Frank Veroustraete

REDSTAR CV&M · Systems Analysis

The document shows my experience gathered over the years.

This Report gives a short account of the History of Aviation over the last 500 years.

Production of electricity with PV cells. How to increase PV cell efficiency

One wonders, if anyone has ever looked at Mendeleev's table of Elements with the abundance of its elements in the Earth’s crust in mind, and ... yes, bio-geochemists did exactly that! So what can we learn from it? Because apparently Lithium is an important chemical element in the production of batteries from which Electric Vehicles and lots of othe...

Report of REDSTAR CV&M and Testaankoop consumer organization about greenwashing

This Report elaborates on the demography and socio-economic status of the five Bric Bloc countries. It elaborates on strengths and weaknesses of the Bric countries, compared to two more developed Unions of States e.g., the US and the EU. Conclusions are drawn with respect of the Brics future and expansion. Census data are the basis of this report a...

Now that Turkish votes have been cast, elections passed into eternity. Nevertheless Turkey is sinking further into the swamp of poverty. Erdogan's power is based on an enigmatic paradox! His voting supporters consist of the poor and poorest voters, hit hard by the backlashes of his financial-economic policies. A hard malaise lashes Turkish citizens...

This Environmental Impact Report assesses the environmental consequences associated with the intensive breeding of livestock (cattle, pigs, chicken) in the BENELUX region (Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg). Intensive animal farming practices have significant implications for various aspects of the environment we live in, especially in densely popul...

PFAS stands for poly and perfluoro-alkyl substances. It is a group of thousands of different molecules containing the atom fluorine (F). The fabrics are interesting for the chemical industry because they hardly weather and repel water, grease and dirt. Teflon is one of the best known PFAS. PFAS are also added to products to make them wear resistant...

Op 11 maart 2011 vond 130 km ten oosten van de Japanse stad Sendai een catastrofale zeebeving plaats met een kracht van 9 op de schaal van Richter. De daaropvolgende tsunami (vloedgolf) richtte veel schade aan. In Sendai, de hoofdstad van de prefectuur Miyagi, werd een tsunami van 10 meter hoog waargenomen. Bij de kerncentrale Fukushima Daiichi was...

The experiments are in fact measurements provided by the Belgian Royal Meteorological Institute (KMI - RMI, Brussels). They are presented for June 2023, which was a very special month concerning mean monthly temperatures, and solar irradiation. records were broken in a month where the Sun is at its maximal elevation in Belgium and other Channel and...

Deadly Heat Domes occurred in June 2023. Where and how intense?

The Colorado River is in crisis. The problem has been building for decades but has come to a head in recent years because the major reservoirs on the river have fallen to dangerously low levels, prompting the Biden administration to call for unprecedented cuts in water usage for the 40 million people who rely on the river.

This dissertation aims to provide a comprehensive examination of the history of racial theories, tracing their origins, evolution, and societal impacts across different periods. By delving into the intellectual, scientific, and socio-political contexts in which racial theories emerged, this dissertation sheds light on the development of racial thin...

There is now a greater chance than before that we will remain stuck in the same weather pattern for a longer period of time. In the past, a new pattern presented itself every few days, now those patterns tend to persist for a longer period of time. Can you explain this using the meteorological literature? ChatGPT Although I don't have access to the...

The essay describes the developments in mathematics over human history. It is a short account of important steps taken by humanity in the development of mathematics, its methods and applications.

Slavery in the 21st Century. Its socio-economic impacts.

The paper gives an update of the EU energy mix and the position of Belgium in this context.

Sommige futuristen beweren al enkele decennia dat de mensheid afstevent op de zogenaamde 'Technologische Singulariteit (TS)', TS is een punt waarop de technologische vooruitgang zo snel vooruit gaat dat het menselijk brein niet meer kan begrijpen wat er aan de hand is. Hoewel hun voorspellingen volgens sommige critici te optimistisch waren, lijkt h...

New data by ICOS confirm that natural carbon sinks such as the ocean and forests are not stable. Climate change makes these sinks more vulnerable, in some cases even turning them into carbon emitters. This compromises current climate targets and action plans.

This report gives insight in the Energy & Transport activities in the Rhine-Scheldt-Meuse Estuary. This estuary has been of importance for Europe since the Middle Ages. Bruges was the 'Venice of the North' in that period. Now the Rhine-Scheldt-Meuse Estuary has become the Energy and Transport hub of Europe. I give an account of this in this report....

BG9 - Programme group scientific officer: Silvia Caldararu BG9.1. - Remote Sensing applications for the biosphere A very tiny layer holds most of earth's life in a complex mix of biotic and abiotic factors that interact in a subtle unique and ever changing play. In this scene, remotely-sensed (RS) signals result from the interaction of incoming,...

