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Related paper containing detailed description: Moesinger et al. (2020) Vegetation optical depth (VOD) describes the attenuation of radiation by plants. VOD a function of frequency as well as vegetation water content, and by extension biomass. VOD has many possible applications in studies of the biosphere, such as biomass monitoring, drought monitoring, phenology analyzes or fire risk management. We merged VOD observations from various spaceborne sensors (SSM/I, TMI, AMSR-E, AMSR2, WindSat) to create global long-term vod time series. Prior to aggregation the data has been rescaled to AMSR-E, removing systematic differences between them. There is a product for C-band (~6.9 GHz, 2002 - 2018), X-band (10.7 GHz, 1997 - 2018) and Ku-band (~19 GHz, 1987 - 2017). The data is global sampled on a regular 0.25 degrees grid. Each product is available as daily global netcdf4 files. Currently there is an issue with opening the file using ESA SNAP. As an alternative Panoply can be used to quickly visualize the data. An update of VODCA, addressing this issue and potentially including an extension of the dataset, is foreseen to be published on Zenodo early 2020. Please contact us if you have any questions, problems or suggestions for improvement! Files: "VODCA_C-band_2002-2018_v01.0.0.zip" (unzipped size: ~140 GB): VODCA C-band files, sorted into yearly folders "VODCA_X-band_1997-2018_v01.0.0.zip" (unzipped size: ~180 GB): VODCA X-band files, sorted into yearly folders "VODCA_Ku-band_1987-2017_v01.0.0.zip" (unzipped size: ~270 GB) : VODCA Ku-band files, sorted into yearly folders "vodca_v01-0_K-band_2007-06-01.nc" sample file of the Ku-band product "ESA-CCI-SOILMOISTURE-LAND_AND_RAINFOREST_MASK-fv04.2.nc" Contains a global land mask, VODCA only has data for land locations. Source: https://github.com/TUW-GEO/smecv-grid Variables of data in VODCA files: "VOD": Unitless, Vegetation Optical Depth of the respective band "sensor_flag": Bit-flag indicating which sensors contributed to each observation. Values: 1 = AMSR-E 2 = AMSR2 3 = SSM/I F8 4 = SSM/I F11 5 = SSM/I F13 6 = TMI 7 = WindSat "processing_flag": Bit-flag indicating irregularities during processing affecting the quality of the observations Values: 0 = Everything is fine 10 = AMSR-2 7.3 GHz band is used instead of 6.9 GHz 11 = Sensor is scaled to matched TMI instead of AMSR-E 12 = Sensor scaled without temporally overlapping observations "time"/"lon"/"lat": Dimensions of the data.

The benefits of aluminum lamination in improving the physical and mechanical properties of wood-based composites is now well documented. This paper shows the contribution of life cycle assessment (LCA) as a tool to assess and compare the environmental footprint in the development of laminated panels. SimaPro 9.0 software, using Ecoinvent database was used to analyze the environmental impacts associated with the manufacturing of wood aluminum-laminated (WAL) panels and aluminum honeycomb panel (AHP). The impact 2002+ method was used to estimate environmental impacts. The LCA results show that the WAL panels manufacturing had a lower environmental impact than AHP manufacturing. In term of product, wood-based composites were the best choice as a core in laminated panel manufacturing. Wood-based composite manufacturing showed environmental advantages in all damage categories except in ecosystem quality. Aluminum alloy sheets manufacturing played an important role in the generation of environmental impacts for laminated panel development.

