Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Environmental Health and Protection
Cultural inception of invasive species
Published: 2024-09-02
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Health and Protection, Environmental Studies, Natural Resources and Conservation, Sustainability
1. Many invasive alien species gradually become embedded within local cultures. Such species can increasingly be perceived by society as familiar and native elements of the social-ecological system and as integral parts of local cultures. 2. Here, we explore this phenomenon and define it as cultural inception. Cultural inception can greatly hinder our ability to successfully manage invasive [...]
Light Pollution at Sea: Implications and Potential Hazards of Human Activity for Offshore Bird and Bat Movements in the Greater North Sea
Published: 2024-05-24
Subjects: Environmental Health and Protection, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Studies, Life Sciences, Marine Biology, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Nature and Society Relations, Ornithology, Other Animal Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology, Water Resource Management, Zoology
Human activity in the North Sea is intensifying, as emerging uses, such as offshore wind farms (OWFs) and liquid natural gas (LNG) terminals, are added to fishing, freight shipping and fossil fuel production as traditional forms of resource exploitation. The volume and scale of these additional installations are projected to increase substantially in the coming decades, which amplifies the need [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Warming in the upper San Francisco Estuary: Patterns of water temperature change from 5 decades of data
Published: 2021-04-30
Subjects: Climate, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Health and Protection, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Fresh Water Studies, Life Sciences, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Terrestrial and Aquatic Ecology
Temperature is a key controlling variable from subcellular to ecosystem scales. Thus, climatic warming is expected to have broad impacts, especially in economically and ecologically valuable systems such as estuaries. The heavily managed upper San Francisco Estuary supplies water to millions of people and is home to fish species of high conservation, commercial, and recreational interest. Despite [...]
Toward a Pluralistic Conception of Resilience
Published: 2019-06-29
Subjects: Applied Mathematics, Computer Sciences, Dynamic Systems, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Health and Protection, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation, Numerical Analysis and Computation, Other Medicine and Health Sciences, Other Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Social and Behavioral Sciences, Sustainability, Systems Biology
The concept of resilience occupies an increasingly prominent position within contemporary efforts to confront many of modernitys most pressing challenges, including global environmental change, famine, infrastructure, poverty, and terrorism, to name but a few. Received views of resilience span a broad conceptual and theoretical terrain, with a diverse range of application domains and settings. In [...]