This year's COP27 has been held in Sharm-El-Sheikh from the 6th to 18th of November 2022. The event hosted delegates from the 198 parties to the UNFCCC. It explored previous themes at COP meetings like the one in Glasgow, as well as biodiversity and decarbonisation. There was an expectation that a focus would be placed on how to finance climate cha...

Engie, the French parent company of Electrabel, is in favor of closing the Belgian nuclear power stations by 2025. The company has decided to depreciate the value of the nuclear power stations in full. Until now, it has taken into account that the two youngest installations will remain open for a longer time. The latter is now also a thing of the p...

This Report describes how to harvest wind energy with a Kite and convert it into electricity to finally store it in a battery. The technique is brand new and developed in Delft, the Netherlands by KitePower. See also: https://thekitepower.com/

Never before has so much solar PV panel based electricity been produced in Belgium as in the past three months. Records were already broken in May and June, but the past month of July stands out in particular. At that time, an unprecedented amount of solar electric power was being produced, they saw at high-voltage grid operator Elia: "935 GWh was...

Energy giant Iberdrola has commissioned Europe's largest solar power plant in western Spain. 1.5 million solar panels are to supply 334,000 homes with electricity © Business AM Energy giant Iberdrola has commissioned Europe's largest solar power plant in southwestern Spain. 1.5 million solar panels are to supply 334,000 homes with electric power. S...

Every time the topic of global warming and climate change are discussed, renewable energy assumes the role of best option. The clamour for the transition from fossil and nuclear to renewable energy is getting louder and louder. Countries worldwide pledge ambitious zero carbon emission targets and offer lucrative incentives to their citizens, busine...

The report describes the destructive power of many, if not most, of the open air nuclear bomb detonations which took place during the 40s, 50s and 60s of the previous century. It uses a comparative approach of the detonation described in this short report. The approach gives outcome on the impact of nuclear bomb detonations with regard to the fireb...

The method outlines the steps to take to estimate human CO2 emissions for a certain region or set of countries.

Recent rumours suggest that Lütfi Elvan might soon have to resign from his post as Turkish Finance Minister. He drew the condemnation of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan over his remarks on tackling inflation. AKP MP’s said that Erdoğan became mad when hearing Elvan's remarks. Hence, Erdoğan addressed his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) me...

Een multinationaal nutsbedrijf met monopolie in België! Maandag 25/10/2021 Nu de prijzen van aardgas en electriciteit hoogterecords breken, is het voor de Belgische Federale Overheid niet eenvoudig om van het molog energiebedrijf ENGIE wat clementie te vragen ten bate van Belgische verbruikers van aardgas en electriciteit. Belgisch Federaal Ministe...

This Technical Short Report, identifies Turkey's economy to be in a pure stagflation status. It is explained why?

Ruw geschat hebben 1.217 Belgen constructies opgezet in belastingparadijzen. En dan zijn we bescheiden. De 1.217 zijn maar het kleine grut. Onderzoek door het Internationaal Consortium van Onderzoekjournalisten (ICIJ). D.d. 5 oktober 2021. Het financiële centrum in Panama. De 'Pandora Papers' zijn gelekte documenten van 14 kantoren die constructies...

Nu de prijzen van aardgas en elektriciteit hoogterecords breken, is het voor de Belgische Federale Overheid niet eenvoudig om van het moloch energiebedrijf ENGIE wat clementie te vragen ten bate van Belgische verbruikers van aardgas en elektriciteit. Belgisch Federaal Minister van Energie, Tinne Van der Straeten (Groen), mag Engie geen hogere bijdr...

This Report gives an interpretation of COVID-19 infections and deaths based on a systems analytical approach applied on Belgian datasets. It might shed more light on decisions which can be taken with respect to vaccination strategies. According to this report, countries can return to almost normal living conditions if some measures are carefully up...

Are you ready to apply for a job in a Simulated Martial Environment? Did the Biosphere 2 experiments fail or not! In a statement, NASA announced the launch of a test campaign for a future manned mission to Mars. In particular, the space agency launched a call for applications to simulate life (or survival) on the red planet. The selected candidate...

This report is a copy of the EGU Newsletter for the Benefit of ResearchGate members.

It becomes more probable that the wars of the future will be fought over water rather than oil. It is a past mirage, becoming an increasingly more terrifying reality every year passing. The amount of rain, snow, or other precipitation falling on a given location on the Earth's surface over the years, depends a lot on where that location is situated...

We are two members of ResearchGate, and we interacted over some years on spaceflight, astronomy and their sometimes opposite objectives. An account was made of some of our conclusions and insights. Enjoy, Frank and Patrice

Till now, nine people died in the collapse of a Miami apartment building. At least 121 are still missing in the rubble. An engineer already sounded the alarm during 2018. Rescue workers are searching for survivors in the rubble since last Thursday's collapse. The operation is slow though. The destruction of the Champlain Towers South apartment bu...

