The role of climate, water and biotic interactions in shaping biodiversity patterns in arid environments across spatial scales

Urban biodiversity conservation requires an understanding of how urbanization modulates biodiversity patterns and the associated ecosystem services. While important advances have been made in the conceptual development of urban biodiversity research over the last decades, challenges remain in understanding the interactions between different groups of taxa and the spatiotemporal complexity of urbanization processes. The CityScapeLab Berlin is a novel experimental research platform that allows the testing of theories on how urbanization affects biodiversity patterns and biotic interactions in general and the responses of species of conservation interest in particular. We chose dry grassland patches as the backbone of the research platform because dry grasslands are common in many urban regions, extend over a wide urbanization gradient, and usually harbor diverse and self-assembled communities. Focusing on a standardized type of model ecosystem allowed the urbanization effects on biodiversity to be unraveled from effects that would otherwise be masked by habitat- and land-use effects. The CityScapeLab combines different types of spatiotemporal data on (i) various groups of taxa from different trophic levels, (ii) environmental parameters on different spatial scales, and (iii) on land-use history. This allows for the unraveling of the effects of current and historical urban conditions on urban biodiversity patterns and the related ecological functions.

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Metapopulation-level associations in mutualistic stream fishes

10.32942/osf.io/gpzes ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Seoghyun Kim ◽

Christine Dolph ◽

Akira Terui

Keyword(s):

Large Scale ◽

Spatial Scales ◽

Biotic Interactions ◽

Fish Distribution ◽

Environmental Drivers ◽

Positive Interactions ◽

Stream Fishes ◽

Host Nest ◽

Associate Species

Positive biotic interactions are recognized as important factors determining species distributions. Although effects of positive interactions have often been observed at local scales, much less is known about consequences at larger spatial scales such as metapopulation dynamics. Here, we study nest associations of stream fishes - widespread reproductive mutualism between host (nest-builder) and beneficiary (nest associate) species in North America - as a model system to examine the role of positive interactions in determining the metapopulation-level association between host and beneficiary species. Using regional data of fish distribution in the Midwestern US, we found that watershed-level occupancy of host species (i.e., metapopulation occupancy) remarkably increased that of nest associates. Importantly, our results illustrated that the effects of positive biotic interactions at the metapopulation level were comparable or even stronger than environmental drivers, i.e., factors that have been studied most extensively in metapopulation studies. This study provides insightful evidence that positive biotic interactions have large-scale consequences for distributions of organisms than previously thought. Successful biodiversity conservation may need a broader framework that appreciates the role of positive biotic interactions at larger spatial scales.

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POLÍTICAS DE ESCALA E A CONFORMAÇÃO DE ESTRATÉGIAS-REDE DAS AÇÕES COLETIVAS NO ESPAÇO SISALEIRO DA BAHIA

GEOgraphia ◽

10.22409/geographia.v19i41.1095 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 19 (41) ◽

pp. 39

Author(s):

Agripino Souza Coelho Neto

Keyword(s):

