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Swarm-founding wasps are endemic and common representatives of neotropical fauna and compose an interesting social tribe of vespids, presenting both complex social characteristics and uncommon traits for a eusocial group, such as the absence of castes with distinct morphology. The paper wasp Protonectarina sylveirae (Saussure) presents a broad distribution from Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay, occurring widespread in the Atlantic rainforest and arboreal Caatinga, being absent in the Amazon region. Given the peculiar distribution among swarm-founding wasps, an integrative approach to reconstruct the evolutionary history of P. sylveirae in a spatial-temporal framework was performed to investigate: the presence of genetic structure and its relationship with the geography, the evolution of distinct morphologic lineages and the possible historical event(s) in Neotropical region, which could explain the observed phylogeographic pattern. Individuals of P. sylveirae were obtained from populations of 16 areas throughout its distribution for DNA extraction and amplification of mitochondrial genes 12S, 16S and COI. Analysis of genetic diversity, construction of haplotype net, analysis of population structure and dating analysis of divergence time were performed. A morphometric analysis was also performed using 8 measures of the body of the adult (workers) to test if there are morphological distinction among populations. Thirty-five haplotypes were identified, most of them exclusively of a group and a high population structure was found. The possibility of genetic divergence because of isolation by distance was rejected. Morphological analysis pointed to a great uniformity in phenotypes, with only a small degree of differentiation between populations of south and the remaining. Divergence time analysis showed a Middle/Late Miocene origin, a period where an extensive marine ingression occurred in South America. Divergence of haplogroups began from the Plio/Pleistocene boundary and the last glacial maximum most likely modeled the current distribution of species, even though it was not the cause of genetic breaks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Endocrine disrupting compounds (EDCs) are chemicals that negatively impact endocrine system function, with effluent from paper mills one example of this class of chemicals. In Florida, female Eastern mosquitofish (Gambusia holbrooki) have been observed with male secondary sexual characteristics at three paper mill-impacted sites, indicative of EDC exposure, and are still found at one site on the Fenholloway River. The potential impacts that paper mill effluent exposure has on the G. holbrooki endocrine system and the stream ecosystem are unknown. The objective of this study was to use gene expression analysis to determine if exposure to an androgen receptor agonist was occurring and to couple this analysis with in vitro assays to evaluate the presence of androgen and progesterone receptor active chemicals in the Fenholloway River. Focused gene expression analyses of masculinized G. holbrooki from downstream of the Fenholloway River paper mill were indicative of androgen exposure, while genes related to reproduction indicated potential progesterone exposure. Hepatic microarray analysis revealed an increase in the expression of metabolic genes in Fenholloway River fish, with similarities in genes and biological processes compared to G. holbrooki exposed to androgens. Water samples collected downstream of the paper mill and at a reference site indicated that progesterone and androgen receptor active chemicals were present at both sites, which corroborates previous chemical analyses. Results indicate that G. holbrooki downstream of the Fenholloway River paper mill are impacted by a mixture of both androgens and progesterones. This research provides data on the mechanisms of how paper mill effluents in Florida are acting as endocrine disruptors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The last several decades have witnessed a shift in the way in which news is delivered and consumed by users. With the growth and advancements in mobile technologies, the Internet, and Web 2.0 technologies users are not only consumers of news, but also producers of online content. This has resulted in a novel and highly participatory cyber-physical news awareness ecosystem that fosters digital activism, in which volunteers contribute content to online communities. While studies have examined the various components of this news awareness ecosystem, little is still known about how news media coverage (and in particular digital media) impacts digital activism. In order to address this challenge and develop a greater understanding of it, this paper focuses on a specific form of digital activism, that of the production of digital geographical content through crowdsourcing efforts. Using refugee camps from around the world as a case study, we examine the relationship between news coverage (via Google news), search trends (via Google trends) and user edit contribution patterns in OpenStreetMap, a prominent geospatial data crowdsourcing platform. In addition, we compare and contrast these patterns with user edit patterns in Wikipedia, a well-known non-geospatial crowdsourcing platform. Using Google news and Google trends to derive a measure of thematic public awareness, our findings indicate that digital activism bursts tend to take place during periods of sustained build-up of public awareness deficit or surplus. These findings are in line with two prominent mass communication theories: agenda setting and corrective action, and suggest the emergence of a novel stimulus-awareness-activism framework in today’s participatory digital age. Moreover, these findings further complement existing research examining the motivational factors that drive users to contribute to online collaborative communities. This paper brings us one step closer to understanding the underlying mechanisms that drive digital activism in particular in the geospatial domain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recreational fishing is often perceived as harmless when it comes to fisheries management, and its impact often estimated to surpass the economic outcomes of e.g. large-scale fisheries. Recreational fisheries are often an indication of political stability and sound ecosystem management. However, despite a high economic impact, the economic costs on traditional and small-scale commercial fishers is yet to be known. This paper answers the question of how unregulated recreational fisheries could rather generate a loss to an economy, and cause unfair competition with existing commercial sectors using the example of Algeria. This paper assesses catches and economic value of recreational fisheries in Algeria, and finds that over 6,000 tonnes reach commercial markets annually, competing directly with the small-scale artisanal sector, while selling recreationally caught fish is still illegal. The paper further finds that the public is thereby deprived—through lost tax, licence income and landed value of $45 million US annually. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the consequences of ignoring the clustered data structure on allometric models. Clustered data, in the form of multiple trees sampled from multiple forest stands is commonly used to develop biomass allometric models. Of 102 reviewed papers published between 2012 and 2016 that reported biomass allometric models, 84 (82%) have used a clustered sampling design. However, in as many as 80% of these, the clustered data structure was ignored, potentially violating the independence assumption in ordinary least squares methods. The consequences of ignoring clustered data structure were empirically validated using two clustered biomass datasets (of 110 and 220 trees, with the cluster size of 5 and 10 trees respectively). We showed that when Intraclass Correlation Coefficient (ICC) was higher than zero, ignoring the clustered data structure returned underestimated standard errors, affecting further the confidence interval and t-test results. The underestimation level depended on ICC (which shows the variance proportion that was caused by the forest stand) and on cluster size (the number of trees sampled from one forest stand). We also showed that using first-order autocorrelation tests, such as the traditional Durbin-Watson statistic, to detect the autocorrelation due to clustered structure could be misleading as the test may show lack of autocorrelation even though ICC is different from zero. In conclusion, when ICC is higher than zero, ignoring the clustered data structure yields over-confident biomass predictions (due to underestimated confidence interval) and/or incorrect research conclusions (due to overestimated evidence against null hypothesis in t-test). Therefore, using a modelling approach that accounts for the hierarchical structure of the data is highly recommended when any form of clustering can be identified, even if the autocorrelation is not significant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the study of the fungi remains preserved in the waterlogged deposits of the Neolithic site of La Draga. These resources had the potential of being used as food and medicine, but also as tinder. Fire was without a doubt one of the most important resources for past people. It was used for lighting, heating, processing food and other materials, cooking and protection, and also possessed social and ritual significance. Hearths are one of the most common features at archaeological sites, but very often little attention is paid to the question of how these fires were lit, and they are seldom reflected in the archaeological record. In order to produce fire by percussion, an intermediate material is required between the sparks and the fuel. Fruiting bodies of fungi are a potential form of tinder, but are less inclined to be well-preserved than other materials. This paper presents the fungal fruiting bodies found at the Neolithic site of La Draga and discusses the meaning of their presence within the archaeological context of the site and European Prehistory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Changes in urban residential density represent an important issue in terms of land consumption, the conservation of ecosystems, air quality and related human health problems, as well as the consequential challenges for urban and regional planning. It is the decline of residential densities, in particular, that has often been used as the very definition of sprawl, describing a phenomenon that has been extensively studied in the United States and in Western Europe. Whilst these studies provide valuable insights into urbanization processes, only a handful of them have reflected the uneven dynamics of simultaneous urban growth and shrinkage, using residential density changes as a key indicator to uncover the underlying dynamics. This paper introduces a contrasting analysis of recent developments in both de- and re-concentration, defined