NASA scientists call the results of their latest research, alarming. In the last fourteen years, the Earth appears to retain twice as much extra solar energy. Atmospheric warming up is faster than predicted till now. In 2021, the American desert and the West Coast are drier now than at any time in the past 400 years. The extent of drought in the We...

Canada recorded its highest ever temperature as the country's west and the US Pacific northwest frazzle in an unprecedented heatwave. Lytton in British Columbia soared to a 46.6 °C on Sunday, breaking an 84-year-old record, officials said. A "heat dome"-a static high pressure field acting like a lid on a cooking pot-has set records in many other ar...

A permanent global warming, with an additional 1.5 °C (a threshold value), would have: "Irreversible consequences for human and ecological systems". That’s yet another warning which is written in a draft report by UN climate experts, in which the French news agency AFP has been able to look into. If global warming reaches an additional 2 °C instead...

Experimental results are presented and discussed about the groundwater levels evolution in Belgium (in Dutch).

Alarming," NASA scientists call the results of their latest research. The last fourteen years, the earth appears to retain twice as much extra solar energy. Atmospheric warming up is faster than predicted till now. In 2021, the American desert and the West Coast are drier now than at any time in the past 400 years. Eric Mack 13h00 Pacific Time-18/0...

Soil resources of the Earth are vital for preserving life on this planet due to their unique ecosystem services. Etymologically, humus, human, and humble share, for a good reason, the same root. These resources are, however, limited and non-renewable at a reasonable time scale. In addition, soils are now threatened, as evidenced in the fact that in...

Introduction Seminar to Remote Sensing

Copyright on all Seminars with Frank Veroustraete

The description is given in the presentation added

Aridity and salinity limit sustainable biomass production and agricultural practices in desert areas. In this study, the capability of wind deposits containing around 10% gypsum was evaluated for reclamation of saline soil and its effect on the production of sorghum bicolar L., in an arid area. Two substance treatments at concentrations of 25 and 5...

This code package contains the source code of a FOURIER filter routine written in FORTRAN 77 (FOURIERMOD.FOR). An example application is included e.g.: The example of PV Cell temperatures measured on a minute basis and present in the input file of the routine (VAR_IN.TXT) Also included is a spreadsheet showing the results of filtering and additiona...

Review Confirmation Certificate

Current uncertainty in quantifying the global carbon budget remains a major contributing source of uncertainty in reliably projecting future climate change. Furthermore, quantifying the global carbon budget and characterizing uncertainties have emerged as critical to a successful implementation of United National Framework Convention on Climate Cha...

The objective of this paper was to evaluate the use of in situ normalized difference vegetation index (NDVIis) and Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer NDVI (NDVIMD) time series data as proxies for ecosystem gross primary productivity (GPP) to improve GPP upscaling. We used GPP flux data from 21 global FLUXNET sites across main global biom...

VALERI : a network of sites and methodology for the validation of medium spatial resolution land products

Forest canopy height (FCH) is a key parameter in the estimation of forest biomass and productivity. However, areas with hilly or mountainous terrain present a genuine challenge to extract the vertical structural parameters by using the large footprint Lidar full waveform data. In this study, a mathematical method based on the inflection point of Li...

This short research communication discusses the probability of a second severe drought period in Belgium, which might become evn more probleamtic than the draught during 2018.

Aboveground forest biomass (Bagf) and height of forest canopy (Hfc) are of great significance for the determination of carbon sources and sinks, carbon cycling and global change research. In this paper, Bagf of coniferous and broadleaf forest in the Chinese Three Gorges region is estimated by integrating light detection and ranging (LiDAR) and Land...

Supporting Information S1

Forest carbon use efficiency (CUE, the ratio of net to gross primary productivity) represents the fraction of photosynthesis that is not used for plant respiration. Although important, it is often neglected in climate change impact analyses. Here, we assess the potential impact of thinning on projected carbon-cycle dynamics and implications for for...

This preprint tackles the global climate impact extremes in the framework of a nowcasting project. June and especially July have seen lots of extreme events. The main impact in Europe is extreme drought and soaring high temperatures which were all-time record-breaking in many countries. Forest fires due to the extreme drought, have shown an enormou...

The preprint is a letter from the director of the European Research Council (ERC) thanking me for the review work I performed for the ERC. In fact this is not a real preprint but more a letter of recognition of the work I performed for the ERC. Frank Veroustraete

The data file is a certificate for outstanding review work of paper contributions to an ISPRS Conference.

A method to remove atmospheric carbon dioxide by precipitation enhancement from clouds with an advanced spraying technique making use of an alkaline compound is proposed.

