Search results for " war"

Does service quality matter in measuring the performance of water utilities?

2008

Abstract Quality is a dimension of water services that has been repeatedly omitted in the study of performance of water utilities. In this paper, Data Envelopment Analysis techniques are used to compute both conventional quantity-based and quality-adjusted scores of technical efficiency for a sample of Spanish water utilities. The key assumptions are that a lack of quality (bad quality) can be regarded as a bad output and the existence of a trade-off between quantity and quality. Our main results indicate that quality matters in measuring technical efficiency, the difference between conventional and quality-adjusted evaluations representing the opportunity cost of maintaining quality. Avera…

1200-yr high-resolution terrestrial climate archive from the middle of the Mediterranean: The sedimentary record from Lake “Specchio di Venere” on Pa…

2011

The special location of Lake "Specchio di Venere" on Pantelleria Island in the Sicily Channel (Mediterranean Sea) between Tunisia and Sicily offers a unique terrestrial archive recording atmospheric changes, which are otherwise difficult to decipher in the marine records from this area. The lake is an endorheic saline basin with a maximum depth of 12.5 m. As the water input depends on rainfall, precipitation variations influence changes of the lake's water chemistry. In summer 2008, Lake Venere was cored with a modified Livingstone corer revealing a composite sedimentary sequence of 10.29 m length. Two radiocarbon dates form a preliminary age model indicating a very high sedimentation rate …

Climate change impact on extrinsic and intrinsic competition between egg parasitoids

2012

Climate changing is a real phenomenon and the last decade was the warmest decade ever. The impact of climate change on animal communities is complex, affecting species interactions in all trophic levels, in different ways and in different bio-geographic zones. Here we will discuss about the possible effects of climate changes in shaping the competition between egg parasitoid species to consume the same hosts. Egg parasitoids are important biological control agents due to their ability to kill the pest before the crop-feeding stages emerge. Competitive effects can be divided in “extrinsic competition”, the indirect interactions between adult females searching for hosts, and “intrinsic compet…

Range expansion and climate warming: state-of-art and perspectives of the case-study Brachidontes pharaonis (Mollusca: Mytilidae).

2009

Cumulative climatic stressors strangles marine aquaculture: Ancillary effects of COVID 19 on Spanish mariculture

2021

9 pages, 8 figures

Limited potential for bird migration to disperse plants to cooler latitudes

2021

Climate change is forcing the redistribution of life on Earth at an unprecedented velocity1,2. Migratory birds are thought to help plants to track climate change through long-distance seed dispersal3,4. However, seeds may be consistently dispersed towards cooler or warmer latitudes depending on whether the fruiting period of a plant species coincides with northward or southward migrations. Here we assess the potential of plant communities to keep pace with climate change through long-distance seed dispersal by migratory birds. To do so, we combine phenological and migration information with data on 949 seed-dispersal interactions between 46 bird and 81 plant species from 13 woodland communi…

ROLE OF BEHAVIOUR IN MARINE ORGANISMS: POTENTIAL EFFECTS UNDER FUTURE OCEAN CONDITIONS.

2021

Over the last 250 years, the intensive burning of fossil fuels along with industrial processes and land uses (e.g. clearing forests and agriculture) has contributed to an increase in atmospheric CO2 from approximately 280 to 410 ppm, with a further increase (from 730 to 1020 ppm) projected by the end of this century. About 30% of the anthropogenic CO2 has been absorbed by the ocean, with a consequent decrease of the ocean’s surface pH causing a phenomenon better known as Ocean Acidification (OA). The average pH of the surface ocean has declined from 8.2 by 0.1 units since pre-industrial times as a result of CO2 emissions and a further reduction of 0.3–0.5 pH units is expected to occur by th…

The rise of thermophilic sea urchins and the expansion of barren grounds in the Mediterranean Sea

2011

Recent ecological studies have shown a strong relation between temperature, echinoids and their grazing effects on macro-algal communities. In this study, we speculate that climate warming may result in an increasingly favourable environment for the reproduction and development of the sea urchin Arbacia lixula. The relationship between increased A. lixula density and the extent of barren grounds in the Mediterranean Sea is also discussed.

Short-term exposure to concurrent biotic and abiotic stressors may impair farmed molluscs performance

2022

Global warming, through increasing temperatures, may facilitate the spread and proliferation of outbreak-forming species which may find favourable substrate conditions on artificial aquaculture structures. The presence of stinging organisms (cnidarian hydroids) in the facilities fouling community are a source of pollution that can cause critical problems when in-situ underwater cleaning processes are performed. Multiple stressor experiments were carried out to investigate the cumulative effect on farmed mussels' functional traits when exposed to realistic stressful conditions, including presence of harmful cnidarian cells and environmental conditions of increasing temperature and short-term…

Predictive Metabolic Suitability Maps for the Thermophilic Invasive Hydroid Pennaria disticha Under Future Warming Mediterranean Sea Scenarios

2022

Temperature is a fundamental variable for all biological processes. It influences the metabolism and tolerance limits of all living organisms, affecting species phenology and distribution patterns. It also facilitates the spread of non-indigenous species and the proliferation and expansion of native outbreak-forming species. Pennaria disticha is a colonial benthic cnidarian reported to be invasive in different Indian and Pacific coastal areas, as well as a harmful member of fouling communities found in Mediterranean marine aquaculture farms. Using the most basal functional trait (i.e., thermal tolerance), we explored the potential of P. disticha to colonize different habitats across the Med…