Publications by authors named "Jose Darrozes"
In this study, we present the feasibility of using gravity measurements made with a small inertial navigation system (INS) during in situ experiments, and also mounted on an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), to recover local gravity field variations. The INS operated is the SPATIAL one developed by Advanced Navigation, which has three-axis accelerometers. When the temperature bias is corrected, these types of INS are powerful enough to present the periodic signal corresponding to the solid Earth tides.
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- Mining areas, especially those with massive sulfides like the Iberian Pyrite Belt in Spain, have severe environmental issues, including contaminated soils and water bodies.
- New studies of copper isotopes in the water and sediments show that while the isotopic signature of the pit lakes varies by location, it stays consistent across seasons, influenced mainly by water-rock interactions.
- Additionally, processes in the Meca River reduce metal concentrations and involve organisms like algae, while the Sancho lake maintains a steady isotopic signature despite fluctuating copper levels, highlighting complex interactions in the ecosystem.
Microorganisms play a role in the construction or modulation of various types of landforms. They are especially notable for forming microbially induced sedimentary structures (MISS). Such microbial structures have been considered to be among the most likely biosignatures that might be encountered on the martian surface.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn Southern Europe, soil contamination by heavy metals (HM) due to mining and industrial activities is a long-known problem. Yet, despite soils being widely contaminated through decades, some plants are still able to grow. Some of these plants, like giant reed (Arundo donax) or common reed (Phragmites australis) are capable of accumulating substantial amount of HM.
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- Atmospheric pollution significantly affects human health and the environment, leading to the use of biomonitors like the epiphytic plant Tillandsia usneoides to assess air quality in areas impacted by former mining activities in Southeast Spain.
- The study involved placing these plants at five different locations from a mining area to urban and coastal zones, collecting samples every two months over a year to analyze metal(loid) concentrations and compare them against regional geochemical backgrounds.
- Results revealed significant enrichment of harmful elements in the plants, with slower dust deposition rates in urban and coastal areas, suggesting Tillandsia usneoides can effectively trace atmospheric pollution sources and improve understanding of how plants absorb pollutants.
Geological evidence shows that life on Earth evolved in line with major concomitant changes in Earth surface processes and landforms. Biogeomorphological characteristics, especially those involving microorganisms, are potentially important facets of biosignatures on Mars and are generating increasing interest in astrobiology. Using Earth as an analog provides reasons to suspect that past or present life on Mars could have resulted in recognizable biogenic landforms.
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- Air pollution significantly affects the environment and human health; this study focuses on air particles from a mining area in Cartagena-La Unión, Spain, to assess their health risks.
- Four monitoring sites were chosen: a mining tailing, an urban area, an agricultural zone, and a coastal site, revealing varying particle sizes and mineral compositions, with high levels of harmful metals like Zn, Pb, and As in polluted areas.
- Risk assessments highlighted that while total metal content indicated unacceptable cancer and hazard risks at the mining tailing, considering bioaccessible metal fractions resulted in more acceptable risk levels, indicating potential overestimation when using total content alone.
Global Navigation Satellite System-Reflectometry (GNSS-R) has emerged as a remote sensing tool, which is complementary to traditional monostatic radars, for the retrieval of geophysical parameters related to surface properties. In the present paper, we describe a new polarimetric GNSS-R system, referred to as the GLObal navigation satellite system Reflectometry Instrument (GLORI), dedicated to the study of land surfaces (soil moisture, vegetation water content, forest biomass) and inland water bodies. This system was installed as a permanent payload on a French ATR42 research aircraft, from which simultaneous measurements can be carried out using other instruments, when required.
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