Hasil untuk "General. Including nature conservation, geographical distribution"

S. Díaz, J. Settele, Eduardo S Brondízio et al.

The time is now For decades, scientists have been raising calls for societal changes that will reduce our impacts on nature. Though much conservation has occurred, our natural environment continues to decline under the weight of our consumption. Humanity depends directly on the output of nature; thus, this decline will affect us, just as it does the other species with which we share this world. Díaz et al. review the findings of the largest assessment of the state of nature conducted as of yet. They report that the state of nature, and the state of the equitable distribution of nature's support, is in serious decline. Only immediate transformation of global business-as-usual economies and operations will sustain nature as we know it, and us, into the future. Science, this issue p. eaax3100 BACKGROUND Human actions have long been known to drive declines in nature, and there is growing awareness of how globalization means that these drivers increasingly act at a distance (telecoupling). However, evidence from different disciplines has largely accumulated in parallel, and the global effects of telecouplings have never been addressed comprehensively. Now, the first integrated global-scale intergovernmental assessment of the status, trends, and future of the links between people and nature provides an unprecedented picture of the extent of our mutual dependence, the breadth and depth of the ongoing and impending crisis, and the interconnectedness among sectors and regions. ADVANCES Human impacts on life on Earth have increased sharply since the 1970s. The world is increasingly managed to maximize the flow of material contributions from nature to keep up with rising demands for food, energy, timber, and more, with global trade increasing the geographic separation between supply and demand. This unparalleled appropriation of nature is causing the fabric of life on which humanity depends to fray and unravel: Most indicators of the state of nature, whether monitored by natural and social scientists or by Indigenous Peoples and local communities, are declining. These include the number and population size of wild species, the number of local varieties of domesticated species, the distinctness of ecological communities, and the extent and integrity of many terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. As a consequence, nature’s capacity to provide crucial benefits has also declined, including environmental processes underpinning human health and nonmaterial contributions to human quality of life. The costs are distributed unequally, as are the benefits of an expanding global economy. These trends in nature and its contributions to people are projected to worsen in the coming decades—unevenly so among different regions—unless rapid and integrated action is taken to reduce the direct drivers responsible for most change over the past 50 years: land and sea use change, direct harvesting of many plants and animals, climate change (whose impacts are set to accelerate), pollution, and the spread of invasive alien species. Exploratory scenarios suggest that a world with increased regional barriers—resonating with recent geopolitical trends—will yield more negative global trends in nature, as well as the greatest disparity in trends across regions, greater than a world with liberal financial markets, and much greater than one that prioritizes and integrates actions toward sustainable development. Evidence from target-seeking scenarios and pathways indicates that a world that achieves many of the global biodiversity targets and sustainability goals related to food, energy, climate, and water is not—yet—beyond reach, but that no single action can get us there. OUTLOOK Our comprehensive assessment of status, trends, and possible futures for nature and people suggests that action at the level of direct drivers of nature decline, although necessary, is not sufficient to prevent further deterioration of the fabric of life on Earth. Reversal of recent declines—and a sustainable global future—are only possible with urgent transformative change that tackles the root causes: the interconnected economic, sociocultural, demographic, political, institutional, and technological indirect drivers behind the direct drivers. As well as a pan-sectoral approach to conserving and restoring the nature that underpins many goals, this transformation will need innovative governance approaches that are adaptive; inclusive; informed by existing and new evidence; and integrative across systems, jurisdictions, and tools. Although the challenge is formidable, every delay will make the task even harder. Crucially, our analysis pinpoints five priority interventions (“levers”) and eight leverage points for intervention in the indirect drivers of global social and economic systems where they can make the biggest difference. Traditional diversity-rich human landscapes, and the livelihoods and identities that depend on them, face global threats. Mosaics of crops, forest, and pasture have been maintained for millennia around the world. Now, they are under increasing threat from climate change and large-scale land use change to accommodate global demands for commodities. So are the livelihoods and cultural identity of the peoples that live in them, such as this woman collecting fodder for her flock in the Checacupe district, Perú. Photo credit www.estebantapella.com The human impact on life on Earth has increased sharply since the 1970s, driven by the demands of a growing population with rising average per capita income. Nature is currently supplying more materials than ever before, but this has come at the high cost of unprecedented global declines in the extent and integrity of ecosystems, distinctness of local ecological communities, abundance and number of wild species, and the number of local domesticated varieties. Such changes reduce vital benefits that people receive from nature and threaten the quality of life of future generations. Both the benefits of an expanding economy and the costs of reducing nature’s benefits are unequally distributed. The fabric of life on which we all depend—nature and its contributions to people—is unravelling rapidly. Despite the severity of the threats and lack of enough progress in tackling them to date, opportunities exist to change future trajectories through transformative action. Such action must begin immediately, however, and address the root economic, social, and technological causes of nature’s deterioration.

