Runoff at the micro-plot and slope scale following wildfire, central Portugal

Through their effects on soil properties and vegetation/litter cover, wildfires can strongly enhance overland flow generation and accelerate soil erosion [1] and, thereby, negatively affect land-use sustainability as well as downstream aquatic and flood zones. Wildfires are a common phenomenon in present-day Portugal, devastating in an average year some 100.000 ha of forest and woodlands and in an exceptional year like 2003 over 400.000 ha. There therefore exists a clear need in Portugal for a tool that can provide guidance to post-fire land management by predicting soil erosion risk, on the one hand, and, on the other, the mitigation effectiveness of soil conservation measures. Such a tool has recently been developed for the Western U.S.A. [3: ERMiT] but its suitability for Portuguese forests will need to be corroborated by field observations. Testing the suitability of existing erosion models in recently burned forest areas in Portugal is, in a nutshell, the aim of the EROSFIRE projects. In the first EROSFIRE project the emphasis was on the prediction of erosion at the scale of individual hill slopes. In the ongoing EROSFIRE-II project the spatial scope is extended to include the catchment scale, so that also the connectivity between hill slopes as well as channel and road processes are being addressed. Besides ERMiT, the principal models under evaluation for slope-scale erosion prediction are: (i) the variant of USLE [4] applied by the Portuguese Water Institute after the wildfires of 2003; (ii) the Morgan–Morgan–Finney model (MMF) [5]; (iii) MEFIDIS [6]. From these models, MEFIDIS and perhaps MMF will, after successful calibration at the slope scale, also be applied for predicting catchment-scale sediment yields of extreme events

Runoff and erosion at the micro-plot and slope scale in a small burnt catchment, central Portugal

Wildfires can have important impacts on hydrological processes and soil erosion in forest catchments, due to the destruction of vegetation cover and changes to soil properties. However, the processes involved are non-linear and not fully understood. This has severely limited the understanding on the impacts of wildfires, especially in the up-scaling from hillslopes to catchments; in consequence, current models are poorly adapted for burnt forest conditions. The objective of this presentation is to give an overview of the hydrological response and sediment yield from the micro-plot to slope scale, in the first year following a wildfire (2008/2009) that burnt an entire catchment nearby the Colmeal village, central Portugal. The overview will focus on three slopes inside the catchment, with samples including: • Runoff at micro-plot scale (12 bounded plots) and slope scale (12 open plots); • Sediments and Organic Matter loss at micro-plot scale (12 bounded plots) and slope scale (12 open plots plus 3 Sediment fences); • Rainfall and Soil moisture data; • Soil Water Repellency and Ground Cover data. The analysis of the first year following the wildfire clearly shows the complexity of runoff generation and the associated sediment transport in recently burnt areas, with pronounced differences between hillslopes and across spatial scales as well as with marked variations through time. This work was performed in the framework of the EROSFIRE-II project (PTDC/AGR-CFL/70968/2006) which has as overall aim to predict soil erosion risk in recently burnt forest areas, including common post-fire forest management practices; the project focuses on the simultaneous measurement of runoff and soil erosion at multiple spatial scales.The results to be presented in this session are expected to show how sediment is generated, transported and exported in the Colmeal watershed; and contribute to understand and simulate erosion processes in burnt catchments, including for model development and evaluation

Non-sequential double ionization below laser-intensity threshold: Anticorrelation of electrons without excitation of parent ion

Two-electron correlated spectra of non-sequential double ionization below laser-intensity threshold are known to exhibit back-to-back scattering of the electrons, viz., the anticorrelation of the electrons. Currently, the widely accepted interpretation of the anticorrelation is recollision-induced excitation of the ion plus subsequent field ionization of the second electron. We argue that another mechanism, namely simultaneous electron emission, when the time of return of the rescattered electron is equal to the time of liberation of the bounded electron (the ion has no time for excitation), can also explain the anticorrelation of the electrons in the deep below laser-intensity threshold regime. Our conclusion is based on the results of the numerical solution of the time-dependent Schr\"{o}dinger equation for a model system of two one-dimensional electrons as well as an adiabatic analytic model that allows for a closed-form solution.Comment: 6 pages and 3 figure

Ingredientes para alimentos funcionais: uma área de futuro?

