The paper presents relationship between the Standardised Precipitation Index (SPI) and physiological responses of individual trees in a beech stand using an example of an experimental plot in Bienska valley (Zvolen, Slovakia). SPI is a widely used tool for monitoring both short-term and long-term droughts, and for the assessments of drought impacts on agriculture. Due to the complex ecosystem bonds, monitoring of drought in forests often requires a sophisticated technological approach. The aim of the paper was to correlate the SPI on the physiological responses of trees that were recorded during the performed physiological research (sap flow, and stem circumference increment) at the site in the growing seasons (May to September) of the years 2012-2014. The results revealed a relationship between the index and the physiological responses, although the problem with the impact of other environmental factors has also come up. The secondary correlation, in which soil water potential that significantly affects physiological responses of forest tree species was used as a dependent variable, showed a tighter relationship with the SPI. We found the highest correlation between the soil water potential and the values of SPI aggregated for five weeks. This indicates that the beech forest has a five week resistance to drought stress. The results also enable simple monitoring of the initiation of the drought stress by applying SPI for five weeks.
In the realm of the philosophy of sounds and auditory experience there is an ongoing discussion concerned with the nature of sounds. One of the contestant views within this ontology of sound is that of the Property View, which holds that sounds are properties of the sounding objects. A way of developing this view is through the idea of dispositionalism, namely, by sustaining the theory according to which sounds are dispositional properties (Pasnau 1999; Kulvicki 2008; Roberts 2017). That portrayal, however, is not sufficient, as it has not inquired the metaphysical debates about dispositions beyond the conditional analysis. In this paper, I try to advance this view by including recent developments (for instance Bird 2007; Vetter 2015) in the field of dispositionalism and I analyse whether this new version can sort out known and new objections to Property View.
The debates over the problem of faultless disagreement have played a major role in shaping the landscape of today’s semantic theories. In my paper, I argue that even though the existent contextualism-friendly proposals explain a lot of disagreement data by specifying various ways in which speakers may use subjective predicates, neither provides a satisfactory account which would explain what all the subjective disagreements have in common. In particular, what is lacking is an explanation of the persistent autocentric cases (Lasersohn 2004), i.e., disagreements in which each speaker utters a subjective sentence while openly and knowingly occupying his or her own perspective. In my paper, I offer a solution which consists in supplementing the standard contextualist semantics with an explanation of this most problematic class of cases, which is possible due to redescribing the phenomena in speech act nomenclature.
Results of cadmium sorption and desorption, as well as distribution coefficients of cadmium in the soils from the Danubian Lowland and from Veľký Ďur (neighbourhood of the nuclear power plant Jaslovske Bohunice) are presented in this study. It was found that Cd adsorption is high in studied soils already after the one-minute lasting Cd-soil contact. The results obtained show that the highest sorption of cadmium is in the loamy-sand soil from Kalinkovo (99.75 %). Zeolite application was the most effective in the loam soil from Macov. Sorption of cadmium in this soil increased by 1.45%. The presence of zeolite in chosen soil samples influenced Cd desorption, too. In loamy-sand soil from Kalinkovo cadmium desorption decreased by 50 % after zeolite application. Sorption experiments with radionuclides (85Sr and 137Cs) were conducted on brown earth from the site Velľký Ďur. The 137Cs sorption is very high in studied soil. Zeolite is more effective in the case of 85Sr. Desorption of radiostrontium decreased by 50% after zeolite application. and V práci sa prezentujú výsledky sorpcie, desorpcie a hodnoty rozdeľovacieho koeficientu kadmia vo vybraných vzorkách pôd Podunajskej nížiny a hnedozeme z lokality Veľký Ďur. Kadmium je silne sorbované sledovanými pôdami už po 1 minúte trvania kontaktu. Najvyššia sorpcia sa pozorovala u hlinito-piesočnatej pôdy z lokality Kalinkovo, kde pomerné adsorbované množstvo S kadmia bolo 99,75 %. Aplikácia zeolitu sa najviac prejavila u hlinitej pôdy z Macova, kde sa pomerné adsorbované množstvo S kadmia zvýšilo o 1,45 %. Zeolit ovplyvnil aj desorpciu naviazaného kadmia v sledovaných pôdnych vzorkách. Najviac kadmia sa desorbovalo z hlinito-piesočnatej pôdy z Kalinkova a aplikácia zeolitu znížila pomerné desorbované množstvo kadmia na menej ako polovicu. Sorpčné experimenty s rádionuklidmi (85Sr a 137Cs) boli vykonané na hnedozemi z lokality Veľký Ďur. 137Cs je už samotnou pôdou sorbované takmer na 100 % a prítomnosť zeolitu už sorpciu prakticky nezvyšuje. Zeolit zvyšuje sorpciu hlavne u rádiostroncia. Desorpcia stroncia po aplikácii zeolitu sa znížila o 50 %.