P. Macreadie, Micheli D. P. Costa, T. Atwood et al.

Ping Wang, Peiyi Lin, Jie Wu et al.

Deyselana Lima da Costa, Bruno José Corecha Fernandes Eiras, Jean Danilo da Silva Pereira et al.

IntroductionThe Blue Amazon represents an extensive coastal zone with high biodiversity and wide salinity variation, which poses challenges for marine fish farming, particularly regarding the efficiency of biofilters in recirculating aquaculture systems (RAS). In this context, açaí seeds (Euterpe oleracea), previously evaluated in freshwater, emerge as a promising alternative for use as filter media under different salinity conditions. The objective of this study was to evaluate the potential of açaí seeds as substrate in RAS biofilters, analyzing their acute and chronic impact on the physicochemical parameters of water and the removal of ammonia, nitrite and nitrate over 28 days.MethodsThe experiment was conducted in six independent systems (three aquaria each), subjected to salinities of 0, 7, 14, 21, 28 and 35‰. After Acute (0, 20, 40, 60,80,100 and 120 minutes) and chronic (2,3,4,14,21 and 28 days) salinity change, water samples were collected to measure physicochemical quality and to assess nitrification efficiency and nitrogen compound removal.ResultsHigher oxygen consumption and ammonia clearance were observed at 0, 7 and 14‰ after 120 minutes of salinity change, while nitrate accumulation was significantly higher in freshwater. In long term, after 28 days, ammonia clearance was significantly lower at 35‰, though nitrate accumulation was not affected by salinity. The highest ammonia removal rates were recorded in the 0‰ and 7‰ treatments.DiscussionThe results demonstrate that açaí seeds are capable of removing ammonia after a few minutes and can sustain the growth of nitrifying bacteria under different salinity levels, although more efficiently in low salinity waters (seven times).

Albert Cruz-Gispert, David García-del-Amo, A. B. Junqueira et al.

Climate change impacts on biodiversity have been primarily studied through ecological research methods, largely ignoring other knowledge systems. Indigenous and local knowledge systems include rich observations of changes in biodiversity that can inform climate change adaptation planning and environmental stewardship. We reviewed literature documenting local observations of climate change impacts on biodiversity reported by Indigenous peoples and local communities. We examined whether reported impacts varied across taxa, geographic regions, and people's main livelihood activities and assessed whether local reports followed geographic and taxonomic patterns found in the natural sciences literature. We also compared taxa reportedly affected by climate change by Indigenous peoples and local communities and by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List. Our analyses included 2452 observations of climate change impacts on 1715 taxa from 203 documents describing 291 case studies. Changes in taxon abundance, phenotype, phenology, and distribution were widely reported, and most climate change impacts were reported for plants, fishes, and mammals. Reported impacts differed by geographic region and by livelihood, and most species reported as affected by climate change by Indigenous peoples and local communities were not considered threatened by climate change by the IUCN. Our results showed that Indigenous and local knowledge systems can contribute to a more complete understanding of climate change impacts on biodiversity.

