Carla Ferreira

Instituto Politécnico de Coimbra | IPC · Applied Research Institute

Heatwaves can greatly impact societies, underscoring the need to extend current heatwave prediction lead times. This study investigated multiple machine-learning (ML) model approaches for heatwave occurrence prediction with long lead times of one to five months based on explanatory atmospheric and land surface features. Five ML classifiers were bui...

Water is crucial for enduring horticultural productivity, but high water-use requirements and declining water supplies with the changing climate challenge economic viability, environmental sustainability, and social justice. While the scholarly literature pertaining to water management in horticulture abounds, knowledge of practices and technologie...

Soil sustains life and provides ecosystem services relevant for the environment, society, and the economy. However, soil is a finite resource and is vulnerable to degradation that reduces its ability to provide goods and services. The Mediterranean region is the area most susceptible to soil degradation and desertification within Europe, with ongoi...

Forests are prone to a panoply of threats that undermine their productivity and supply of ecosystem services. Due to global changes (e.g. climate, economic, social, policy, management, governance), forest management is often in sub-optimal conditions that may drive degradation processes. In the Mediterranean region, although fire is a common distur...

The Mediterranean region is characterized by specific climatic (dry and hot summers and mild winters), geologic (especially karstic formations) and topographic gradients that make it diverse in terms of socio-economic and environmental features, but also unique. It has been considered a biodiversity hotspot but also a climate change hotspot, with t...

Coastal regions host a large portion of the global population and face complex balancing challenges for achieving economic, social, and environmental sustainability. This chapter presents an innovative participatory approach to meeting these challenges, developed in the EU Horizon 2020 project “The collaborative land-sea integration platform” (COAS...

Status quo water scarcity in the Mediterranean region is expected to be exacerbated as hydro-climatic changes intensify, demanding the development of place-based interventions with careful attention to contextualized economic, environmental, social, and institutional interactions. Key to this will be advancement of contemporary understanding of the...

While livelihoods of Somalian livestock smallholders rely heavily on seasonal climate conditions, little is known of long-term implications of the changing climate for this nation. Here, we quantify implications of the changing climate on the productivity and profitability of livestock smallholders across a rainfall gradient in northwestern Somalia...

Background: While livestock products comprise the cornerstone of food security, livestock managers face the dual challenge of adapting to a climate crisis and sustainably reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Climatic variability and extreme weather events impact the agri-food chain, hindering global agricultural productivity and threatening safe, nut...

In this case study pharmaceuticals were analysed in the Mondego river (Portugal) and their environmental risk assessed by means of risk quotients based on an extensive retrieval of ecotoxicological data for freshwater and saltwater species. The Mondego river crosses Coimbra, the most populated city in the Portuguese Centro Region hosting a complex...

Growing population and increasing global food demand exert tremendous pressure on crop production. In European Mediterranean regions, maize is often grown under irrigation, but increasingly less reliable rainfall has amplified competition for water resources. As such, there is heightened interest among policy makers and practitioners alike for inno...

Large lakes face considerable challenges due to human activities and climate change, impacting local weather conditions and ecosystem sustainability. Lake Urmia, Iran’s largest lake and the world’s second-largest saltwater lake, has undergone a substantial reduction in water levels, primarily due to drought, climate change, and excessive irrigation...

Trace metals in the environment are important pollutants affecting human health, particularly in urban areas worldwide. Phytoremediation as a nature-based solution (NBS) and environmentally friendly technology may decrease high concentrations of trace metals in urban soils, protecting public health (especially children) and contributing to urban su...

Flood phenomena linked to anthropogenic actions, such as large-scale urbanization, massive tourist flows and climate change are some of the main causes of degrading coastal archaeological heritage sites. In the field of Architectural Technology, the study investigates the degradation status of these sites and its causes and identifies recovery and...

The pressing issue of global warming is particularly evident in urban areas, where urban thermal islands amplify the warming effect. Understanding land surface temperature (LST) changes is crucial in mitigating and adapting to the effect of urban heat islands, and ultimately addressing the broader challenge of global warming. This study estimates L...