There is increasing interest on national climate change mitigation and adaptation plans in mangroves in developing nations, and Ellembelle in the Western Region of Ghana is no exception. Ellembelle, the study area, is one of the areas where there is little information on the extent of mangrove forest. This research, aims to determine changes having...

The focus of this poster is on the least structurally complex an only gaseous molecule of all plant physiological ’hormones, e.g. ethylene. Ethylene is produced by all plants, lower and higher ones, trees, agricultural and natural herbaceous species ,even bryophytes and bacteria. Should ethylene be considered as the gaseous molecules isoprene and t...

The poster demonstrates mesophyllness in function of abaxial and adaxial leaf reflectance and using the Normalized Difference Asymmetry Index (NDAI)

The aim of the OPTIMISE network is to better understand reflectance and fluorescence measurements for ground validation of Earth system models and global satellite observation ((ESA FLEX)s, using innovative spectrometers and UAV platforms, and to develop automated wireless communication systems with on-line spectral information storage, quality ass...

A method to remove atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) by precipitation enhancement from clouds with an advanced spraying technique making use of alkaline compounds is proposed. Alkali absorption by cloud water can significantly increase the solubility of СО2 in raindrops developed by airplane seeding. This would provide much higher than normal levels...

To explore the impacts on global agricultural systems, as we speak till 2050, is a hectic task. It encompasses essentially the objective to identify the decisions policy makers have to make for the years ahead. They have to decide on the policy to follow to consolidate the objective, that a global population rising to nine billion (or more) ca...

Ethylene is a different type of plant physiological metabolite than the 'classical' plant hormones. Classical plant hormones all control one or another type of plant physiological process. In this paper, we focus on the least structurally complex as well as the only gaseous molecule of all plant physiological 'hormonal' metabolites, e.g. ethylene....

This first Editorial of REDSTAR-CV&M OPEN SOURCE SCIENCE Publishing – CLIMATE IMPACTS, gives an account of the first islands in the Pacific to disappear in the largest Ocean of the globe, the Pacific. REDSTAR-CV&M OPEN SOURCE SCIENCE Publishing does not have journalism as an objective, but the description and distribution of scientific evidence on...

The city of Valencia (39°28' N, 0°22' W, 15 m a.s.l., 809,267 inhabitants in 2010), listed as the third largest city of Spain, has a principal road network of 300 km and a fleet of approximately 496,000 vehicles. • The city has 119,171 trees (2010), which are exposed to different ranges of traffic pollution (CO2, particulate matter, CO, NOx, SOx),...

Geophysical Research Abstracts - Vol. 18, EGU2016-18364-1, 2016 EGU General Assembly 2016 © Author(s) 2016. CC Attribution 3.0 License. Global GPP based on Plant Functional Types Frank Veroustraete (1) and Manuela Balzarolo (2) (1) Antwerp University, Faculty of Sciences, Department of Bioscience Engineering, Belgium. (frank.veroustraete@uantwerpen...

General comments: 1) Good paper, but English can significantlly be improved. I added the reviewed mansucript with a lot of examples for improvement. Please take care of this action. 2) Use the present tence wherever possible. 3) Scientifically I have no comments on this paper. Its thesis is sound and the argumentation as well. Specific comments: 1)...

This report is an attachment to the ACTIVITY REPORT for the HYPERCITY project with CONTRACT SR/00/303 and contains the project information (progress, results and future work) and illustrative material.

in ecosystem phenology play an important role in the definition of inter-annual variability of net ecosystem carbon uptake. A good estimate at the global scale of ecosystem phenology, mainly that of photosynthesis or gross primary productivity (GPP), may be provided by vegetation indices derived from MODIS satellite image data. However, the relatio...

The working paper describes the structure of the US Intelligence Community

How can precision farming evolve in such a way that the Earth continues providing mankind with food for an exponentially growing world population? At what point in time will we be able to designate agriculture, as sustainable agriculture?

Aridity and salinity limit sustainable biomass production and agriculture in desert areas. On the other hand, due to an ever-increasing global population and the concomitantly declining natural resources, food and energy security is an important global concern. In this study, capability of wind deposit was evaluated for saline soil reclamation and...

Analysis of the Spatio-Temporal Characteristics of Water Use Efficiency of Vegetation in West China Lu Ling1, Li Xin1, Huang Chun-Lin1, Frank Veroustraete2 1. Cold and Arid Regions Environmental and Engineering Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Lanzou Gansu 730000, China; 2. Flemish Institute for Technological Research(VITO)/Centre...

For years now, drone advocates have cited precision agriculture - crop management that uses GPS and big data - as a way to increase crop yield while resolving water and food crises. Unfortunately, drones haven’t had a significant impact on agricultural practices, at least until recently. A lot is happening lately on the subject of drone application...