The common noctule bat (Nyctalus noctula): population trends from artificial roosts and the effect of biotic and abiotic parameters on the probability of occupation

Abstract As urbanization and intense forestry management are increasing, natural bat roosting opportunities, e.g. tree cavities, are constantly declining. A common management practice, especially in urban environments, is the installation of bat boxes. We assessed (1) abundance trends inside artificial bat boxes of the noctule bat (Nyctalus noctula) over 11 years in Neu-Ulm, Germany, and identified (2) parameters affecting the occupation rate. Further, we compared (3) abundance of noctule bats in bat boxes between areas with large availability of natural roosts (forests) and urban areas with primarily artificial roosting structures (parks). Our results revealed a severe decline of noctule bats over 11 years. Further, our results indicate that bat boxes cannot fully replace natural tree cavities. Nonetheless, they support roost availability in areas already altered and providing only low amounts of natural bat roosts. The findings of our study have important implications for the conservation of bats in urbanized landscapes and underline the importance of old and intact forests for local biodiversity.

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Diversity of organisms

10.1093/oso/9780198827238.003.0005 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Philip James

Keyword(s):

Life Cycle ◽

Urban Areas ◽

Native Species ◽

New Technologies ◽

Urban Environments ◽

Green Spaces ◽

The Common ◽

Living Organisms ◽

Micro Organisms ◽

Diversity Of Life

The focus of this chapter is an examination of the diversity of living organisms found within urban environments, both inside and outside buildings. The discussion commences with prions and viruses before moving on to consider micro-organisms, plants, and animals. Prions and viruses cause disease in plants and animals, including humans. Micro-organisms are ubiquitous and are found in great numbers throughout urban environments. New technologies are providing new insights into their diversity. Plants may be found inside buildings as well as in gardens and other green spaces. The final sections of the chapter offer a discussion of the diversity of animals that live in urban areas for part or all of their life cycle. Examples of the diversity of life in urban environments are presented throughout, including native and non-native species, those that are benign and deadly, and the common and the rare.

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High-Resolution Modelling of Thermal Exposure during a Hot Spell: A Case Study Using PALM-4U in Prague, Czech Republic

Atmosphere ◽

10.3390/atmos12020175 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 12 (2) ◽

pp. 175

Author(s):

Jan Geletič ◽

Michal Lehnert ◽

Pavel Krč ◽

Jaroslav Resler ◽

Eric Scott Krayenhoff

Keyword(s):

Czech Republic ◽

Urban Areas ◽

Heat Exposure ◽

Thermal Exposure ◽

Urban Environments ◽

Cooling Effect ◽

Spatiotemporal Variability ◽

Climate Index ◽

Street Canyons ◽

General Terms

The modelling of thermal exposure in outdoor urban environments is a highly topical challenge in modern climate research. This paper presents the results derived from a new micrometeorological model that employs an integrated biometeorology module to model Universal Thermal Climate Index (UTCI). This is PALM-4U, which includes an integrated human body-shape parameterization, deployed herein for a pilot domain in Prague, Czech Republic. The results highlight the key role of radiation in the spatiotemporal variability of thermal exposure in moderate-climate urban areas during summer days in terms of the way in which this directly affects thermal comfort through radiant temperature and indirectly through the complexity of turbulence in street canyons. The model simulations suggest that the highest thermal exposure may be expected within street canyons near the irradiated north sides of east–west streets and near streets oriented north–south. Heat exposure in streets increases in proximity to buildings with reflective paints. The lowest heat exposure during the day may be anticipated in tree-shaded courtyards. The cooling effect of trees may range from 4 °C to 9 °C in UTCI, and the cooling effect of grass in comparison with artificial paved surfaces in open public places may be from 2 °C to 5 °C UTCI. In general terms, this study illustrates that the PALM modelling system provides a new perspective on the spatiotemporal differentiation of thermal exposure at the pedestrian level; it may therefore contribute to more climate-sensitive urban planning.

