compared the event inventory with two independent E-LIMs for the same area and landslide event. The 3D vision of the NDVI stereoscopic image pair maximized the use of the radiometric (color and tone) and the terrain (elevation, slope, relief, and convexity) information captured by the stereoscopic multispectral images, allowing for the recognition of more landslides and more landslide areas than the other E-LIMs in the shadowed areas. Our results confirm that use of NDVI images facilitates the visual recognition and mapping of landslides in terrain affected by shadows. We expect that the proposed method can help trained interpreters to map landslides more accurately in areas affected by shadows.
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Toward Global Soil Moisture Monitoring With Sentinel-1: Harnessing Assets and Overcoming Obstacles

Bauer-Marschallinger B.; Freeman V.; Cao S.; Paulik C.; Schaufler S.; Stachl T.; Modanesi S.; Massari C.; Ciabatta L.; Brocca L.; Wagner W., 2019, Toward Global Soil Moisture Monitoring With Sentinel-1: Harnessing Assets and Overcoming Obstacles, IEEE transactions on geoscience and remote sensing (2019). doi_10.1109/TGRS.2018.2858004,

DOI: 10.1109%2FTGRS.2018.2858004

Abstract
Soil moisture is a key environmental variable, important to, e.g., farmers, meteorologists, and disaster management ...
Soil moisture is a key environmental variable, important to, e.g., farmers, meteorologists, and disaster management units. Here, we present a method to retrieve surface soil moisture (SSM) from the Sentinel-1 (S-1) satellites, which carry C-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (CSAR) sensors that provide the richest freely available SAR data source so far, unprecedented in accuracy and coverage. Our SSM retrieval method, adapting well-established change detection algorithms, builds the first globally deployable soil moisture observation data set with 1-km resolution. This paper provides an algorithm formulation to be operated in data cube architectures and high-performance computing environments. It includes the novel dynamic Gaussian upscaling method for spatial upscaling of SAR imagery, harnessing its field-scale information and successfully mitigating effects from the SAR's high signal complexity. Also, a new regression-based approach for estimating the radar slope is defined, coping with Sentinel-1's inhomogeneity in spatial coverage. We employ the S-1 SSM algorithm on a 3-year S-1 data cube over Italy, obtaining a consistent set of model parameters and product masks, unperturbed by coverage discontinuities. An evaluation of therefrom generated S-1 SSM data, involving a 1-km soil water balance model over Umbria, yields high agreement over plains and agricultural areas, with low agreement over forests and strong topography. While positive biases during the growing season are detected, the excellent capability to capture small-scale soil moisture changes as from rainfall or irrigation is evident. The S-1 SSM is currently in preparation toward operational product dissemination in the Copernicus Global Land Service.
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Daily River Discharge Estimates by Merging Satellite Optical Sensors and Radar Altimetry Through Artificial Neural Network

Tarpanelli, Angelica; Santi, Emanuele; Tourian, Mohammad J.; Filippucci, Paolo; Amarnath, Giriraj; Brocca, Luca, 2019, Daily River Discharge Estimates by Merging Satellite Optical Sensors and Radar Altimetry Through Artificial Neural Network, IEEE transactions on geoscience and remote sensing (2019). doi_10.1109/TGRS.2018.2854625,

