Search results for "ecological"
showing 10 items of 1263 documents
When Climate Turns Nasty, What Are Recent and Future Implications? Ecological and Human Health Review of Climate Change Impacts
2020
Purpose of Review: The impacts of climate change on biodiversity in the last three decades have increasingly assumed from significant to threatening proportions and this causes major global concerns. This study aims at examining the recent and future impacts of global climate change on both ecological resources and human well-being. This review study is based on the general concept of ecological resilience: that coping with climate change stresses and disturbances depends on social resilience, political and environmental strategies accessible in a community. The study assessed over 300 peer-reviewed publications, both articles and books, which linked climate change impacts on ecosystems to …
New horizons in microparticle forensics: Actinide imaging and detection of 238Pu and 242mAm in hot particles
2021
Description
Lichens Used as Monitors of Atmospheric Pollution Around Agadir (Southwestern Morocco)—A Case Study Predating Lead-Free Gasoline
2011
More than 30 epiphytic lichens, collected in Agadir (Morroco) and along a 150-km transect from the Atlantic Ocean eastward, were analyzed for their metal content and lead isotopic composition. This dataset was used to evaluate atmospheric metal contamination and the impact of the city on the surrounding area. The concentrations of Cu, Pb, and Zn (average ± 1 SD) were 20.9 ± 15.2 μg g−1, 13.8 ± 9.0 μg g−1, and 56.6 ± 26.6 μg g−1, respectively, with the highest values observed in lichens collected within the urban area. The 206Pb/207Pb and 208Pb/207Pb ratios in the lichens varied from 1.146 to 1.186 and from 2.423 to 2.460, respectively. Alkyllead-gasoline sold in Morocco by the major petrol …
Large Blooms of
2018
ABSTRACT Biological soil crusts (biocrusts) account for a substantial portion of primary production in dryland ecosystems. They successionally mature to deliver a suite of ecosystem services, such as carbon sequestration, water retention and nutrient cycling, and climate regulation. Biocrust assemblages are extremely well adapted to survive desiccation and to rapidly take advantage of the periodic precipitation events typical of arid ecosystems. Here we focus on the wetting response of incipient cyanobacterial crusts as they mature from “light” to “dark.” We sampled a cyanobacterial biocrust chronosequence before (dry) and temporally following a controlled wetting event and used high-throug…
Complementary methods assessing short and long-term prey of a marine top predator ‒ Application to the grey seal-fishery conflict in the Baltic Sea.
2019
The growing grey seal (Halichoerus grypus) population in the Baltic Sea has created conflicts with local fisheries, comparable to similar emerging problems worldwide. Adequate information on the foraging habits is a requirement for responsible management of the seal population. We investigated the applicability of available dietary assessment methods by comparing morphological analysis and DNA metabarcoding of gut contents (short-term diet; n = 129/125 seals, respectively), and tissue chemical markers i.e. fatty acid (FA) profiles of blubber and stable isotopes (SIs) of liver and muscle (mid- or long-term diet; n = 108 seals for the FA and SI markers). The methods provided complementary inf…
Artificial selection for predatory behavior results in dietary niche differentiation in an omnivorous mammal
2021
AbstractThe diet of an individual is a result of the availability of dietary items and the individual’s foraging skills and preferences. Behavioral differences may thus influence diet variation, but the evolvability of diet choice through behavioral evolution has not been studied. We used experimental evolution combined with a field enclosure experiment to test whether behavioral selection leads to dietary divergence. We analysed the individual dietary niche via stable isotope ratios of nitrogen (δ15N) and carbon (δ13C) in the hair of an omnivorous mammal, bank vole, from 4 lines selected for predatory behavior and 4 unselected control lines. Predatory voles had higher hair δ15N values than…
Volcanic CO2 tracks the incubation period of basaltic paroxysms
2021
Description
Life Cycle Assessment for Supporting Eco-Design: The Case Study of Sodium–Nickel Chloride Cells
2021
The European Union is moving towards a sustainable, decarbonized, and circular economy. It has identified seven key value chains in which to intervene, with the battery and vehicle value chain being one of them. Thus, actions and strategies for the sustainability of batteries need to be developed. Since Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a strategic tool for evaluating environmental sustainability, this paper investigates its application to two configurations of a sodium–nickel chloride cell (planar and tubular), focusing on the active material and the anode, with the purpose of identifying the configuration characterized by the lowest environmental impacts. The results, based on a “from cradle…
Effects of microplastics on the functional traits of aquatic benthic organisms: A global-scale meta-analysis
2021
Microplastics are widespread in the aquatic environment and thus available for many organisms at different trophic levels. Many scientific papers focus their attention on the study of the effects of microplastics on different species at individual level. Here we performed a global scale meta-analysis focusing our work on the study of the effect of microplastics on the functional traits of aquatic benthic organisms. Overall, microplastics showed a moderate negative effect on the examined functional traits of benthic organisms. Our results show that some crucial functional traits, such as those linked to behaviour and feeding, appear to be unaffected by microplastics. In contrast, traits rela…
Investigating marine shallow waters dynamics to explore the role of turbidity on ecological responses
2009
The ecological tangible effect of the complex interaction between sediments and water column in shallow waters is represented by turbidity which is a common feature of most aquatic ecosystems: it varies both temporally and spatially; it can cover a huge area and persist for a long period or it can be very localized and temporary. Among many factors able to generate turbidity, wind generated wave action and water mass movements due to tides seem important in causing resuspension of sediments. Although there is much research spent in last decades on this topic and many models to explain the complexity of the wind-water-sediment interaction, some interactive aspects are too site specific and t…