Political Action ◽

Spatial Scales ◽

Spatial Behavior ◽

Collective Actions ◽

Collective Behaviors ◽

Rural Workers ◽

Scale Levels ◽

Scale Network ◽

Comme Point

Resumo: O presente texto pretende analisar o papel das ações coletivas (associações, cooperativas e sindicatos de agricultores) no acionamento e na ativação das escalas geográficas para o desenvolvimento de suas atividades. O estudo foi realizado no Espaço Sisaleiro da Bahia (Brasil), onde um conjunto significativo de associações e cooperativas de agricultores e sindicatos de trabalhadores rurais tem se organizado em torno das escalas espaciais para viabilizar sua ação político-institucional e econômico-produtiva. A ação desses coletivos organizados em rede tem permitido a conformação e o fortalecimento de novas escalas de ação política, como no caso da criação do conselho territorial para viabilização da implantação de políticas de governo. Cooperativas, associações e sindicatos se apoiam nas escalas para compor organizações em diferentes níveis escalares (escala local, escala regional, escala do estado federado e escala nacional), buscando fortalecer seus propósitos e ampliar seu poder de barganha e influência. Analisando o comportamento espacial dessas variadas modalidades de ações coletivas, é possível considerar que elas desenvolvem políticas de escala, ou seja, a escala passa a significar muito mais que uma categoria de análise, mas se torna uma categoria da prática social e política. Nesse sentido, parte-se do pressuposto de que os grupos humanos produzem e tornam efetivas suas próprias escalas visando a alcançar suas metas e organizar seus comportamentos coletivos. Palavras-chave: Escala. Rede. Cooperativismo. Associativismo. Sindicalismo. Espaço Sisaleiro da Bahia. SCALE POLICIES AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF NETWORK STRATEGIES OF COLLECTIVE ACTIONS IN THE SISAL REGION OF BAHIA (BRAZIL)Abstract: This paper aims to analyze the role of collective initiatives of associations, cooperatives and farmers’ unions in the mobilization and activation of geographical scales for the development of their activities. The study was conducted in the Sisal Region of Bahia (Brazil), where a significant number of farmers associations and cooperatives and rural workers’ unions have been organizing their actions around spatial scales to enable their political-institutional and economic-productive influence. The gathering and action of these organized groups in a network have allowed the establishment and strengthening of new scales of political action, as seem in the case of the creation of a territorial council to facilitate the implementation of government policies. Cooperatives, associations, and unions rely on scales to form organizations at different scale levels (local, regional, federal and national scales), seeking to strengthen their performance and increase their bargaining power and influence. After analyzing the spatial behavior of these various forms of collective actions, it’s reasonable to say that they develop scale policies, which means the scale becomes more than a category of analysis, but also a category of social and political practice. In this sense, it’s assumed that human groups produce and utilize the scales in order to reach their goals and organize their own collective behaviors. Keywords: Scale. Network. Cooperativism. Associativism. Syndicalism. Sisal Region of Bahia. POLITIQUES D’ÉCHELLE ET FORMATION DES STRATÉGIES-RÉSEAU DES ACTIONS COLLECTIVES DANS LA RÉGION DU SISAL DE L’ÉTAT DE BAHIA Resumé: Cet article analyse le rôle des actions collectives (associations, coopératives et syndicats d’agriculteurs) dans la prise en compte et l’utilisation des échelles géographiques pour le développement de leurs activités. L’étude a été menée dans la région du sisal à Bahia (Brésil), où un ensemble important d’associations et de coopératives d’agriculteurs et de syndicats de travailleurs ruraux se sont organisés autour d’échelles spatiales pour que puisse être mise en place leur action politique et institutionnelle, économique et productive. L’action de ces groupements organisés en réseaux a permis la conformation et le renforcement de nouvelles échelles d’action politique, comme lors de la création du conseil territorial, pour permettre la mise en œuvre des politiques gouvernementales. Les coopératives, les associations et les syndicats prennent les échelles comme point de départ pour former des organisations à différents niveaux scalaires (échelle locale, échelle régionale, échelle fédérée et échelle nationale), dans le but de renforcer leurs objectifs et d’accroître leur pouvoir de négociation et d’influence. Si nous analysons le comportement spatial de ces diverses formes d’action collective il est possible de considérer qu’ils développent des politiques d’échelle, à savoir l’échelle vient signifier bien plus qu’une catégorie d’analyse, puisqu’elle devient une catégorie de la pratique sociale et politique. En ce sens, on suppose que les groupes humains produisent et rendent efficaces leurs propres échelles pour atteindre leurs objectifs et organiser leurs comportements collectifs. Mots-clés: Échelle. Réseau. Coopérativisme. Associations. Syndicalisme. Région du sisal de l’État de Bahia.

