Nora Tassetti | Università Politecnica delle Marche, Italy (original) (raw)
Papers by Nora Tassetti
The aim of the research was to monitor and assess landslide hazards by remote sensing data proces... more The aim of the research was to monitor and assess landslide hazards by remote sensing data processing and GIS spatial analysis. The automatic classification of remote sensing images provides many useful land use information to combine in a GIS environment with other spatial factors influencing the occurrence of landslide. The upper part of Susa Valley, in the Italian Western Alps, was chosen as test area because of a large variety of remote sensing data available by ISPRS WG VIII/2 with the aim to exchange information and experience in the field of geomatic techniques. It is well known that the occurrence of landslides is controlled by a lot of morphological, geological, and human factors. We have chosen, regarding the available data, the following factors: acclivity, aspect, lithology, land use and precipitations. We have built up a mathematical predictive model enabling actual/potential unstable slopes. It is a linear model where the hazard score depends on instability factors and...
Abstract The most extensive and use of Remote Sensing data is in Land Cover/Land Use studies by m... more Abstract The most extensive and use of Remote Sensing data is in Land Cover/Land Use studies by means of automated image classification. The general objective of this research is to develop, starting from high resolution multi-spectral imagery, an automated ...
Fishery discard survival depends on multiple conditions; caution is essential when survival study... more Fishery discard survival depends on multiple conditions; caution is essential when survival study outputs are employed to support management decisions. The study presents a stepwise procedure, devised to estimate discard survival, that accounts for the variability characterizing commercial fishing practices. The procedure was applied to the first survival study performed onboard rapido trawlers targeting Solea solea in the Mediterranean Sea. Undersized specimens collected during sorting were assessed for vitality; some were retained for captive observation. The main drivers affecting discard survival at the time of catch sorting (immediate survival) were identified and used to outline four different operational conditions set (scenarios). Immediate survival in each scenario was subsequently modified by applying a hazard coefficient of survival after 5 days of captive observation in relation to each vitality class, thus obtaining relative survival estimates following discarding. Temp...
Multibeam echosounders are widely used for 3D bathymetric mapping, and increasingly for water col... more Multibeam echosounders are widely used for 3D bathymetric mapping, and increasingly for water column studies. However, they rapidly collect huge volumes of data, which poses a challenge for water column data processing that is often still manual and time-consuming, or affected by low efficiency and high false detection rates if automated. This research describes a comprehensive and reproducible workflow that improves efficiency and reliability of target detection and classification, by calculating metrics for target cross-sections using a commercial software before feeding into a feature-based semi-supervised machine learning framework. The method is tested with data collected from an uncalibrated multibeam echosounder around an offshore gas platform in the Adriatic Sea. It resulted in more-efficient target detection, and, although uncertainties regarding user labelled training data need to be underlined, an accuracy of 98% in target classification was reached by using a final pre-t...
Sustainability
Human pressures on marine ecosystems significantly increased during last decades. Among the inten... more Human pressures on marine ecosystems significantly increased during last decades. Among the intense anthropic activities, industrial fisheries have caused the alteration of habitats, the reduction of biodiversity and the main fish stocks. The aim of this research, carried out in the Adriatic Sea, was to test a repeatable Marine Spatial Planning framework aimed at enhancing fisheries sustainability through the application of Decision Support Tools and the composition of a catalog of possible measures. The use of these tools proved very useful to identify possible criticalities and facilitate an effective exchange with fisheries stakeholders, local authorities, and fishermen, whose involvement was an indispensable step in the process. Tool-based analyses allowed to assess the spatial footprint of a range of anthropogenic pressures from human activities (e.g., fisheries, maritime traffic, and aquaculture). Within this multi-pressure scenario, special attention was paid to fishing-relat...
2021 International Workshop on Metrology for the Sea; Learning to Measure Sea Health Parameters (MetroSea)
Frontiers in Marine Science
In the past decades, the Automatic Identification System (AIS) has been employed in numerous rese... more In the past decades, the Automatic Identification System (AIS) has been employed in numerous research fields as a valuable tool for, among other things, Maritime Domain Awareness and Maritime Spatial Planning. In contrast, its use in fisheries management is hampered by coverage and transmission gaps. Transmission gaps may be due to technical limitations (e.g., weak signal or interference with other signals) or to deliberate switching off of the system, to conceal fishing activities. In either case such gaps may result in underestimating fishing effort and pressure. This study was undertaken to map and analyze bottom trawler transmission gaps in terms of duration and distance from the harbor with a view to quantifying unobserved fishing and its effects on overall trawling pressure. Here we present the first map of bottom trawler AIS transmission gaps in the Mediterranean Sea and a revised estimate of fishing effort if some gaps are considered as actual fishing.
