First large-scale ecological impact study of desalination outfall reveals trade-offs in effects of hypersalinity and hydrodynamics

2018 ◽  
Vol 145 ◽  
pp. 757-768 ◽  
Author(s):  
Graeme F. Clark ◽  
Nathan A. Knott ◽  
Brett M. Miller ◽  
Brendan P. Kelaher ◽  
Melinda A. Coleman ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Ecological Impact ◽  
Impact Study ◽  
Trade Offs

scholarly journals The application of an environmental performance framework for climate adaptation innovations on two nature-based adaptations

AMBIO ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jantsje M. van Loon-Steensma ◽  
Christopher Goldsworthy
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Impact ◽  
Environmental Assessment ◽  
Environmental Performance ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Climate Adaptation ◽  
Ecological Impact ◽  
Design Stage ◽  
Environmentally Conscious ◽  
Performance Framework ◽  
Trade Offs

AbstractIn this paper, we introduce and test a framework to qualitatively assess the environmental impact of climate adaptation innovations with the ambition to facilitate the implementation of these adaptations. The framework was designed to enable continuous environmentally conscious benchmarking based on three environmental performance indicators: sustainable design, environmental impact and ecological impact. It was pilot tested by uninvolved experts and key-persons for two large-scale nature-based flood adaptation innovations in the Netherlands and discussed with environmental assessment professionals. Our findings indicate how the inclusion of our framework helps to identify important knowledge gaps regarding environmental co-benefits and trade-offs, and can be beneficial to both those developing the innovation and the local authorities charged with assessing the suitability of innovations. We conclude by noting how the incorporation of environmental impact assessment from the design stage of adaptations could supplement existing environmental assessment regulations pre-empting concerns rather than reacting to them.

scholarly journals Mapping the adaptive landscape of a major agricultural pathogen reveals evolutionary constraints across heterogeneous environments

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anik Dutta ◽  
Fanny E. Hartmann ◽  
Carolina Sardinha Francisco ◽  
Bruce A. McDonald ◽  
Daniel Croll
Keyword(s):  
Life History ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Life History Traits ◽  
Genetic Correlations ◽  
Stress Factors ◽  
Life History Trait ◽  
Adaptive Landscape ◽  
Heterogeneous Environments ◽  
Growth Responses ◽  
Trade Offs

AbstractThe adaptive potential of pathogens in novel or heterogeneous environments underpins the risk of disease epidemics. Antagonistic pleiotropy or differential resource allocation among life-history traits can constrain pathogen adaptation. However, we lack understanding of how the genetic architecture of individual traits can generate trade-offs. Here, we report a large-scale study based on 145 global strains of the fungal wheat pathogen Zymoseptoria tritici from four continents. We measured 50 life-history traits, including virulence and reproduction on 12 different wheat hosts and growth responses to several abiotic stressors. To elucidate the genetic basis of adaptation, we used genome-wide association mapping coupled with genetic correlation analyses. We show that most traits are governed by polygenic architectures and are highly heritable suggesting that adaptation proceeds mainly through allele frequency shifts at many loci. We identified negative genetic correlations among traits related to host colonization and survival in stressful environments. Such genetic constraints indicate that pleiotropic effects could limit the pathogen’s ability to cause host damage. In contrast, adaptation to abiotic stress factors was likely facilitated by synergistic pleiotropy. Our study illustrates how comprehensive mapping of life-history trait architectures across diverse environments allows to predict evolutionary trajectories of pathogens confronted with environmental perturbations.

scholarly journals Fencing affects African wild dog movement patterns and population dynamics

Oryx ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Helen M. K. O'Neill ◽  
Sarah M. Durant ◽  
Stefanie Strebel ◽  
Rosie Woodroffe
Keyword(s):  
Population Dynamics ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Animal Movement ◽  
Landscape Connectivity ◽  
Ecological Impact ◽  
Movement Patterns ◽  
Wrong Side ◽  
African Wild Dog ◽  
Wild Dog ◽  
Wild Dogs

Abstract Wildlife fences are often considered an important tool in conservation. Fences are used in attempts to prevent human–wildlife conflict and reduce poaching, despite known negative impacts on landscape connectivity and animal movement patterns. Such impacts are likely to be particularly important for wide-ranging species, such as the African wild dog Lycaon pictus, which requires large areas of continuous habitat to fulfil its resource requirements. Laikipia County in northern Kenya is an important area for wild dogs but new wildlife fences are increasingly being built in this ecosystem. Using a long-term dataset from the area's free-ranging wild dog population, we evaluated the effect of wildlife fence structure on the ability of wild dogs to cross them. The extent to which fences impeded wild dog movement differed between fence designs, although individuals crossed fences of all types. Purpose-built fence gaps increased passage through relatively impermeable fences. Nevertheless, low fence permeability can lead to packs, or parts of packs, becoming trapped on the wrong side of a fence, with consequences for population dynamics. Careful evaluation should be given to the necessity of erecting fences; ecological impact assessments should incorporate evaluation of impacts on animal movement patterns and should be undertaken for all large-scale fencing interventions. Where fencing is unavoidable, projects should use the most permeable fencing structures possible, both in the design of the fence and including as many purpose-built gaps as possible, to minimize impacts on wide-ranging wildlife.

