Epidemiological Investigations and Ecological Impacts of Commensal Rodents at the North Sinai, Egypt

The Aleutian Archipelago and surrounding waters have enormous ecological, cultural, and commercial significance. As one of the shortest routes between North American and Asian ports, the North Pacific Great Circle Route, which crosses through the Aleutian Archipelago, is traveled by thousands of large cargo ships and tanker vessels every year. To reduce maritime risks and enhance navigational safety, the International Maritime Organization built upon earlier offshore routing efforts by designating five Areas To Be Avoided (ATBAs) in the Aleutian Islands in 2016. The ATBAs are designed to keep large vessels at least 50 nautical miles (93 km) from shore unless calling at a local port or transiting an authorized pass between islands. However, very few studies have examined the effectiveness of ATBAs as a mechanism for changing vessel behavior and thereby reducing the ecological impacts of maritime commerce. In this study, we use 4 years of satellite-based vessel tracking data to assess the effectiveness of the Aleutian ATBAs since their implementation in 2016. We determined whether vessels transiting the North Pacific Great Circle Route changed behavior after ATBA implementation, both in terms of overall route selection and in terms of compliance with each ATBA boundary. We found a total of 2,252 unique tankers and cargo vessels >400 gross tons transited the study region, completing a total of 8,794 voyages. To quantify routing changes of individual vessels, we analyzed the 767 vessels that transited the study region both before and after implementation. The percentage of voyages transiting through the boundaries of what would become ATBAs decreased from 76.3% in 2014–2015 (prior to ATBA designation) to 11.8% in 2016–2017 (after implementation). All five Aleutian ATBAs had significant increases in compliance, with the West ATBA showing the most dramatic increase, from 32.1% to 95.0%. We discuss the framework for ATBA enforcement and highlight the value of local institutional capacity for real-time monitoring. Overall, our results indicate that ATBAs represent a viable strategy for risk mitigation in sensitive ecological areas and that through monitoring, spatial protections influence vessel route decisions on multiple spatial scales.

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The ecological impacts of commensal species: black rats, Rattus rattus, at the urban–bushland interface

Wildlife Research ◽

10.1071/wr15048 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 42 (2) ◽

pp. 86 ◽

Cited By ~ 15

Author(s):

Peter B. Banks ◽

Helen M. Smith

Keyword(s):

Exotic Species ◽

Urban Areas ◽

Rattus Rattus ◽

Research Priorities ◽

Ecological Impacts ◽

Black Rat ◽

Urban Impacts ◽

Commensal Species ◽

Commensal Rodents ◽

Black Rats

Exotic species have had devastating impacts worldwide and are a major threat to native wildlife. Human commensal species (hereafter commensals) are a special class of exotic species that live largely off the resources associated with human activity. The encroachment of commensals from an urban area into surrounding bushland has been frequently overlooked as an important component of urban impacts, even though human-commensals are common to many urban regions globally. In this review, we present theoretical and empirical evidence for the processes and outcomes occurring when exotic commensal species encroach into native bushland. Specifically we ask when, how and why exotic commensal species encroach into bushland, what determines whether they establish, and what are the ecological consequences. We focus on the black rat, Rattus rattus, arguably the archetypal commensal species with a cosmopolitan distribution and the greatest potential for ecological damage of all the commensal rodents. We expect that the processes that we outline apply to other commensal species more broadly. We argue that commensals are in fact natives of the urban milieu and only become alien when they encroach into peri-urban bushland. We propose that the mechanisms of this encroachment will be different from those of other, non-commensal exotic species because urban areas act as dispersal hubs to overcome many of the barriers of invasion that other exotic species face. We suggest that resource supplementation by urban areas creates a great potential for promoting encroachment, invasion as well as impact. However, biotic and abiotic barriers to invasion are still relevant for commensals, highlighting the need to maintain the integrity of ecosystems and wildlife populations in urban edges so as to prevent commensal incursion. We examine how commensal black rats affect wildlife via three fundamental mechanisms, namely, predation, disease transfer and competition for resources, and also consider their possible positive impacts acting as functional replacements for lost natives. We conclude the review with an outline of research priorities and future directions that are essential for progressing our understanding of the ecology of commensal species.

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Detailed Seal Analysis, Lower Cretaceous Rocks of the North Sinai Basin, Egypt: Effects on Hydrocarbon Migration and Accumulation in Overpressured Regimes

AAPG Bulletin ◽

10.1306/0c9b096d-1710-11d7-8645000102c1865d ◽

1991 ◽

Vol 75 ◽

Author(s):

NASHAAT, M., Egyptian General Petro

Keyword(s):

Lower Cretaceous ◽

Hydrocarbon Migration ◽

The North ◽

North Sinai

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An initial assessment of the potential environmental impact of CO2 escape from marine carbon capture and storage systems

Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers Part A Journal of Power and Energy ◽

10.1243/09576509jpe623 ◽

2009 ◽

Vol 223 (3) ◽

pp. 269-280 ◽

Cited By ~ 65

Author(s):

J Blackford ◽

N Jones ◽

R Proctor ◽

J Holt ◽

S Widdicombe ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Carbon Capture ◽