Computers & Geosciences, 2016
Linear buffer strips (BS) along watercourses are commonly adopted to reduce run-off, accumulation... more Linear buffer strips (BS) along watercourses are commonly adopted to reduce run-off, accumulation of bank-top sediments and the leaking of pesticides into fresh-waters, which strongly increase wate...
European Journal of Remote Sensing, 2014
Abstract. The paper presents a database of information on wrecks, natural and artificial reefs lo... more Abstract. The paper presents a database of information on wrecks, natural and artificial reefs located in the Adriatic Sea, collected within the framework of the Interreg Italy–Croatia project ADRIREEF – Innovative exploitation of Adriatic Reefs in order to strengthen Blue Economy. The data collection lasted more than 1 year and included three surveys and a wide literature review. After being collected, data were harmonized and, where possible, made machine-readable. Moreover, data were widely metadated, published in a WebGIS ( https://adrireef.github.io/sandbox3/ , last access: 3 May 2021), and shared as open data in EMODnet (European Marine Observation and Data Network) Data Ingestion Portal through the SEANOE repository (Ferra et al., 2020; https://doi.org/10.17882/74880 ). The database is composed of 285 three-dimensional records, each one described by 51 attributes. Parameters are clustered in four main groups: identification, reef description, site description, and management/...
Mediterranean Marine Science
Morphological analysis, molecular characterization, and information on distribution and density o... more Morphological analysis, molecular characterization, and information on distribution and density of Anadara kagoshimensis (Tokunaga, 1906) specimens collected in the Adriatic Sea were here carried out as based on various material and data from five surveys conducted from 2010 to 2014, for a total of 329 bottom trawl hauls. The morphological and molecular analyses allowed to clarify the confused taxonomy regarding the biggest ark clam alien species invading the Italian waters and the Mediterranean Sea. The analysis on distribution and density revealed that A. kagoshimensis mostly occurs along the Italian coast at depths from 8 to 50 m, with a catch frequency of more than 98% in all hauls performed on silty-clay sediment at 8-30 m depth. The hotspot map clearly shows a reduction of its distribution area from 2010 to 2012.
Sensors
Maritime traffic and fishing activities have accelerated considerably over the last decade, with ... more Maritime traffic and fishing activities have accelerated considerably over the last decade, with a consequent impact on the environment and marine resources. Meanwhile, a growing number of ship-reporting technologies and remote-sensing systems are generating an overwhelming amount of spatio-temporal and geographically distributed data related to large-scale vessels and their movements. Individual technologies have distinct limitations but, when combined, can provide a better view of what is happening at sea, lead to effectively monitor fishing activities, and help tackle the investigations of suspicious behaviors in close proximity of managed areas. The paper integrates non-cooperative Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) Sentinel-1 images and cooperative Automatic Identification System (AIS) data, by proposing two types of associations: (i) point-to-point and (ii) point-to-line. They allow the fusion of ship positions and highlight “suspicious” AIS data gaps in close proximity of managed...
Marine Environmental Research
Sensors
Hydrocarbon seepage is overlooked in the marine environment, mostly due to the lack of high-resol... more Hydrocarbon seepage is overlooked in the marine environment, mostly due to the lack of high-resolution exploration data. This contribution is about the set-up of a relocatable and cost-effective monitoring system, which was tested on two seepages in the Central Adriatic Sea. The two case studies are an oil spill at a water depth of 10 m and scattered biogenic methane seeps at a water depth of 84 m. Gas plumes in the water column were detected with a multibeam system, tightened to sub-seafloor seismic reflection data. Dissolved benthic fluxes of nutrients, metals and Dissolved Inorganic Carbon (DIC) were measured by in situ deployment of a benthic chamber, which was used also for the first time to collect water samples for hydrocarbons characterization. In addition, the concentration of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, as well as major and trace elements were analyzed to provide an estimate of hydrocarbon contamination in the surrounding sediment and to make further inferences on th...