DOI: 10.1109%2FTGRS.2018.2854625

Abstract
Thanks to the large number of satellites, the multimission approach is becoming a viable method ...
Thanks to the large number of satellites, the multimission approach is becoming a viable method to integrate measurements and intensify the number of samples in space and time for monitoring the earth system. In this paper, we merged data from different satellite missions, optical sensors, and altimetry, for estimating daily river discharge through the application of the artificial neural network (ANN) technique. ANN was selected among other retrieval techniques because it offers an easy but effective way of combining input data from different sources into the same retrieval algorithm. The network is trained in a calibration period and validated in an independent period against in situ observations of river discharge for two gauging sites_ Lokoja along the Niger River and Pontelagoscuro along the Po River. For optical sensors, we found that the temporal resolution is more important than the spatial resolution for obtaining accurate discharge estimates. Our results show that Landsat fails in the estimation of extreme events by missing most of the peak values due to its long revisit time (14-16 days). Better performances are obtained from Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) and Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer. Radar altimetry provides results in between MODIS-TERRA and MODIS-AQUA at Lokoja, whereas it outperforms all single optical sensors at Pontelagoscuro. The multimission approach, involving optical sensors and altimetry, is found the most reliable tool to estimate river discharge with a relative root-mean-square error of 0.12% and 0.27% and Nash-Sutcliffe coefficient of 0.98 and 0.83 for the Niger and Po rivers, respectively.
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Understanding the global hydrological droughts of 2003-2016 and their relationships with teleconnections

Forootan, E.; Forootan, E.; Khaki, M.; Khaki, M.; Schumacher, M.; Wulfmeyer, V.; Mehrnegar, N.; van Dijk, A. I.J.M.; Brocca, L.; Farzaneh, S.; Akinluyi, F.; Ramillien, G.; Shum, C. K.; Shum, C. K.; Awange, J.; Mostafaie, A., 2019, Understanding the global hydrological droughts of 2003-2016 and their relationships with teleconnections, Science of the total environment 650 (2019): 2587–2604. doi_10.1016/j.scitotenv.2018.09.231,

DOI: 10.1016%2Fj.scitotenv.2018.09.231

Abstract
Droughts often evolve gradually and cover large areas, and therefore, affect many people and activities. ...
Droughts often evolve gradually and cover large areas, and therefore, affect many people and activities. This motivates developing techniques to integrate different satellite observations, to cover large areas, and understand spatial and temporal variability of droughts. In this study, we apply probabilistic techniques to generate satellite derived meteorological, hydrological, and hydro-meteorological drought indices for the world's 156 major river basins covering 2003-2016. The data includes Terrestrial Water Storage (TWS) estimates from the Gravity Recovery And Climate Experiment (GRACE) mission, along with soil moisture, precipitation, and evapotranspiration reanalysis. Different drought characteristics of trends, occurrences, areal-extent, and frequencies corresponding to 3-, 6-, 12-, and 24-month timescales are extracted from these indices. Drought evolution within selected basins of Africa, America, and Asia is interpreted. Canonical Correlation Analysis (CCA) is then applied to find the relationship between global hydro-meteorological droughts and satellite derived Sea Surface Temperature (SST) changes. This relationship is then used to extract regions, where droughts and teleconnections are strongly interrelated. Our numerical results indicate that the 3- to 6-month hydrological droughts occur more frequently than the other timescales. Longer memory of water storage changes (than water fluxes) has found to be the reason of detecting extended hydrological droughts in regions such as the Middle East and Northern Africa. Through CCA, we show that the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) has major impact on the magnitude and evolution of hydrological droughts in regions such as the northern parts of Asia and most parts of the Australian continent between 2006 and 2011, as well as droughts in the Amazon basin, South Asia, and North Africa between 2010 and 2012. The Indian ocean Dipole (IOD) and North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) are found to have regional influence on the evolution of hydrological droughts.
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DEFINIZIONE DI SOGLIE PLUVIOMETRICHE E IMPLEMENTAZIONE DEL SISTEMA DI ALLERTA REGIONALE PER LA PREVISIONE DI FRANE INDOTTE DALLA PIOGGIA IN SARDEGNA (SARF SARDEGNA)

Maria Teresa Brunetti, Silvia Peruccacci, Mauro Rossi, Ivan Marchesini, Fausto Guzzetti, 2018, DEFINIZIONE DI SOGLIE PLUVIOMETRICHE E IMPLEMENTAZIONE DEL SISTEMA DI ALLERTA REGIONALE PER LA PREVISIONE DI FRANE INDOTTE DALLA PIOGGIA IN SARDEGNA (SARF SARDEGNA), 2018,

