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Alto Minho is a region of northern Portugal in the northwest of the Iberian Peninsula, which is one of the regions in Europe where fires are more frequent. The historical mapping of burned areas has been fundamental to characterize the fire regime and to determine wildfire prevention policies and urban planning measures. Over the last decades, several studies have been published seeking to characterize the impact of fire on the territory, its frequency and recurrence, based on the official cartography, provided by the Instituto de Conservação da Natureza e das Florestas - ICNF. In this study, a detailed and rigorous cartography of the areas affected by fires in the Alto Minho area in the last two decades (2001 to 2020) was developed. These areas were determined based on the analysis of 400 images from the Landsat 5 (TM), Landsat 7 (ETM+), Landsat 8 (Operational Land Imager - OLI) and Sentinel-2 (Multispectral Instrument - MSI) satellites, whose perimeters resulted from manual digitizing supported by historical series of orthophotos. A total of 12 692 fire perimeters were digitalized corresponding to 235 060 hectares of burned area in the Alto Minho region. These results substantially differ from the official cartographic information, in terms of cartographic accuracy, number of fire perimeters (3873) and burned area (179 283 hectares). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A new Roman military site was recently detected in Galicia, Spain, an area where the army presence had been challenging to trace until date. O Penedo dos Lobos is a playing-card shaped camp with very distinctive, fortified entrances. The archaeological survey conducted on this site in the summer of 2018 allowed us to recover some elements of Roman militaria, as well as numismatic evidence dating back to late 1st c. BC, thus suggesting a connection with the Cantabrian-Asturian Wars of Augustan times. However, there is still some uncertainty regarding the specific task undertaken by the military contingent that occupied this site. Besides its historical implications, a focus will be given to the methodology applied for the archaeological survey of this site. This has shed new light on the Roman military presence in Galicia, allowing its integration into wider European debates on Roman conquest and expansion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The latitudinal position of the southeast of the Iberian Peninsula generates high average temperatures (between 25 and 30oC) during the summer season, although its complex orography and the important lapse rate (LR) give rise to important differences in minimum temperatures, influenced by intense processes of nocturnal temperature inversion (ITN) in inland valleys. The increase of new meteorological stations and the rise in the density of observation networks, together with the implementation of its own network in cold air pools (CAP) in the provinces of Murcia, Albacete or Jaén, leads to a greater understanding of the distribution of surface temperatures. The main objective of the research is the generation of cartography (thermographs) that reflects the distribution of night temperatures in the southeast of the Iberian Peninsula, carried out through the treatment of satellite products (VIIRS LST Band I5 of the SUOMI-NPP satellite). Together with the use of satellite images (thermography), it is possible to analyze in detail the thermal contrasts that exist during the hottest days of summer through 147 weather stations and recording thermometers (July 15 to August 15) of the year 2017 to 2020. Verification of the thermographs used (Band I5 product) shows a notable statistical adjustment (R2 of 0.87), with a Bias and RMSE of -0.2 and 1.83oC respectively. The cartography is carried out for the differences in the provinces that make up the SE of the Iberian Peninsula (Alicante, Albacete, Murcia, Jaén, Granada and Almería), with daily thermal differences in minimum temperatures of up to 23.4oC between inland valleys and coastal areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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