Natalia Yingling, Karen E. Selph, Moira Décima et al.

Phytoplankton community structure is crucial to pelagic food webs and biogeochemical processes. Understanding size-based biomass distribution and carbon dynamics is essential for assessing their contributions to oceanic carbon cycling. This study quantifies plankton carbon (C) based size spectra, community composition, living to total particulate organic carbon (POC) and C:Chlorophyll a (C:Chla) ratios across biogeographical provinces in the Pacific sector of the Southern Ocean near the Subtropical Front (Chatham Rise, Aotearoa-New Zealand). We analyzed phytoplankton community composition using epifluorescence microscopy and flow cytometry, while quantifying size-fractionated Chl-a and POC to estimate normalized biomass, abundance size spectra, and C:Chla ratios. On average, subtropical-influenced waters had lower macronutrients, higher total Chla (1.1 ± 0.2 μg Chla L-1) and were dominated by nanoplankton, which accounted for 45% of the total plankton community (35.2 ± 4.6 μg C L-1). In contrast, picoplankton dominated plankton communities within the subantarctic-influenced and accounted for 35% of the total plankton community (18.5 ± 0.9 μg C L-1) in these water with higher macronutrient concentrations and lower total Chla concentrations (0.32 ± 0.06 μg Chla L-1). Subantarctic-influenced regions had steeper (more negative) slopes for the normalized biomass size spectrum (average = -1.00) compared to subtropical-influenced waters (average = -0.78) indicating greater relative dominance of small taxa. The subantarctic-influenced region had ~2-fold higher surface average C:Chla ratios compared to the subtropical-influenced region with picoplankton consistently having lower C:Chla ratios, due to low Chla values, than larger nano- or microplankton. Live plankton carbon contributed a median of 67% of total particulate organic carbon in the euphotic zone (non-living detritus comprises the remaining ~1/3), which is indicative of substantial primary production and rapid recycling by a strong microbial loop. Our study provides important insights into phytoplankton community structure, biomass distribution and their contribution to carbon sequestration in this region, highlighting the important roles of nanoplankton in subtropical productive waters and picoplankton in offshore subantarctic waters as well as a strong variation of C:Chla across different phytoplankton size classes.

Caroline Leuchtenberger, Lívia A. Rodrigues, Abigail Martin et al.

Michael Drexler, Elizabeth B. Cerny-Chipman, Megan J. Peterson Williams et al.

Climate change requires managers to bolster long-term resilience of fisheries and concurrently improve short-term responsiveness of management systems to prevailing ecological conditions, all while avoiding unintended harm to stocks in a highly uncertain context. There has been substantial effort dedicated to developing the scientific information and tools needed to inform climate-ready fisheries, yet implementation of these approaches has been limited in the United States management system. Meanwhile, climate impacts on fisheries are already occurring, making fish and fishing communities highly vulnerable to sudden, and often detrimental, changes. There is a need to accelerate adaptation efforts, and near-term action is critical even without the full complement of information and tools in hand. Here, existing climate-ready approaches were compiled and synthesized to offer a comprehensive and structured perspective on priority actions that can be taken in the next 1-2 years to increase the resilience and adaptability of fish stocks and communities that rely on them. From the review there are three main findings: 1) 45% of the management actions can be implemented in this short timeframe, 2) Nearly all actions identified can be implemented in the current fishery and regulatory framework, and 3) While new approaches are needed, managers should proceed with caution to avoid maladaptation and choose a no- or low- maladaptation risk approach wherever possible.

