Search results for " Ecosystems"
showing 10 items of 133 documents
Effects of elevated production of autochthonous dissolved organic matter on the freely dissolved concentration of cadmium
2018
Eutrophication enhances the production of autochthonous dissolved organic matter (DOM), which is a major driving factor behind the impairment of many aquatic ecosystems. In a mesocosm study, we investigated the effects of the abundance and composition of DOM on the potential bioavailability of cadmium (Cd) caused by eutrophication, using three-dimensional excitation-emission matrix fluorescence spectroscopy integrated with tangential flow ultrafiltration technology. The complexing capacity of DOM-Cd and the sorption distribution coefficient between DOM and the bulk solution was calculated based on a 1 : 1 complexation model. The fluorescent DOM was decomposed into three components (one prot…
An introduction to knowledge computing
2014
This paper deals with the challenges related to self-management and evolution of massive knowledge collections. We can assume that a self-managed knowledge graph needs a kind of a hybrid of: an explicit declarative self-knowledge (as knowledge about own properties and capabilities) and an explicit procedural self-knowledge (as knowledge on how to utilize own properties and the capabilities for the self-management).We offer an extension to a traditional RDF model of describing knowledge graphs according to the Semantic Web standards so that it will also allow to a knowledge entity to autonomously perform or query from remote services different computational executions needed. We also introdu…
Designing, Developing, and Implementing Software Ecosystems: Towards a Step-wise Guide
2016
The notion of software ecosystems has been popular both in research and industry for more than a decade, but how software ecosystems are created still remains unclear. This becomes more of a challenge if one examines the “creation” of ecosystems that have high probability in surviving in the future, i.e. with respect to ecosystem health. In this paper, we focus on the creation of software ecosystems and propose a process for designing, developing, and establishing software ecosystems based on three basic steps and a set of activities for each step. We note that software ecosystem research identifies that ecosystems typically emerge from either a company deciding to allow development on thei…
Mediterranean rocky reefs in the Anthropocene: Present status and future concerns
2021
Global change is striking harder and faster in the Mediterranean Sea than elsewhere, where high levels of human pressure and proneness to climate change interact in modifying the structure and disrupting regulative mechanisms of marine ecosystems. Rocky reefs are particularly exposed to such environmental changes with ongoing trends of degradation being impressive. Due to the variety of habitat types and associated marine biodiversity, rocky reefs are critical for the functioning of marine ecosystems, and their decline could profoundly affect the provision of essential goods and services which human populations in coastal areas rely upon. Here, we provide an up-to-date overview of the statu…
Ecohydrology in Mediterranean areas: a numerical model to describe growing seasons out of phase with precipitations
2008
The probabilistic description of soil moisture dynamics is a relatively new topic in hydrology. The most common ecohydrological models start from a stochastic differential equation describing the soil water balance, where the unknown quantity, the soil moisture, depends both on spaces and time. Most of the solutions existing in literature are obtained in a probabilistic framework and under steady-state condition; even if this last condition allows the analytical handling of the problem, it has considerably simplified the same problem by subtracting generalities from it. <br><br> The steady-state hypothesis, appears perfectly applicable in arid and semiarid climatic areas like th…
Chapter 4: Direct and indirect drivers of change in biodiversity and nature’s contributions to people.
2018
The aim of this chapter is to assess evidence of the status and trends of the drivers that affect biodiversity and nature’s contributions to people. There are three wider categories of nature’s contributions to people: regulating, material and non-material contributions, that are similar to, but not identical to classifications of ecosystem services (see Chapter 1). Ecosystems are dynamic interacting networks of animals, plants, fungi, and microorganisms, above and below ground and water-surfaces. These biodiverse networks of interacting organisms respond to a set of environmental factors such as climate, soil, or water conditions. Social-ecological systems also include human activities (di…
Towards a Trustful Digital World : Exploring Self-Sovereign Identity Ecosystems
2021
In the current global situation-burdened by, among others, a vast number of people without formal identification, digital leap, the need for health passports and contact tracking applications-providing private and secure digital identity for individuals, organizations and other entities is crucial. The emerging self-sovereign identity (SSI) solutions rely on distributed ledger technologies and verifiable credentials and have the potential to enable trustful digital interactions. In this human-centric paradigm, trust among actors can be established in a decentralized manner while the identity holders are able to own and control their confidential data. In this paper, we build on observations…
Fauna Europaea: Diptera – Brachycera
2015
Fauna Europaea provides a public web-service with an index of scientific names (including important synonyms) of all extant multicellular European terrestrial and freshwater animals and their geographical distribution at the level of countries and major islands (east of the Urals and excluding the Caucasus region). The Fauna Europaea project comprises about 230,000 taxonomic names, including 130,000 accepted species and 14,000 accepted subspecies, which is much more than the originally projected number of 100,000 species. Fauna Europaea represents a huge effort by more than 400 contributing taxonomic specialists throughout Europe and is a unique (standard) reference suitable for many user c…
Exploring the spatial relationship between airborne-derived red and far-red sun-induced fluorescence and process-based GPP estimates in a forest ecos…
2019
International audience; Terrestrial gross primary productivity (GPP) plays an essential role in the global carbon cycle, but the quantification of the spatial and temporal variations in photosynthesis is still largely uncertain. Our work aimed to investigate the potential of remote sensing to provide new insights into plant photosynthesis at a fine spatial resolution. This goal was achieved by exploiting high-resolution images acquired with the FLuorescence EXplorer (FLEX) airborne demonstrator HyPlant. The sensor was flown over a mixed forest, and the images collected were elaborated to obtain two independent indicators of plant photosynthesis. First, maps of sun-induced chlorophyll fluore…
First record of Heptapleurum arboricola Hayata (Araliaceae) as a casual non-native woody plant in the Mediterranean area
2021
I report here the first record of Heptapleurum arboricola Hayata (syn. Schefflera arboricola (Hayata) Merr.) (Araliaceae) as a casual non-native plant throughout the Mediterranean area. I observed the natural regeneration in urban areas at Castellammare del Golfo, a small coastal town in north-west Sicily (Mediterranean Italy). Due to the lack of self-sustaining populations and the short-term observational period, Heptapleurum arboricola should be considered as a casual species according to the classification of non-native plants. The detection of early signs of naturalization of non-native plants is of crucial importance for the management and control of invasive species. The main abiotic …