Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Environmental Sciences
Managing Water for Birds—a Tool for the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge
Published: 2024-10-22
Subjects: Environmental Sciences, Hydrology, Natural Resources and Conservation, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Water Resource Management
The “Water for Birds Tool” is a spreadsheet-based model (using Microsoft Excel) designed for resource managers to assess the spatial extent and types of bird habitats in the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. The model quantifies the areas of open water, partial water, and water depths on a monthly timescale during the irrigation season (April–July) from 2021–2024. This model combines previously [...]
Widespread loss of important ecosystem services from rapidly urbanising Kathmandu Valley
Published: 2024-10-20
Subjects: Environmental Sciences
Ecosystem services are crucial for human well-being as it offers benefits such as food production, water purification, and climate regulation. However, land use change caused by rapid urban expansion poses a significant threat to these services. We investigate the impact of urbanization on ecosystem services in the Kathmandu Valley, a region experiencing intense urban growth. We assessed changes [...]
Climate-linked escalation of societally disastrous wildfires
Published: 2024-10-18
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Sciences
Climate change is forcing societies to contend with increasingly fire-prone ecosystems. Yet, despite evidence of more extreme fire seasons, evidence is lacking globally for trends in wildfires with socially and economically disastrous effects. Using a systematic dataset, we analyse the distribution, trends, and climatic conditions connected with the most lethal and costly wildfire disasters from [...]
Ambitions in national plans do not yet match bold international protection and restoration commitments
Published: 2024-10-17
Subjects: Environmental Law, Environmental Sciences
Almost 200 nations have made bold commitments to halt biodiversity loss as signatories to the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (‘GBF’). The effective achievement of the GBF relies on domestic targets and actions, reflected in National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans (‘NBSAPs’). NBSAPS are an integral feature of the Convention on Biological Diversity (‘CBD’) framework, and [...]
Is the audience gender-blind? Smaller attendance in female talks highlights imbalanced visibility in academia
Published: 2024-05-27
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Sciences, Evolution, Gender Equity in Education, Higher Education, Inequality and Stratification, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Psychological Phenomena and Processes
Although diverse perspectives are fundamental for fostering and advancing science, power relations have limited the development, propagation of ideas, and recognition of political minority groups in academia. Gender bias is one of the most well-documented processes, leading women to drop out of their academic careers due to fewer opportunities and lower recognition. Using long-term data [...]
Blood lead increases and haemoglobin decreases in urban birds along a soil contamination gradient in a mining city
Published: 2024-03-29
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Health and Protection, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Lead contaminated soil is a persistent global threat to the health of animal populations. Nevertheless, links between soil lead and its adverse effects on exposed wildlife remain poorly understood. Here, we explore local geographic patterns of exposure in urban birds along a gradient of lead contamination in Broken Hill, an Australian mining city. Soil lead concentrations are linked to [...]
Japanese mayfly family classification with a vision transformer model
Published: 2024-02-10
Subjects: Aquaculture and Fisheries Life Sciences, Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Biodiversity, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Computer Sciences, Databases and Information Systems, Engineering, Environmental Health and Protection, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Benthic macroinvertebrates are a frequently used indicator group for biomonitoring and biological assessment of river ecosystems. However, their taxonomic identification is laborious and requires special expertise. In this study, we aimed to assess the capability of a vision transformer (ViT) model for family-level identification of mayflies (order Ephemeroptera). Specifically, we focused on [...]
A big data and machine learning approach for monitoring the condition of ecosystems
Published: 2024-01-16
Subjects: Applied Statistics, Biodiversity, Bioinformatics, Earth Sciences, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Sciences, Forest Biology, Forest Sciences, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Statistical Methodology, Statistical Models, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Ecosystems are highly valuable as a source of goods and services and as a heritage for future generations. Knowing their condition is extremely important for all management and conservation activities and public policies. Until now, the evaluation of ecosystem condition has been unsatisfactory and thus lacks practical implementation for most countries. We propose that ecosystem integrity is a [...]
The role of deadwood in the carbon cycle: Implications for models, forest management, and future climates
Published: 2024-01-10
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Earth Sciences, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Sciences, Forest Biology, Forest Management, Forest Sciences, Life Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Plant Biology, Plant Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Deadwood represents a significant carbon pool in forests and savannas. Although previous research has focused mainly on forests, we synthesise deadwood studies across all ecosystems with woody vegetation. Storage and release of carbon from deadwood is controlled by interacting decomposition drivers including biotic consumers (animals, microbes) and abiotic factors (water, fire, sunlight, [...]
House Sparrows as Sentinels of Childhood Lead Exposure
Published: 2024-01-04
Subjects: Environmental Health and Protection, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Our understanding of connections between human and animal health has advanced substantially since the canary was introduced as a sentinel of toxic conditions in coal mines. Nonetheless, the development of wildlife sentinels for monitoring human exposure to toxins has been limited. Here, we capitalized on a three-decade long child blood lead monitoring program to demonstrate that the globally [...]
Quantifying clearance rates of restored shellfish reefs using modular baskets
Published: 2023-12-08
Subjects: Animal Experimentation and Research, Aquaculture and Fisheries Life Sciences, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences, Marine Biology, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Research Methods in Life Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology, Water Resource Management, Zoology
Shellfish reefs are among the most degraded ecosystems globally, prompting substantial efforts to restore them. While biodiversity gains of restored reefs are well documented, other ecosystem services such as water filtration remain poorly quantified. We present a novel way of measuring water filtration by restored reefs using modular restoration structures called Robust Oyster Baskets (ROB 400). [...]
A Perspective on How Glyphosate and 2,4-D May Impact Climate Change
Published: 2023-08-26
Subjects: Biogeochemistry, Climate, Earth Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
An increase in herbicide use is occurring due to a growing population and herbicide-resistant crops in agriculture, which has resulted in more herbicide tolerant target species. Glyphosate and 2,4-Dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4-D) are two of the most commonly used herbicides worldwide and are more recently being used in combination in pre-mixed commercial formulas. Subsequently, herbicide [...]
Assessing risk of ecosystem collapse in a changing climate
Published: 2023-08-07
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences
Climate change has pervasive impacts on Earth’s ecosystems, but the diversity and complexity of ecosystems makes estimating the severity of impacts and the resulting risk of collapse difficult. In this perspective, we conceptualise the challenge of understanding how climate change alters ecosystems, and how to reliably measure those changes in ecosystem risk assessments, focussing on the IUCN Red [...]
Landscape changes in the “valli da pesca” of the Venice lagoon and possible effects on the Ecosystem Services supply
Published: 2023-06-21
Subjects: Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Natural Resources and Conservation, Nature and Society Relations, Other Environmental Sciences, Remote Sensing, Sustainability, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Coastal lagoons have long been subject to continuous changes caused by mutual interactions with human activities. Monitoring such changes becomes critical, particularly when modifications in landscape and land cover classes can affect their capacity to ensure Ecosystem Services (ESs). In the Venice lagoon, some confined areas called “valli da pesca” supply provisioning ESs, namely aquaculture and [...]
Biogeochemistry of soils, sediments, and surface waters across the upland to wetland gradient of coastal interfaces
Published: 2023-05-15
Subjects: Environmental Sciences
Transferable and mechanistic understanding of cross-scale interactions is necessary to predict how coastal systems respond to global change. Cohesive datasets across geographically distributed sites can enable a mechanistic understanding of coastal ecosystem control points and examine how geographically transferable this knowledge is. To address the above research objectives, data were collected [...]