Search results for "ecosystem"
showing 10 items of 1752 documents
The Influence of Sewage Sludge and Fly Ash Fertilization on the Total Number of Bacteria (TNB) and Bradyrhizobium Species in Soybean Agroecosystem
2023
The aim of this study was to determine the impact of different chemical properties in soil, including changes in magnetic susceptibility and the impact of humic substances from sewage sludge and fly ash on the microbial community in the soybean agroecosystem. A field experiment was carried out using the random plot method on Cambisol with a texture of silt loam. The experiment consisted of 24 plots (six treatments and four replications) using different dozes of sewage sludge and fly ash. The following physicochemical and chemical analyses were performed in the soil samples: pH in KCl, conductivity (λ), total content of heavy metal, magnetic measurements and fractional composition of …
Parasite avoidance behaviours in aquatic environments
2018
Parasites, including macroparasites, protists, fungi, bacteria and viruses, can impose a heavy burden upon host animals. However, hosts are not without defences. One aspect of host defence, behavioural avoidance, has been studied in the terrestrial realm for over 50 years, but was first reported from the aquatic environment approximately 20 years ago. Evidence has mounted on the importance of parasite avoidance behaviours and it is increasingly apparent that there are core similarities in the function and benefit of this defence mechanism between terrestrial and aquatic systems. However, there are also stark differences driven by the unique biotic and abiotic characteristics of terrestrial …
Shedding Light on Early Stage Academic Entrepreneurship : Finnish University Researchers' View on Key Stakeholder Relations and Their Influence on th…
2020
Since the mid-1980s, along with the opening up of the Finnish economy, the pressure to commercialize university research has steadily increased in Finland. This is in line with the growing importance of innovations in an ever-globalizing world in which purely production- cost-based strategies are about to become obsolete. However, in comparison to other Nordic countries and Western European industrial countries, Finnish investments in research have fallen short in their ability to increase high-technology export levels (Kotiranta and Tahvanainen 2018). Moreover, Finnish academia faces challenges in creating university-based economic activity (Nikulainen and Tahvanainen 2013). In order to he…
Solving Conflicts among Conservation, Economic, and Social Objectives in Boreal Production Forest Landscapes: Fennoscandian Perspectives
2018
This chapter discusses challenges and possibilities involved in preserving biological diversity and the diversity of ecosystem services in the boreal zone and yet at the same time maintaining intensive timber extraction in boreal forests. Our focus is on Fennoscandian forests at the landscapes level, and we consider economic, social and ecological in the sustainability of forest management. We provide an outlook to boreal forest ecosystems and their history, and an overview of the forestry practices and policies that aim to ensure multi-functionality of Fennoscandian forests, i.e. diversity of efforts on sustaining biodiversity, timber production and other ecosystem services from forest lan…
Spatially dynamic forest management to sustain biodiversity and economic returns.
2014
Production of marketed commodities and protection of biodiversity in natural systems often conflict and thus the continuously expanding human needs for more goods and benefits from global ecosystems urgently calls for strategies to resolve this conflict. In this paper, we addressed what is the potential of a forest landscape to simultaneously produce habitats for species and economic returns, and how the conflict between habitat availability and timber production varies among taxa. Secondly, we aimed at revealing an optimal combination of management regimes that maximizes habitat availability for given levels of economic returns. We used multi-objective optimization tools to analyze data fr…
Transformation of the Forest-based Bioeconomy by Embracing Digital Solutions
2017
This paper attempts to explore a new insight to both industrialized and growing economies by demonstrating a digital-driven creative disruption in the forest-based bioeconomy which is beginning to replace its conventional and narrow concept of a forest-blinded economy. Notwithstanding the potential broad cross-sectoral benefits to both industrialized and growing economies, natural environments and locality constraints and the incessant challenge of distance have impeded balanced development of this economy. However, driven by digital solutions the economy has taken big steps forward in recent years. Digitalization has enabled real-time end-to-end supply chain visibility, improved delivery a…
Semantic Portal as a Tool for Structural Reform of the Ukrainian Educational System
2014
Education is recognized as a fundamental enabler of human development. The adoption of information and communications technologies (ICTs) by education (especially in developing countries) contributes to educational system reforms, in addition to the traditional advantages, such as social openness and accessibility. Yet the academic community has not studied sufficiently the challenging context in which ICTs are used as instruments for the reform of inefficient, and sometimes even corrupted, educational systems rather than just as means for smarter classrooms, remote access, or content management. The object of this study is Ukrainian higher education (HE) and its quality assurance (QA) syst…
Comparing Conservation Value Maps and Mapping Methods in a Rural Landscape in Southern Finland
2015
We tested to what extent conservation value maps are different if the valuation and mapping method is changed. We compared 66 different conservation value and 4 different ecosystem service maps. Using remote sensing and other georeferenced data, we produced 2 different habitat type maps, which were 50 % similar. We valued each mapped habitat type based on rarity corrected potential number of vascular plant species and naturalness using 6 different valuation alternatives. We mapped habitat type connectivity and complementarity using 2 main approaches. The habitat type valuation alternatives were quite similar, but if the habitat type naturalness was taken into account, differences were large…
Red list of threatened vascular plants in Italy
2021
Italy has a rich natural heritage, which is dangerously under pressure. In recent years, there is an increased awareness of the crucial role of plants in ecosystem functioning and in providing ecosystem services. Consequently, an updated Red List of the Italian vascular flora was compiled in this work, at the request of the Ministry for Environment, Land and Sea Protection, with the scientific support of the Italian Botanical Society. The IUCN Red List criteria were applied to 2,430 Italian native vascular plant taxa to assess their current extinction risk and to highlight the major threats affecting the Italian flora. Our results revealed that 54 taxa (2.2% of the assessed taxa) are extinc…
Implementation of IUCN criteria for the definition of the Red List of Ecosystems in Italy, Plant Biosystems.
2020
The present work is aimed at presenting the data, methods and criteria that are being used for the assessment of ecosystem collapse risk in Italy.