Flooding is one of the most serious and frequent natural hazards affecting human life, property, and the environment. This study develops and tests a deep learning approach for large‐scale spatial flood modeling, using Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) and optimized versions combined with the Gray Wolf Optimizer (GWO) or the Imperialist Competitiv...

Climate change has increasing impacts of hydro-meteorological extremes on water resources. Projections indicate a similar trend and challenge in the effectiveness of conventional engineering solutions in climate change adaptation (CCA) and disaster risk reduction (DRR) strategies. Nature-based solutions (NbSs) have been promoted as viable approache...

Drought is a natural hazard occurring with increasing frequency due to climate change. Drought events reduce soil water content and also soil organic carbon (SOC) content, with negative impacts on crop development and food security. This study investigates the impact of drought on SOC dynamics in agricultural systems and the influence of water avai...

Incremental gains in soil organic carbon (SOC) at scale have enormous potential to mitigate global warming, yet confusion over contexts that elicit SOC accumulation abound. Here, we examine how adaptation (through irrigation, fertiliser, crop type and rotations), status quo SOC levels and soil type impact on long-term SOC sequestration and net gree...

Here we generate adaptable and deployable management policies based on deep reinforcement learning (RL) and imitation learning (IL). Using N fertilization and irrigation application as examples, we use the crop model Gym-DSSAT to train several reward functions to examine trade-offs between yield, resource use and environmental impacts. We show that...

Crop management has a significant impact on crop yield, economic profit, and the environment. Although management guidelines exist, finding the optimal management practices is challenging. Previous work used reinforcement learning (RL) and crop simulators to solve the problem, but the trained policies either have limited performance or are not depl...

Climate change affects plant dynamics and functioning of terrestrial ecosystems. This study aims to investigate temporal changes in global vegetation coverage and biomes during the past three decades. We compared historic annual NDVI time series (1982, 1983, 1984 and 1985) with recent ones (2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018), captured from NOAA-AVHRR satel...

Agricultural drought can severely reduce crop yields, lead to large economic losses and health impacts. Combined climate and land use variations determine key indicators of agricultural drought, including soil moisture and the Palmer drought severity index (PDSI). This study investigated the use of machine learning (ML) methods for predicting these...

The quality and vitality of cities largely depend on the design, management, and maintenance of green areas, including urban protected areas (UPAs), since they provide multiple benefits for the city. Due to urbanization and higher anthropogenic pressure, green areas are decreasing which directly affects natural habitats and biodiversity. This study...

Agricultural land degradation is a global problem affecting food production and other ecosystem services worldwide such as water regulation. It is driven by unsustainable land use and management practices (e.g. intensive tillage, overuse of agrochemicals) and can be aggravated by future climate change. Land degradation is particularly problematic i...

The European Mediterranean region is heralded globally for both its high vulnerability to soil degradation and realization of the climate crisis, with ambient temperatures increasing at rates 20% faster than the global average. Maize crops in this region experience moderate to severe water stress during late spring and summer, although such trends...

Pistachio is an important economic crop in arid and semi-arid regions of Iran. A major problem leading to a reduction in crop quality and reduced marketability is extreme air temperature in summer, which causes sunburn of pistachio leaves and fruit. A solution proposed to deal with the negative effects of high temperatures and increase water consum...

Urbanization alters hydrological processes and is often associated with increasing flood risks, which threaten human wellbeing and social and economic development. The conventional paradigm of flood protection relying on structural measures based on hard engineering solutions (e.g., dams, piped systems) has proven insufficient to mitigate floods. S...

Crop management, including nitrogen (N) fertilization and irrigation management, has a significant impact on the crop yield, economic profit, and the environment. Although management guidelines exist, it is challenging to find the optimal management practices given a specific planting environment and a crop. Previous work used reinforcement learnin...

One of the main problems in developing countries is unplanned urban growth and land use change. Timely identification of new constructions can be a good solution to mitigate some environmental and social problems. This study examined the possibility of identifying new constructions in urban areas using images from unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), Go...