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EXPLORING THE ROLE OF GROUNDWATER STORAGE IN WATERSHED VARIABILITY ACROSS SPATIAL SCALES

10.1130/abs/2020am-359524 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

Laura Condon ◽

Keyword(s):

Spatial Scales ◽

Groundwater Storage

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The effects of armed conflict on forest cover changes across temporal and spatial scales in the Colombian Amazon

Regional Environmental Change ◽

10.1007/s10113-021-01770-6 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 21 (3) ◽

Author(s):

Oscar V. Bautista-Cespedes ◽

Louise Willemen ◽

Augusto Castro-Nunez ◽

Thomas A. Groen

Keyword(s):

Armed Conflict ◽

Forest Cover ◽

Spatial Scales ◽

Armed Forces ◽

Peace Negotiations ◽

Post Conflict ◽

Forest Cover Changes ◽

The Government ◽

Colombian Amazon

AbstractThe Amazon rainforest covers roughly 40% of Colombia’s territory and has important global ecological functions. For more than 50 years, an internal war in the country has shaped this region. Peace negotiations between the government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) initiated in 2012 resulted in a progressive de-escalation of violence and a complete ceasefire in 2016. This study explores the role of different deforestation drivers including armed conflict variables, in explaining deforestation for three periods between 2001 and 2015. Iterative regression analyses were carried out for two spatial extents: the entire Colombian Amazon and a subset area which was most affected by deforestation. The results show that conflict variables have positive relationships with deforestation; yet, they are not among the main variables explaining deforestation. Accessibility and biophysical variables explain more variation. Nevertheless, conflict variables show divergent influence on deforestation depending on the period and scale of analysis. Based on these results, we develop deforestation risk maps to inform the design of forest conservation efforts in the post-conflict period.

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An inter-dependence of flood and drought: disentangling amphibian beta diversity in seasonal floodplains

Marine and Freshwater Research ◽

10.1071/mf16391 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 68 (11) ◽

pp. 2115 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Leonardo F. B. Moreira ◽

Tainá F. Dorado-Rodrigues ◽

Vanda L. Ferreira ◽

Christine Strüssmann

Keyword(s):

Community Structure ◽

Environmental Factors ◽

Quantitative Data ◽

Explanatory Variable ◽

Biotic Interactions ◽

Ecological Role ◽

Β Diversity ◽

Amphibian Community ◽

Dry Seasons

Species composition in floodplains is often affected by different structuring factors. Although floods play a key ecological role, habitat selection in the dry periods may blur patterns of biodiversity distribution. Here, we employed a partitioning framework to investigate the contribution of turnover and nestedness to β-diversity patterns in non-arboreal amphibians from southern Pantanal ecoregion. We investigated whether components of β-diversity change by spatial and environmental factors. We sampled grasslands and dense arboreal savannas distributed in 12 sampling sites across rainy and dry seasons, and analysed species dissimilarities using quantitative data. In the savannas, both turnover and nestedness contributed similarly to β diversity. However, we found that β diversity is driven essentially by turnover, in the grasslands. In the rainy season, balanced variation in abundance was more related to altitude and factors that induce spatial patterns, whereas dissimilarities were not related to any explanatory variable during dry season. In the Pantanal ecoregion, amphibian assemblages are influenced by a variety of seasonal constraints on terrestrial movements and biotic interactions. Our findings highlighted the role of guild-specific patterns and indicated that mass effects are important mechanisms creating amphibian community structure in the Pantanal.

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Behaviour in flow: perspectives on the distribution and dispersion of meroplanktonic larvae in the water column

Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences ◽

10.1139/f00-159 ◽

2001 ◽

Vol 58 (1) ◽

pp. 86-98 ◽

Cited By ~ 88

Author(s):

Anna Metaxas

Keyword(s):

Water Column ◽

Turbulent Flows ◽

Larval Dispersal ◽

Spatial Scales ◽

Fluid Motion ◽

Benthic Boundary Layer ◽

Larval Distribution ◽

Physical Measurements ◽

Marine Benthic Invertebrates

For marine benthic invertebrates with meroplanktonic larvae, the relative importance of hydrodynamics and swimming behaviour in determining larval dispersal in the water column, particularly at small spatial scales, has not been determined. In the field, larval aggregations recorded at physical and biological discontinuities in the water column were attributed to hydrodynamics. Similar aggregations obtained in the absence of flow in the laboratory indicate a potentially significant role of behaviour. At large spatial scales, larval distribution in the plankton is mainly regulated by horizontal advection. However, the ability of larvae to behaviourally regulate their position at scales of micrometres to metres when exposed to turbulent fluid motion in the water column, as evidenced in the benthic boundary layer, is unknown. Evaluation of swimming in turbulent flows in the water column is an intriguing area of research, which involves several constraints. In the field, quantification of behaviour is limited by low success in tracking larvae and lack of appropriate observational tools. In the laboratory, the generation and quantification of flow regimes that are representative of those in the field remains a challenge. An approach that integrates biological and physical measurements within realistic ranges is necessary to advance our understanding of larval dispersal.

