In this study, the interferometric coherence calculated from 12-day Sentinel-1 image pairs was analysed in relation to mowing events on agricultural grasslands. Results showed that after a mowing ...event, median VH (vertical transmit, horizontal receive) and VV (vertical transmit, vertical receive) polarisation coherence values were statistically significantly higher than those from before the event. The shorter the time interval after the mowing event and the first interferometric acquisition, the higher the coherence. The coherence tended to stay higher, even 24 to 36 days after a mowing event. Precipitation caused the coherence to decrease, impeding the detection of a mowing event. Given the three analysed acquisition geometries, it was concluded that afternoon acquisitions and steeper incidence angles were more useful in the context of this study. In the case of morning acquisitions, dew might have caused a decrease of coherence for mowed and unmowed grasslands. Additionally, an increase of coherence after a mowing event was not evident during the rapid growth phase, due to the 12-day separation between the interferometric acquisitions. In future studies, six-day pairs utilising Sentinel-1A and 1B acquisitions should be considered.
Climate change is expected to increase to extreme temperatures and lead to more intense formation of near-surface ozone. Higher temperatures can cause heat stress and ozone is a highly oxidative ...pollutant; both increase cardiorespiratory mortality. Using greenhouse gas and ozone precursor emission scenarios, global and regional climate and chemistry-transport models, epidemiological data, and population projections, we projected ozone- and heat-related health risks under a changing climate. European near-surface temperature was modelled with the regional climate model (RCA4), forced by the greenhouse gas emission scenario RCP4.5 and the global climate model EC-EARTH, and near-surface ozone was modelled with the Multi-scale Atmospheric Transport and Chemistry (MATCH) model. Two periods were compared: recent climate in 1991-2000 and future climate in 2046-2055, projecting around a 2° increase in global temperatures by that time. Projections of premature mortality considered future climate, future population, and future emissions separately and jointly to understand the relative importance of their contributions. Ozone currently causes 55 000 premature deaths annually in Europe due to long-term exposure, including a proportion of the estimated 26 000 deaths per year due to short-term exposures. When only taking into account the impact of a changing climate, up to an 11% increase in ozone-associated mortality is expected in some countries in Central and Southern Europe in 2050. However, projected decreases in ozone precursor emissions are expected to result in a decrease in ozone-related mortality (−30% as EU average). Due to aging and increasingly susceptible populations, the decrease in 2050 would be smaller, up to −24%. During summer months, ozone risks could combine with increasing temperatures, especially during the hottest periods and in densely populated urban areas. While the heat burden is currently of the same order of magnitude as ozone, due to increasing temperatures and decreasing ozone precursor emissions, heat-related mortality could be twice as large as ozone-related mortality in 2050.
The Copernicus Sentinel-2 mission operated by the European Space Agency (ESA) provides comprehensive and continuous multi-spectral observations of all the Earth’s land surface since mid-2015. Clouds ...and cloud shadows significantly decrease the usability of optical satellite data, especially in agricultural applications; therefore, an accurate and reliable cloud mask is mandatory for effective EO optical data exploitation. During the last few years, image segmentation techniques have developed rapidly with the exploitation of neural network capabilities. With this perspective, the KappaMask processor using U-Net architecture was developed with the ability to generate a classification mask over northern latitudes into the following classes: clear, cloud shadow, semi-transparent cloud (thin clouds), cloud and invalid. For training, a Sentinel-2 dataset covering the Northern European terrestrial area was labelled. KappaMask provides a 10 m classification mask for Sentinel-2 Level-2A (L2A) and Level-1C (L1C) products. The total dice coefficient on the test dataset, which was not seen by the model at any stage, was 80% for KappaMask L2A and 76% for KappaMask L1C for clear, cloud shadow, semi-transparent and cloud classes. A comparison with rule-based cloud mask methods was then performed on the same test dataset, where Sen2Cor reached 59% dice coefficient for clear, cloud shadow, semi-transparent and cloud classes, Fmask reached 61% for clear, cloud shadow and cloud classes and Maja reached 51% for clear and cloud classes. The closest machine learning open-source cloud classification mask, S2cloudless, had a 63% dice coefficient providing only cloud and clear classes, while KappaMask L2A, with a more complex classification schema, outperformed S2cloudless by 17%.