Carbon Capture And Storage ◽

Ecological Impacts ◽

Initial Assessment ◽

Future Research ◽

North West ◽

Environmental Perturbation ◽

The North ◽

Marine System ◽

And Storage

If carbon capture and storage is to be adopted as a CO2 mitigation strategy, it is important to understand the associated risks. The risk analysis consists of several elements such as leakage probability, assessing the strength of environmental perturbation, and quantifying the ecological, economic, and social impacts. Here, the environmental perturbation aspect is addressed by using a marine system model of the North West European Shelf seas to simulate the consequences of CO2 additions such as those that could arise from a failure of geological sequestration schemes. Little information exists to guide the choice of leak scenario and many assumptions are required; for consistency the assumptions err towards greater impact and what would be in likelihood extreme scenarios. The simulations indicate that only the largest leakage scenarios tested are capable of producing perturbations that are likely to have environmental consequences beyond the locality of a leak event. It is shown that, given the available evidence, the chemical perturbation of a sequestration leak, regionally integrated, is likely to be insignificant when compared with that from continued non-mitigated atmospheric CO2 emissions and the subsequent acidification of the marine system. The potential ecological impacts of a large environmental CO2 perturbation are reviewed, indicating that the biogeochemical functioning and biodiversity are sensitive. The key unknowns that must be addressed in future research are identified; namely, the fine scale dispersion of CO2 and the ability of ecological systems to recover from perturbation.

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Role of North Pacific Mixed Layer in the Response of SST Annual Cycle to Global Warming

Journal of Climate ◽

10.1175/jcli-d-14-00349.1 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 28 (23) ◽

pp. 9451-9458 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Changlin Chen ◽

Guihua Wang

Keyword(s):

Global Warming ◽

Mixed Layer ◽

Annual Cycle ◽

North Pacific ◽

North Pacific Ocean ◽

Mixed Layer Depth ◽

Ecological Impacts ◽

Global Ocean ◽

The North ◽

The North Pacific

Abstract The annual cycle of sea surface temperature (SST) in the North Pacific Ocean is examined in terms of its response to global warming based on climate model simulations from phase 5 of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5). As the global ocean warms up, the SST in the North Pacific generally tends to increase and the warming is greater in summer than in winter, leading to a significant intensification of SST annual cycle. The mixed layer temperature equation is used to examine the mechanism of this intensification. Results show that the decrease of mixed layer depth (MLD) in summer is the main reason behind the intensification of SST annual cycle. Because the MLD in summer is much shallower than that in winter, the incoming net heat flux is trapped in a thinner surface layer in summer, causing a warmer summer SST and the amplification of SST annual cycle. The change of the SST annual cycle in the North Pacific may have profound ecological impacts.

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OFFSHORE ARTIFICIAL STRUCTURES AND THEIR INFLUENCE ON THE ISRAEL AND SINAI MEDITERRANEAN BEACHES

Coastal Engineering Proceedings ◽

10.9753/icce.v18.110 ◽

1982 ◽

Vol 1 (18) ◽

pp. 110

Author(s):

Vaacov Nir

Keyword(s):

Sandy Beaches ◽

The South ◽

The North ◽

Northerly Direction ◽

Levantine Basin ◽

Beach Sediments ◽

Port Said ◽

North Beach ◽

North Sinai ◽

Quartz Grains

The Israel Mediterranean shore forms a gentle curve from an almost easterly direction in north Sinai to an almost northerly direction in Israel. This shore forms the southeastern corner of the Levantine Basin which itself forms the extreme eastern part of the Mediterranean Sea. The length of the Israel shoreline from Rosh Haniqra near the Lebanese border to northern Sinai in the south is about 230 km, while the Sinai coast from Rafah to Port Said (Fig.1), is almost 200 km long. The coastline region consists largely of Quaternary carbonate cemented quartz sandstone, known by local name "kurkar". Recent faulting is responsible for the shape and, to a certain extent, for the morphology of large parts of the central coastline, which is characterized by kurkar cliffs (Neev et. al_. , 1973 it 1978).Wide sandy beaches are found in the southern parts, while an abraded rocky platforms occur mainly in the central and northern parts, where the beaches are narrow having kurkar cliffs at their backshor.e side. Four different morphological sections can be found in the Israel Mediterranean shore, (Nir, 1982). These differ in their beach and inland morphology on one hand, and in their sedimentological properties on the other. The four different sections from north to south are: 1) Rosh Haniqra to Akko. A sedimentological1y isolated region, bounded on both the south and north. Beach sediments are mostly of local calcareous material of marine origin. Akko promontory is the most northern limit of Nile derived sands and plays as the recent edge of the Nile sedimentary cell (Nir, 1980). 2) Haifa Bay. Wide sandy beaches, bounded on the north by the Akko promontory, and by the Carmel "nose" on the south. 3) Mount Carmel coastal plain, is sedimentologically somewhat isolated region with relatively narrow beaches and small kurkar cliffs. Sediments consist of both local and imported components. 4) The kurkar cliffs and sandy beaches from Caesarea to Rafah. Beaches of differing width having quite uniform petrographic components, mostly quartz grains originating from the Nile river and transported along the Sinai beaches to the Israeli beaches. Some of the present beach components are derivated from the abraded kurkar cliff.

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