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An Eco-Friendly Multimodal Route Guidance System for Urban Areas Using Multi-Agent Technology

Applied Sciences ◽

10.3390/app11052057 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 11 (5) ◽

pp. 2057

Author(s):

Abdallah Namoun ◽

Ali Tufail ◽

Nikolay Mehandjiev ◽

Ahmed Alrehaili ◽

Javad Akhlaghinia ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Traffic Flow ◽

Urban Areas ◽

Urban Environments ◽

Ease Of Use ◽

Transport Infrastructure ◽

Guidance System ◽

Planning System ◽

Flow Density ◽

Route Guidance ◽

Agent Based

The use and coordination of multiple modes of travel efficiently, although beneficial, remains an overarching challenge for urban cities. This paper implements a distributed architecture of an eco-friendly transport guidance system by employing the agent-based paradigm. The paradigm uses software agents to model and represent the complex transport infrastructure of urban environments, including roads, buses, trolleybuses, metros, trams, bicycles, and walking. The system exploits live traffic data (e.g., traffic flow, density, and CO2 emissions) collected from multiple data sources (e.g., road sensors and SCOOT) to provide multimodal route recommendations for travelers through a dedicated application. Moreover, the proposed system empowers the transport management authorities to monitor the traffic flow and conditions of a city in real-time through a dedicated web visualization. We exhibit the advantages of using different types of agents to represent the versatile nature of transport networks and realize the concept of smart transportation. Commuters are supplied with multimodal routes that endeavor to reduce travel times and transport carbon footprint. A technical simulation was executed using various parameters to demonstrate the scalability of our multimodal traffic management architecture. Subsequently, two real user trials were carried out in Nottingham (United Kingdom) and Sofia (Bulgaria) to show the practicality and ease of use of our multimodal travel information system in providing eco-friendly route guidance. Our validation results demonstrate the effectiveness of personalized multimodal route guidance in inducing a positive travel behavior change and the ability of the agent-based route planning system to scale to satisfy the requirements of traffic infrastructure in diverse urban environments.

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Wetland Roofs as an Attractive Option for Decentralized Water Management and Air Conditioning Enhancement in Growing Cities—A Review

Water ◽

10.3390/w11091845 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 11 (9) ◽

pp. 1845

Author(s):

Andreas Zehnsdorf ◽

Keani C. U. Willebrand ◽

Ralf Trabitzsch ◽

Sarah Knechtel ◽

Michael Blumberg ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Water Management ◽

Urban Areas ◽

Ground Level ◽

Urban Environments ◽

Positive Side ◽

Climate Regulation ◽

Decentralized Treatment ◽

Attractive Option ◽

Stormwater Retention ◽

Positive Side Effects

While constructed wetlands have become established for the decentralized treatment of wastewater and rainwater, wetland roofs have only been built in isolated cases up to now. The historical development of wetland roofs is described here on the basis of a survey of literature and patents, and the increasing interest in this ecotechnology around the world is presented. In particular, this article describes the potential for using wetland roofs and examines experience with applications in decentralized water management in urban environments and for climate regulation in buildings. Wetland roofs are suitable as a green-blue technology for the future—particularly in cities with an acute shortage of unoccupied ground-level sites—for the decentralized treatment of wastewater streams of various origins. Positive “side effects” such as nearly complete stormwater retention and the improvement of climates in buildings and their surroundings, coupled with an increase in biodiversity, make wetland roofs an ideal multi-functional technology for urban areas.

