Search results for "Forestry"

Ecotype-Level Genetic Biodiversity of Five Italian Traditional Crops

2019

Italy displays a high level of agrobiodiversity due to its diversified pedoclimatic zones. The Administrative Region of Campania includes several and divergent biomes, occurring close to each other. In fact, the distance between a sea level environment and that of high mountains can be less than 20 km. These environmental conditions allow the cultivation of many different crops and vegetables, represented by diverse ecotypes and varieties that are well adapted to the distribution range where they have been selected and grown. Efforts to maintain and further increase biodiversity in farming systems require a better understanding of the existing diversity created by traditional farming practi…

Synthesis of habitat restoration impacts on young-of-the-year salmonids in boreal rivers

2019

River restoration offers the potential to enhance biological integrity, often measured as fish population changes. We used a meta-analytical approach to synthesize density responses to in-stream habitat restoration by young-of-the year (YOY) brown trout and Atlantic salmon in 28 rivers (overall 32 restoration projects) in Finland. We also examined which local and watershed-scale factors most influenced restoration success. Finally, we conducted an expert survey to obtain an independent estimate of a sufficient density enhancement for restoration to be considered successful. Despite strong context-dependency, habitat restoration had an overall positive effect on YOY salmonid density. When co…

2018

Optimized Application of Biome-BGC for Modeling the Daily GPP of Natural Vegetation Over Peninsular Spain

2018

A methodology for improving the application of Biome-BGC in peninsular Spain was developed focusing on the optimization of the rooting depth (zroot), which is not available for the study area on a spatially distributed basis. The optimal zroot was identified by comparing daily gross primary production (GPP) simulations with varying zroot to GPP estimations from a production efficiency model previously optimized for and validated in the study area. The methodology was first tested in four eddy covariance (EC) sites representative of Mediterranean ecosystems and next applied at a regional scale to the whole study area. As a result, daily GPP simulated maps for the 2005-2012 period and an opti…

Environment-sensitivity functions for gross primary productivity in light use efficiency models

2022

International audience; The sensitivity of photosynthesis to environmental changes is essential for understanding carbon cycle responses to global climate change and for the development of modeling approaches that explains its spatial and temporal variability. We collected a large variety of published sensitivity functions of gross primary productivity (GPP) to different forcing variables to assess the response of GPP to environmental factors. These include the responses of GPP to temperature; vapor pressure deficit, some of which include the response to atmospheric CO2 concentrations; soil water availability (W); light intensity; and cloudiness. These functions were combined in a full fact…

Alder pollen in Finland ripens after a short exposure to warm days in early spring, showing biennial variation in the onset of pollen ripening

2017

Abstract We developed a temperature sum model to predict the daily pollen release of alder, based on pollen data collected with pollen traps at seven locations in Finland over the years 2000–2014. We estimated the model parameters by minimizing the sum of squared errors (SSE) of the model, with weights that put more weight on binary recognition of daily presence or absence of pollen. The model results suggest that alder pollen ripens after a couple of warm days in February, while the whole pollen release period typically takes up to 4 weeks. We tested the model residuals against air humidity, precipitation and wind speed, but adding these meteorological features did not improve the model pr…

Social process of adaptation to environmental changes: How eastern african societies intervene between crops and climate

2014

Abstract Studies on climate change can only be conducted on a long time scale, and observing how societies adapt their sowing practices to climate variability is challenging and costly. As an alternative, a space and time substitution design was used, changes in space corresponding to that induced in time by environmental change. On the eastern slope of Mount Kenya, the Tharaka community, originating from the lowlands (750 m), moved up to the midlands (950 m) with their lowland-adapted resources, whereas the Mwimbi, originating from wetter upland (1100 m), moved down to the midlands with their highland-adapted genetic resources. A weather station was installed at 950 and 1100 m, and a logis…

Lysimeter assessment of the Simplified Two-Source Energy Balance model and eddy covariance system to estimate vineyard evapotranspiration

2019

Abstract Estimation of crop water needs plays a key role in the water resource management in arid and semi-arid regions. Actual evapotranspiration (ETa) becomes the key term in both water and energy balances at this point. In this work we focus on vineyard due to the significance of this crop for La Mancha region, Spain, with the greatest concentration of vineyards in the world. Eddy-covariance (EC) technique has been traditionally used for ground observations of ETa. One of the aims of this work is to assess the feasibility of an EC system under the challenging conditions of a small drip-irrigated vineyard in a semi-arid environment. Two-source energy balance modelling allows for ETa estim…

Plant diversity effects on aboveground and belowground N pools in temperate grassland ecosystems: Development in the first 5 years after establishment

2011

[1] Biodiversity is expected to improve ecosystem services, e.g., productivity or seepage water quality. The current view of plant diversity effects on element cycling is based on short-term grassland studies that discount possibly slow belowground feedbacks to aboveground diversity. Furthermore, these grasslands were established on formerly arable land associated with changes in soil properties, e.g., accumulation of organic matter. We hypothesize that the plant diversity-N cycle relationship changes with time since establishment. We assessed the relationship between plant diversity and (1) aboveground and soil N storage and (2) NO3-N and NH4-N availability in soil between 2003 and 2007 in…

Oxidation, efflux, and isotopic fractionation of methane during autumnal turnover in a polyhumic, boreal lake

2007

[1] We studied the oxidation and efflux of methane (CH4) in a small, polyhumic lake, Mekkojarvi (southern Finland), during 6 weeks in autumn when the stability of the water mass first weakened, temporarily restabilized, and finally mixed completely. During the summer stratification period, CH4 had accumulated in the anoxic hypolimnion to high concentrations (>150 mmol m−3). Gradual mixing of the water column during the autumn allowed access to both oxygen and CH4 by aerobic methane-oxidizing bacteria (MOB) deeper in the water column. Thus the bulk (∼83–88%) of the CH4 accumulated in the hypolimnion was subsequently consumed by MOB while only 12–17% was lost from the lake to the atmosphere a…