Runnan Ha, Linyun Wei, Haoguang Li

This article examines China’s evolving legal framework for ship-induced oil pollution damage liability system, focusing on the 2024 Draft Amendment to the Maritime Law. Historically, the development of this system in China has been achieved through accession to international conventions, domestic legislative transformation, and the improvement of supporting systems. However, fragmented rules and outdated liability limits hindered effective compensation. DAML introduces a dedicated chapter on oil pollution damage, establishing strict liability for shipowners, defining compensation scope, and mandating an “Insurance and Fund” dual safeguard system. It further clarifies joint liability for multi-ship spills and conflict-of-law rules favoring the lex loci damni. The study argues that this revision bridges gaps between international standards and domestic law while addressing judicial inconsistencies. In order to refine this system, this article conducts an analysis in conjunction with DAML revision text and puts forward optimization suggestions from four perspectives: improving the legal system, providing case law guidance, enhancing government supervision, and perfecting supporting legal safeguards.

Kent H. Redford, Jack A. Gilbert, Raquel S. Peixoto

N. Cantasano

The Natura 2000 network is the main tool established by the European Union for biodiversity conservation. The cornerstones of this natural infrastructure are, actually, represented by the Special Areas of Conservation (SAC) and the Zones of Special Protection (ZPS). In the Calabria coastal region, this network is formed by 44 ZSCs widespread along the regional coastline. In this way, most of the Natura 2000 sites are located in continental areas, as 75% of the whole, and every key area includes some natural habitat types. In particular, the greater number of habitats is concentrated in transitional environments, as the case study located in the mouth of the Crati River, including 17 habitat types. However, the geographic distribution of Natura 2000 sites is quite unbalanced because most of the SACs are located in continental landscapes, 75% of the whole, while only 25% are concentrated in coastal regions. This irregular distribution of the network leads to a loss of biodiversity levels from continental to coastal areas. So, the implementation of the Natura 2000 network could be the main tool to connect terrestrial and coastal regions not only for biodiversity conservation but also to improve the social and economic conditions of local people.

L. Ledheng, Emanuel Maria Yosef Hano’e, Marce Sherly Kase

The presence of anthropogenic activities in the coastal areas of the South Central Timor (SCT) Regency has weakened coastal resilience, which may exacerbate the impact of rising sea levels. One important factor that needs to be analyzed is the vulnerability assessment. This study, conducted from July to September 2024, aimed to determine the spatial distribution and variables that can influence the vulnerability in the coastal areas. The methods used were the Coastal Vulnerability Index (CVI) and the Social Vulnerability Index (SoVI), which then used Multi Criteria Analysis (MCA) to perform the standardization value. The integrated index values were then integrated into the Geographic Information System (GIS) for comprehensive spatial information. The results showed that, in general, the coastal areas of the SCT Regency were in the low (35%), medium (48%), and high (66%) risk categories. Areas of high physical vulnerability were alluvial lowland areas and those near hills. The karst hills that are characteristic of the coastal areas of the SCT regency have become a threat to the lives of coastal communities. Communities living in coastal hill areas, including the Kolbano and Oetuke coasts, and in the alluvial lowlands like the Tuafanu, Kualin, and Oni coasts, need to be the focus and priority areas for recovery efforts. This is due to the high level of vulnerability, both physically and socio-economically. Geomorphology is the primary contributor to physical vulnerability because these coastal hills and lowlands are prone to erosion and land degradation caused by waves, tides, and human activities. On the socio-economic side, land use, particularly mining activities, increases vulnerability by degrading the environment and threatening the livelihood of coastal communities. Key recovery efforts should focus on revegetation, which can help stabilize the soil, reduce erosion, and restore ecological balance while offering sustainable economic benefits to the local population.

Amr S. Mohamed, Emily Nguyen, Deepa Kundur

Amidst the growing demand for implementing advanced control and decision-making algorithms|to enhance the reliability, resilience, and stability of power systems|arises a crucial concern regarding the safety of employing machine learning techniques. While these methods can be applied to derive more optimal control decisions, they often lack safety assurances. This paper proposes a framework based on control barrier functions to facilitate safe learning and deployment of reinforcement learning agents for power system control applications, specifically in the context of automatic generation control. We develop the safety barriers and reinforcement learning framework necessary to establish trust in reinforcement learning as a safe option for automatic generation control - as foundation for future detailed verification and application studies.