as decreasing or increasing residential densities, respectively. Using a large sample of European cities, it detects differences in density changes between successional population growth/decline. The paper shows that dedensification, found in some large cities globally, is not a universal phenomenon in growing urban areas; neither the increasing disproportion between a declining demand for and an increasing supply of residential areas nor actual concentration processes in cities were found. Thus, the paper provides a new, very detailed perspective on (de)densification in both shrinking and growing cities and how they specifically contribute to current land take in Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Land tenure and tenure security are among the most important factors determining the viability and success of Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) initiatives. The premise of the present paper is that territorial conflicts lead to forest loss and compromise the successful implementation of REDD+. Within this context, the main objectives of this paper are to (i) document, relying on participatory methods, the extent to which land conflicts drive deforestation and (ii) reflect on the legal context of REDD+ examining if, from an Indigenous perspective, it offers tools to resolve such conflicts. We used the Upper Bayano Watershed in eastern Panama as a case study of complex land tenure dynamics, and their effects on forest conservation in the context of REDD+. Combining a range of participatory methods including participatory mapping and forest carbon stock assessment, we estimated the consequences of land invasions on forest carbon stocks. Our analysis shows that invasions of Indigenous territories amounted to 27.6% of the total deforestation for the period of 2001–2014. The situation is of paramount concern in the Embera territory of Majé where 95.4% of total deforestation was caused by colonist invaders. Using and validating the maps made freely available by the Global Forest Change initiative of the University of Maryland, we then developed a reference level for the watershed and carried out a back of the envelop estimation of likely REDD+ revenue, showing its potential to bring much needed income to Indigenous communities striving to protect their forest estate. Our analysis of current legislation in Panama highlights confusion and important legal voids and emphasizes the strong links between land tenure, carbon ownership, and territorial invasions. The options and shortcoming of implementing REDD+ in Indigenous territories is discussed in the conclusion taking our legal review into account. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Publication metadata help deliver rich analyses of scholarly communication. However, research concepts and ideas are more effectively expressed through unstructured fields such as full texts. Thus, the goals of this paper are to employ a full-text enabled method to extract terms relevant to disciplinary vocabularies, and through them, to understand the relationships between disciplines. This paper uses an efficient, domain-independent term extraction method to extract disciplinary vocabularies from a large multidisciplinary corpus of PLoS ONE publications. It finds a power-law pattern in the frequency distributions of terms present in each discipline, indicating a semantic richness potentially sufficient for further study and advanced analysis. The salient relationships amongst these vocabularies become apparent in application of a principal component analysis. For example, Mathematics and Computer and Information Sciences were found to have similar vocabulary use patterns along with Engineering and Physics; while Chemistry and the Social Sciences were found to exhibit contrasting vocabulary use patterns along with the Earth Sciences and Chemistry. These results have implications to studies of scholarly communication as scholars attempt to identify the epistemological cultures of disciplines, and as a full text-based methodology could lead to machine learning applications in the automated classification of scholarly work according to disciplinary vocabularies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Selecting appropriate environmental variables is a key step in ecology. Terrain attributes (e.g. slope, rugosity) are routinely used as abiotic surrogates of species distribution and to produce habitat maps that can be used in decision-making for conservation or management. Selecting appropriate terrain attributes for ecological studies may be a challenging process that can lead users to select a subjective, potentially sub-optimal combination of attributes for their applications. The objective of this paper is to assess the impacts of subjectively selecting terrain attributes for ecological applications by comparing the performance of different combinations of terrain attributes in the production of habitat maps and species distribution models. Seven different selections of terrain attributes, alone or in combination with other environmental variables, were used to map benthic habitats of German Bank (off Nova Scotia, Canada). 29 maps of potential habitats based on unsupervised classifications of biophysical characteristics of German Bank were produced, and 29 species distribution models of sea scallops were generated using MaxEnt. The performances of the 58 maps were quantified and compared to evaluate the effectiveness of the various combinations of environmental variables. One of the combinations of terrain attributes–recommended in a related study and that includes a measure of relative position, slope, two measures of orientation, topographic mean and a measure of rugosity–yielded better results than the other selections for both methodologies, confirming that they together best describe terrain properties. Important differences in performance (up to 47% in accuracy measurement) and spatial outputs (up to 58% in spatial distribution of habitats) highlighted the importance of carefully selecting variables for ecological applications. This paper demonstrates that making a subjective choice of variables may reduce map accuracy and produce maps that do not adequately represent habitats and species distributions, thus having important implications when these maps are used for decision-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Regulating ecosystem services provided by urban forests are of great importance for the quality of life among city dwellers. To reach a maximum contribution to well-being in cities, the urban regulating ecosystem services (URES) must match with the demands in terms of space and time. If we understand the matches or mismatches between the current urban dwellers’ desired quality conditions (demand) and the supply of URES by urban forests (UF) in the cities, this will facilitate integrating the concepts of ecosystem services in urban planning and management, but such an assessment has suffered from major knowledge limitations. Since it is complex and problematic to identify the direct demands for URES and the spatiotemporal patterns therein, improving the demand indicators can help to determine the actual requirements. In this paper, a methodological approach based on indicators is presented and demonstrated for two important URES: air quality improvement and global climate change mitigation provided by urban trees and shrubs. Four air quality standards and greenhouse gas reduction targets were used and compared to supplies of the URES in Tabriz, Iran. Our results show that the mean contribution of the URES supply to air quality standards and greenhouse gas reduction targets is modest. Hence, in Tabriz, there is a strong mismatch between demand and supply. Mismatches at the city scale will have to be reduced by both a reduction in pollutant emissions and an increased provisioning of URES supply through urban greenery. The presented assessment approach and the results for Tabriz make it explicit how different the demands and supplies of the two studied URES are, and we expect similar mismatches in many other cities. Therefore, our approach, relatively simple but still realistic and easy-to-apply, can raise awareness about, and the utility of, the ecosystem services concepts for urban planning and policymaking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates how former hunter-gatherers living along the southern North Sea coast in NW Europe adapted to long-term and short-term climatic and environmental changes at the beginning of the Holocene. It is argued that contemporaneous hunter-gatherers repeatedly changed their hunting equipment in response to changing climate and environment, not just for functional reasons but mainly driven by socio-territorial considerations. Based on a Bayesian analysis of 122 critically selected radiocarbon dates a broad chronological correlation is demonstrated between rapid changes in the design and technology of stone projectiles and short but abrupt cooling events, occurring at 10.3, 9.3 and 8.2 ka cal BP. Combined with the rapid sea level rises and increased wildfires these climatic events probably impacted the lifeways of hunter-gatherers in such a way that they increasingly faced resource stress and competition, forcing them to invest in the symbolic defense of their social territories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The expansion of the human species out of Africa in the Pleistocene, and the subsequent development of agriculture in the Holocene, resulted in waves of linguistic diversification and replacement across the planet. Analogous to the growth of populations or the speciation of biological organisms, languages diversify over time to form phylogenies of language families. However, the dynamics of this diversification process are unclear. Bayesian methods applied to lexical and phonetic data have created dated linguistic phylogenies for 18 language families encompassing ~3,000 of the world’s ~7,000 extant languages. In this paper we use these phylogenies to quantify how fast languages expand and diversify through time both within and across language families. The overall diversification rate of languages in our sample is ~0.001 yr-1 (or a doubling time of ~700 yr) over the last 6,000 years with evidence for nonlinear dynamics in language diversification rates over time, where both within and across language families, diversity initially increases rapidly and then slows. The expansion, evolution, and diversification of languages as they spread around the planet was a non-constant process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban change (urbanization) has dominated land change science for several decades. However, few studies have focused on what many scholars call the urban densification process (i.e., urban intensity expansion) despite its importance to both planning and subsequent impacts to the environment and local economies. This paper documents past urban densification patterns and uses this information to predict future densification trends in southeastern Wisconsin (SEWI) by using a rich dataset from the United States and by adapting the well-known Land Transformation Model (LTM) for this purpose. Urban densification is a significant and progressive process that often accompanies urbanization more generally. The increasing proportion of lower density areas, rather than higher density areas, was the main characteristic of the urban densification in SEWI from 2001 to 2011. We believe that improving urban land use efficiency to maintain rational densification are effective means toward a sustainable urban landscape. Multiple goodness-of-fit metrics demonstrated that the reconfigured LTM performed relatively well to simulate urban densification patterns in 2006 and 2011, enabling us to forecast densification to 2016 and 2021. The predicted future urban densification patterns are likely to be characterized by higher densities continue to increase at the expense of lower densities. We argue that detailed categories of urban density and specific relevant predictor variables are indispensable for densification prediction. Our study provides researchers working in land change science with important insights into urban densification process modeling. The outcome of this model can help planners to identify the current trajectory of urban development, enabling them to take informed action to promote planning objectives, which could benefit sustainable urbanization definitely. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the analysis of long-term changes in population densities at the regional and macro-regional scale and in the density of metapopulations. The following issues concerning estimations are addressed: chronological resolution of demographic changes, estimation of the weight of values for population density in order to transform the initial values included in the sample into the values that may be compared with each other at the regional scale, calibration of the transformed values into real population densities, and the estimation of the weight of values for population density at the scales of macro-regions and for the density of metapopulations. The proposed methods are tested on demographic changes in Central Europe, Southern Scandinavia, Southeastern Europe, and the Near East. The obtained results represent major trends in demographic development, while the proposed methodology could also be applied in other wide-scale demographic analyses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spatial indicators are used to quantify the state of species and ecosystem status, that is the impacts of climate and anthropogenic changes, as well as to comprehend species ecology. These metrics are thus, determinant to the stakeholder’s decisions on the conservation measures to be implemented. A detailed review of the literature (55 papers) showed that 18 spatial indicators were commonly used in marine ecology. Those indicators were than characterized and studied in detail, based on its application to empirical data (a time series of 35 marine species spatial distributions, sampled either with a random stratified survey or a regular transects surveys). The results suggest that the indicators can be grouped into three classes, that summarize the way the individuals occupy space: occupancy (the area occupied by a species), aggregation (spreading or concentration of species biomass) and quantity dependent (indicators correlated with biomass), whether these are spatially explicit (include the geographic coordinates, e.g. center of gravity) or not. Indicator’s temporal variability was lower than between species variability and no clear effect was observed in relation to sampling design. Species were then classified accordingly to their indicators. One indicator was selected from each of the three categories of indicators, to represent the main axes of species spatial behavior and to interpret them in terms of occupancy-aggregation-quantity relationships. All species considered were then classified according to their relationships among those three axes, into species that under increasing abundancy, primarily increase occupancy or aggregation or both. We suggest to use these relationships along the three-axes as surveillance diagrams to follow the yearly evolution of species distributional patterns in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The multi-period (~38,000–6000 cal BP) site of Franchthi Cave, located in the Argolid peninsula of southern mainland Greece, is unique in the Eastern Mediterranean for preserving a long archaeological sequence extending from the Upper Palaeolithic through to the end of the Neolithic period. In this paper, we present new anthracological (carbonized fuel wood waste) evidence from Franchthi Cave with which we reconstruct the changing ecology of woodland vegetation in its environs during the late Pleistocene and the early-mid Holocene. The integrated archaeobotanical record (charred wood and non-wood macro-remains) demonstrates that in the Lateglacial the now-submerged coastal shelf of the southern Argolid peninsula was covered by steppe grassland vegetation dominated by junipers, almonds, cereals and legumes. The rapid climatic amelioration that marked the start of the Holocene brought about the disappearance of juniper and the expansion of deciduous woodland, cereals and lentils. This woodland-grassland biome bears no analogues in the modern and historical vegetation ecology of the Aegean basin. Instead, it is directly comparable to the steppe woodland biomes exploited by late Pleistocene and early Holocene hunter-gatherers in Southwest Asia, and points to the convergent evolution of late Pleistocene and early Holocene plant exploitation strategies between the two regions. Continuous sea-level rise during the early Holocene led to the gradual extinction of this unique palaeohabitat, which acted as the catalyst for the selective introduction of domesticated cereal crops at Franchthi Cave in the early 9th millennium cal BP. Our meta-analysis of the non-wood archaeobotanical data puts into question the concept of the wholesale introduction of a crop “package” by pioneer settler groups arriving from the East. It is proposed instead that selective cereal crop introduction formed part of a complex pattern of sociocultural interactions that brought together indigenous and immigrant groups into new communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tourist satisfaction has always been a crucial research issue in the tourism economy. This paper utilizes the Spatial Durbin Model (SDM) to analyze the impact of urban tourism satisfaction on urban macroeconomics from a macro perspective, using quarterly data on tourist satisfaction in 35 large and medium-sized cities along with major urban macroeconomic variables. This study is quite distinct from previous research that focused on constructing a tourist satisfaction index and analyzing the influence factors of tourism satisfaction from the perspective of the micro-level internal composition of tourism. The empirical results show: Firstly, in respect of the impact of urban tourists' satisfaction on the GDP income of cities, the SDM and the SDM with a lagged first-order dependent variable (SDM_dlag) show that the short-term and long-term indirect effects of log-tourist satisfaction are significantly positive, indicating that city satisfaction has a significant positive spatial spillover effect on GDP growth in other cities; Secondly, in respect of the influence of urban tourist satisfaction on the cost of urban life in the SDM, the long-term direct and indirect effects of logarithmic satisfaction are significantly positive, implying, in the long run, that tourist satisfaction has a positive intraregional spillover effect and spatial spillover effect on urban living costs; Finally, the SDM_dlag for the regression of urban tourist satisfaction on the cost of urban daily life shows that the short-run direct and indirect effects of city tourist satisfaction are significantly negative, indicating that tourist satisfaction has intra-regional and spatial spillover effects, and its rise will reduce the cost of living expenses in local and other cities in the short term. Overall, we have further elucidated the role of different levels of urban tourist satisfaction in city macroeconomics from the spatial dimension, thereby enriching the existing research on tourist satisfaction to some certain extent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Community structures are ubiquitous in various complex networks, implying that the networks commonly be composed of groups of nodes with more internal links and less external links. As an important topic in network theory, community detection is of importance for understanding the structure and function of the networks. Optimizing statistical measures for community structures is one of most popular strategies for community detection in complex networks. In the paper, by using a type of self-loop rescaling strategy, we introduced a set of global modularity functions and a set of local modularity functions for community detection in networks, which are optimized by a kind of the self-consistent method. We carefully compared and analyzed the behaviors of the modularity-based methods in community detection, and confirmed the superiority of the local modularity for detecting community structures on large-size and heterogeneous networks. The local modularity can more quickly eliminate the first-type limit of modularity, and can eliminate or alleviate the second-type limit of modularity in networks, because of the use of the local information in networks. Moreover, we tested the methods in real networks. Finally, we expect the research can provide useful insight into the problem of community detection in complex networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Climate change is affecting food systems globally, with implications for food security, nutrition, and the health of human populations. There are limited data characterizing the current and future consequences of climate change on local food security for populations already experiencing poor nutritional indicators. Indigenous Amazonian populations have a high reported prevalence of nutritional deficiencies. This paper characterizes the food system of the Shawi of the Peruvian Amazon, climatic and non-climatic drivers of their food security vulnerability to climate change, and identifies potential maladaptation trajectories. Methods and findings: Semi-structured interviews with key informants (n = 24), three photovoice workshops (n = 17 individuals), transect walks (n = 2), a food calendar exercise, and two community dissemination meetings (n = 30 individuals), were conducted within two Shawi communities in Balsapuerto District in the Peruvian Loreto region between June and September of 2014. The Shawi food system was based on three main food sub-systems (forest, farming and externally-sourced). Shawi reported collective, gendered, and emotional notions related to their food system activities. Climatic and non-climatic drivers of food security vulnerability among Shawi participants