Search results for "Climate"

Interactions between Climate Change and Infrastructure Projects in Changing Water Resources: An Ethnobiological Perspective from the Daasanach, Kenya

2021

The fast and widespread environmental changes that have intensified in the last decades are bringing disproportionate impacts to Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities. Changes that affect water resources are particularly relevant for subsistence-based peoples, many of whom already suffer from constraints regarding reliable access to safe water. Particularly in areas where water is scarce, climate change is expected to amplify existing stresses in water availability, which are also exacerbated by multiple socioeconomic drivers. In this paper, we look into the local perceptions of environmental change expressed by the Daasanach people of northern Kenya, where the impacts of climate change …

Comparison of Diatoms and Dinoflagellates from Different Habitats as Sources of PUFAs

2019

Recent studies have clearly shown the importance of omega-3 (&omega

Multiple-stressor effects of warming and acidification on the embryonic development of an estuarine fiddler crab

2021

Made available in DSpace on 2021-06-25T10:56:04Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2021-06-05 Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP) Predicted effects of anthropogenic climate change on estuarine and coastal organisms are complex, and early life history stages of calcified ectotherms are amongst the most sensitive groups. Despite the importance of understanding their vulnerability, we lack information on the effects of multiple stressors on the embryonic development of estuarine and burrowing organisms, mainly mangrove-associated species. Here, we determined the combined effects of elevated temperature and decreased pH on the embryonic development of th…

Understanding the long-term effects of species invasions

2006

We describe here the ecological and evolutionary processes that modulate the effects of invasive species over time, and argue that such processes are so widespread and important that ecologists should adopt a long-term perspective on the effects of invasive species. These processes (including evolution, shifts in species composition, accumulation of materials and interactions with abiotic variables) can increase, decrease, or qualitatively change the impacts of an invader through time. However, most studies of the effects of invasive species have been brief and lack a temporal context; 40% of recent studies did not even state the amount of time that had passed since the invasion. Ecologists…

Drivers of plant richness patterns of Mediterranean riparian forests at local and regional scales have bottom-up and top-down effects

2019

Questions: It has been long recognized that community species richness depends on factors operating at different spatial scales. Most frequently, across-scale studies have focused on the impact of regional factors on local richness (top-down effects) while few have analyzed the importance of local factors on regional richness (bottom-up) and even fewer have tried to integrate effects on both directions. Our objectives were to reveal the key factors shaping plant species richness of Mediterranean riparian forests and to test whether empirical models based on top-down or bottom-up relationships are able to explain the spatial scaling of richness. Location: Southern half of Spain, SW Europe. M…

Long-term changes in autumn migration dates at the Strait of Gibraltar reflect population trends of soaring birds

2016

A growing body of work shows that climate change is the cause of a number of directional shifts in the spring phenology of migratory birds. However, changes in autumn phenology are well studied and their consistency across species, as well as their link with population trends, remains uncertain. We investigate changes in the autumn migration dates of 11 species of soaring birds over the Strait of Gibraltar over a 16-year period. Using models corrected for phylogeny, we assessed whether ecological and morphological characteristics, as well as population trends, account for interspecific shifts in migration times. We recorded different phenological changes in different periods of the migratio…

Wild and cultivated mushrooms as a model of sustainable development

2013

The natural resources are currently overexploited and since 1992 the Conference of Rio de Janeiro has focused on sustainable development to safeguard our planet for future generations. The Fungi kingdom includes producers of goods and services for ecosystems and organisms widely used in the food industry. Besides, macrofungi are recognized as nontimber forest products and could be utilized as agents of environmental management through weed biocontrol and environmental improvement. Moreover, the cultivation of fungi, in particular truffles, can provide an important income in agroecosystems, especially in marginal areas, along with the development of new technologies to produce novel products…

The interplay of landscape composition and configuration: new pathways to manage functional biodiversity and agroecosystem services across Europe

2019

Managing agricultural landscapes to support biodiversity and ecosystem services is a key aim of a sustainable agriculture. However, how the spatial arrangement of crop fields and other habitats in landscapes impacts arthropods and their functions is poorly known. Synthesising data from 49 studies (1515 landscapes) across Europe, we examined effects of landscape composition (% habitats) and configuration (edge density) on arthropods in fields and their margins, pest control, pollination and yields. Configuration effects interacted with the proportions of crop and non-crop habitats, and species’ dietary, dispersal and overwintering traits led to contrasting responses to landscape variables. O…

Study of Mass Oxygen Transfer in a Biotrickling Filter for Air Pollution Control

2012

Biotrickling filtration is a potential and cost effective alternative for the treatment of volatile organic compound (VOC) emissions in air, so it is necessary to deepen into the key aspects of design and operation for the optimization of this technology. One of these factors is the oxygen mass transfer of the process. This study would facilitate the selection of the packing material and the mathematical modelling and simulation of bioreactors. Four plastic packing materials with a different specific surface area have been evaluated in terms of oxygen mass transfer. For the tested range of superficial liquid velocities, data show a relationship between the kLa and the superficial liquid vel…

2019

Aim Using the extremophile genus Anabasis, which includes c. 28 succulent, xerophytic C4 species, and is widely distributed in arid regions of Northern Africa, Arabia, and Asia, we investigate biogeographical relationships between the Irano-Turanian floristic region (ITfr) and its neighboring regions. We test whether the spread of arid and semi-arid biomes in Eurasia coincides with the biogeography of this drought-adapted genus, and whether the ITfr acted as source area of floristic elements for adjacent regions. Location Deserts and semi-deserts of Northern Africa, Mediterranean, Arabia, West and Central Asia. Methods Four cpDNA markers (rpL16 intron, atpB-rbcL, trnQ-rps16, and ndhF-rpL32 …