Abstract
Il documento è l'Allegato Tecnico relativo all'Accordo tra la Direzione generale della Protezione Civile della ...
Il documento è l'Allegato Tecnico relativo all'Accordo tra la Direzione generale della Protezione Civile della Regione Sardegna, Servizio previsione rischi e dei sistemi informativi, infrastrutture e reti e l'Istituto di Ricerca per la Protezione Idrogeologica (IRPI), Centro di Competenza (CC) del Dipartimento della Protezione Civile (DPC). In particolare, le attività proposte riguardano (i) la selezione e la formazione di un'unità di personale, (ii) l'analisi della banca dati esistente e la raccolta, l'organizzazione e l'elaborazione di informazioni meteorologiche e geomorfologiche su movimenti franosi indotti da piogge nella Regione Sardegna, (iii) la regionalizzazione e la validazione delle previsioni del Sistema di Allertamento Nazionale per il possibile innesco di Frane indotte da pioggia in Italia (SANF) in Sardegna, (iv) la definizione di nuove soglie pluviometriche empiriche per la previsione del possibile innesco di fenomeni franosi nel territorio regionale, (v) la definizione di soglie per aree fisiografiche sub-regionali, (vi) il supporto alla realizzazione della carta di suscettibilità da frana in Sardegna, (vii) l'implementazione del Sistema di Allertamento Regionale per il possibile innesco di Frane indotte da pioggia in Sardegna (SARF Sardegna), e (viii) la formazione e il supporto per il personale della Regione Sardegna.
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Rapid Segmentation of Change Detection Maps Derived from Satellite Backscatter Imagery to Extract Landslides Information

Giuseppe Esposito, Ivan Marchesini, Alessandro Cesare Mondini, Mauro Rossi, Paola Reichenbach, Paola Salvati, 2018, Rapid Segmentation of Change Detection Maps Derived from Satellite Backscatter Imagery to Extract Landslides Information, 2nd International Earth Science & Global Geology Conference, pp. 36–36, Dubai (UAE), 3/12/2018, 4/12/2018,

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SANF-RFI – Definizione di soglie pluviometriche per il possibile innesco di frane in Italia

Massimo Melillo, Stefano Luigi Gariano, Silvia Peruccacci, Maria Teresa Brunetti, Ivan Marchesini, 2018, SANF-RFI – Definizione di soglie pluviometriche per il possibile innesco di frane in Italia, P-04-1, 2018,

Abstract
Il documento illustra la definizione di soglie pluviometriche per il possibile innesco di frane in ...
Il documento illustra la definizione di soglie pluviometriche per il possibile innesco di frane in Italia, ottenute analizzando informazioni su movimenti franosi occorsi lungo la rete ferroviaria RFI. In particolare, il documento è suddiviso in sette capitoli. Il Capitolo 1 contiene un'introduzione ai contenuti del documento. Il Capitolo 2 descrive il tool implementato dal CC CNR-IRPI per la ricostruzione degli eventi di pioggia e delle condizioni pluviometriche per l'innesco delle frane e la definizione oggettiva e riproducibile di soglie di pioggia empiriche. Il Capitolo 3 mostra la rete pluviometrica nazionale utilizzata per ricostruire la pioggia presumibilmente responsabile dell'innesco dei fenomeni franosi lungo la rete RFI. Il Capitolo 4 riporta l'infrastruttura RFI e dettaglia le analisi svolte per la georeferenziazione automatica del grafo di rete. Nel Capitolo 5 sono descritti il catalogo degli eventi pluviometrici che hanno innescato frane in Italia costruito dal CC CNR-IRPI e il catalogo dei fenomeni franosi occorsi lungo la rete ferroviaria fornito da RFI. Il Capitolo 6 riporta la definizione delle nuove soglie pluviometriche nazionali ottenute integrando i dati disponibili presso il CC CNR-IRPI con quelli provenienti dal catalogo RFI. Nello stesso capitolo viene mostrato il confronto tra la nuova soglia nazionale e quelle precedentemente definite dal CC CNR-IRPI. Il Capitolo 7 contiene l'elenco della bibliografia di riferimento.
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