acted at proximal and distal levels, and mutually reinforced key maladaptation trajectories, including: 1) a growing population and natural resource degradation coupled with limited opportunities to increase incomes, and 2) a desire for education and deforestation reinforced by governmental social and food interventions. Conclusion: A series of maladaptive trajectories have the potential to increase social and nutritional inequities for the Shawi. Transformational food security adaptation should include consideration of Indigenous perceptions and priorities, and should be part of Peruvian food and socioeconomic development policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the last years, the new science of cities has been established as a fertile quantitative approach to systematically understand the urban phenomena. One of its main pillars is the proposition that urban systems display universal scaling behavior regarding socioeconomic, infrastructural and individual basic services variables. This paper discusses the extension of the universality proposition by testing it against a broad range of urban metrics in a developing country urban system. We present an exploration of the scaling exponents for over 60 variables for the Brazilian urban system. Estimating those exponents is challenging from the technical point of view because the Brazilian municipalities’ definition follows local political criteria and does not regard characteristics of the landscape, density, and basic utilities. As Brazilian municipalities can deviate significantly from urban settlements, urban-like municipalities were selected based on a systematic density cut-off procedure and the scaling exponents were estimated for this new subset of municipalities. To validate our findings we compared the results for overlaying variables with other studies based on alternative methods. It was found that the analyzed socioeconomic variables follow a superlinear scaling relationship with the population size, and most of the infrastructure and individual basic services variables follow expected sublinear and linear scaling, respectively. However, some infrastructural and individual basic services variables deviated from their expected regimes, challenging the universality hypothesis of urban scaling. We propose that these deviations are a product of top-down decisions/policies. Our analysis spreads over a time-range of 10 years, what is not enough to draw conclusive observations, nevertheless we found hints that the scaling exponent of these variables are evolving towards the expected scaling regime, indicating that the deviations might be temporally constrained and that the urban systems might eventually reach the expected scaling regime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper demonstrates the impact of an endemic fossorial animal, plateau pika (Ochotona curzoniae), on soil properties and N2O flux at the Zoige Wetland. Pika burrow and control sites without disturbance by pika were selected to measure the soil water content, bulk density, soil organic matter (SOM), NH4-N content and NO3-N content in August 2012. N2O fluxes were measured with static opaque chambers at these sites in June and August 2012. Pika burrowing altered soil aeration by transferring deeper soil to the surface and by constructing underground burrows, which significantly increased bulk density, and reduced soil water content, SOM and NH4-N content at 0–10 cm and 10–20 cm soil depth. N2O flux had a significant correlation with bulk density, SOM and NH4-N content. Pika burrowing significantly influenced N2O flux by increasing N2O flux at the control site from near zero to 0.063±0.011 mg m-2 h-1. Our findings described how pika burrowing influences the soil traits and significantly increases the principal greenhouse gas N2O emission. As plateau pika was commonly considered as a pest, our findings give a novel clue to effectively manage populations of plateau pika on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau from the perspective of greenhouse gas emission. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Rhodnius nasutus, a vector of the etiological agent Trypanosoma cruzi, is one of the epidemiologically most relevant triatomine species of the Brazilian Caatinga, where it often colonizes rural peridomestic structures such as chicken coops and occasionally invades houses. Historical colonization and determination of its genetic diversity and population structure may provide new information towards the improvement of vector control in the region. In this paper we present thoughtful analyses considering the phylogeography and demographic history of R. nasutus in the Caatinga. Methodology/Principal findings: A total of 157 R. nasutus specimens were collected from Copernicia prunifera palm trees in eight geographic localities within the Brazilian Caatinga biome, sequenced for 595-bp fragment of the mitochondrial cytochrome b gene (cyt b) and genotyped for eight microsatellite loci. Sixteen haplotypes were detected in the cyt b sequences, two of which were shared between different localities. Molecular diversity indices exhibited low diversity and a haplotype network revealed low divergence among R. nasutus sequences, with two central haplotypes shared by five of the eight populations analyzed. The demographic model that better represented R. nasutus population dynamics was the exponential growth model. Results of the microsatellite data analyses indicated that the entire population is comprised of four highly differentiated groups, with no obvious contemporary geographic barriers that could explain the population substructure detected. A complex pattern of migration was observed, in which a western Caatinga population seems to be the source of emigrants to the eastern populations. Conclusions/Significance: R. nasutus that inhabit C. prunifera palms do not comprise a species complex. The species went through a population expansion at 12–10 ka, during the Holocene, which coincides with end of the largest dry season in South America. It colonized the Caatinga in a process that occurred from west to east in the region. R. nasutus is presently facing an important ecological impact caused by the continuous deforestation of C. prunifera palms in northeast Brazil. We hypothesize that this ecological disturbance might contribute to an increase in the events of invasion and colonization of human habitations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban agriculture has become a common form of urban land use in European cities linked to multiple environmental, social and economic benefits, as well as to diversified forms (from self-production allotments to high-tech companies). Social acceptance will determine the development of urban agriculture and specific knowledge on citizens’ perception is required in order to set the basis for policy-making and planning. The ecosystem services provided by urban agriculture can be determinant in this process. The goal of this paper is to evaluate the social acceptance and the perceived ecosystem services of urban agriculture in the city of Bologna (Italy), as an example of a Southern European city. In particular, we evaluated the preferences for urban land uses, for different typologies of urban agriculture and for the resulting products, the perceived provision of ecosystem services and the willingness to engage in new initiatives. A survey that investigated these topics (including open questions, closed questions and Likert-scale evaluation) was performed on the citizens of Bologna (n = 380) between October and November 2016. Results showed that urban agriculture is widely accepted by the inhabitants of Bologna, particularly regarding vegetable production. Although intensive farming systems were the least preferred forms to be implemented in Bologna, citizens highly accepted a large variety of urban agriculture goods, with preference for those obtained from plants as compared to animal products. The willingness-to-pay for urban food products was mostly the same as for conventional ones, although the participants recognised the social values, proximity and quality of the former. Socio-cultural ecosystem services were perceived as more valuable than environmental ones. Policy-making recommendations can be extracted from the results to facilitate the development of urban agriculture plans and policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Effective ecosystem-based management requires estimates of abundance and population trends of species of interest. Trend analyses are often limited due to sparse or short-term abundance estimates for populations that can be logistically difficult to monitor over time. Therefore it is critical to assess regularly the quality of the metrics in long-term monitoring programs. For a monitoring program to provide meaningful data and remain relevant, it needs to incorporate technological improvements and the changing requirements of stakeholders, while maintaining the integrity of the data. In this paper we critically examine the monitoring program for the Australian fur seal (AFS) Arctocephalus pusillus doriferus as an example of an ad-hoc monitoring program that was co-ordinated across multiple stakeholders as a range-wide census of live pups in the Austral summers of 2002, 2007 and 2013. This 5-yearly census, combined with historic counts at individual sites, successfully tracked increasing population trends as signs of population recovery up to 2007. The 2013 census identified the first reduction in AFS pup numbers (14,248 live pups, -4.2% change per annum since 2007), however we have limited information to understand this change. We analyse the trends at breeding colonies and perform a power analysis to critically examine the reliability of those trends. We then assess the gaps in the monitoring program and discuss how we may transition this surveillance style program to an adaptive monitoring program than can evolve over time and achieve its goals. The census results are used for ecosystem-based modelling for fisheries management and emergency response planning. The ultimate goal for this program is to obtain the data we need with minimal cost, effort and impact on the fur seals. In conclusion we identify the importance of power analyses for interpreting trends, the value of regularly assessing long-term monitoring programs and proper design so that adaptive monitoring principles can be applied. