Article
Environmental Sciences
George Varlas, Christina Papadaki, Konstantinos Stefanidis, Angeliki Mentzafou, Ilias Pechlivanidis, Anastasios Papadopoulos, Elias Dimitriou
Summary: This study investigates the impact of climate change on the average annual discharge and discharge maxima in a Mediterranean river from 1981 to 2017. The results show a decrease in average annual discharge in the 1980s, reaching a minimum in the early 1990s, and then an increase from the mid-1990s to 2017. The study also reveals a significant increasing trend in discharge maxima in September in two of the three sub-basins, highlighting the potential socioeconomic implications of climate change in the Pinios basin.
Article
Geography, Physical
Yuming Guo, Fang Xiang, Hengxu Huang, Qi Yang, Li Ding, Kunmei Yang
Summary: This study explores the Quaternary paleoclimatic changes in the Yibin area using sediment characteristics as proxies. The results show a warm and humid paleoclimate during the Middle Pleistocene and early Late Pleistocene, followed by a dry and cold paleoclimate in the middle-late Late Pleistocene. The uplift of the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau intensified the Plateau winter monsoon and caused the withdrawal of the Indian monsoon from Sichuan Basin, leading to changes in the paleoclimate of the Yibin area.
Article
Environmental Sciences
Dimitrios Malamataris, Anna Chatzi, Konstantinos Babakos, Vassilios Pisinaras, Evangelos Hatzigiannakis, Barbara A. Willaarts, Manuel Bea, Alessandro Pagano, Andreas Panagopoulos
Summary: This paper presents and analyzes an effective strategy for stakeholder participation, aiming to identify Water-Energy-Food-Ecosystem (WEFE) challenges in the Pinios River Basin of Greece. The proposed comprehensive methodology, developed within a specific project, provides a framework for managing the WEFE system and obtaining insights into the challenges through efficient engagement of stakeholders. Stakeholder perceptions contribute to redefining policies in line with sustainable development goals.
Article
Green & Sustainable Science & Technology
Vassilios Pisinaras, Frank Herrmann, Andreas Panagopoulos, Evangelos Tziritis, Ian McNamara, Frank Wendland
Summary: To support sustainable water resources management in the Pinios River Basin (PRB), we established and calibrated the mGROWA hydrological model at a high resolution (100 meters) and daily time scale, considering crop-specific irrigation requirements and overcoming data scarcity constraints. This approach provides spatially continuous estimates of various water balance components, such as actual evapotranspiration, irrigation requirements, total runoff, and groundwater recharge, and enables identification of potential unsustainable water use in irrigated agriculture.
Article
Geography, Physical
Caio Breda, Fabiano do Nascimento Pupim, Andre Oliveira Sawakuchi, Thays Desiree Mineli
Summary: Studies on the Upper and Middle Tiete River in southeast Brazil during the late Quaternary using geomorphological, sedimentological, and OSL dating techniques reveal the effects of climate and tectonic factors on alluvial aggradation and terraces formation. The evolution of the fluvial landscape is mainly influenced by climate-induced changes in water discharge.
Article
Remote Sensing
Alex Sole Gomez, Leonardo Scandolo, Elmar Eisemann
Summary: Plastic pollution in the sea has negative impacts on the environment, marine life, and the economy. This study proposes an automatic learning approach based on satellite imagery to accurately detect floating plastic debris in rivers. The approach shows high predictive accuracy, but a more extensive labeled dataset is needed to generalize it to different types of rivers. Additionally, the solution can be used to monitor the accumulation of floating debris over time in specific areas.
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF APPLIED EARTH OBSERVATION AND GEOINFORMATION
(2022)
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Yong Li, Yanmeng Chi, Shanling Han, Chaojie Zhao, Yanan Miao
Summary: This paper introduces the process of quantitatively characterizing the microscopic pore-throat structure of carbon fiber reinforced resin matrix composites using Avizo software and discusses the difficult problems encountered in the analysis. The study reveals that pores in the sample are mainly dispersed in the lower part, with the equivalent radius mainly in the range of 0.7-0.8 μm.