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Biomimetic Urban and Architectural Design: Illustrating and Leveraging Relationships between Ecosystem Services

Biomimetics ◽

10.3390/biomimetics6010002 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 6 (1) ◽

pp. 2

Author(s):

Maibritt Pedersen Zari

Keyword(s):

Ecosystem Services ◽

Urban Design ◽

Urban Areas ◽

Architectural Design ◽

Urban Environments ◽

Published Data ◽

Ecological Knowledge ◽

Policy Makers ◽

Spatial Design ◽

Key Barrier

Redesigning and retrofitting cities so they become complex systems that create ecological and cultural–societal health through the provision of ecosystem services is of critical importance. Although a handful of methodologies and frameworks for considering how to design urban environments so that they provide ecosystem services have been proposed, their use is not widespread. A key barrier to their development has been identified as a lack of ecological knowledge about relationships between ecosystem services, which is then translated into the field of spatial design. In response, this paper examines recently published data concerning synergetic and conflicting relationships between ecosystem services from the field of ecology and then synthesises, translates, and illustrates this information for an architectural and urban design context. The intention of the diagrams created in this research is to enable designers and policy makers to make better decisions about how to effectively increase the provision of various ecosystem services in urban areas without causing unanticipated degradation in others. The results indicate that although targets of ecosystem services can be both spatially and metrically quantifiable while working across different scales, their effectiveness can be increased if relationships between them are considered during design phases of project development.

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Marking Religious and Ethnic Boundaries: Cases from the Ancient Golan Heights

Church History ◽

10.2307/3169396 ◽

2000 ◽

Vol 69 (3) ◽

pp. 519-557 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Robert C. Gregg

Keyword(s):

Rhode Island ◽

Religious Identity ◽

Urban Areas ◽

Religious Groups ◽

Small Communities ◽

Rural Settings ◽

The Common ◽

Late Roman Period ◽

Common Era

In the aftermath of the 1967 “Six Days' War,” 254 ancient inscribed stones were found in forty-four towns and villages of the Golan Heights—241 in Greek, 12 in Hebrew or Aramaic, and 1 in Latin. These stones, along with numerous architectural fragments, served as the basis of the 1996 book by myself and Dan Urman, Jews, Pagans, and Christians in the Golan Heights—a study of settlement patterns of people of the three religions in this region in the early centuries of the common era.1 The area of the Golan heights, roughly the size of Rhode Island, was in antiquity a place of agriculture and, for the most part, small communities. Though historians of religions in the late Roman period have long been aware of the “quartering” of cities, and of the locations of particular religious groups in this or that section of urban areas, we have had little information concerning the ways in which Hellenes, Jews, and Christians took up residence in relation to each other in those rural settings featuring numerous towns and hamlets— most presumably too small to have “zones” for ethnic and religious groups. The surviving artifacts of a number of the Golan sites gave the opportunity for a case study. Part 1 of this article centers on evidence for the locations and possible interactions of members of these religious groups in the Golan from the third to the seventh centuries and entails a summary of findings in the earlier work, while part 2 takes up several lingering questions about religious identity and ways of “marking” it within Golan countryside communities. Both sections can be placed under a rubric of “boundary drawing and religion.”

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Influence of temperature on maternity roost selection by noctule bats (Nyctalus noctula) and Leisler’s bats (N. leisleri) in Białowieża Primeval Forest, Poland

Canadian Journal of Zoology ◽

10.1139/z06-060 ◽

2006 ◽

Vol 84 (6) ◽

pp. 900-907 ◽

Cited By ~ 30

Author(s):

Ireneusz Ruczyński

Keyword(s):

