Linking Surface Urban Heat Islands with Groundwater Temperatures.

Urban temperatures are typically, but not necessarily, elevated compared to their rural surroundings. This phenomenon of urban heat islands (UHI) exists both above and below the ground. These zones are coupled through conductive heat transport. However, the precise process is not sufficiently understood. Using satellite-derived land surface temperature and interpolated groundwater temperature measurements, we compare the spatial properties of both kinds of heat islands in four German cities and find correlations of up to 80%. The best correlation is found in older, mature cities such as Cologne and Berlin. However, in 95% of the analyzed areas, groundwater temperatures are higher than land surface temperatures due to additional subsurface heat sources such as buildings and their basements. Local groundwater hot spots under city centers and under industrial areas are not revealed by satellite-derived land surface temperatures. Hence, we propose an estimation method that relates groundwater temperatures to mean annual land-surface temperatures, building density, and elevated basement temperatures. Using this method, we are able to accurately estimate regional groundwater temperatures with a mean absolute error of 0.9 K.

Ecosystem properties of semiarid savanna grassland in West Africa and its relationship with environmental variability.

The Dahra field site in Senegal, West Africa, was established in 2002 to monitor ecosystem properties of semiarid savanna grassland and their responses to climatic and environmental change. This article describes the environment and the ecosystem properties of the site using a unique set of in situ data. The studied variables include hydroclimatic variables, species composition, albedo, normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), hyperspectral characteristics (350-1800 nm), surface reflectance anisotropy, brightness temperature, fraction of absorbed photosynthetic active radiation (FAPAR), biomass, vegetation water content, and land-atmosphere exchanges of carbon (NEE) and energy. The Dahra field site experiences a typical Sahelian climate and is covered by coexisting trees (~3% canopy cover) and grass species, characterizing large parts of the Sahel. This makes the site suitable for investigating relationships between ecosystem properties and hydroclimatic variables for semiarid savanna ecosystems of the region. There were strong interannual, seasonal and diurnal dynamics in NEE, with high values of ~-7.5 g C m(-2)  day(-1) during the peak of the growing season. We found neither browning nor greening NDVI trends from 2002 to 2012. Interannual variation in species composition was strongly related to rainfall distribution. NDVI and FAPAR were strongly related to species composition, especially for years dominated by the species Zornia glochidiata. This influence was not observed in interannual variation in biomass and vegetation productivity, thus challenging dryland productivity models based on remote sensing. Surface reflectance anisotropy (350-1800 nm) at the peak of the growing season varied strongly depending on wavelength and viewing angle thereby having implications for the design of remotely sensed spectral vegetation indices covering different wavelength regions. The presented time series of in situ data have great potential for dryland dynamics studies, global climate change related research and evaluation and parameterization of remote sensing products and dynamic vegetation models.