Abstract. Reliable quantification of the sources and sinks of greenhouse gases, together with trends and uncertainties, is essential to monitoring the progress in mitigating anthropogenic emissions under the Paris Agreement. This study provides a consolidated synthesis of CH4 and N2O emissions with consistently derived state-of-the-art bottom-up (BU) and top-down (TD) data sources for the European Union and UK (EU27+UK). We integrate recent emission inventory data, ecosystem process-based model results, and inverse modelling estimates over the period 1990–2018. BU and TD products are compared with European National GHG Inventories (NGHGI) reported to the UN climate convention secretariat UNFCCC in 2019. For uncertainties, we used for NGHGI the standard deviation obtained by varying parameters of inventory calculations, reported by the Member States following the IPCC guidelines recommendations. For atmospheric inversion models (TD) or other inventory datasets (BU), we defined uncertainties from the spread between different model estimates or model specific uncertainties when reported. In comparing NGHGI with other approaches, a key source of bias is the activities included, e.g. anthropogenic versus anthropogenic plus natural fluxes. In inversions, the separation between anthropogenic and natural emissions is sensitive to the geospatial prior distribution of emissions. Over the 2011–2015 period, which is the common denominator of data availability between all sources, the anthropogenic BU approaches are directly comparable, reporting mean emissions of 20.8 Tg CH4 yr−1 (EDGAR v5.0) and 19.0 Tg CH4 yr−1 (GAINS), consistent with the NGHGI estimates of 18.9 ± 1.7 Tg CH4 yr−1. TD total inversions estimates give higher emission estimates, as they also include natural emissions. Over the same period regional TD inversions with higher resolution atmospheric transport models give a mean emission of 28.8 Tg CH4 yr−1. Coarser resolution global TD inversions are consistent with regional TD inversions, for global inversions with GOSAT satellite data (23.3 Tg CH4yr−1) and surface network (24.4 Tg CH4 yr−1). The magnitude of natural peatland emissions from the JSBACH-HIMMELI model, natural rivers and lakes emissions and geological sources together account for the gap between NGHGI and inversions and account for 5.2 Tg CH4 yr−1. For N2O emissions, over the 2011–2015 period, both BU approaches (EDGAR v5.0 and GAINS) give a mean value of anthropogenic emissions of 0.8 and 0.9 Tg N2O yr−1 respectively, agreeing with the NGHGI data (0.9 ± 0.6 Tg N2O yr−1). Over the same period, the average of the three total TD global and regional inversions was 1.3 ± 0.4 and 1.3 ± 0.1 Tg N2O yr−1 respectively, compared to 0.9 Tg N2O yr−1 from the BU data. The TU and BU comparison method defined in this study can be operationalized for future yearly updates for the calculation of CH4 and N2O budgets both at EU+UK scale and at national scale. The referenced datasets related to figures are visualized at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4288969 (Petrescu et al., 2020).

Microalgae offer a great potential to contribute significantly as renewable fuels and documented as a promising platform for algae-based bio refineries. They provide solutions to mitigate the environmental concerns posed by conventional fuel sources; however, the production of microalgal biofuels in large scale production system encounters few technical challenges. High quantity of nutrients requirements and water cost constrain the scaling up microalgal biomass to large scale commercial production. Crop protection against biomass losses due to grazers or pathogens is another stumbling block in microalgal field cultivation. With our existing technologies, unless coupled with high-value or mid-value products, algal biofuel cannot reach the economic target. Many microalgal industries that started targeting biofuel in the last decade had now adopted parallel business plans focusing on algae by-products application as cosmetic supplements, nutraceuticals, oils, natural color, and animal feed. This review provides the current status and proposes a framework for key supply demand, challenges for cost-effective and sustainable use of water and nutrient. Emphasis is placed on the future industrial market status of value added by products of microalgal biomass. The cost factor for biorefinery process development needs to be addressed before its potential to be exploited for various value-added products with algal biofuel.

Rapid urbanization combined with high economic growth, industrialization, and changes in socio-economic conditions increase the quantity of municipal solid waste. Cities located in South-Asia are facing serious issues due to waste, with countries like India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan top of the list of bad waste management. The increasing generation of solid waste and also the improper management of waste in Bangladesh leads to environmental degradation. Current waste management practice in Bangladesh is so weak that day by day it is harming the climate and creating a lot of unwanted situations. This research consists of an examination of the current administrative measures and presents another proposition for the executive cycle to decrease ecological contamination. The research study aims to decrease the amount of waste being dumped into municipal sanitary landfill sites & converting the waste into energy which is both financially and environmentally suitable by involving unemployed people in the management system. The results of this study will give an idea of how waste can be utilized as a resource and how this resource can be a capital good as well as how the local level problems can be solved by taking some strategies and making our environment suitable for future generations.

Molecular dynamics simulations have been performed to study photosystem II structure and function. Structural information obtained from simulations was combined with ab initio computations of chromophore excited states. In contrast to calculations based on the x-ray structure, the molecular-dynamics-based calculations accurately predicted the experimental absorbance spectrum. In addition, our calculations correctly assigned the energy levels of reaction-center (RC) chromophores, as well as the lowest-energy antenna chlorophyll. The primary and secondary quinone electron acceptors, Q(A) and Q(B), exhibited independent changes in position over the duration of the simulation. Q(B) fluctuated between two binding sites similar to the proximal and distal sites previously observed in light- and dark-adapted RC from purple bacteria. Kinetic models were used to characterize the relative influence of chromophore geometry, site energies, and electron transport rates on RC efficiency. The fluctuating energy levels of antenna chromophores had a larger impact on quantum yield than did their relative positions. Variations in electron transport rates had the most significant effect and were sufficient to explain the experimentally observed multi-component decay of excitation in photosystem II. The implications of our results are discussed in the context of competing evolutionary selection pressures for RC structure and function.