Abstract
Background
Residential wood combustion (RWC) is one of the largest sources of fine particles (PM
2.5
) in the Nordic cities. The current study aims to calculate the related health effects in ...four studied city areas in Sweden, Finland, Norway, and Denmark.
Methods
Health impact assessment (HIA) was employed as the methodology to quantify the health burden. Firstly, the RWC induced annual average PM
2.5
concentrations from local sources were estimated with air pollution dispersion modelling. Secondly, the baseline mortality rates were retrieved from the national health registers. Thirdly, the concentration-response function from a previous epidemiological study was applied. For the health impact calculations, the WHO-developed tool AirQ + was used.
Results
Amongst the studied city areas, the local RWC induced PM
2.5
concentration was lowest in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area (population-weighted annual average concentration 0.46 µg m
− 3
) and highest in Oslo (2.77 µg m
− 3
). Each year, particulate matter attributed to RWC caused around 19 premature deaths in Umeå (95% CI: 8–29), 85 in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area (95% CI: 35–129), 78 in Copenhagen (95% CI: 33–118), and 232 premature deaths in Oslo (95% CI: 97–346). The average loss of life years per premature death case was approximately ten years; however, in the whole population, this reflects on average a decrease in life expectancy by 0.25 (0.10–0.36) years. In terms of the relative contributions in cities, life expectancy will be decreased by 0.10 (95% CI: 0.05–0.16), 0.18 (95% CI: 0.07–0.28), 0.22 (95% CI: 0.09–0.33) and 0.63 (95% CI: 0.26–0.96) years in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area, Umeå, Copenhagen and Oslo respectively. The number of years of life lost was lowest in Umeå (172, 95% CI: 71–260) and highest in Oslo (2458, 95% CI: 1033–3669).
Conclusions
All four Nordic city areas have a substantial amount of domestic heating, and RWC is one of the most significant sources of PM
2.5
. This implicates a substantial predicted impact on public health in terms of premature mortality. Thus, several public health measures are needed to reduce the RWC emissions.
•Interferometric coherence detects peat harvesting related surface altering works.•The potential for estimation of peat extraction intensity demonstrated.•Partially extracted areas distinguishable ...with the coherence standard deviation.•Multiple orbits, backscatter intensity or reference polygons and the impact of rain.
Monitoring of when, where and in which quantity peat is harvested is currently based on manual declarations. Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) is a powerful tool for change detection and monitoring. The aim of this study was to evaluate whether Sentinel-1 6-day interferometric SAR (InSAR) temporal coherence could allow peat extraction monitoring from satellite. We demonstrate that temporal median coherence enables to detect harvest related surface altering works and therefore also spatially explicitly determine active and inactive extraction areas. A polygon-based multi-orbit time series approach is sufficient for the task. Hereby, vertical–vertical polarisation (VV) is more sensitive to the changes compared to vertical-horizontal (VH). During the main harvest season the peat extraction area has median VV coherence lower than 0.2 while the abandoned area and open bog which serve as reference for undisturbed extraction area have close to 0.6. Also, the potential for coherence based milled peat extraction intensity estimation is demonstrated and an indication is given how partially extracted areas could be distinguished from fully harvested and not harvest areas, by the use of coherence standard deviation. Regarding the influence of rainfall, only heavy rain on one of the acquisitions of the image pair whereas the other is from dry conditions seems to cause decorrelation comparable to surface altering works. Moreover, deploying images from multiple consecutive orbits or introducing backscatter intensity σ0 or reference polygons of undisturbed area helps to reduce risk for rain induced false positives. Developing an operational algorithm for peat extraction identification could be undertaken in future studies.