Late Pregnancy ◽

Ground Level ◽

Data Logger ◽

Primeval Forest ◽

Tree Cavities ◽

Roost Selection ◽

Pregnancy And Lactation ◽

Maximum Temperatures ◽

Białowieża Primeval Forest ◽

Nyctalus Noctula

This study tests whether the temperature of tree cavities determines their selection by bats in Białowieża Primeval Forest (BPF), eastern Poland. Using a data logger, I simultaneously measured the temperature in cavities selected by bats as roosts and the temperature in available but unselected cavities. The maternity roosts chosen by noctule bats, Nyctalus noctula (Schreber, 1774), and Leisler’s bats, N. leisleri (Kuhl, 1817), during late pregnancy and lactation were warmer than unoccupied cavities, but temperature ranges in the two types of cavity did not differ. A logistic regression model showed that the mean cavity temperature during the night (2200–0400) and the minimum cavity temperature over a 24 h period were crucial for roost selection. This suggests that female noctule and Leisler’s bats selected roosts that promoted juvenile growth and used tree cavities that could save them energy while they were active because the cavity temperatures were close to the lower critical temperature of their thermoneutral zone. I also suggest that selection of warmer cavities minimized the bats' energy expenditure prior to emergence from the roost and that passive rewarming inside the cavity was an important factor in minimizing energetic costs of roosting by bats in BPF. Mean and maximum temperatures recorded near tree trunks increased with the height at which the temperature was measured (ground level, 10, 20, and 30 m), suggesting that bats can gain thermal benefits from insolation of the trunk by selecting highly placed cavities, as was observed in BPF.

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Diversity of Listeria Species in Urban and Natural Environments

Applied and Environmental Microbiology ◽

10.1128/aem.00282-12 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 78 (12) ◽

pp. 4420-4433 ◽

Cited By ~ 95

Author(s):

Brian D. Sauders ◽

Jon Overdevest ◽

Esther Fortes ◽

Katy Windham ◽

Ynte Schukken ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Urban Areas ◽

Environmental Samples ◽

Nearest Neighbor ◽

Allelic Diversity ◽

Urban Environments ◽

Source Tracking ◽

Natural Environments ◽

Content Type ◽

Molecular Source ◽

Listeria Seeligeri

ABSTRACTA total of 442Listeriaisolates, including 234Listeria seeligeri, 80L. monocytogenes, 74L. welshimeri, 50L. innocua, and 4L. marthiiisolates, were obtained from 1,805 soil, water, and other environmental samples collected over 2 years from four urban areas and four areas representing natural environments.Listeriaspp. showed similar prevalences in samples from natural (23.4%) and urban (22.3%) environments. WhileL. seeligeriandL. welshimeriwere significantly associated with natural environments (P≤ 0.0001),L. innocuaandL. monocytogeneswere significantly associated with urban environments (P≤ 0.0001). Sequencing ofsigBfor all isolates revealed 67 allelic types with a higher level of allelic diversity among isolates from urban environments. SomeListeriaspp. andsigBallelic types showed significant associations with specific urban and natural areas. Nearest-neighbor analyses also showed that certainListeriaspp. andsigBallelic types were spatially clustered within both natural and urban environments, and there was evidence that these species and allelic types persisted over time in specific areas. Our data show that members of the genusListerianot only are common in urban and natural environments but also show species- and subtype-specific associations with different environments and areas. This indicates thatListeriaspecies and subtypes within these species may show distinct ecological preferences, which suggests (i) that molecular source-tracking approaches can be developed forListeriaand (ii) that detection of someListeriaspecies may not be a good indicator forL. monocytogenes.

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Damage assessment mapping of rural environments; integration of SAR and Optical data

10.5194/egusphere-egu21-9202 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Shiran Havivi ◽

Stanley R. Rotman ◽

Dan G. Blumberg ◽

Shimrit Maman

Keyword(s):