Article
Chemistry, Inorganic & Nuclear
Jingrui Han, Lei Shao, Huan Chen, Huazhang Zhou, Bing Zhang, Yan Zhang, Hehe Yuan, Junyi Chen, Jun Zhou, Yu Fu
Summary: A new method to construct hierarchical architectures has been developed by programmed transformation of metal-organic frameworks (MOFs). Hierarchical quaternary architectures of MOF have been successfully achieved by sequential immersion of the precursor in two kinds of transformation solutions.
INORGANIC CHEMISTRY
(2022)
Article
Environmental Sciences
Daniel Sola, K. Andrea Scott
Summary: River ice segmentation is crucial for various applications such as validating river processes, predicting ice jam and flooding risks, and managing water supply and hydroelectric power generation. In this study, we propose a novel convolution block that combines depthwise separable convolutions and local binary convolutions, resulting in significantly reduced parameters, compute operations, and memory usage while maintaining comparable segmentation performance. Our network shows faster training speed and better generalization ability compared to efficient segmentation networks like LR-ASPP with a MobileNetV3 backbone.
Article
Remote Sensing
Franz Wagner, Anette Eltner, Hans-Gerd Maas
Summary: A comparison of 32 convolutional neural networks was conducted to obtain reliable water segmentations for real-time monitoring of river water levels. The networks were trained on a new river water segmentation dataset and two augmentation methods were developed to prevent overfitting. U-Net with a ResNeXt 50 encoding network achieved the best performance on the water segmentation dataset, with IoU scores of 0.91, 0.98, and 0.93 for no augmentation, offline augmentation, and online augmentation respectively. The applied augmentation strategies on Cityscapes also showed improvements in IoU scores.
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF APPLIED EARTH OBSERVATION AND GEOINFORMATION
(2023)
Article
Geography, Physical
Livio Ronchi, Alessandro Fontana, Kim M. Cohen, Esther Stouthamer
Summary: This study analyzed the evolution of an ancient valley in the Venetian-Friulian Plain, identifying two main phases related to the activity of the Tagliamento River and the Holocene marine transgression. It contributes to understanding the role of Alpine rivers and groundwater-fed streams in forming large incised valleys in the coastal sector. This study provides insights into the downstream-controlled filling of the incised valley during the transgressive phase.
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Georg Brenneis, Karina Frankowski, Laura Maass, Gerhard Scholtz
Summary: Regenerative abilities vary greatly among different animal lineages. In this study, researchers discovered that immatures of the sea spider Pycnogonum litorale can regrow almost complete body segments and tissues, including the hindgut and musculature, after transverse amputation. This challenges the commonly held belief that molting animals are incapable of primary body axis regeneration, suggesting that the ability for regeneration may have been inherited from a protostome ancestor.
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
(2023)
Article
Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
Gyorgy Abrusan, Carles Foguet
Summary: It has been suggested that a significant fraction of homomer protein-protein interfaces evolve neutrally, without contributing to function, due to a hydrophobic bias in missense mutations. However, the fraction of such gratuitous complexes is currently unknown. In this study, the researchers quantified the fraction of homodimers where multimerization is unlikely to contribute to their biochemical function. They found that ligand binding-site structure predicts whether a homomer is functional or not, and that the hydrophobicity of interfaces changes little with the strength of selection. Additionally, they observed that MBS homomer interfaces coevolve more strongly with ligand binding sites than the interfaces of SBS homomers.
MOLECULAR BIOLOGY AND EVOLUTION
(2023)
Article
Geochemistry & Geophysics
Jaime E. Delano, Richard W. Briggs, Jessica Thompson Jobe, Ryan D. Gold, Simon E. Engelhart
Summary: Blind reverse faults are difficult to detect due to lack of surface rupture, such as the blind Reelfoot fault in the New Madrid seismic zone. By studying terraces and lacustrine landforms, researchers found evidence of broad folding caused by the buried fault's slip in the Obion River valley. Historical records of coseismic lake formation indicate the fault's significant deformation potential, with evidence of long earthquake history predating existing records.
