Effect of traditional check dams (jessour) on soil and olive trees water status in Tunisia.

In the arid regions of south eastern Tunisia, the land use is predominated by olive trees cropping, where two main cultivation strategies can be found: using of water harvesting techniques to overcome the scarcity and variability of rainfall (in the Matmata mountains) and dryland farming (in the Jeffara plain). In these arid areas, soil moisture is the main limiting factor for crop growth and it should be monitored to benchmark different management options. Different conventional methods are available for point soil moisture monitoring, but the increased availability of remotely sensed data offers major opportunities for spatial analyses. The aim of this paper is to perform a comparative study on the soil water status for rainfed olive tree growing in three major landscape areas: in the mountains with traditional water harvesting check dams (called jessour), in the piedmont on floodwater harvesting (called tabias), and in the plain with full dryland farming conditions. Time series of Normalized Difference Infrared Index (NDII), derived from Landsat 7 satellite, were retrieved from the novel Google Earth Engine platform. NDII values were related to measured soil water content, which was taken at non-regular time intervals between 2009 and 2017. The analysis of NDII data, indicating the water content of the vegetation, shows that jessour can adequately ensure water supply for olive trees. Increased soil moisture conditions in the jessour areas are visible both in the dry and the humid seasons, indicating the effectiveness of this traditional water harvesting system. Moreover, our results show that Landsat 7 NDII values are correlated with the root-zone soil moisture in the monitoring sites (r2 ranging from 0.62 to 0.67), allowing the use of NDII to estimate soil water contents in our study area.

Effects of the substitution of P2O5 by B2O3 on the structure and dielectric properties in (90-x) P2O5-xB2O3-10Fe2O3 glasses.

90%[xB2O3 (1-x) P2O5] 10%Fe2O3, glass systems where (x=0 mol%, 5 mol%, 10 mol%, 15 mol%, 20 mol%) was prepared via a melt quenching technique. The structure of glass is investigated at room temperature by, Raman and EPR spectroscopy. Raman studies have been performed on these glasses to examine the distribution of different borate and phosphate structural groups. We have noted an increase from 3 to 4 in the coordination number of the boron atoms from 3 to 4, i.e., the conversion of the BO3 triangular structural units into BO4 tetrahedra. The samples have been investigated by means of electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR). The results obtained from the gef=4.28 EPR line are typical of the occurrence of iron (III) occupying substitutional sites. Moreover, the dielectric sizes such as ε'(ω), ε″(ω), imaginary parts of the electrical modulus, M(*)(ω) and the loss tanδ, their variation with frequency at room temperature show a decrease in relaxation intensity with an increase in the concentration of (B2O3). On the present work, we have found a weak extinction index with our new glass.