The future climate regions in Estonia Sepp, Mait; Tamm, Tanel; Sagris, Valentina
Estonian journal of earth sciences,
12/2018, Letnik:
67, Številka:
4
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
It can be assumed that future climate changes may have diverse impact on different parts of Estonia. For the regionalization of climate change impacts we used outputs of the EURO-CORDEX climate model ...ensemble and added its relative changes for temperature and precipitation to the values of the model's reference period 1971-2000. In order to reduce the ambiguity of spatially detailed outputs, the clusters of future climate variables for seasons were produced. We conclude that three climatic regions--the mainland, the coast and the western Estonian islands--will most likely persist in the future climate. Major regional changes may occur at the end of the 21st century according to the pessimistic scenario of Representative Concentration Pathways RCP8.5. In the rest of the cases, although the boundaries of regions may shift, the warming as well as the increase in precipitation will mainly occur within the regions. Partially this will result in the growth of contrasts between regions.Key words: climate change, climate modelling outputs, Estonia, climate regions, greenhouse gas emission scenarios.
Health impact assessments (HIA) use information on exposure, baseline mortality/morbidity and exposure-response functions from epidemiological studies in order to quantify the health impacts of ...existing situations and/or alternative scenarios. The aim of this study was to improve HIA methods for air pollution studies in situations where exposures can be estimated using GIS with high spatial resolution and dispersion modeling approaches.
Tallinn was divided into 84 sections according to neighborhoods, with a total population of approx. 390,000 persons. Actual baseline rates for total mortality and hospitalization with cardiovascular and respiratory diagnosis were identified. The exposure to fine particles (PM2.5) from local emissions was defined as the modeled annual levels. The model validation and morbidity assessment were based on 2006 PM10 or PM2.5 levels at 3 monitoring stations. The exposure-response coefficients used were for total mortality 6.2% (95% CI 1.6-11%) per 10 microg/m3 increase of annual mean PM2.5 concentration and for the assessment of respiratory and cardiovascular hospitalizations 1.14% (95% CI 0.62-1.67%) and 0.73% (95% CI 0.47-0.93%) per 10 microg/m3 increase of PM10. The direct costs related to morbidity were calculated according to hospital treatment expenses in 2005 and the cost of premature deaths using the concept of Value of Life Year (VOLY).
The annual population-weighted-modeled exposure to locally emitted PM2.5 in Tallinn was 11.6 microg/m3. Our analysis showed that it corresponds to 296 (95% CI 76528) premature deaths resulting in 3859 (95% CI 10236636) Years of Life Lost (YLL) per year. The average decrease in life-expectancy at birth per resident of Tallinn was estimated to be 0.64 (95% CI 0.17-1.10) years. While in the polluted city centre this may reach 1.17 years, in the least polluted neighborhoods it remains between 0.1 and 0.3 years. When dividing the YLL by the number of premature deaths, the decrease in life expectancy among the actual cases is around 13 years. As for the morbidity, the short-term effects of air pollution were estimated to result in an additional 71 (95% CI 43-104) respiratory and 204 (95% CI 131-260) cardiovascular hospitalizations per year. The biggest external costs are related to the long-term effects on mortality: this is on average euro 150 (95% CI 40-260) million annually. In comparison, the costs of short-term air-pollution driven hospitalizations are small euro 0.3 (95% CI 0.2-0.4) million.
Sectioning the city for analysis and using GIS systems can help to improve the accuracy of air pollution health impact estimations, especially in study areas with poor air pollution monitoring data but available dispersion models.
Short temporal baseline regular Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) interferometry is a tool well suited for wide area monitoring of agricultural activities, urgently needed in European Union Common ...Agricultural Policy (CAP) enforcement. In this study, we demonstrate and describe in detail, how mowing and ploughing events can be identified from Sentinel-1 6-day interferometric coherence time series. The study is based on a large dataset of 386 dual polarimetric Sentinel-1 VV/VH SAR and 351 Sentinel-2 optical images, and nearly 2000 documented mowing and ploughing events on more than 1000 parcels (average 10.6 ha, smallest 0.6 ha, largest 108.5 ha). Statistical analysis revealed that mowing and ploughing cause coherence to increase when compared to values before an event. In the case of mowing, the coherence increased from 0.18 to 0.35, while Sentinel-2 NDVI (indicating the amount of green chlorophyll containing biomass) at the same time decreased from 0.75 to 0.5. For mowing, there was virtually no difference between the polarisations. After ploughing, VV-coherence grew up to 0.65 and VH-coherence to 0.45, while NDVI was around 0.2 at the same time. Before ploughing, both coherence and NDVI values were very variable, determined by the agricultural management practices of the parcel. Results presented here can be used for planning further studies and developing mowing and ploughing detection algorithms based on Sentinel-1 data. Besides CAP enforcement, the results are also useful for food security and land use change detection applications.