This study investigates 11 agricultural management practices (AMPs) and their effects on seven visual soil quality indicators and soil aggregate stability. The survey carried out across eight pedoclimatic zones in Europe and China was based on visual soil assessments (New Zealand VSA method) performed on soils subject to different soil management p...

Recent research established a link between environmental alterations due to agriculture intensification, social damage and the loss of economic growth. Thus, the integration of environmental and social dimensions is key for economic development. In recent years, several frameworks have been proposed to assess the overall sustainability of farms. Ne...

Urban green spaces (UGS) are essential for human well-being, contributing towards quality of life and promoting social interactions and inclusion. Accessibility to recreational UGS is key to human well-being in urban areas. However, there is a lack of works focused on recreational UGS accessibility in cities from different countries, using differen...

The major event that hit Europe in summer 2021 reminds society that floods are recurrent and among the costliest and deadliest natural hazards. The long-term flood risk management (FRM) efforts preferring sole technical measures to prevent and mitigate floods have shown to be not sufficiently effective and sensitive to the environment. Nature-Based...

Benzo[a]pyrene (BaP) is a polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon, highly persistent and toxic and a widespread environmental pollutant. Although various technologies have been developed to remove BaP from the environment, its sorption through solid matrixes has received increasing attention due to cost-effectiveness. The present research compares the adso...

Adequate planning of soil and water conservation requires understanding and prediction of the interactions between soil, climate, and management scenarios. These interactions have been investigated over the last decades by means of modeling tools. Some of the most widely used models, namely KINEROS, WEPP, SWAT, and AnnAGNPS have been compared in te...

Floods are a widespread natural hazard affecting people and their assets in regions worldwide, including Southern Europe. Besides coastal floods, the Mediterranean region is highly prone to flash floods driven by short but intense precipitation events. With increasing flood risk due to climate change and socio‐economic conditions, governments are u...

Grain corn is the main cereal produced in Portugal. It is grown in intensive monoculture cropping systems that may have negative effects on soil quality, affecting long-term fertility and productivity, and, therefore, the sustainability of the production. A promising management practice to mitigate soil degradation is to grow winter cover crops use...

Urban green spaces (UGS) deliver a wide range of regulating, provisioning and cultural ecosystem services (CES), relevant to support the achievement of some United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (e.g., Goal 11: sustainable cities and communities, and Goal 3: good health and well-being). However, knowledge of preferences and uses of UGS by ur...

Food security is a global concern affecting even highly developed countries. Ongoing globalisation of food systems, characterised by trading interdependencies, means that agricultural production can be disrupted by climate change, affecting food availability. This study investigated Sweden’s food security by identifying major food import categories...

Flooding affects Mediterranean coastal areas, with negative impacts on regional populations and ecosystems. This paper reviews the causes and consequences of coastal flooding in European Mediterranean countries, common and advanced solutions implemented to mitigate flood risk, and the importance of stakeholder involvement in developing these soluti...

The adaptive cycle and panarchy are recognised tools for resilience assessment prior to establishing new management approaches aligned with Anthropocene needs. This study used the adaptive cycle and panarchy to assess the dynamics of the social-ecological system (SES) of La Marjaleria, Spain, which experienced increasing human pressure and environm...

Soil, a non-renewable resource, sustains life on Earth by supporting around 95% of global food production and providing ecosystem services such as biomass production, filtration of contaminants and transfer of mass and energy between spheres. Unsustainable management practices and climate change are threatening the natural capital of soils, particu...

A loss of natural capital within cities and their surrounding areas has been noticed over the last decades. Increasing development associated with higher sealing rates has caused a general loss of Urban Green Spaces (UGS) within the urban environment, whereas urban sprawl and the improvement of road networks have deeply fragmented the surrounding l...

A study was carried out to assess if the visual soil assessment method (VSA) would allow recognizing differences between soils receiving organic matter (OM) amendments and similar control soils, by the observation of visual soil quality indicators' score. 36 practices were identified across 8 pedoclimatic zones. These fields/plots were paired with...