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates suitability of supervised machine learning classification methods for classification of biomes using pollen datasets. We assign modern pollen samples from Africa and Arabia to five biome classes using a previously published African pollen dataset and a global ecosystem classification scheme. To test the applicability of traditional and machine-learning based classification models for the task of biome prediction from high dimensional modern pollen data, we train a total of eight classification models, including Linear Discriminant Analysis, Logistic Regression, Naïve Bayes, K-Nearest Neighbors, Classification Decision Tree, Random Forest, Neural Network, and Support Vector Machine. The ability of each model to predict biomes from pollen data is statistically tested on an independent test set. The Random Forest classifier outperforms other models in its ability correctly classify biomes given pollen data. Out of the eight models, the Random Forest classifier scores highest on all of the metrics used for model evaluations and is able to predict four out of five biome classes to high degree of accuracy, including arid, montane, tropical and subtropical closed and open systems, e.g. forests and savanna/grassland. The model has the potential for accurate reconstructions of past biomes and awaits application to fossil pollen sequences. The Random Forest model may be used to investigate vegetation changes on both long and short time scales, e.g. during glacial and interglacial cycles, or more recent and abrupt climatic anomalies like the African Humid Period. Such applications may contribute to a better understanding of past shifts in vegetation cover and ultimately provide valuable information on drivers of climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With an estimate of around 9,000 species, the Neotropical region hosts the greatest diversity of freshwater fishes of the world. Genetic surveys have the potential to unravel isolated and unique lineages and may result in the identification of undescribed species, accelerating the cataloguing of extant biodiversity. In this paper, molecular diversity within the valuable and widespread Neotropical genus Hoplias was assessed by means of DNA Barcoding. The geographic coverage spanned 40 degrees of latitude from French Guiana to Argentina. Our analyses revealed 22 mitochondrial lineages fully supported by means of Barcode Index Number, Automatic Barcode Gap Discovery and phylogenetic analyses. This mtDNA survey revealed the existence of 15 fully supported mitochondrial lineages within the once considered to be the continentally distributed H. malabaricus. Only four of them are currently described as valid species however, leaving 11 mitochondrial lineages currently “masked” within this species complex. Mean genetic divergence was 13.1%. Barcoding gap analysis discriminated 20 out of the 22 lineages tested. Phylogenetic analyses showed that all taxonomically recognized species form monophyletic groups. Hoplias malabaricus sensu stricto clustered within a large clade, excluding the representatives of the La Plata River Basin. In the H. lacerdae group, all species but H. curupira showed a cohesive match between taxonomic and molecular identification. Two different genetic lineages were recovered for H. aimara. Given the unexpected hidden mitochondrial diversity within H. malabaricus, the COI sequence composition of specimens from Suriname (the type locality), identified as H. malabaricus sensu stricto, is of major importance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To understand the response of marine calcifying organisms under high CO2 scenarios, it is critical to study their calcification patterns in the natural environment. This paper focuses on a major calcifying phytoplankton group, the coccolithophores, through the analysis of water samples collected along a W-E Mediterranean transect during two research cruises, in April 2011 (Meteor cruise M84/3) and May 2013 (MedSeA cruise 2013). The Mediterranean Sea is a marginal sea characterized by large biogeochemical gradients. Currently, it is undergoing both warming and ocean acidification, processes which are rapidly modifying species distribution and calcification. The species Emiliania huxleyi largely dominates the total coccolithophore production in present day oceans and marine basins, including the Mediterranean Sea. A series of morphometric measurements were performed on the coccoliths of this species to estimate their mass, length and calculate a calcification index (proxy for the size-normalized calcification degree). The most abundant morphotype of E. huxleyi in the Mediterranean Sea is Type A. Coccoliths of this morphotype were additionally analyzed based on scanning electron microscopy images: four calcification varieties were quantified, according to the relationship between slit length-tube width, and the state of the central area (open or closed). The average E. huxleyi coccolith mass along the Mediterranean oceanographic transect depended strongly on both the average coccolith length and calcification index. The variability in average coccolith length and calcification index across samples reflected oscillations in the relative abundance of the calcification varieties. We also demonstrated that the distribution of the calcification varieties followed the main environmental gradients (carbonate chemistry, salinity, temperature, nutrient concentrations). Hence, shifts in the distribution of the calcification varieties and of the average E. huxleyi coccolith mass are to be expected in the Mediterranean Sea under climate change. These physiological and ecological responses will modulate the net coccolithophore calcification and, ultimately, the regional carbonate export to the seafloor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most island-ecology studies focus on the properties of entire island communities, thus neglecting species-environment relationships operating at the habitat-level. Habitat-specific variation in the strength and sign of these relationships will conceal patterns observed on the island scale and may preclude a mechanistic interpretation of patterns and processes. Habitat-specific species-environment relationships may also depend on the descriptor of ecological communities. This paper presents a comprehensive plot-based analysis of local vegetation composition and species diversity (species richness and species evenness) of (i) rocky shore, (ii) semi-natural grassland and (iii) coniferous forest habitats in three Baltic archipelagos in Sweden. To identify differences and consistencies between habitats and descriptors, we assessed the relative contributions of the variable-sets “region”, “topography”, “soil morphology”, “soil fertility”, “soil water”, “light availability”, “distance” and “island configuration” on local vegetation composition, species richness and species evenness. We quantified the impact of “management history” on the descriptors of local grassland communities by a newly introduced grazing history index (GHI). Unlike species diversity, changes in vegetation composition were related to most of the variable-sets. The relative contributions of the variable-sets were mostly habitat-specific and strongly contingent on the descriptor involved. Within each habitat, richness and evenness were only partly affected by the same variable-sets, and if so, their relative contribution varied between diversity proxies. Across all habitats, soil variable-sets showed highly consistent effects on vegetation composition and species diversity and contributed most to the variance explained. GHI was a powerful predictor, explaining high proportions of variation in all three descriptors of grassland species communities. The proportion of unexplained variance was habitat-specific, possibly reflecting a community maturity gradient. Our results reveal that species richness alone is an incomplete representation of local species diversity. Finally, we stress the need of including habitat-based approaches when analyzing complex species-environment relationships on islands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the results of research into pathways leading to the production of methane (CH4) and carbon dioxide (CO2) in sediments of two eutrophic reservoirs (Maziarnia and Nielisz), located in south-eastern Poland. In seeking to identify the pathways in question, use was made of analysis of stable carbon isotopes in CH4 and CO2 dissolved in pore water. This determined that CH4 is mainly produced through acetate fermentation, though the hydrogenotrophic methanogenic process may also be of importance, especially in deeper layers of sediments. Both the presence of autochthonous organic matter and increased pH values are shown to favour acetate fermentation. In turn, methanogenesis in sediments is assessed as capable of accounting for the generation of a considerable amount of CO2. Indeed, the role of methanogenesis in CO2 production is increasingly important further down in the layers of sediment, where allochthonous organic matter is predominant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Natural resource management uses expert judgement to estimate facts that inform important decisions. Unfortunately, expert judgement is often derived by informal and largely untested protocols, despite evidence that the quality of judgements can be improved with structured approaches. We attribute the lack of uptake of structured protocols to the dearth of illustrative examples that demonstrate how they can be applied within pressing time and resource constraints, while also improving judgements. Aims and methods: In this paper, we demonstrate how the IDEA protocol for structured expert elicitation may be deployed to overcome operational challenges while improving the quality of judgements. The protocol was applied to the estimation of 14 future abiotic and biotic events on the Great Barrier Reef, Australia. Seventy-six participants with varying levels of expertise related to the Great Barrier Reef were recruited and allocated randomly to eight groups. Each participant provided their judgements using the four-step question format of the IDEA protocol (‘Investigate’, ‘Discuss’, ‘Estimate’, ‘Aggregate’) through remote elicitation. When the events were realised, the participant judgements were scored in terms of accuracy, calibration and informativeness. Results and conclusions: The results demonstrate that the IDEA protocol provides a practical, cost-effective, and repeatable approach to the elicitation of quantitative estimates and uncertainty via remote elicitation. We emphasise that i) the aggregation of diverse individual judgements into pooled group judgments almost always outperformed individuals, and ii) use of a modified Delphi approach helped to remove linguistic ambiguity, and further improved individual and group judgements. Importantly, the protocol encourages review, critical appraisal and replication, each of which is required if judgements are to be used in place of data in a scientific context. The results add to the growing body of literature that demonstrates the merit of using structured elicitation protocols. We urge decision-makers and analysts to use insights and examples to improve the evidence base of expert judgement in natural resource management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Land use change (LUC) is a main cause of global environmental change, and is an important activity to be studied. Our research aims to examine the current state of evidence on the link between LUC and human health in the Amazon region. We conducted a scoping review of literature in two research databases, resulting