Transportation noise is a growing public health concern worldwide, especially in urban areas, causing annoyance, sleep disturbance, cardiovascular diseases and other health effects. Recently, ...European Commission (EC) has developed a mutual methodology for assessing health impacts of transportation noise in European Union using strategic noise mapping. Applying this methodology, our aim was to quantify the health effects of road, rail and aircraft noise in two Estonian cities, Tallinn and Tartu. We also aimed to assess sensitivity of this methodology, while implementing lower threshold values and employing additional health outcomes.
The proportion of highly annoyed residents due to road traffic noise was 11.6% in Tallinn, and 9.2% in Tartu; around 2.5% residents in both cities could have high sleeping disturbances. As exposure to railway and aircraft noise was relatively low in both cities, people with high annoyance and high sleep disturbance caused by railway and aircraft noise was below 1%. Ischemic heart disease (IHD) cases attributable to road traffic noise was estimated to be 122.6 in Tallinn and 21.5 in Tartu. Altogether transportation noise was estimated to cause 1807 disability adjusted life years (DALYs) in Tallinn and 370 DALYs in Tartu. The health costs were calculated as €126.5 and €25.9 million annually, respectively in the two cities.
When we included higher number of health outcomes (stroke incidence, IHD deaths) and lowered exposure threshold by 5 dB, the annual burden of disease was doubled. As the latest epidemiological studies showed transportation noise having larger number of effects on lower noise levels, the results with the currently applied European Commission health impact assessment (HIA) methodology were rather conservative. Despite of uncertainties associated to applied methodology, transportation noise, especially road traffic noise, is an important environmental risk factor, that leads to considerable loss of healthy life years and causes large health costs in urban areas.
•Transportation noise have considerable health effects in urban areas.•Currently applied health impact assessment methodology is rather conservative.•The method is sensitive for changes in exposure thresholds.
Background: Residential wood combustion (RWC) is one of the largest sources of fine particles (PM2.5) in the Nordic cities. The current study aims to calculate the related health effects in four ...studied city areas in Sweden, Finland, Norway, and Denmark.
Methods: Health impact assessment (HIA) was employed as the methodology to quantify the health burden. Firstly, the RWC induced annual average PM2.5 concentrations from local sources were estimated with air pollution dispersion modelling. Secondly, the baseline mortality rates were retrieved from the national health registers. Thirdly, the concentration-response function from a previous epidemiological study was applied. For the health impact calculations, the WHO-developed tool AirQ + was used.
Results: Amongst the studied city areas, the local RWC induced PM2.5 concentration was lowest in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area (population-weighted annual average concentration 0.46 µg m− 3) and highest in Oslo (2.77 µg m− 3). Each year, particulate matter attributed to RWC caused around 19 premature deaths in Umeå (95% CI: 8–29), 85 in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area (95% CI: 35–129), 78 in Copenhagen (95% CI: 33–118), and 232 premature deaths in Oslo (95% CI: 97–346). The average loss of life years per premature death case was approximately ten years; however, in the whole population, this reflects on average a decrease in life expectancy by 0.25 (0.10–0.36) years. In terms of the relative contributions in cities, life expectancy will be decreased by 0.10 (95% CI: 0.05–0.16), 0.18 (95% CI: 0.07–0.28), 0.22 (95% CI: 0.09–0.33) and 0.63 (95% CI: 0.26–0.96) years in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area, Umeå, Copenhagen and Oslo respectively. The number of years of life lost was lowest in Umeå (172, 95% CI: 71–260) and highest in Oslo (2458, 95% CI: 1033–3669).
Conclusions: All four Nordic city areas have a substantial amount of domestic heating, and RWC is one of the most significant sources of PM2.5. This implicates a substantial predicted impact on public health in terms of premature mortality. Thus, several public health measures are needed to reduce the RWC emissions.
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