Review
Materials Science, Multidisciplinary
Xin-Long Zheng, Ying-Jie Yang, Yu-Hao Liu, Pei-Lin Deng, Jing Li, Wei-Feng Liu, Peng Rao, Chun-Man Jia, Wei Huang, Yan-Lian Du, Yi-Jun Shen, Xin-Long Tian
Summary: This review article discusses the application of Cu2ZnSnS4 (CZTS) as a photocatalyst for hydrogen evolution in water splitting. It provides a brief introduction to the crystal and band structure properties of CZTS, followed by a discussion on the basic principle of photocatalytic hydrogen evolution. The performance and current status of bare CZTS, combinations of CZTS with co-catalysts, and CZTS-based heterojunction photocatalysts for hydrogen evolution are reviewed and discussed in detail. The article also addresses the challenges and issues encountered in the application of CZTS and provides possible solutions for developing advanced CZTS photocatalysts.
Article
Geography, Physical
George D. Bathrellos, Hariklia D. Skilodimou, Vasiliki Zygouri, Ioannis K. Koukouvelas
Summary: The study focused on analyzing the recurrence of landslides and creating a hazard assessment map for a mountainous region in central Greece. Results showed that high and very high landslide hazards were mainly concentrated in the western, south-western, and southern parts of the study area.
ZEITSCHRIFT FUR GEOMORPHOLOGIE
(2021)
Article
Geography, Physical
Ahmed M. Youssef, Mazen M. Abu-Abdullah, Emad Abu AlFadail, Hariklia D. Skilodimou, George D. Bathrellos
Summary: The study aimed to identify the causes of the Al-Lith earthen dam failure and ways to prevent and mitigate the potential consequences of future flood occurrences. By utilizing remote sensing images, DEM, field observations, and rainfall data, a geospatial integrated approach combining GIS, remote sensing, hydromorphological analysis, and rainfall-runoff modeling was used to better understand the hydrology of the study area.
ZEITSCHRIFT FUR GEOMORPHOLOGIE
(2021)
Article
Green & Sustainable Science & Technology
Hariklia D. Skilodimou, George D. Bathrellos, Dimitrios E. Alexakis
Summary: This study proposes a simple method to produce a flood hazard assessment map in burned and urban areas with limited data. The study found that the areas with highest flood hazard are in the eastern and southern parts of the study area. The model predictions were robust, and the map was shown to be reliable and accurate, with potential applications in land use planning, disaster mitigation, and post-fire management.
Article
Geosciences, Multidisciplinary
Maria Karpouza, Konstantinos Chousianitis, George D. Bathrellos, Hariklia D. Skilodimou, George Kaviris, Assimina Antonarakou
Summary: This study aims to propose an approach for simultaneous hazard zonation mapping of earthquake-induced secondary effects. The methodology involves evaluating the hazard of seismically induced landslides and soil liquefaction separately, then combining them into a single hazard map to assess areas exposed to both phenomena. Using spatial multi-criteria method and Geographic Information Systems, the methodology can categorize regions threatened by coseismic landslides, soil liquefaction, or both, especially in seismically active regions with mountainous terrain and coastal plain areas.
Article
Geography, Physical
George D. Bathrellos, Hariklia D. Skilodimou
Summary: This paper presents a multi-criteria spatial data analysis method to evaluate suitable locations for sand and gravel extractions. The study area was the upper reaches of Pinios River in central Greece. The results show that the most suitable extraction sites are located in the northern, western, eastern, and southeastern parts of the study area.
ZEITSCHRIFT FUR GEOMORPHOLOGIE
(2022)
Article
Environmental Sciences
Hariklia D. Skilodimou, Vasileios Antoniou, George D. Bathrellos, Eleni Tsami
Summary: Mapping and monitoring coastline changes in Athens Riviera over the past 76 years have revealed significant alterations mainly caused by human interference. The study shows that human interventions have led to major coastline changes in areas such as Faliro Bay, Alimos, and Glyfada, while the coastal regions adjacent to Athens metropolitan area have experienced the highest modifications. The analysis indicates that the rate of coastline changes slowed down after 1987, with 40% increase in coastline length and 2.67 km(2) of land reclaimed to the sea over the past 76 years. The applied method using aerial photographs and GIS techniques proves effective for coastal monitoring and management.