in 14 papers for analysis. Our analysis demonstrated a lack of clear definitions for LUC, a wide variety of negative health effects from LUC, the lack of qualitative articles, a lack of studies exploring the potential positive health effects of LUC, and the predominance of studies coming from the Brazilian Amazon. Our study validated the prevailing idea that LUC can lead to negative health consequences, if not managed properly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Watershed planning can lead to policy innovation and action toward environmental protection. However, groups often suffer from low engagement with communities that experience disparate impacts from flooding and water pollution. This can limit the capacity of watershed efforts to dismantle pernicious forms of social inequality. As a result, the benefits of environmental changes often flow to more empowered residents, short-changing the power of watershed-based planning as a tool to transform ecological, economic, and social relationships. The objectives of this paper are to assess whether the worldview of watershed planning actors are sufficiently attuned to local patterns of social vulnerability and whether locally significant patterns of social vulnerability can be adequately differentiated using conventional data sources. Drawing from 35 in-depth interviews with watershed planners and community stakeholders in the Milwaukee River Basin (WI, USA), we identify five unique definitions of social vulnerability. Watershed planners in our sample articulate a narrower range of social vulnerability definitions than other participants. All five definitions emphasize spatial and demographic characteristics consistent with existing ways of measuring social vulnerability. However, existing measures do not adequately differentiate among the spatio-temporal dynamics used to distinguish definitions. In response, we develop two new social vulnerability measures. The combination of interviews and demographic analyses in this study provides an assessment technique that can help watershed planners (a) understand the limits of their own conceptualization of social vulnerability and (b) acknowledge the importance of place-based vulnerabilities that may otherwise be obscured. We conclude by discussing how our methods can be a useful tool for identifying opportunities to disrupt social vulnerability in a watershed by evaluating how issue frames, outreach messages, and engagement tactics. The approach allows watershed planners to shift their own culture in order to consider socially vulnerable populations comprehensively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mitigating extreme heat in urban areas is beneficial and sometimes critical to human health. Thriving plant communities in community parks play an important role in mitigating extreme heat through providing cooling effect, while inevitably affecting how people perceive the benefits of using community parks for recreation. Thus, the impacts of plant communities on the thermal environment should be quantified to determine the optimal structure of the plant community. The goal would be to harmonize the functions of improving the thermal environment with the preferences people have related to the recreational benefits of plant communities with various levels of vegetation density. In this paper, the correlations between the structural characteristics of plant communities and their function in mitigating the thermal environment were investigated on calm summer days in Xincheng Central Park, Minhang District, Shanghai, China. In addition to analyzing the plant communities present and their effects on the park microclimate, a questionnaire was employed to determine the plant community preferences of recreational park users. The results showed that plant communities could reduce the air temperature by 1.23–2.42 °C and increase the relative humidity by 2.4–4.2% during the daytime. The microclimate conditions in plant communities with varying vegetation densities were significantly different. The canopy density and leaf area index primarily controlled the temperature reduction, while the canopy density and total canopy cover ratio primarily controlled the increase in humidity; meanwhile, these correlations varied at different times of the day. Moreover, most of the park users preferred a moderately dense plant community which met their environmental perceptions for recreation in parks. Age or education level variables of park users would also predict preferences for different plant community densities. Ultimately, one plant community pattern with appropriate canopy density (60%), leaf area index (≥3) and canopy cover ratio (total 0.80–1.20, with 0.6–0.75 for trees and 0.20–0.45 for shrubs/woodland area) was recommended, which would harmonize the functions of the mitigation of the thermal environment with most people’s perception of a desirable vegetation density. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The role of forest management in mitigating climate change is a central concern for the Canadian province of British Columbia. The successful implementation of forest management activities to achieve climate change mitigation in British Columbia will be strongly influenced by public support or opposition. While we now have increasingly clear ideas of the management opportunities associated with forest mitigation and some insight into public support for climate change mitigation in the context of sustainable forest management, very little is known with respect to the levels and basis of public support for potential forest management strategies to mitigate climate change. This paper, by describing the results of a web-based survey, documents levels of public support for the implementation of eight forest carbon mitigation strategies in British Columbia’s forest sector, and examines and quantifies the influence of the factors that shape this support. Overall, respondents ascribed a high level of importance to forest carbon mitigation and supported all of the eight proposed strategies, indicating that the British Columbia public is inclined to consider alternative practices in managing forests and wood products to mitigate climate change. That said, we found differences in levels of support for the mitigation strategies. In general, we found greater levels of support for a rehabilitation strategy (e.g. reforestation of unproductive forest land), and to a lesser extent for conservation strategies (e.g. old growth conservation, reduced harvest) over enhanced forest management strategies (e.g. improved harvesting and silvicultural techniques). We also highlighted multiple variables within the British Columbia population that appear to play a role in predicting levels of support for conservation and/or enhanced forest management strategies, including environmental values, risk perception, trust in groups of actors, prioritized objectives of forest management and socio-demographic factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Local and indigenous knowledge is being transformed globally, particularly being eroded when pertaining to ecology. In many parts of the world, rural and indigenous communities are facing tremendous cultural, economic and environmental changes, which contribute to weaken their local knowledge base. In the face of profound and ongoing environmental changes, both cultural and biological diversity are likely to be severely impacted as well as local resilience capacities from this loss. In this global literature review, we analyse the drivers of various types of local and indigenous ecological knowledge transformation and assess the directionality of the reported change. Results of this analysis show a global impoverishment of local and indigenous knowledge with 77% of papers reporting the loss of knowledge driven by globalization, modernization, and market integration. The recording of this loss, however, is not symmetrical, with losses being recorded more strongly in medicinal and ethnobotanical knowledge. Persistence of knowledge (15% of the studies) occurred in studies where traditional practices were being maintained consiously and where hybrid knowledge was being produced as a resut of certain types of incentives created by economic development. This review provides some insights into local and indigenous ecological knowledge change, its causes and implications, and recommends venues for the development of replicable and comparative research. The larger implication of these results is that because of the interconnection between cultural and biological diversity, the loss of local and indigenous knowledge is likely to critically threaten effective conservation of biodiversity, particularly in community-based conservation local efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite increasing ability to store and analyze large amounts of data for organismal and ecological studies, the process of collecting distance and count measurements from images has largely remained time consuming and error-prone, particularly for tasks for which automation is difficult or impossible. Improving the efficiency of these tasks, which allows for more high quality data to be collected in a shorter amount of time, is therefore a high priority. The open-source web application, webpic, implements common web languages and widely available libraries and productivity apps to streamline the process of collecting distance and count measurements from images. In this paper, I introduce the framework of webpic and demonstrate one readily available feature of this application, linear measurements, using fossil leaf specimens. This application fills the gap between workflows accomplishable by individuals through existing software and those accomplishable by large, unmoderated crowds. It demonstrates that flexible web languages can be used to streamline time-intensive research tasks without the use of specialized equipment or proprietary software and highlights the potential for web resources to facilitate data collection in research tasks and outreach activities with improved efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century the discussion on early human behavioral patterns revolved around the hunting versus scavenging debate. The correct identification of bone modifications, including percussion, cut and tooth marks, is a key issue within this debate. While many authors have shown that carnivore and human modifications can be easily distinguished, it is true that sometimes percussion marks without associated microstriations and tooth pits overlap morphologically, causing confusion, especially when unmodified hammerstones are used. In order to solve this equifinality problem, many investigations have focused their efforts on other pieces of evidence such as the identification of notches, fragmentation patterns and frequencies, among others. These studies, however, cannot be considered as fully conclusive. Within this paper we address the problem of equifinality when identifying percussion marks produced with unmodified hammerstones and tooth pits created by carnivores using new methodologies based on the 3D reconstruction of marks and their statistical multivariate analysis. For the purpose of this study a total of 128 marks– 39 percussion marks produced with an unmodified quartzite hammerstone, and 89 pits generated by different carnivores–were virtually modelled with the aid of a DAVID structured-light scanner SLS-2 and later analyzed by means of geometric morphometrics. Our results show that percussion marks not associated with striae fields and the pits generated by the carnivores studied here can be successfully distinguished. