The advantages of intelligent approaches such as the conjunction of artificial vision and the use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have been recently emerging. This paper presents a focused on obtaining scans of large areas of livestock system. Counting and monitoring of animal species can be performed with video recordings taken from UAVs. Moreover the system keeps track of the number of animals detected by analyzing the images taken with the UAVs cameras. Several tests have been performed to evaluate this system and preliminary results and the conclusions are presented in this paper.

Groundwater storage, drainage, and interbasin water exchange are common hydrological processes but often difficult to quantify due to a lack of local observations. We present a study of three volcanic mountainous watersheds located in south‐central Chile (~36.9 ° S) in the Chillán volcanic complex (Chillán, Renegado, and Diguillín river basins). These are neighboring basins that are similar with respect to the metrics normally available for characterization everywhere (e.g., precipitation, temperature, and land cover). In a hydrological sense, similar (proportional) behavior would be expected if these catchments would be characterized with this general information. However, these watersheds show dissimilar behavior when analyzed in detail. The surface water balance does not fit for any of these watersheds individually; however, the water balance of the whole system can be explained by likely interbasin water exchanges. The Renegado river basin has an average annual runoff per unit of area on the order of 60–65% less than those of the Diguillín and Chillán rivers, which is contradictory to the hydrological similarity among the basins. To understand the main processes that control streamflow generation, two analyses were performed: (a) basin metrics (land cover, geologic, topographic, and climatological maps) and hydro‐meteorological data analyses and (b) a water balance model approach. The analyses contribute to a plausible explanation for the hydrogeological processes in the system. The soils, topography, and geology of the Chillán–Renegado–Diguillín system favor the infiltration and groundwater movements from the Renegado river basin, mainly to the neighboring Diguillín basin. The interbasin water exchanges affect hydrological similarity and explain the differences observed in the hydrological processes of these three apparently similar volcanic basins. The results highlight the complexity of hydrological processes in volcanic mountainous systems and suggest that a simple watershed classification approach based on widely available data is insufficient. Simple local analyses such as specific flow analysis with a review of the geology and morphology can contribute to a better understanding of the hydrology of volcanic mountainous areas.

Hydrological modelling has undergone constant growth with the increase in information processing capabilities. Hydrological models have traditionally been used to study the effects of climate change on management and land-use changes and for water resources planning, among other purposes. The aim of this study was to determine and analyse the advantages of the HBV and HYMOD models, which are commonly used in hydrology on daily and monthly time scales. A regional sensitivity analysis was used to compare the processes that take on greater importance at different time scales in the two models. As a result, it was found that quick precipitation-runoff processes prove to be better represented in the HBV model, while slow, time-aggregated processes are better represented by the HYMOD model. This study confirms that both models are adequate for rain-dominated basins, such as those of the study area. Additionally, the HBV model proved to be more robust in comparison to HYMOD.

In this paper, we report on the spectral detection of wustite, Fe(II) oxide (FeO), and magnetite, Fe(II, III) oxide (Fe3O4), molecular emissions during the combustion of pyrite (FeS2), in a laboratory-scale furnace operating at high temperatures. These species are typically generated by reactions occurring during the combustion (oxidation) of this iron sulfide mineral. Two detection schemes are addressed: the first consisting of measurements with a built-in developed spectrometer with a high sensitivity and a high spectral resolution. The second one consisting of spectra measured with a low spectral resolution and a low sensitivity commercial spectrometer, but enhanced and analyzed with post signal processing and multivariate data analysis such as principal component analysis (PCA) and a multivariate curve resolution—the alternating least squares method (MCR-ALS). A non-linear model is also proposed to reconstruct spectral signals measured during pyrite combustion. Different combustion conditions were studied to evaluate the capacity of the detection schemes to follow the spectral emissions of iron oxides. The results show a direct correlation between FeO and Fe3O4 spectral features intensity, and non-linear relations with key combustion variables such as flame temperature, and the combusted sulfide mineral particle size.