scholarly journals Metaecosystem dynamics drive community composition in experimental multilayered spatial networks

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Harvey ◽  
Isabelle Gounand ◽  
Emanuel A. Fronhofer ◽  
Florian Altermatt

AbstractCross-ecosystem subsidies are studied with a focus on resource exchange at local ecosystem boundaries. This perspective ignores regional dynamics that can emerge via constraints imposed by the landscape, potentially leading to spatially-dependent effects of subsidies and spatial feedbacks. Using miniaturized landscape analogues of river dendritic and terrestrial lattice spatial networks, we manipulated and studied resource exchange between the two whole networks. We found that community composition in dendritic networks depended on the resource pulse from the lattice network, with the strength of this effect declining in larger downstream patches. In turn, this spatially-dependent effect imposed constraints on the lattice network with populations in that network reaching higher densities when connected to more central patches in the dendritic network. Consequently, localized cross-ecosystem fluxes, and their respective effects on recipient ecosystems, must be studied in a perspective taking into account the explicit spatial configuration of the landscape.Statement of authorshipEH, IG, EAF and FA designed the research; EH conducted the lab experiment with support from IG, EAF and FA, processed the experimental data with methodological developments from IG, and carried out the analysis of experimental data; all authors participated in results interpretation; EH wrote the first draft of the manuscript; All authors significantly contributed to further manuscript revisions.

2017 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
pp. 508-528 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andres Sevtsuk ◽  
Raul Kalvo

We introduce a version of the Huff retail expenditure model, where retail demand depends on households’ access to retail centers. Household-level survey data suggest that total retail visits in a system of retail centers depends on the relative location pattern of stores and customers. This dependence opens up an important question—could overall visits to retail centers be increased with a more efficient spatial configuration of centers in planned new towns? To answer this question, we implement the model as an Urban Network Analysis tool in Rhinoceros 3D, where facility patronage can be analyzed along spatial networks and apply it in the context of the Punggol New Town in Singapore. Using fixed household locations, we first test how estimated store visits are affected by the assumption of whether shoppers come from homes or visit shops en route to local public transit stations. We then explore how adjusting both the locations and sizes of commercial centers can maximize overall visits, using automated simulations to test a large number of scenarios. The results show that location and size adjustments to already planned retail centers in a town can yield a 10% increase in estimated store visits. The methodology and tools developed for this analysis can be extended to other context for planning and right-sizing retail developments and other public facilities so as to maximize both user access and facilities usage.


2010 ◽  
Vol 7 (10) ◽  
pp. 2989-3004 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. Vidal Vázquez ◽  
J. G. V. Miranda ◽  
J. Paz-Ferreiro

Abstract. Most of the indices currently employed for assessing soil surface micro-topography, such as random roughness (RR), are merely descriptors of its vertical component. Recently, multifractal analysis provided a new insight for describing the spatial configuration of soil surface roughness. The main objective of this study was to test the ability of multifractal parameters to assess in field conditions the decay of initial surface roughness induced by natural rainfall under different soil tillage systems. In addition, we evaluated the potential of the joint use of multifractal indices plus RR to improve predictions of water storage in depressions of the soil surface (MDS). Field experiments were performed on an Oxisol at Campinas, São Paulo State (Brazil). Six tillage treatments, namely, disc harrow, disc plough, chisel plough, disc harrow + disc level, disc plough + disc level and chisel plough + disc level were tested. In each treatment soil surface micro-topography was measured four times, with increasing amounts of natural rainfall, using a pin meter. The sampling scheme was a square grid with 25 × 25 mm point spacing and the plot size was 1350 × 1350 mm (≈1.8 m2), so that each data set consisted of 3025 individual elevation points. Duplicated measurements were taken per treatment and date, yielding a total of 48 experimental data sets. MDS was estimated from grid elevation data with a depression-filling algorithm. Multifractal analysis was performed for experimental data sets as well as for oriented and random surface conditions obtained from the former by removing slope and slope plus tillage marks, respectively. All the investigated microplots exhibited multifractal behaviour, irrespective of surface condition, but the degree of multifractality showed wide differences between them. Multifractal parameters provided valuable information for characterizing the spatial features of soil micro-topography as they were able to discriminate data sets with similar values for the vertical component of roughness. Conversely, both, rough and smooth soil surfaces, with high and low roughness values, respectively, can display similar levels of spectral complexity. Although in most of the studied cases trend removal produces increasing homogeneity in the spatial configuration of height readings, spectral complexity of individual data sets may increase or decrease, when slope or slope plus tillage tool marks are filtered. Increased cumulative rainfall had significant effects on various parameters from the generalized dimension, Dq, and singularity spectrum, f(α). Overall, micro-topography decay by rainfall was reflected on a shift of the singularity spectra, f(α) from the left side (q>>0) to the right side (q>0) to the left side (q


Author(s):  
Alexander Danilin ◽  
Alexey Kurbatov ◽  
Sergey Zhavoronok

Spatial vibrations of a system containing a cable and a mass (solid body of arbitrary spatial configuration) are modeled. The problem is solved in a geometrically linear formulation, taking into account the hysteresis of energy scattering that is based on the kinematic equation. Identification of its parameters is carried out on the basis of experimental data on hysteresis loops of the limit cycle.