Li Xu, Yongzhi Wang, Lizhi Zhou

Theodore C. Nichols, Lisa A. Clark

Abstract Mute swans (Cygnus olor) have increased in New Jersey at ~7%/yr since the mid‐1980s with the population peaking at 1,890 mute swans by 2005. Wildlife agencies have implemented management programs to reduce mute swan numbers to population objectives; however, evaluation of these programs is lacking. Given the detrimental impacts of mute swans on wetland habitats, we implemented a cull program in 2007 in New Jersey through shooting, mostly during mid‐summer, and focused cull efforts on key molting sites. Our primary objective was to measure the impact of culls on mute swan population trends. We also examined population response of mute swans at key molting sites over time after culls began. We conducted 61 field operations at 21 sites and culled 2,038 mute swans over 11 years. We achieved a mean annual statewide cull rate of 0.15 and reduced the 2005 mute swan population 56% by 2017. The statewide mute swan population declined (P = 0.038) at nearly 8%/yr following commencement of culls. Four heavily used molting sites comprised 79% of the mute swans culled and population response varied across the 4 key cull sites. We fit a linear model using a derived annual cull rate and mute swan abundance data to describe the effect of culls on population growth (λ) and determined that a cull rate >0.09 was required to reduce (λ < 1) the mute swan population in New Jersey. Our work should benefit wildlife agencies who are considering implementing mute swan management programs.

Julie M. Kern, Paul G. McDonald

Mobbing is a widespread, vocally coordinated behaviour where species approach and harass a threat. The noisy miner (Manorina melanocephala) is a notorious native Australian honeyeater, well‐known for its hyperaggressive mobbing. Numerous studies have identified negative impacts of their mobbing behaviour, highlighting the exclusion of competitors from colony areas and the resulting loss of woodland‐bird biodiversity. Despite this, few studies have investigated mobbing itself, and our understanding of the factors which influence its expression remains limited. Here, we use a field‐based playback experiment to investigate whether mobbing responses vary in relation to colony borders and caller familiarity. Noisy miners were more likely to respond, reacted more quickly and responded more strongly to mobbing calls broadcast inside as opposed to outside the colony. These behavioural differences likely arise from variation in the relative costs and benefits of responding. When noisy miners did mob outside the colony, more individuals joined in response to unfamiliar as opposed to familiar callers. Our results reveal that noisy miner mobbing may not be as indiscriminate as often assumed, with caller familiarity and location influencing this behaviour. We suggest there are benefits to greater consideration of the factors impacting noisy miner mobbing behaviour. Keywords: Avian biodiversity, interspecific aggression, mobbing behaviour, noisy miner, vocal communication

Matthew R. Jones, Rosie Chance, Thomas Bell et al.

The surface ocean is the main source of iodine to the atmosphere, where it plays a crucial role including in the catalytic removal of tropospheric ozone. The availability of surface oceanic iodine is governed by its biogeochemical cycling, the controls of which are poorly constrained. Here we show a near two-year time series of the primary iodine species, iodide, iodate and dissolved organic iodine (DOI) in inner shelf marine surface waters of the Western English Channel (UK). The median ± standard deviation concentrations between November 2019 and September 2021 (n=76) were: iodide 88 ± 17 nM (range 61-149 nM), iodate 293 ± 28 nM (198-382 nM), DOI 16 ± 16 nM (&lt;0.12-75 nM) and total dissolved iodine (dIT) 399 ± 30 nM (314-477 nM). Though lower than inorganic iodine ion concentrations, DOI was a persistent and non-negligible component of dIT, which is consistent with previous studies in coastal waters. Over the time series, dIT was not conserved and the missing pool of iodine accounted for ~6% of the observed concentration suggesting complex mechanisms governing dIT removal and renewal. The contribution of excess iodine (I*) sourced from the coastal margin towards dIT was generally low (3 ± 29 nM) but exceptional events influenced dIT concentrations by up to ±100 nM. The seasonal variability in iodine speciation was asynchronous with the observed phytoplankton primary productivity. Nevertheless, iodate reduction began as light levels and then biomass increased in spring and iodide attained its peak concentration in mid to late autumn during post-bloom conditions. Dissolved organic iodine was present, but variable, throughout the year. During winter, iodate concentrations increased due to the advection of North Atlantic surface waters. The timing of changes in iodine speciation and the magnitude of I* subsumed by seawater processes supports the paradigm that transformations between iodine species are biologically mediated, though not directly linked.