In the present study, experiments were conducted in a large-scale flume to investigate the issue of local scour around side-by-side bridge piers under both ice-covered and open flow conditions. Three non-uniform sediments were used in this experimental study. Analysis of armour layer in the scour holes around bridge piers was performed to inspect the grain size distribution curves and to study the impact of armour layer on scour depth. Assessments of grain size of deposition ridges at the downstream side of bridge piers have been conducted. Based on data collected in 108 experiments, the independent variables associated with maximum scour depth were assessed. Results indicate that the densimetric Froude number was the most influential parameter on the maximum scour depth. With the increase in grain size of the armour layer, ice cover roughness and the densimetric Froude number, the maximum scour depth around bridge piers increases correspondingly. Equations have been developed to determine the maximum scour depth around bridge piers under both open flow and ice covered conditions.
In response to the continually increasing sediment concentrations in rivers and lakes, the Ethiopian government is leading an effort where farmers are installing soil and water conservation measures to increase infiltration and reduce erosion. This paper reports on findings from a four year study in the 95 ha Debre Mawi watershed where under the government led conservation works, mainly terraces with infiltration furrows were installed halfway in the period of observation. The results show that runoff volume decreased significantly after installation of the soil and water conservation practices but sediment concentration decreased only marginally. Sediment loads were reduced mainly because of the reduced runoff. Infiltration furrows were effective on the hillsides where rain water could infiltrate, but on the flat bottom lands that become saturated with the progress of the monsoon rain, infiltration was restricted and conservation practices became conduits for carrying excess rainfall. This caused the initiation of gullies in several occasions in the saturated bottomlands. Sediment concentration at the outlet barely decreased due to entrainment of loose soil from unstable banks of gullies in the periodically saturated bottom areas. Since most uphill drainage were already half filled up with sediments after two years, long term benefits of reducing runoff can only be sustained with continuous maintenance of uphill infiltration furrows.
We apply the Linear Storage Model (LSM) to simulate the influence of the evapotranspiration on discharges. High resolution discharge data from two small catchments in the Czech Republic, the Teply Brook and the Starosuchdolsky Brook catchment are used. The results show the runoff process is simpler in a deeper valley of the Starosuchdolsky catchment where the soil zone is deeper and the valley bottom recharges runoff even during very dry periods. Two-soil zone model is adequate to simulate the diurnal runoff variability. Three-soil zone model is needed in the Teply Brook catchment due to the absence of water transport in the most-upper soil zone. Time delays between minimum and maximum discharge during the day reach up to about 20 hours. Evapotranspiration and hydraulic resistances are as high as 14% of catchment daily runoff in the urbanized Starosuchdolsky Brook catchment and 25% of catchment daily runoff in the forested, less impacted Teply Brook catchment.
This paper explores the impacts of reconfiguration and leaf morphology on the flow downstream of a flexible foliated plant. 3D acoustic Doppler velocimetry and particle image velocimetry were used to experimentally investigate the hydrodynamic interaction between a foliated plant and the flow, testing two plants with different leaves morphology under different bulk flow velocities. The model vegetation was representative of riparian vegetation species in terms of plants hydrodynamic behavior and leaf to stem area ratio. To explore the effects of the seasonal variability of vegetation on the flow structure, leafless conditions were tested. Reconfiguration resulted in a decrease of the frontal projected area of the plants up to the 80% relative to the undeformed value. Such changes in plant frontal area markedly affected the spatial distributions of mean velocity and turbulence intensities, altering the local exchanges of momentum. At increasing reconfiguration, the different plant morphology influenced the mean and turbulent wake width. The leafless stem exhibited a rigid behavior, with the flow in the wake being comparable to that downstream of a rigid cylinder. The study revealed that the flexibility-induced reconfiguration of plants can markedly affect the local distribution of flow properties in the wake, potentially affecting transport processes at the scale of the plant and its subparts.
Abandonment of agricultural lands in recent decades is occurring mainly in Europe, North America and Oceania, and changing the fate of landscapes as the ecosystem recovers during fallow stage. The objective of this study was to find the impact of secondary succession in abandoned fields on some parameters of acidic sandy soils in the Borská nížina lowland (southwestern Slovakia). We investigated soil chemical (pH and soil organic carbon content), hydrophysical (water sorptivity, and hydraulic conductivity), and water repellency (water drop penetration time, water repellency cessation time, repellency index, and modified repellency index) parameters, as well as the ethanol sorptivity of the studied soils. Both the hydrophysical and chemical parameters decreased significantly during abandonment of the three investigated agricultural fields. On the other hand, the water repellency parameters increased significantly, but the ethanol sorptivity did not change during abandonment. As the ethanol sorptivity depends mainly on soil pore size, the last finding could mean that the pore size of acidic sandy soils did not change during succession.