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Trace metals in Northern New England streams: Evaluating the role of road salt across broad spatial scales with synoptic snapshots

PLoS ONE ◽

10.1371/journal.pone.0212011 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 14 (2) ◽

pp. e0212011 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Jessica F. Wilhelm ◽

Daniel J. Bain ◽

Mark B. Green ◽

Kathleen F. Bush ◽

William H. McDowell

Keyword(s):

Trace Metals ◽

New England ◽

Spatial Scales ◽

Road Salt ◽

Northern New England

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The Value of Citizen Science in Increasing Our Knowledge of Under-Sampled Biodiversity: An Overview of Public Documentation of Auchenorrhyncha and the Hoppers of North Carolina

Frontiers in Environmental Science ◽

10.3389/fenvs.2021.710396 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 9 ◽

Author(s):

Kyle D. Kittelberger ◽

Solomon V. Hendrix ◽

Çağan Hakkı Şekercioğlu

Keyword(s):

North Carolina ◽

Citizen Science ◽

Spatial Scales ◽

The United States ◽

Undescribed Species ◽

The Past ◽

Global Biodiversity ◽

Temporal And Spatial

Due to the increasing popularity of websites specializing in nature documentation, there has been a surge in the number of people enthusiastic about observing and documenting nature over the past 2 decades. These citizen scientists are recording biodiversity on unprecedented temporal and spatial scales, rendering data of tremendous value to the scientific community. In this study, we investigate the role of citizen science in increasing knowledge of global biodiversity through the examination of notable contributions to the understanding of the insect suborder Auchenorrhyncha, also known as true hoppers, in North America. We have compiled a comprehensive summary of citizen science contributions—published and unpublished—to the understanding of hopper diversity, finding over fifty previously unpublished country and state records as well as dozens of undescribed and potentially undescribed species. We compare citizen science contributions to those published in the literature as well as specimen records in collections in the United States and Canada, illuminating the fact that the copious data afforded by citizen science contributions are underutilized. We also introduce the website Hoppers of North Carolina, a revolutionary new benchmark for tracking hopper diversity, disseminating knowledge from the literature, and incorporating citizen science. Finally, we provide a series of recommendations for both the entomological community and citizen science platforms on how best to approach, utilize, and increase the quality of sightings from the general public.

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Recent changes of relative humidity: regional connection with land and ocean processes

10.5194/esd-2017-43 ◽

2017 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Sergio M. Vicente-Serrano ◽

Raquel Nieto ◽

Luis Gimeno ◽

Cesar Azorin-Molina ◽

Anita Drumond ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Relative Humidity ◽

Interannual Variability ◽

Air Temperature ◽

Spatial Scales ◽

Global Scale ◽

Sea Surface ◽

Positive Trend ◽

Source Regions ◽

Strong Agreement

Abstract. We analyzed changes in surface relative humidity (RH) at the global scale from 1979 to 2014 using both observations and ERA-Interim dataset. We compared the variability and trends of RH with those of land evapotranspiration and ocean evaporation in moisture source areas across a range of selected regions worldwide. The sources of moisture for each particular region were identified by integrating different observational data and model outputs into a lagrangian approach. The aim was to account for the possible role of changes in air temperature over land, in comparison to sea surface temperature (SST), on RH variability. Results demonstrate a strong agreement between the interannual variability of RH and the interannual variability of precipitation and land evapotranspiration in regions with continentally-originated humidity. In contrast, albeit with the dominant positive trend of air temperature/SST ratio in the majority of the analyzed regions, the interannual variability of RH in the target regions did not show any significant correlation with this ratio over the source regions. Also, we did not find any significant association between the interannual variability of oceanic evaporation in the oceanic humidity source regions and RH in the target regions. Our findings stress the need for further investigation of the role of both dynamic and radiative factors in the evolution of RH over continental regions at different spatial scales.

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