The importance of soils to society has gained increasing recognition over the past decade, with the potential to contribute to most of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). With unprecedented and growing demands for food, water and energy, there is an urgent need for a global effort to address the challenges of climate change an...

Floods are one of the most common natural disasters affecting numerous people worldwide. Over the last years, Nature-Based Solutions (NBS) have gained attention as an emerging approach for flood mitigation that can complement traditional grey infrastructures. NBS provide several ecosystem services, including flood mitigation and improved water qual...

Identification of flood-prone sites in urban environments is necessary, but there is insufficient hydraulic information and time series data on surface runoff. To date, several attempts have been made to apply deep-learning models for flood hazard mapping in urban areas. This study evaluated the capability of convolutional neural network (NNETC) an...

This figure is related to the publication "Time of Day and Workdays vs. Weekend Differences in the Use of Cultural Ecosystem Services in Urban Parks (Coimbra, Portugal)". To read the full paper online, please use this link: https://rdcu.be/cmlYF

Mediterranean headwater catchments have experienced major land-use changes in recent centuries, namely characterized by afforestation with fast-growing tree species (e.g., pine and eucalyptus). This paper investigates differences in the hydrological response of two forested catchments with distinct Pinus pinaster Aiton (PIN) and Eucalyptus globulus...

Soils are a natural capital which support life on Earth and are responsible for many ecosystem services that are the foundation for human wellbeing. However, soils have been intensively used and subject to degradation, particularly in urban areas. The main objective of this study is: i) to give an overview of soil conditions in urban protected area...

Urban green spaces (UGS) are a key component to achieve United Nations sustainable development goals (SDGs) such as good health and wellbeing (Goal 3) and sustainable cities and communities (Goal 11). Among other areas, UGS comprise urban parks, which are key to supply a variety of ecosystem services (ES) to humans. However, urban dwellers visit pa...

Urban areas face several environmental problems and risks related to water management, such as floods and degradation of water quality, enhancing population vulnerability and threatening urban sustainability. These problems are expected to be exacerbated with increasing urbanization and climate change, which leads to higher frequency and intensity...

Estimating evapotranspiration (ET), the main water output flux within basins, is an important step in assessing hydrological changes and water availability. However, direct measurements of ET are challenging, especially for large regions. Global products now provide gridded estimates of ET at different temporal resolution, each with its own method...

The majority of the world population is living in urban areas. As cities expand, soil sealing increases the vulnerability of urban areas to pluvial floods, and the consequent impacts on social and economic domains. Flood mitigation typically relies on grey infrastructures, but the implementation of Nature-Based Solutions (NBS) can be critical to co...

Warming and hydrological changes have already affected and shifted environments in the Arctic. Arctic wetlands are complex systems of coupled hydrological, ecological, and permafrost‐related processes, vulnerable to such environmental changes. This review uses a systems perspective approach to synthesize and elucidate the various interlinked respon...

Biochar effect on soil's bulk density

Keywords: Cover crop, grain corn, nutrient supply, leaching, weed control, Mediterranean region

Advising farmers on the best agricultural management practices (AMP) to be adopted in order to Sustain agricultural productivity while improving soil quality is mandatory to assure future food production. Some promising AMPs have been suggested over the time to prevent soil degradation. These practices have been randomly adopted by farmers but whic...

Citizen science is increasingly seen as an approach to gather information with an unprecedented time and territorial resolution, especially after the introduction of new IT solutions. This allows citizens to interact with researchers and provide detailed information about the scientific questions under appraisal in real time, and documented with ex...

Increasing wildfire frequency and severity has been recorded all over the world. Wildfires are an important driver of land degradation, since they can have detrimental impacts on soil properties, usually leading to decreasing soil fertility and erosion, which affect vegetation recovery. Several studies have been investigating these impacts, but typ...

Urban areas comprise a variety of impervious and pervious surfaces leading to complex spatiotemporal rainfall-runoff processes. The extent of paved surfaces diminishes water infiltration and increases runoff after a precipitation event and thus may provide a relevant impact on streamflow regime and flood risk. The magnitude of the impacts of urbani...