European Journal of Remote Sensing
The aim of the research was to monitor and assess landslide hazards by remote sensing data proces... more The aim of the research was to monitor and assess landslide hazards by remote sensing data processing and GIS spatial analysis. The automatic classification of remote sensing images provides many useful land use information to combine in a GIS environment with other spatial factors influencing the occurrence of landslide. The upper part of Susa Valley, in the Italian Western Alps, was chosen as test area because of a large variety of remote sensing data available by ISPRS WG VIII/2 with the aim to exchange information and experience in the field of geomatic techniques. It is well known that the occurrence of landslides is controlled by a lot of morphological, geological, and human factors. We have chosen, regarding the available data, the following factors: acclivity, aspect, lithology, land use and precipitations. We have built up a mathematical predictive model enabling actual/potential unstable slopes. It is a linear model where the hazard score depends on instability factors and...
Abstract The most extensive and use of Remote Sensing data is in Land Cover/Land Use studies by m... more Abstract The most extensive and use of Remote Sensing data is in Land Cover/Land Use studies by means of automated image classification. The general objective of this research is to develop, starting from high resolution multi-spectral imagery, an automated ...
Fishery discard survival depends on multiple conditions; caution is essential when survival study... more Fishery discard survival depends on multiple conditions; caution is essential when survival study outputs are employed to support management decisions. The study presents a stepwise procedure, devised to estimate discard survival, that accounts for the variability characterizing commercial fishing practices. The procedure was applied to the first survival study performed onboard rapido trawlers targeting Solea solea in the Mediterranean Sea. Undersized specimens collected during sorting were assessed for vitality; some were retained for captive observation. The main drivers affecting discard survival at the time of catch sorting (immediate survival) were identified and used to outline four different operational conditions set (scenarios). Immediate survival in each scenario was subsequently modified by applying a hazard coefficient of survival after 5 days of captive observation in relation to each vitality class, thus obtaining relative survival estimates following discarding. Temp...
Multibeam echosounders are widely used for 3D bathymetric mapping, and increasingly for water col... more Multibeam echosounders are widely used for 3D bathymetric mapping, and increasingly for water column studies. However, they rapidly collect huge volumes of data, which poses a challenge for water column data processing that is often still manual and time-consuming, or affected by low efficiency and high false detection rates if automated. This research describes a comprehensive and reproducible workflow that improves efficiency and reliability of target detection and classification, by calculating metrics for target cross-sections using a commercial software before feeding into a feature-based semi-supervised machine learning framework. The method is tested with data collected from an uncalibrated multibeam echosounder around an offshore gas platform in the Adriatic Sea. It resulted in more-efficient target detection, and, although uncertainties regarding user labelled training data need to be underlined, an accuracy of 98% in target classification was reached by using a final pre-t...
Sustainability
Human pressures on marine ecosystems significantly increased during last decades. Among the inten... more Human pressures on marine ecosystems significantly increased during last decades. Among the intense anthropic activities, industrial fisheries have caused the alteration of habitats, the reduction of biodiversity and the main fish stocks. The aim of this research, carried out in the Adriatic Sea, was to test a repeatable Marine Spatial Planning framework aimed at enhancing fisheries sustainability through the application of Decision Support Tools and the composition of a catalog of possible measures. The use of these tools proved very useful to identify possible criticalities and facilitate an effective exchange with fisheries stakeholders, local authorities, and fishermen, whose involvement was an indispensable step in the process. Tool-based analyses allowed to assess the spatial footprint of a range of anthropogenic pressures from human activities (e.g., fisheries, maritime traffic, and aquaculture). Within this multi-pressure scenario, special attention was paid to fishing-relat...
2021 International Workshop on Metrology for the Sea; Learning to Measure Sea Health Parameters (MetroSea)
Frontiers in Marine Science
In the past decades, the Automatic Identification System (AIS) has been employed in numerous rese... more In the past decades, the Automatic Identification System (AIS) has been employed in numerous research fields as a valuable tool for, among other things, Maritime Domain Awareness and Maritime Spatial Planning. In contrast, its use in fisheries management is hampered by coverage and transmission gaps. Transmission gaps may be due to technical limitations (e.g., weak signal or interference with other signals) or to deliberate switching off of the system, to conceal fishing activities. In either case such gaps may result in underestimating fishing effort and pressure. This study was undertaken to map and analyze bottom trawler transmission gaps in terms of duration and distance from the harbor with a view to quantifying unobserved fishing and its effects on overall trawling pressure. Here we present the first map of bottom trawler AIS transmission gaps in the Mediterranean Sea and a revised estimate of fishing effort if some gaps are considered as actual fishing.