Os prebióticos são ingredientes alimentares não digeríveis, geralmente oligossacarídeos, que exercem um efeito benéfico no indivíduo estimulando selectivamente o crescimento e/ou actividade de espécies bacterianas existentes no cólon, melhorando a saúde do hospedeiro. O mercado mundial deste tipo de produtos tem vindo a crescer a taxas bastante elevadas, apesar de os seus preços de venda serem ainda bastante elevados. Neste sentido, é de acreditar que o desenvolvimento de novos processos de produção biotecnológicos com menores custos associados impulsione ainda mais o mercado. O projecto “BIOLIFE – Ingredientes para alimentos funcionais” visa o desenvolvimento de processos alternativos de produção de prebióticos

Efeito da aplicação de silício na resistência às condições ambientais em Eucalyptus grandis.

EVINCI. Resumo 029

Neonatal sepsis – a retrospective analysis 2004 to 2006 of Bissaya Barreto Maternity

Introdução: As doenças infecciosas são uma causa frequente de morbi- -mortalidade no período neonatal. O conhecimento da epidemiologia de cada unidade é um factor decisivo para o sucesso da antibioterapia empírica. Objectivos: Caracterizar os episódios de sépsis neonatal (SNN) ocorridos de Janeiro de 2004 a Dezembro de 2006 na Unidade de Cuidados Intensivos Neonatais (UCIN) da Maternidade Bissaya Barreto. Material e métodos: Estudo descritivo retrospectivo dos processos clínicos dos recém-nascidos com o diagnóstico de SNN. Definiu-se sépsis com confirmação laboratorial se dois ou mais critérios clínicos compatíveis, associados a um dos seguintes critérios laboratoriais: a) identificação de qualquer agente patogénico bacteriano na hemocultura ou no líquor cefalo-raquídeo; b) identificação de Staphylococcus coagulase negativo na presença de proteína C reactiva >2,0 mg/dl ou plaquetas <100.000/μl ou relação neutrófilos imaturos / neutrófilos totais >0,2. Definiu-se sépsis clínica quando se verificou: instituição de terapêutica antibiótica durante 5 dias, hemocultura negativa ou não pedida, ausência de infecção noutro local e dois ou mais critérios clínicos compatíveis. No caso de sépsis clínica deveria haver pelo menos também um dos seguintes: proteína C reactiva >2,0 mg/dl; leucócitos >30.000 ou <5.000/μl; relação neutrófilos imaturos / neutrófilos totais >0,2; plaquetas <100 000/μl. Considerou-se SNN precoce ou tardia, respectivamente se início até ou após as 72 horas de vida. Resultados: Cumpriram critérios de inclusão 61 episódios infecciosos (16 precoces e 45 tardios), correspondendo a 58 recém-nascidos. Destes, 50% apresentavam peso de nascimento inferior a 1500 gramas. A idade gestacional variou entre as 25 e as 41 semanas, com mediana de 30 semanas. Da amostra considerada, 45 (73,8%) foram sépsis com confirmação laboratorial e 16 (26,2%) foram sépsis clínicas. Os gérmens isolados foram 26 (57,8%) Staphylococcus coagulase negativos – 17 (37,8%) Staphylococcus epidermidis, 9 (20,0%) outros Staphylococcus coagulase negativos; 9 (20,0%) Escherichia coli; 6 (13,3%) Staphylococcus aureus; 2 (4,4%) Streptococcus do grupo B; 1 (2,2%) Proteus mirabilis; 1 (2,2%) Cândica albicans.A percentagem de resistências da Escherichia coli à ampicilina foi de 77,8%. Houve dois Staphylococcus aureus meticilino-resistentes, ambos sensíveis à vancomicina. Faleceram 6 recém-nascidos com SNN. Comentários: Os nossos resultados estão de acordo com os estudos nacionais e internacionais sobre SNN, salientando-se contudo o diminuto número de Streptococcus do grupo B isolados e o maior número de Escherichia coli, com uma elevada percentagem de estirpes ampicilino- resistentes. A mortalidade relacionada com a SNN encontra-se dentro dos dados referidos na literatura

A general treatment of geometric phases and dynamical invariants

Based only on the parallel transport condition, we present a general method to compute Abelian or non-Abelian geometric phases acquired by the basis states of pure or mixed density operators, which also holds for nonadiabatic and noncyclic evolution. Two interesting features of the non-Abelian geometric phase obtained by our method stand out: i) it is a generalization of Wilczek and Zee's non-Abelian holonomy, in that it describes nonadiabatic evolution where the basis states are parallelly transported between distinct degenerate subspaces, and ii) the non-Abelian character of our geometric phase relies on the transitional evolution of the basis states, even in the nondegenerate case. We apply our formalism to a two-level system evolving nonadiabatically under spontaneous decay to emphasize the non-Abelian nature of the geometric phase induced by the reservoir. We also show, through the generalized invariant theory, that our general approach encompasses previous results in the literature