Natural Disaster ◽

Rural Areas ◽

Urban Areas ◽

Damage Assessment ◽

Vegetation Index ◽

Urban Environments ◽

Optical Data ◽

Damage Level ◽

Rural Environments ◽

Rural And Urban

The damage caused by a natural disaster in rural areas differs in nature, extent, landscape and in structure, from the damage in urban environments. Previous and current studies focus mainly on mapping damaged structures in urban areas after catastrophe events such as an earthquake or tsunami. Yet, research focusing on the damage level or its distribution in rural areas is absent. In order to apply an emergency response and for effective disaster management, it is necessary to understand and characterize the nature of the damage in each different environment.&#160;Havivi et al. (2018), published a damage assessment algorithm that makes use of SAR images combined with optical data, for rapid mapping and compiling a damage assessment map following a natural disaster. The affected areas are analyzed using interferometric SAR (InSAR) coherence. To overcome the loss of coherence caused by changes in vegetation, optical images are used to produce a mask by computing the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) and removing the vegetated area from the scene. Due to the differences in geomorphological settings and landuse\landcover between rural and urban settlements, the above algorithm is modified and adjusted by inserting the Modified Normalized Difference Water Index (MNDWI) to better suit rural environments and their unique response after a disaster. MNDWI is used for detection, identification and extraction of waterbodies (such as irrigation canals, streams, rivers, lakes, etc.), allowing their removal which causes lack of coherence at the post stage of the event. Furthermore, it is used as an indicator for highlighting prone regions that might be severely affected pre disaster event. Thresholds are determined for the co-event coherence map (&#8804; 0.5), the NDVI (&#8805; 0.4) and the MNDWI (&#8805; 0), and the three layers are combined into one. Based on the combined map, a damage assessment map is generated.&#160;As a case study, this algorithm was applied to the areas affected by multi-hazard event, following the Sulawesi earthquake and subsequent tsunami in Palu, Indonesia, which occurred on September 28th, 2018. High-resolution COSMO-SkyMed images pre and post the event, alongside a Sentinel-2 image pre- event are used as inputs. The output damage assessment map provides a quantitative assessment and spatial distribution of the damage in both the rural and urban environments. The results highlight the applicability of the algorithm for a variety of disaster events and sensors. In addition, the results enhance the contribution of the water component to the analysis pre and post the event in rural areas. Thus, while in urban regions the spatial extent of the damage will occur in its proximity to the coastline or the fault, rural regions, even in significant distance will experience extensive damage due secondary hazards as liquefaction processes.&#160; &#160; &#160;

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Using TSX/TDX Pursuit Monostatic SAR Stacks for PS-InSAR Analysis in Urban Areas

Remote Sensing ◽

10.3390/rs11010026 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 11 (1) ◽

pp. 26 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Ziyun Wang ◽

Timo Balz ◽

Lu Zhang ◽

Daniele Perissin ◽

Mingsheng Liao

Keyword(s):

Urban Areas ◽

Urban Environments ◽

Deformation Monitoring ◽

Data Sets ◽

Persistent Scatterer Interferometry ◽

Operating Modes ◽

Monitoring Procedure ◽

Urban Monitoring ◽

Indispensable Tool ◽

Scientific Testing

Persistent Scatterer Interferometry (PS-InSAR) has become an indispensable tool for monitoring surface motion in urban environments. The interferometric configuration of PS-InSAR tends to mix topographic and deformation components in differential interferometric observations. When the upcoming constellation missions such as, e.g., TanDEM-L or TWIN-L provide new standard operating modes, bi-static stacks for deformation monitoring will be more commonly available in the near future. In this paper, we present an analysis of the applicability of such data sets for urban monitoring, using a stack of pursuit monostatic data obtained during the scientific testing phase of the TanDEM-X (TDX) mission. These stacks are characterized by extremely short temporal baselines between the TerraSAR-X (TSX) and TanDEM-X acquisitions at the same interval. We evaluate the advantages of this acquisition mode for urban deformation monitoring with several of the available acquisition pairs. Our proposed method exploits the special properties of this data using a modified processing chain based on the standard PS-InSAR deformation monitoring procedure. We test our approach with a TSX/TDX mono-static pursuit stack over Guangzhou, using both the proposed method and the standard deformation monitoring procedure, and compare the two results. The performance of topographic and deformation estimation is improved by using the proposed processing method, especially regarding high-rise buildings, given the quantitative statistic on temporal coherence, detectable numbers, as well as the PS point density of persistent scatters points, among which the persistent scatter numbers increased by 107.2% and the detectable height span increased by 78% over the standard processing results.

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