2012 ◽  
Vol 134 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Kinsey ◽  
Guy Dumas

The performance of a new concept of hydrokinetic turbine using oscillating hydrofoils to extract energy from water currents (tidal or gravitational) is investigated using URANS numerical simulations. The numerical predictions are compared with experimental data from a 2 kW prototype, composed of two rectangular oscillating hydrofoils of aspect ratio 7 in a tandem spatial configuration. 3D computational fluid dynamics (CFD) predictions are found to compare favorably with experimental data especially for the case of a single-hydrofoil turbine. The validity of approximating the actual arc-circle trajectory of each hydrofoil by an idealized vertical plunging motion is also addressed by numerical simulations. Furthermore, a sensitivity study of the turbine’s performance in relation to fluctuating operating conditions is performed by feeding the simulations with the actual time-varying experimentally recorded conditions. It is found that cycle-averaged values, as the power-extraction efficiency, are little sensitive to perturbations in the foil kinematics and upstream velocity.


Oikos ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 129 (3) ◽  
pp. 402-412 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Harvey ◽  
Isabelle Gounand ◽  
Emanuel A. Fronhofer ◽  
Florian Altermatt

2010 ◽  
Vol 163-167 ◽  
pp. 3210-3213 ◽  
Author(s):  
Li Cheng Wang

In this paper, the lattice network model on mesoscale is established based on the random geometry meshing technique to investigate the chloride ingress into unsaturated concrete. Concrete is treated as a composite material with three phases, i.e., the coarse aggregates, the mortar, and the interface between them. The diffusivity for water and chloride in each phase of the mesoscopic structure of concrete is separately quantified by experimental data or through empirical assumption. The numerical predictions are compared with the available experimental measurements. The comparisons indicate that numerical predictions agree well with the test results.


Author(s):  
A. Gómez ◽  
P. Schabes-Retchkiman ◽  
M. José-Yacamán ◽  
T. Ocaña

The splitting effect that is observed in microdiffraction pat-terns of small metallic particles in the size range 50-500 Å can be understood using the dynamical theory of electron diffraction for the case of a crystal containing a finite wedge. For the experimental data we refer to part I of this work in these proceedings.


Author(s):  
K.B. Reuter ◽  
D.B. Williams ◽  
J.I. Goldstein

In the Fe-Ni system, although ordered FeNi and ordered Ni3Fe are experimentally well established, direct evidence for ordered Fe3Ni is unconvincing. Little experimental data for Fe3Ni exists because diffusion is sluggish at temperatures below 400°C and because alloys containing less than 29 wt% Ni undergo a martensitic transformation at room temperature. Fe-Ni phases in iron meteorites were examined in this study because iron meteorites have cooled at slow rates of about 10°C/106 years, allowing phase transformations below 400°C to occur. One low temperature transformation product, called clear taenite 2 (CT2), was of particular interest because it contains less than 30 wtZ Ni and is not martensitic. Because CT2 is only a few microns in size, the structure and Ni content were determined through electron diffraction and x-ray microanalysis. A Philips EM400T operated at 120 kV, equipped with a Tracor Northern 2000 multichannel analyzer, was used.


Author(s):  
C. C. Ahn ◽  
D. H. Pearson ◽  
P. Rez ◽  
B. Fultz

Previous experimental measurements of the total white line intensities from L2,3 energy loss spectra of 3d transition metals reported a linear dependence of the white line intensity on 3d occupancy. These results are inconsistent, however, with behavior inferred from relativistic one electron Dirac-Fock calculations, which show an initial increase followed by a decrease of total white line intensity across the 3d series. This inconsistency with experimental data is especially puzzling in light of work by Thole, et al., which successfully calculates x-ray absorption spectra of the lanthanide M4,5 white lines by employing a less rigorous Hartree-Fock calculation with relativistic corrections based on the work of Cowan. When restricted to transitions allowed by dipole selection rules, the calculated spectra of the lanthanide M4,5 white lines show a decreasing intensity as a function of Z that was consistent with the available experimental data.Here we report the results of Dirac-Fock calculations of the L2,3 white lines of the 3d and 4d elements, and compare the results to the experimental work of Pearson et al. In a previous study, similar calculations helped to account for the non-statistical behavior of L3/L2 ratios of the 3d metals. We assumed that all metals had a single 4s electron. Because these calculations provide absolute transition probabilities, to compare the calculated white line intensities to the experimental data, we normalized the calculated intensities to the intensity of the continuum above the L3 edges. The continuum intensity was obtained by Hartree-Slater calculations, and the normalization factor for the white line intensities was the integrated intensity in an energy window of fixed width and position above the L3 edge of each element.


2019 ◽  
Vol 62 (3) ◽  
pp. 745-757 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica M. Wess ◽  
Joshua G. W. Bernstein

PurposeFor listeners with single-sided deafness, a cochlear implant (CI) can improve speech understanding by giving the listener access to the ear with the better target-to-masker ratio (TMR; head shadow) or by providing interaural difference cues to facilitate the perceptual separation of concurrent talkers (squelch). CI simulations presented to listeners with normal hearing examined how these benefits could be affected by interaural differences in loudness growth in a speech-on-speech masking task.MethodExperiment 1 examined a target–masker spatial configuration where the vocoded ear had a poorer TMR than the nonvocoded ear. Experiment 2 examined the reverse configuration. Generic head-related transfer functions simulated free-field listening. Compression or expansion was applied independently to each vocoder channel (power-law exponents: 0.25, 0.5, 1, 1.5, or 2).ResultsCompression reduced the benefit provided by the vocoder ear in both experiments. There was some evidence that expansion increased squelch in Experiment 1 but reduced the benefit in Experiment 2 where the vocoder ear provided a combination of head-shadow and squelch benefits.ConclusionsThe effects of compression and expansion are interpreted in terms of envelope distortion and changes in the vocoded-ear TMR (for head shadow) or changes in perceived target–masker spatial separation (for squelch). The compression parameter is a candidate for clinical optimization to improve single-sided deafness CI outcomes.


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