Chuhong Wang, Chuhong Wang, Wenli Duan et al.

Underwater images commonly suffer from a variety of quality degradations, such as color casts, low contrast, blurring details, and limited visibility. Existing superpixel segmentation algorithms face challenges in achieving superior performance when directly applied to underwater images with quality degradation. In this paper, to alleviate the limitations of superpixel segmentation when applied to underwater scenes, we propose the first underwater superpixel segmentation network (USNet), specifically designed according to the intrinsic characteristics of underwater images. Considering the quality degradation, we propose a multi-scale water-net module (MWM) aimed at enhancing the quality of underwater images before superpixel segmentation. The degradation-aware attention (DA) mechanism is then created and incorporated into MWM to solve light scattering and absorption, which can decrease object visibility and cause blurred edges. By effectively directing the network to prioritize locations that exhibit a considerable decrease in quality, this method enhances the visibility of those specific areas. Additionally, we extract the deep spatial features using the coordinate attention method. Finally, these features are fused with the shallow spatial information using the dynamic spatiality embedding module to embed comprehensive spatial features. Training and testing were conducted on the SUIM dataset, the underwater change detection dataset, and UIEB dataset. Experimental results show that our method achieves the best scores in terms of achievable segmentation accuracy, undersegmentation error, and boundary recall evaluation metrics compared to other methods. Both quantitative and qualitative evaluations demonstrate that our method can handle complicated underwater scenes and outperform existing state-of-the-art segmentation methods.

P. González‐del‐Pliego, P. González‐del‐Pliego, R. Freckleton et al.

Amphibians are among the most highly threatened lineages, with at least 2,000 species estimated to be in danger of extinction [1, 2]. Alarmingly, another ∼2,200 species (∼25% of all ∼7,900 known species) are data deficient or not evaluated (hereinafter termed data deficient) by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) [1]. Without an estimate of their status, data-deficient species are usually overlooked in conservation planning and resource allocation [3]. Amphibians have the highest proportion of data-deficient species of any vertebrate group [1, 4], which highlights the need to estimate their threat status considering potentially imminent extinctions. We apply a trait-based spatio-phylogenetic statistical framework [5] to predict threat status for data-deficient species. Because ecological, geographical, and evolutionary attributes increase extinction risk [6, 7], we used geographic distribution data [1, 8], phylogenetically imputed ecological traits, and an amphibian phylogeny [9] to provide initial baseline predictions. We estimate that half of the ∼2,200 data-deficient species are threatened with extinction (vulnerable, endangered, or critically endangered), primarily in the Neotropics and Southeast Asia. This increases the number of amphibian species estimated to be threatened with extinction by ∼50%. Of these, we predict that ∼500 species are endangered or critically endangered, and three may be extinct already. We highlight families that are most at risk and suggest where urgent conservation is needed to avert their loss. We show that some of the most vulnerable species may also be the most poorly known and offer an analytical framework for preliminary analysis of their threat status in the face of deficient empirical data.

Dalia Abd El-Azeem Ahmed, Kamal Shaltout, Dalia Fahmy Slima et al.