Article
Green & Sustainable Science & Technology
Dimitrios E. Alexakis, George D. Bathrellos, Hariklia D. Skilodimou, Dimitra E. Gamvroula
Summary: The study investigated the soil quality in the Ioannina polje in north-west Greece concerning arsenic (As) and zinc (Zn), finding high concentrations of As and Zn in the soil, mainly distributed on very gentle slopes and strongly correlated with geological parent materials and human-induced contamination sources. The results showed that urban and agricultural land use covered 92% of the total area, with higher levels of As and Zn in the soil compared to European topsoils.
Editorial Material
Green & Sustainable Science & Technology
Hariklia D. Skilodimou, George D. Bathrellos
Article
Chemistry, Multidisciplinary
Fakhrul Islam, Muhammad Nasar Ahmad, Hammad Tariq Janjuhah, Matee Ullah, Ijaz Ul Islam, George Kontakiotis, Hariklia D. Skilodimou, George D. Bathrellos
Summary: This study used geospatial modelling and machine learning techniques to identify areas susceptible to soil erosion in Murree, Pakistan. By considering multiple independent variables, the FR model showed the highest accuracy in predicting soil erosion. The results and susceptibility maps of this study are important for decision-makers in preventing soil erosion.
APPLIED SCIENCES-BASEL
(2022)
Article
Environmental Studies
Liaqat Ali, Shehzad Ali, Seema Anjum Khattak, Hammad Tariq Janjuhah, George Kontakiotis, Rahib Hussain, Shah Rukh, Mohammad Tahir Shah, George D. D. Bathrellos, Hariklia D. D. Skilodimou
Summary: This study investigated the health and environmental impacts of coal mining activities in the Makarwal coal mining area in Pakistan. Soil samples collected from the affected areas showed high concentrations of toxic metals such as Ni, Cd, Cr, Cu, Zn, and Pb. Factor analysis indicated that the contamination in the area is likely associated with the geological ore strata in the coalfield. Based on geoaccumulation and ecological risk indices, certain trace elements pose a high risk to humans and the ecosystem. The source of metal contamination is likely from exposed sedimentary rocks, including limestone, dolomite, sandstone, and coal.
Article
Chemistry, Multidisciplinary
Jehanzeb Khan, Waqas Ahmed, Muhammad Waseem, Wajid Ali, Inayat ur Rehman, Ihtisham Islam, Hammad Tariq Janjuhah, George Kontakiotis, George D. Bathrellos, Hariklia D. Skilodimou
Summary: This study presents a detailed analysis of water ingress problems in the Lowari Tunnel in Pakistan and evaluates its suitability for different purposes. The water quality varied depending on geological conditions, with the south portal dominated by Mg cations and bicarbonate anions. The water was suitable for tunnel support systems but not for drinking, and it was classified as excellent for irrigation, benefiting local agriculture.
APPLIED SCIENCES-BASEL
(2023)
Article
Geosciences, Multidisciplinary
Maria Karpouza, George D. Bathrellos, George Kaviris, Assimina Antonarakou, Hariklia D. Skilodimou
Summary: This study focuses on the hazard assessment of the Xerias River drainage basin in Greece, particularly in terms of flooding and tsunami inundation. It identifies safe locations and routes for schools and highlights the importance of scientific analysis in disaster management and planning.
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF DISASTER RISK REDUCTION
(2023)
Article
Geosciences, Multidisciplinary
Kanella Valkanou, Efthimios Karymbalis, George Bathrellos, Hariklia Skilodimou, Konstantinos Tsanakas, Dimitris Papanastassiou, Kalliopi Gaki-Papanastassiou
Summary: This study estimates the annual soil loss in a fire-affected area using the Universal Soil Loss Equation (USLE). The results show a significant increase in soil loss after the fire, with an increase in the area of high erosion rates.
