Search results for "far"
showing 10 items of 6421 documents
The Importance of Engaging Local People in Landscape Management – Experiences from an EU Project
2018
“Bull by the Horns” -project initiated landscape management and promoted biodiversity associated with diminishing High Nature Value farmland habitats in Finland. A specific focus was on grazed semi-natural grasslands and wood-pastures which are collectively referred to as traditional rural biotopes (TRBs). Collaboration among project workers, non-farming landowners, and cattle owners reintroduced grazing to abandoned pastures, and management was financed through agri-environmental payments. Using adaptive co-management principles, the project enabled collective definition of integrated site-specific management objectives. A better understanding of contemporary challenges and opportunities t…
Increasing water temperature and disease risks in aquatic systems: Climate change increases the risk of some, but not all, diseases
2010
Global warming may impose severe risks for aquatic animal health if increasing water temperature leads to an increase in the incidence of parasitic diseases. Essentially, this could take place through a temperature-driven effect on the epidemiology of the disease. For example, higher temperature may boost the rate of disease spread through positive effects on parasite fitness in a weakened host. Increased temperature may also lengthen the transmission season leading to higher total prevalence of infection and more widespread epidemics. However, to date, general understanding of these relationships is limited due to scarcity of long-term empirical data. Here, we present one of the first long…
Improving scientific rigour in conservation evaluations and a plea deal for transparency on potential biases
2020
Abstract The delivery of rigorous and unbiased evidence on the effects of interventions lay at the heart of the scientific method. Here we examine scientific papers evaluating agri‐environment schemes, the principal instrument to mitigate farmland biodiversity declines worldwide. Despite previous warnings about rudimentary study designs in this field, we found that the majority of studies published between 2008 and 2017 still lack robust study designs to strictly evaluate intervention effects. Potential sources of bias that arise from the correlative nature are rarely mentioned, and results are still promoted by using a causal language. This lack of robust study designs likely results from …
The Sulfated Laminarin Triggers a Stress Transcriptome before Priming the SA- and ROS-Dependent Defenses during Grapevine's Induced Resistance agains…
2018
Grapevine (Vitis vinifera) is susceptible to many pathogens which cause significant losses to viticulture worldwide. Chemical control is available, but agro-ecological concerns have raised interest in alternative methods, especially in triggering plant immunity by elicitor treatments. The β-glucan laminarin (Lam) and its sulfated derivative (PS3) have been previously demonstrated to induce resistance in grapevine against downy mildew (Plasmopara viticola). However, if Lam elicits classical grapevine defenses such as oxidative burst, pathogenesis-related (PR)-proteins and phytoalexin production, PS3 triggered grapevine resistance via a poorly understood priming phenomenon. The aim of this st…
The development of the Norwegian wrasse fishery and the use of wrasses as cleaner fish in the salmon aquaculture industry
2017
Norway leads the world aquaculture production of Atlantic salmon Salmo salar and farmed Norwegian Atlantic salmon is currently consumed around the globe. However, sea lice infestation is a major problem faced by the salmon aquaculture industry in Norway and elsewhere. The use of wild-caught cleaner fish, mainly wrasses, has been recommended over the other available methods as the most economical and environmentally friendly option to control sea lice infestation in salmon farming. Here, we review the development of the Norwegian wrasse fishery and the use of wrasses as cleaner fish. In this document, we address the sea lice problem and introduce the main wrasse species employed as cleaner f…
Lesser kestrel diet and agricultural intensification in the Mediterranean: An unexpected win-win solution?
2018
Abstract Farmland bird species have suffered dramatic declines in recent decades, especially in Mediterranean areas. The intensification of agricultural practices has led to reduced invertebrate prey, which represent the bulk of the diet of many farmland birds. In this study, we investigated the spatial and temporal variation in the diet of the lesser kestrel (Falco naumanni) during the breeding season, monitored over a five-year period between 2006 and 2013 in the Gela Plain (Sicily). Our aim was to understand whether, and to what extent, farming practices affected the reproductive outputs of this predominantly insectivore bird in order to find a profitable compromise between conservation …
Glomus ibericum, Septoglomus mediterraneum, and Funneliformis pilosus, three new species of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi
2020
Three new arbuscular mycorrhizal fungal species—Glomus ibericum, Septoglomus mediterraneum, and Funneliformis pilosus—are described and illustrated. In the field, the three species were associated with roots of Ammophila arenaria (Poaceae), Elymus farctus (Poaceae), Otanthus maritimus (Asteraceae), and Echinophora spinosa (Apiaceae) colonizing maritime dunes located along the Mediterranean coast in eastern Spain. The novelty of these species is supported by morphological, molecular, and phylogenetic analyses. Single-species cultures of S. mediterraneum and F. pilosus were obtained using Trifolium repens as a host plant, both forming arbuscular mycorrhizae, whereas single-species cultures fr…
Spatiotemporal Dispersal and Deposition of Fish Farm Wastes: A Model Study from Central Norway
2017
Abstract A spatially explicit coupled hydrodynamic-mass transport model system was used to simulate dispersal of particulate organic matter from Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) farming in central Norway. Model setups of 32 m horizontal resolution were run for periods of up to 650 days for 3 sites of different oceanographic characteristics: one fjord location, one medium-exposed location influenced by fjord water and one coastal location. Records on feed used for each cage at each location were converted to feces released based on a published mass balance model. The results from the simulations were compared with scores from corresponding mandatory benthic surveys (MOM-B) of the sediment layer…
Historical Suitability and Sustainability of Sicani Mountains Landscape (Western Sicily): An Integrated Approach of Phytosociology and Archaeobotany
2020
Since 2015, the ongoing project &ldquo
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…