Search results for "Economic"
showing 10 items of 17949 documents
Economic Conditions in the Area Around the Sea of Galilee in Pre-Hellenistic Times
2017
Abstract In a landscape archaeology project all the fertile fields around the Sea of Galilee (an area of 50 × 30 km) were mapped. The whole territory was subdivided in 5 regions: Jordan valley, Lower Galilee, Upper Galilee, Golan and Transjordanian Hill Country. Additionally all ancient sites from the Neolithic to the Persian period, which are mentioned in archaeological literature, were collected – all together more than 300 sites. These data allow a reconstruction of the economic conditions in antiquity in the area around the Sea of Galilee. Landscape archaeology clearly demonstrates that the economic basis may have been completely diverse in the five sub-regions, and also during differen…
Economic modelling as a tool to support macroalgal bloom management: a case study (Sacca di Goro, Po river delta)
2003
During the last 20, years, intensive mollusk farming has been developed in coastal waters, mostly in sheltered bays and lagoons. Often, mollusk stocks are threatened by frequent anoxic events from macroalgal blooms. Here, a decision support tool is described to select the optimal short-term strategy to control algal biomasses. Even though long-term and detailed studies of the lagoon systems are required to provide reliable, biologically based policies, we have here developed a simplified analysis that overlooks most of the ecological complexity, but explicitly includes environmental variability and uncertainty in parameter estimation in the economic assessment of the performances of differe…
More is more? : Forest management allocation at different spatial scales to mitigate conflicts between ecosystem services
2017
Context: Multi-objective management can mitigate conflicts among land-use objectives. However, the effectiveness of a multi-objective solution depends on the spatial scale at which land-use is optimized. This is because the ecological variation within the planning region influences the potential for site-specific prioritization according to the different objectives. Objectives: We optimized the allocation of forest management strategies to maximize the joint production of two conflicting objectives, timber production and carbon storage, at increasing spatial scales. We examined the impacts of the extent of the planning region on the severity of the conflict, the potential for its mitigation…
Conflicting objectives in production forests pose a challenge for forest management
2017
Conflicts among different ecosystem services have been shown to be common and potentially exacerbated by management interventions. In order to improve the sustainability of natural resource use, the occurrence of these conflicts and the effects that management actions have on them need to be understood. We studied the conflicts between ecosystem services and the potential to solve them by management choices in boreal production forests. Our study area consisted of nearly 30,000 forest stands which were simulated for 50 years into the future under alternative management scenarios. The study included four ecosystem services – timber production, bilberry production, carbon storage, and pest re…
Phytoplankton distribution in Mar Menor coastal lagoon (SE Spain) during 2017.
2020
The Mar Menor is a Spanish coastal lagoon of great ecological and economic interest. The agricultural and tourist activities developed in the surroundings of the lagoon, together with the modifications in its channels of connection with the Mediterranean Sea, have notably affected the quality of its waters, which is altering the natural balance of the ecosystem. In this work, an analysis of the density of phytoplankton present in the lagoon between the months of May to December 2017 was carried out. The results indicate a significant increase in phytoplankton density between 2500 and 67,300 cells/mL compared to previous data of 1981 (between 10 and 500 cells/mL). Concentration of Chlorophyl…
Forest multifunctionality is not resilient to intensive forestry
2021
AbstractThere is ample evidence that intensive management of ecosystems causes declines in biodiversity as well as in multiple ecosystem services, i.e., in multifunctionality. However, less is known about the permanence and reversibility of these responses. To gain insight into whether multifunctionality can be sustained under intensive management, we developed a framework building on the concept of resilience: a system’s ability to avoid displacement and to return or transform to a desired state. We applied it to test the ability of forest multifunctionality to persist during and recover from intensive management for timber production in a boreal forest. Using forest growth simulations and…
Managing boreal forests for the simultaneous production of collectable goods and timber revenues
2016
Timber Production is an economically important provisioning ecosystem service in forests, but is often in conflict with the provision of other ecosystem services. In multifunctional forestry, the production of timber and non-timber ecosystem services should coexist in the same landscape. To this end, we explored the capacity of a boreal landscape to simultaneously produce collectable goods − bilberry (Vaccimium myrtillus L.), cowberry (Vaccinium vitis-idaea L.) and cep (Boletus edulis Bull.) − alongside timber revenues. We also identified optimal forest management plans to achieve this. Furthermore, we analyzed trade-offs between collectable good yields and timber production, as well as bet…
Evaluating the influences of temperature, primary production, and evolutionary history on bivalve growth rates
2019
AbstractOrganismal metabolic rates reflect the interaction of environmental and physiological factors. Thus, calcifying organisms that record growth history can provide insight into both the ancient environments in which they lived and their own physiology and life history. However, interpreting them requires understanding which environmental factors have the greatest influence on growth rate and the extent to which evolutionary history constrains growth rates across lineages. We integrated satellite measurements of sea-surface temperature and chlorophyll-a concentration with a database of growth coefficients, body sizes, and life spans for 692 populations of living marine bivalves in 195 s…
Tri-axial accelerometry shows differences in energy expenditure and parental effort throughout the breeding season in long-lived raptors
2021
Cutting-edge technologies are extremely useful to develop new workflows in studying ecological data, particularly to understand animal behavior and movement trajectories at the individual level. Although parental care is a well-studied phenomenon, most studies have been focused on direct observational or video recording data, as well as experimental manipulation. Therefore, what happens out of our sight still remains unknown. Using high-frequency GPS/GSM dataloggers and tri-axial accelerometers we monitored 25 Bonelli’s eagles Aquila fasciata during the breeding season to understand parental activities from a broader perspective. We used recursive data, measured as number of visits and resi…
Hierarchy is Detrimental for Human Cooperation
2015
Studies of animal behavior consistently demonstrate that the social environment impacts cooperation, yet the effect of social dynamics has been largely excluded from studies of human cooperation. Here, we introduce a novel approach inspired by nonhuman primate research to address how social hierarchies impact human cooperation. Participants competed to earn hierarchy positions and then could cooperate with another individual in the hierarchy by investing in a common effort. Cooperation was achieved if the combined investments exceeded a threshold, and the higher ranked individual distributed the spoils unless control was contested by the partner. Compared to a condition lacking hierarchy, c…