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The emerging Bicycle Sharing System (BSS) provides a new social microscope that allows us to “photograph” the main aspects of the society and to create a comprehensive picture of human mobility behavior in this new medium. BSS has been deployed in many major cities around the world as a short-distance trip supplement for public transportations and private vehicles. A unique value of the bike flow data generated by these BSSs is to understand the human mobility in a short-distance trip. This understanding of the population on short-distance trip is lacking, limiting our capacity in management and operation of BSSs. Many existing operations research and management methods for BSS impose assumptions that emphasize statistical simplicity and homogeneity. Therefore, a deep understanding of the statistical patterns embedded in the bike flow data is an urgent and overriding issue to inform decision-makings for a variety of problems including traffic prediction, station placement, bike reallocation, and anomaly detection. In this paper, we aim to conduct a comprehensive analysis of the bike flow data using two large datasets collected in Chicago and Hangzhou over months. Our analysis reveals intrinsic structures of the bike flow data and regularities in both spatial and temporal scales such as a community structure and a taxonomy of the eigen-bike-flows. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is growing interest in the use of critical slowing down and critical fluctuations as early warning signals for critical transitions in different complex systems. However, while some studies found them effective, others found the opposite. In this paper, we investigated why this might be so, by testing three commonly used indicators: lag-1 autocorrelation, variance, and low-frequency power spectrum at anticipating critical transitions in the very-high-frequency time series data of the Australian Dollar-Japanese Yen and Swiss Franc-Japanese Yen exchange rates. Besides testing rising trends in these indicators at a strict level of confidence using the Kendall-tau test, we also required statistically significant early warning signals to be concurrent in the three indicators, which must rise to appreciable values. We then found for our data set the optimum parameters for discovering critical transitions, and showed that the set of critical transitions found is generally insensitive to variations in the parameters. Suspecting that negative results in the literature are the results of low data frequencies, we created time series with time intervals over three orders of magnitude from the raw data, and tested them for early warning signals. Early warning signals can be reliably found only if the time interval of the data is shorter than the time scale of critical transitions in our complex system of interest. Finally, we compared the set of time windows with statistically significant early warning signals with the set of time windows followed by large movements, to conclude that the early warning signals indeed provide reliable information on impending critical transitions. This reliability becomes more compelling statistically the more events we test. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding trends in the diverse resources provided by large rivers will help balance tradeoffs among stakeholders and inform strategies to mitigate the effects of landscape scale stressors such as climate change and invasive species. Absent a cohesive coordinated effort to assess trends in important large river resources, a logical starting point is to assess our ability to draw inferences from existing efforts. In this paper, we use a common analytical framework to analyze data from five disparate fish monitoring programs to better understand the nature of spatial and temporal trends in large river fish assemblages. We evaluated data from programs that monitor fishes in the Colorado, Columbia, Illinois, Mississippi, and Tallapoosa rivers using non-metric dimensional scaling ordinations and associated tests to evaluate trends in fish assemblage structure and native fish biodiversity. Our results indicate that fish assemblages exhibited significant spatial and temporal trends in all five of the rivers. We also document native species diversity trends that were variable within and between rivers and generally more evident in rivers with higher species richness and programs of longer duration. We discuss shared and basin-specific landscape level stressors. Having a basic understanding of the nature and extent of trends in fish assemblages is a necessary first step towards understanding factors affecting biodiversity and fisheries in large rivers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studying ecological and evolutionary processes in the natural world often requires research projects to follow multiple individuals in the wild over many years. These projects have provided significant advances but may also be hampered by needing to accurately and efficiently collect and store multiple streams of the data from multiple individuals concurrently. The increase in the availability and sophistication of portable computers (smartphones and tablets) and the applications that run on them has the potential to address many of these data collection and storage issues. In this paper we describe the challenges faced by one such long-term, individual-based research project: the Banded Mongoose Research Project in Uganda. We describe a system we have developed called Mongoose 2000 that utilises the potential of apps and portable computers to meet these challenges. We discuss the benefits and limitations of employing such a system in a long-term research project. The app and source code for the Mongoose 2000 system are freely available and we detail how it might be used to aid data collection and storage in other long-term individual-based projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traffic congestion brings not only delay and inconvenience, but other associated national concerns, such as greenhouse gases, air pollutants, road safety issues and risks. Identification, measurement, tracking, and control of urban recurrent congestion are vital for building a livable and smart community. A considerable amount of works has made contributions to tackle the problem. Several methods, such as time-based approaches and level of service, can be effective for characterizing congestion on urban streets. However, studies with systemic perspectives have been minor in congestion quantification. Resilience, on the other hand, is an emerging concept that focuses on comprehensive systemic performance and characterizes the ability of a system to cope with disturbance and to recover its functionality. In this paper, we symbolized recurrent congestion as internal disturbance and proposed a modified metric inspired by the well-applied “R4” resilience-triangle framework. We constructed the metric with generic dimensions from both resilience engineering and transport science to quantify recurrent congestion based on spatial-temporal traffic patterns and made the comparison with other two approaches in freeway and signal-controlled arterial cases. Results showed that the metric can effectively capture congestion patterns in the study area and provides a quantitative benchmark for comparison. Also, it suggested not only a good comparative performance in measuring strength of proposed metric, but also its capability of considering the discharging process in congestion. The sensitivity tests showed that proposed metric possesses robustness against parameter perturbation in Robustness Range (RR), but the number of identified congestion patterns can be influenced by the existence of ϵ. In addition, the Elasticity Threshold (ET) and the spatial dimension of cell-based platform differ the congestion results significantly on both the detected number and intensity. By tackling this conventional problem with emerging concept, our metric provides a systemic alternative approach and enriches the toolbox for congestion assessment. Future work will be conducted on a larger scale with multiplex scenarios in various traffic conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers new high-resolution oxygen and carbon isotope data from Stalagmite S1 from Mavri Trypa Cave, SW Peloponnese. Our data provide the climate background to the destruction of the nearby Mycenaean Palace of Nestor at Pylos at the transition from Late Helladic (LH) IIIB to LH IIIC, ~3150–3130 years before present (before AD 1950, hereafter yrs BP) and the subsequent period. S1 is dated by 24 U-Th dates with an averaged precision of ±26 yrs (2σ), providing one of the most robust paleoclimate records from the eastern Mediterranean for the end of the Late Bronze Age (LBA). The δ18O record shows generally wetter conditions at the time when the Palace of Nestor at Pylos was destroyed, but a brief period of drier conditions around 3200 yrs BP may have disrupted the Mycenaean agricultural system that at the time was likely operating close to its limit. Gradually developing aridity after 3150 yrs BP, i.e. subsequent to the destruction, probably reduced crop yields and helped to erode the basis for the reinstitution of a central authority and the Palace itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