Computers & Geosciences, 2016
Linear buffer strips (BS) along watercourses are commonly adopted to reduce run-off, accumulation... more Linear buffer strips (BS) along watercourses are commonly adopted to reduce run-off, accumulation of bank-top sediments and the leaking of pesticides into fresh-waters, which strongly increase wate...
European Journal of Remote Sensing, 2014
Abstract. The paper presents a database of information on wrecks, natural and artificial reefs lo... more Abstract. The paper presents a database of information on wrecks, natural and artificial reefs located in the Adriatic Sea, collected within the framework of the Interreg Italy–Croatia project ADRIREEF – Innovative exploitation of Adriatic Reefs in order to strengthen Blue Economy. The data collection lasted more than 1 year and included three surveys and a wide literature review. After being collected, data were harmonized and, where possible, made machine-readable. Moreover, data were widely metadated, published in a WebGIS ( https://adrireef.github.io/sandbox3/ , last access: 3 May 2021), and shared as open data in EMODnet (European Marine Observation and Data Network) Data Ingestion Portal through the SEANOE repository (Ferra et al., 2020; https://doi.org/10.17882/74880 ). The database is composed of 285 three-dimensional records, each one described by 51 attributes. Parameters are clustered in four main groups: identification, reef description, site description, and management/...
Mediterranean Marine Science
Morphological analysis, molecular characterization, and information on distribution and density o... more Morphological analysis, molecular characterization, and information on distribution and density of Anadara kagoshimensis (Tokunaga, 1906) specimens collected in the Adriatic Sea were here carried out as based on various material and data from five surveys conducted from 2010 to 2014, for a total of 329 bottom trawl hauls. The morphological and molecular analyses allowed to clarify the confused taxonomy regarding the biggest ark clam alien species invading the Italian waters and the Mediterranean Sea. The analysis on distribution and density revealed that A. kagoshimensis mostly occurs along the Italian coast at depths from 8 to 50 m, with a catch frequency of more than 98% in all hauls performed on silty-clay sediment at 8-30 m depth. The hotspot map clearly shows a reduction of its distribution area from 2010 to 2012.
Sensors
Maritime traffic and fishing activities have accelerated considerably over the last decade, with ... more Maritime traffic and fishing activities have accelerated considerably over the last decade, with a consequent impact on the environment and marine resources. Meanwhile, a growing number of ship-reporting technologies and remote-sensing systems are generating an overwhelming amount of spatio-temporal and geographically distributed data related to large-scale vessels and their movements. Individual technologies have distinct limitations but, when combined, can provide a better view of what is happening at sea, lead to effectively monitor fishing activities, and help tackle the investigations of suspicious behaviors in close proximity of managed areas. The paper integrates non-cooperative Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) Sentinel-1 images and cooperative Automatic Identification System (AIS) data, by proposing two types of associations: (i) point-to-point and (ii) point-to-line. They allow the fusion of ship positions and highlight “suspicious” AIS data gaps in close proximity of managed...
Marine Environmental Research
Sensors
Hydrocarbon seepage is overlooked in the marine environment, mostly due to the lack of high-resol... more Hydrocarbon seepage is overlooked in the marine environment, mostly due to the lack of high-resolution exploration data. This contribution is about the set-up of a relocatable and cost-effective monitoring system, which was tested on two seepages in the Central Adriatic Sea. The two case studies are an oil spill at a water depth of 10 m and scattered biogenic methane seeps at a water depth of 84 m. Gas plumes in the water column were detected with a multibeam system, tightened to sub-seafloor seismic reflection data. Dissolved benthic fluxes of nutrients, metals and Dissolved Inorganic Carbon (DIC) were measured by in situ deployment of a benthic chamber, which was used also for the first time to collect water samples for hydrocarbons characterization. In addition, the concentration of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, as well as major and trace elements were analyzed to provide an estimate of hydrocarbon contamination in the surrounding sediment and to make further inferences on th...
European Journal of Remote Sensing