scholarly journals An integrated life cycle and water footprint assessment of nonfood crops based bioenergy production

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jun Li ◽  
Fengyin Xiong ◽  
Zhuo Chen
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycle ◽  
Environmental Sustainability ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Water Footprint ◽  
Arable Land ◽  
Integrated Analysis ◽  
Actual Performance ◽  
Bioenergy Production ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Hybrid Pennisetum

AbstractBiomass gasification, especially distribution to power generation, is considered as a promising way to tackle global energy and environmental challenges. However, previous researches on integrated analysis of the greenhouse gases (GHG) abatement potentials associated with biomass electrification are sparse and few have taken the freshwater utilization into account within a coherent framework, though both energy and water scarcity are lying in the central concerns in China’s environmental policy. This study employs a Life cycle assessment (LCA) model to analyse the actual performance combined with water footprint (WF) assessment methods. The inextricable trade-offs between three representative energy-producing technologies are explored based on three categories of non-food crops (maize, sorghum and hybrid pennisetum) cultivated in marginal arable land. WF results demonstrate that the Hybrid pennisetum system has the largest impact on the water resources whereas the other two technology options exhibit the characteristics of environmental sustainability. The large variances in contribution ratio between the four sub-processes in terms of total impacts are reflected by the LCA results. The Anaerobic Digestion process is found to be the main contributor whereas the Digestate management process is shown to be able to effectively mitigate the negative environmental impacts with an absolute share. Sensitivity analysis is implemented to detect the impacts of loss ratios variation, as silage mass and methane, on final results. The methane loss has the largest influence on the Hybrid pennisetum system, followed by the Maize system. Above all, the Sorghum system demonstrates the best performance amongst the considered assessment categories. Our study builds a pilot reference for further driving large-scale project of bioenergy production and conversion. The synergy of combined WF-LCA method allows us to conduct a comprehensive assessment and to provide insights into environmental and resource management.

scholarly journals System design for inferring colony-level pollination activity through miniature bee-mounted sensors

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Haron M. Abdel-Raziq ◽  
Daniel M. Palmer ◽  
Phoebe A. Koenig ◽  
Alyosha C. Molnar ◽  
Kirstin H. Petersen
Keyword(s):  
Data Acquisition ◽  
Honey Bees ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Physical World ◽  
Cluttered Environments ◽  
Robotic Mapping ◽  
Large Scale Data ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
Engineered Systems

AbstractIn digital agriculture, large-scale data acquisition and analysis can improve farm management by allowing growers to constantly monitor the state of a field. Deploying large autonomous robot teams to navigate and monitor cluttered environments, however, is difficult and costly. Here, we present methods that would allow us to leverage managed colonies of honey bees equipped with miniature flight recorders to monitor orchard pollination activity. Tracking honey bee flights can inform estimates of crop pollination, allowing growers to improve yield and resource allocation. Honey bees are adept at maneuvering complex environments and collectively pool information about nectar and pollen sources through thousands of daily flights. Additionally, colonies are present in orchards before and during bloom for many crops, as growers often rent hives to ensure successful pollination. We characterize existing Angle-Sensitive Pixels (ASPs) for use in flight recorders and calculate memory and resolution trade-offs. We further integrate ASP data into a colony foraging simulator and show how large numbers of flights refine system accuracy, using methods from robotic mapping literature. Our results indicate promising potential for such agricultural monitoring, where we leverage the superiority of social insects to sense the physical world, while providing data acquisition on par with explicitly engineered systems.

scholarly journals The PETLON Algorithm to Plan Efficiently for Task-Level-Optimal Navigation

2020 ◽  
Vol 69 ◽  
pp. 471-500
Author(s):  
Shih-Yun Lo ◽  
Shiqi Zhang ◽  
Peter Stone
Keyword(s):  
Mobile Robot ◽  
Motion Planning ◽  
Mobile Robots ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Accurate Estimate ◽  
Indoor Environments ◽  
Task Planning ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
High Level ◽  
Task Level

Intelligent mobile robots have recently become able to operate autonomously in large-scale indoor environments for extended periods of time. In this process, mobile robots need the capabilities of both task and motion planning. Task planning in such environments involves sequencing the robot’s high-level goals and subgoals, and typically requires reasoning about the locations of people, rooms, and objects in the environment, and their interactions to achieve a goal. One of the prerequisites for optimal task planning that is often overlooked is having an accurate estimate of the actual distance (or time) a robot needs to navigate from one location to another. State-of-the-art motion planning algorithms, though often computationally complex, are designed exactly for this purpose of finding routes through constrained spaces. In this article, we focus on integrating task and motion planning (TMP) to achieve task-level-optimal planning for robot navigation while maintaining manageable computational efficiency. To this end, we introduce TMP algorithm PETLON (Planning Efficiently for Task-Level-Optimal Navigation), including two configurations with different trade-offs over computational expenses between task and motion planning, for everyday service tasks using a mobile robot. Experiments have been conducted both in simulation and on a mobile robot using object delivery tasks in an indoor office environment. The key observation from the results is that PETLON is more efficient than a baseline approach that pre-computes motion costs of all possible navigation actions, while still producing plans that are optimal at the task level. We provide results with two different task planning paradigms in the implementation of PETLON, and offer TMP practitioners guidelines for the selection of task planners from an engineering perspective.

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