“The Belt and Road” initiative has been expected to facilitate interactions among numerous city centers. This initiative would generate a number of centers, both economic and political, which would facilitate greater interaction. To explore how information flows are merged and the specific opportunities that may be offered, Chinese cities along “the Belt and Road” are selected for a case study. Furthermore, urban networks in cyberspace have been characterized by their infrastructure orientation, which implies that there is a relative dearth of studies focusing on the investigation of urban hierarchies by capturing information flows between Chinese cities along “the Belt and Road”. This paper employs Baidu, the main web search engine in China, to examine urban hierarchies. The results show that urban networks become more balanced, shifting from a polycentric to a homogenized pattern. Furthermore, cities in networks tend to have both a hierarchical system and a spatial concentration primarily in regions such as Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, Yangtze River Delta and the Pearl River Delta region. Urban hierarchy based on web search activity does not follow the existing hierarchical system based on geospatial and economic development in all cases. Moreover, urban networks, under the framework of “the Belt and Road”, show several significant corridors and more opportunities for more cities, particularly western cities. Furthermore, factors that may influence web search activity are explored. The results show that web search activity is significantly influenced by the economic gap, geographical proximity and administrative rank of the city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change and land use change are two major elements of human-induced global environmental change. In temperate grasslands and woodlands, increasing frequency of extreme weather events like droughts and increasing severity of wildfires has altered the structure and dynamics of vegetation. In this paper, we studied the impact of wildfires and the year-to-year differences in precipitation on species composition changes in semi-arid grasslands of a forest-steppe complex ecosystem which has been partially disturbed by wildfires. Particularly, we investigated both how long-term compositional dissimilarity changes and species richness are affected by year-to-year precipitation differences on burnt and unburnt areas. Study sites were located in central Hungary, in protected areas characterized by partially-burnt, juniper-poplar forest-steppe complexes of high biodiversity. Data were used from two long-term monitoring sites in the Kiskunság National Park, both characterized by the same habitat complex. We investigated the variation in species composition as a function of time using distance decay methodology. In each sampling area, compositional dissimilarity increased with the time elapsed between the sampling events, and species richness differences increased with increasing precipitation differences between consecutive years. We found that both the long-term compositional dissimilarity, and the year-to-year changes in species richness were higher in the burnt areas than in the unburnt ones. The long-term compositional dissimilarities were mostly caused by perennial species, while the year-to-year changes of species richness were driven by annual and biennial species. As the effect of the year-to-year variation in precipitation was more pronounced in the burnt areas, we conclude that canopy removal by wildfires and extreme inter-annual variability of precipitation, two components of global environmental change, act in a synergistic way. They enhance the effect of one another, resulting in greater long-term and year-to-year changes in the composition of grasslands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Biomass reconstructions to pre-assessment periods for commercially important and exploitable fish species are important tools for understanding long-term processes and fluctuation on stock and ecosystem level. For some stocks only fisheries statistics and fishery dependent data are available, for periods before surveys were conducted. The methods for the backward extension of the analytical assessment of biomass for years for which only total catch volumes are available were developed and tested in this paper. Two of the approaches developed apply the concept of the surplus production rate (SPR), which is shown to be stock density dependent if stock dynamics is governed by classical stock-production models. The other approach used a modified form of the Schaefer production model that allows for backward biomass estimation. The performance of the methods was tested on the Arctic cod and North Sea herring stocks, for which analytical biomass estimates extend back to the late 1940s. Next, the methods were applied to extend biomass estimates of the North-east Atlantic mackerel from the 1970s (analytical biomass estimates available) to the 1950s, for which only total catch volumes were available. For comparison with other methods which employs a constant SPR estimated as an average of the observed values, was also applied. The analyses showed that the performance of the methods is stock and data specific; the methods that work well for one stock may fail for the others. The constant SPR method is not recommended in those cases when the SPR is relatively high and the catch volumes in the reconstructed period are low. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fluctuations in environmental parameters are increasingly being recognized as essential features of any habitat. The quantification of whether environmental fluctuations are prevalently predictable or unpredictable is remarkably relevant to understanding the evolutionary responses of organisms. However, when characterizing the relevant features of natural habitats, ecologists typically face two problems: (1) gathering long-term data and (2) handling the hard-won data. This paper takes advantage of the free access to long-term recordings of remote sensing data (27 years, Landsat TM/ETM+) to assess a set of environmental models for estimating environmental predictability. The case study included 20 Mediterranean saline ponds and lakes, and the focal variable was the water-surface area. This study first aimed to produce a method for accurately estimating the water-surface area from satellite images. Saline ponds can develop salt-crusted areas that make it difficult to distinguish between soil and water. This challenge was addressed using a novel pipeline that combines band ratio water indices and the short near-infrared band as a salt filter. The study then extracted the predictable and unpredictable components of variation in the water-surface area. Two different approaches, each showing variations in the parameters, were used to obtain the stochastic variation around a regular pattern with the objective of dissecting the effect of assumptions on predictability estimations. The first approach, which is based on Colwell’s predictability metrics, transforms the focal variable into a nominal one. The resulting discrete categories define the relevant variations in the water-surface area. In the second approach, we introduced General Additive Model (GAM) fitting as a new metric for quantifying predictability. Both approaches produced a wide range of predictability for the studied ponds. Some model assumptions–which are considered very different a priori–had minor effects, whereas others produced predictability estimations that showed some degree of divergence. We hypothesize that these diverging estimations of predictability reflect the effect of fluctuations on different types of organisms. The fluctuation analysis described in this manuscript is applicable to a wide variety of systems, including both aquatic and non-aquatic systems, and will be valuable for quantifying and characterizing predictability, which is essential within the expected global increase in the unpredictability of environmental fluctuations. We advocate that a priori information for organisms of interest should be used to select the most suitable metrics for estimating predictability, and we provide some guidelines for this approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we analyse the degree of concordance in species richness and taxonomic distinctness (diversity) patterns among different freshwater taxonomic groups in order to test three long held patterns described in Mexican freshwater biogeography: 1. The aquatic biota of Mexico includes two distinct faunas, a rich Neotropical component in the south and a south-eastern region and a less rich Nearctic component towards central and northern latitudes of the country. 2. A hotspot of species richness and diversity has been recorded in the Usumacinta, including the Yucatan Peninsula. 3. The presence of two distinct biotas in Mexico, an eastern one distributed along the Gulf of Mexico slope, and a western one associated to the Pacific versant. We use species richness and taxonomic distinctness to explore patterns of diversity and how these patterns change between zoogeographical regions. This paper points out a clear separation between Neotropical and Nearctic drainage basins but also between eastern (Gulf of Mexico) and western (Pacific) drainage basins. Present data gives additional empirical support from freshwater biota for three long held beliefs regarding distributional patterns of the Mexican biota. The neotropical basins of Mexico are generally host to a richest and more diversified fauna, that includes more families, genera and species, compared to the less rich and less diverse fauna in the nearctic basins. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Climate change is arguably a major threat to biodiversity conservation and there are several methods to assess its impacts on species potential distribution. Yet the extent to which different approaches on species distribution modeling affect species richness patterns at biogeographical scale is however unaddressed in literature. In this paper, we verified if the expected responses to climate change in biogeographical scale—patterns of species richness and species vulnerability to climate change—are affected by the inputs used to model and project species distribution. Methods: We modeled the distribution of 288 vertebrate species (amphibians, birds and mammals), all endemic to the Amazon basin, using different combinations of the following inputs known to affect the outcome of species distribution models (SDMs): 1) biological data type, 2) modeling methods, 3) greenhouse gas emission scenarios and 4) climate forecasts. We calculated uncertainty with a hierarchical ANOVA in which those different inputs were considered factors. Results: The greatest source of variation was the modeling method. Model performance interacted with data type and modeling method. Absolute values of variation on suitable climate area were not equal among predictions, but some biological patterns were still consistent. All models predicted losses on the area that is climatically suitable for species, especially for amphibians and primates. All models also indicated a current East-western gradient on endemic species richness, from the Andes foot downstream the Amazon river. Again, all models predicted future movements of species upwards the Andes mountains and overall species richness losses. Conclusions: From a methodological perspective, our work highlights that SDMs are a useful tool for assessing impacts of climate change on biodiversity. Uncertainty exists but biological patterns are still evident at large spatial scales. As modeling methods are the greatest source of variation, choosing the appropriate statistics according to the study objective is also essential for estimating the impacts of climate change on species distribution. Yet from a conservation perspective, we show that Amazon endemic fauna is potentially vulnerable to climate change, due to expected reductions on suitable climate area. Climate-driven faunal movements are predicted towards the Andes mountains, which might work as climate refugia for migrating species. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]