Search results for "REEs"
showing 10 items of 921 documents
Environmental change and disease dynamics: effects of intensive forest management on Puumala hantavirus infection in boreal bank vole populations.
2012
Intensive management of Fennoscandian forests has led to a mosaic of woodlands in different stages of maturity. The main rodent host of the zoonotic Puumala hantavirus (PUUV) is the bank vole (Myodes glareolus), a species that can be found in all woodlands and especially mature forests. We investigated the influence of forest age structure on PUUV infection dynamics in bank voles. Over four years, we trapped small mammals twice a year in a forest network of different succession stages in Northern Finland. Our study sites represented four forest age classes from young (4 to 30 years) to mature (over 100 years) forests. We show that PUUV-infected bank voles occurred commonly in all forest age…
The effect of buffer strip width and selective logging on streamside plant communities
2019
Background Riparian forests surrounding streams host high biodiversity values, but are threatened by clear-cut logging. Narrow buffer strips of about 15 m are commonly left between the stream and the clear-cut, but studies suggest that the buffer width should be at least 30 m to protect riparian plant communities. Moreover, selective logging is often allowed on the buffer strips in order to increase economic gain. We used an experiment of 43 riparian sites where buffer strip width and selective logging within the strip were manipulated and supplemented with unlogged control sites. We report the short-term changes in the community composition of vascular plants and mosses near the stream (0–…
Vegetation structure and greenness in Central Africa from Modis multi-temporal data.
2013
African forests within the Congo Basin are generally mapped at regional scale as broad-leaved evergreen forests, with a main distinction between terra-firme and swamp forests types. At the same time, commercial forest inventories, as well as national maps, have highlighted a strong spatial heterogeneity of forest types. A detailed vegetation map generated using consistent methods is needed to inform decision makers about spatial forest organisation and theirs relationships with environmental drivers in the context of global change. We propose a multi-temporal remotely sensed data approach to characterize vegetation types using vegetation index annual profiles. The classifications identified…
The Infestation Degree of Trees with Common Mistletoe Viscum album L. and their Health Status (on the Example of Praszka City)
2017
The research was carried out in September and October 2013. Their main aim was to obtain the information on the abundance and distribution of the common mistletoe in Praszka, assess the health status of the trees infested with this semi-parasite, and to determine its impact on the health of the hosts. All the trees with mistletoe were examined (in terms of the species, the number of semi-parasite shrubs, the host health). The distribution and density hosts were presented on a prepared network with an area of 1 ha and Pearson's correlation factor was used to determine the relationship between the infestation degree of a host and its state of health. Only the typical subspecies of mistletoe –…
Modelling landscape constraints on farmland bird species range shifts under climate change
2018
Several studies estimating the effects of global environmental change on biodiversity are focused on climate change. Yet, non-climatic factors such as changes in land cover can also be of paramount importance. This may be particularly important for habitat specialists associated with human-dominated landscapes, where land cover and climate changes may be largely decoupled. Here, we tested this idea by modelling the influence of climate, landscape composition and pattern, on the predicted future (2021–2050) distributions of 21 farmland bird species in the Iberian Peninsula, using boosted regression trees and 10-km resolution presence/absence data. We also evaluated whether habitat specialist…
Ship-to-Ship State Observer Using Sensor Fusion and the Extended Kalman Filter
2019
In this paper, a solution for estimating the relative position and orientation between two ships in six degrees-of-freedom (6DOF) using sensor fusion and an extended Kalman filter (EKF) approach is presented. Two different sensor types, based on time-of-flight and inertial measurement principles, were combined to create a reliable and redundant estimate of the relative motion between the ships. An accurate and reliable relative motion estimate is expected to be a key enabler for future ship-to-ship operations, such as autonomous load transfer and handling. The proposed sensor fusion algorithm was tested with real sensors (two motion reference units (MRS) and a laser tracker) and an experime…
Mechatronic Design for an Extrusion-Based Additive Manufacturing Machine
2017
3D printers, especially in the implementation of innovative extrusion processes which do not have a long history of development, are often built by adapting mechanical designs, drives and controls previously developed for generic machine tools. This is done through a process of choice and integration which is based principally on empirical criteria and taking into account separately the different aspects and parameters. Hereafter, we present an integrated mechatronic approach which has been adopted to design from the scratch a machine to implement the innovative metal injection moulding (MIM) technology. Its extrusion rate involves the adaptation of the generated trajectories and consequent…
Metaheuristic procedures for the lexicographic bottleneck assembly line balancing problem
2015
The goal of this work is to develop an improved procedure for the solution of the lexicographic bottleneck variant of the assembly line balancing problem (LB-ALBP). The objective of the LB-ALBP is to minimize the workload of the most heavily loaded workstation, followed by the workload of the second most heavily loaded workstation and so on. This problem-recently introduced to the literature (Pastor, 2011)-has practical relevance to manufacturing facilities. We design, implement and fine-tune GRASP, tabu search (TS) and scatter search (SS) heuristics for the LB-ALBP and show that our procedures are able to obtain solutions of a quality that outperforms previous approaches. We rely on both s…
Vibration control strategy for large-scale structures with incomplete multi-actuator system and neighbouring state information
2016
The synthesis of optimal controllers for vibrational protection of large-scale structures with multiple actuation devices and partial state information is a challenging problem. In this study, the authors present a design strategy that allows computing this kind of controllers by using standard linear matrix inequality optimisation tools. To illustrate the main elements of the new approach, a five-story structure equipped with two interstory actuation devices and subjected to a seismic disturbance is considered. For this control setup, three different controllers are designed: an ideal state-feedback H 8 controller with full access to the complete state information and two static output-fee…
Phospholipase activities associated with the tonoplast from Acer pseudoplatanus cells: identification of a phospholipase A1 activity
1995
In higher plants, the lipolytic enzymes and their physiological functions are not well characterized [1]. Most reports demonstrated that phospholipid catabolism in plants is achieved by the concerted actions of membrane-bound enzymes including phospholipase D, phosphatidate phosphatase, lipolytic acyl hydrolases and lipoxygenases [1,2]. With the exception of the phospholipase D, the literature on plant phospholipases is still very limited. We previously reported that tonoplast from Acer pseudoplatanus cells contains small amounts of phosphatidc acid and lysophospholipids, which were produced together with free fatty acids, particularly after addition of Ca2+[3]. These data suggested the pos…