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Underground caves bear a natural hazard due to their possible evolution into a sink hole. Mapping of all existing caves could be useful for general civil usages as natural deposits or tourism and sports. Natural caves exist globally and are typical in karst areas. We investigate the resolution power of modern gravity campaigns to systematically detect all void caves of a minimum size in a given area. Both aerogravity and terrestrial acquisitions are considered. Positioning of the gravity station is fastest with GNSS methods the performance of which is investigated. The estimates are based on a benchmark cave of which the geometry is known precisely through a laser-scan survey. The cave is the Grotta Gigante cave in NE Italy in the classic karst. The gravity acquisition is discussed, where heights have been acquired with dual-frequency geodetic GNSS receivers and Total Station. Height acquisitions with non-geodetic low-cost receivers are shown to be useful, although the error on the gravity field is larger. The cave produces a signal of −1.5 × 10 m/s, with a clear elliptic geometry. We analyze feasibility of airborne gravity acquisitions for the purpose of systematically mapping void caves. It is found that observations from fixed wing aircraft cannot resolve the caves, but observations from slower and low-flying helicopters or drones do. In order to detect the presence of caves the size of the benchmark cave, systematic terrestrial acquisitions require a density of three stations on square 500 by 500 m tiles. The question has a large impact on civil and environmental purposes, since it will allow planning of urban development at a safe distance from subsurface caves. The survey shows that a systematic coverage of the karst would have the benefit to recover the position of all of the greater existing void caves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The REFLEX 2012 campaign was initiated as part of a training course on the organization of an airborne campaign to support advancement of the understanding of land-atmosphere interaction processes. This article describes the campaign, its objectives and observations, remote as well as in situ. The observations took place at the experimental Las Tiesas farm in an agricultural area in the south of Spain. During the period of ten days, measurements were made to capture the main processes controlling the local and regional land-atmosphere exchanges. Apart from multi-temporal, multi-directional and multi-spatial space-borne and airborne observations, measurements of the local meteorology, energy fluxes, soil temperature profiles, soil moisture profiles, surface temperature, canopy structure as well as leaf-level measurements were carried out. Additional thermo-dynamical monitoring took place at selected sites. After presenting the different types of measurements, some examples are given to illustrate the potential of the observations made. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The work described in this paper is aimed at validating hyperspectral airborne reflectance data collected during the Regional Experiments For Land-atmosphere EXchanges (REFLEX) campaign. Ground reflectance data measured in a vineyard were compared with airborne reflec-tance data. A sampling strategy and subsequent ground data processing had to be devised so as to capture a representative spectral sample of this complex crop. A linear model between airborne and ground data was tried and statistically tested. Results reveal a sound correspondence between ground and airborne reflectance data (R2 > 0.97), validating the atmospheric correction of the latter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A two-source model for deriving surface energy fluxes and their soil and canopy components was evaluated using multi-angle airborne observations. In the original formulation (TSEB1), a single temperature observation, Priestley-Taylor parameterization and the vegetation fraction are used to derive the component fluxes. When temperature observations are made from different angles, soil and canopy temperatures can be extracted directly. Two dual angle model versions are compared versus TSEB1: one incorporating the Priestley-Taylor parameterization (TSEB2I) and one using the component temperatures directly (TSEB2D), for which data from airborne campaigns over an agricultural area in Spain are used. Validation of TSEB1 versus ground measurements showed RMSD values of 28 and 10 Wm-2 for sensible and latent heat fluxes, respectively. Reasonable agreement between TSEB1 and TSEB2I was found, but a rather low correlation between TSEB1 and TSEB2D was observed. The TSEB2D estimates appear to be more realistic under the given conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue on topics including land-atmosphere exchange, airborne spectrography and heat fluxes.