scholarly journals Shifting Precipitation Patterns Drive Growth Variability and Drought Resilience of European Atlas Cedar Plantations

Forests ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (12) ◽  
pp. 1751
Author(s):  
Jesús Julio Camarero ◽  
Antonio Gazol ◽  
Michele Colangelo ◽  
Juan Carlos Linares ◽  
Rafael M. Navarro-Cerrillo ◽  
...  

Tree plantations have been proposed as suitable carbon sinks to mitigate climate change. Drought may reduce their carbon uptake, increasing their vulnerability to stress and affecting their growth recovery and resilience. We investigated the recent growth rates and responses to the climate and drought in eight Atlas cedar (Cedrus atlantica) plantations located along a wide climate gradient from wetter sites in south-eastern France and north Spain to dry sites in south-eastern Spain. The cedar growth increased in response to the elevated precipitation from the prior winter to the current summer, but the influence of winter precipitation on growth gained importance in the driest sites. The growth responsiveness to climate and drought peaked in those dry sites, but the growth resilience did not show a similar gradient. The Atlas cedar growth was driven by the total precipitation during the hydrological year and this association strengthened from the 1980s onwards, a pattern related to the winter North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO). High winter NAO indices and drier conditions were associated with lower growth. At the individual level, growth resilience was related to tree age, while growth recovery and year-to-year growth variability covaried. Plantations’ resilience to drought depends on both climate and tree-level features.

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aline Canetti ◽  
Evaldo Muñoz Braz ◽  
Patricia Mattos ◽  
Renato Olivir Basso ◽  
Afonso Figueiredo Filho

Abstract BackgroundThis study aimed to develop a procedure to determine which logging diameter would achieve optimal wood production by species, aiming to support sustainable management of the Amazon forest. Two main methodologies of analysis by species were combined: probability density function (PDF) and growth modeling. The growth models were used to derive the volume increment curves at the individual tree level. To detect the points of maximum annual increment in volume at the population tree level we used PDF with adjusted growth equations.ResultsThe population maximum annual volumetric increments occurred in smaller diameters compared to that of the individual-level. When combining shorter cutting cycles with the population biological rotation point considered as the minimum cutting diameter (MCD), we observed higher annual increments in volume than that achieved using the Brazilian law criteria (MCD = 50 cm) or other MCD tested.ConclusionThe procedure proposed may be used by forest managers and forest law-makers, aiming to maximize sustainable wood production in the Amazon forest.


2020 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 183-198
Author(s):  
Wiktor Soral ◽  
Mirosław Kofta

Abstract. The importance of various trait dimensions explaining positive global self-esteem has been the subject of numerous studies. While some have provided support for the importance of agency, others have highlighted the importance of communion. This discrepancy can be explained, if one takes into account that people define and value their self both in individual and in collective terms. Two studies ( N = 367 and N = 263) examined the extent to which competence (an aspect of agency), morality, and sociability (the aspects of communion) promote high self-esteem at the individual and the collective level. In both studies, competence was the strongest predictor of self-esteem at the individual level, whereas morality was the strongest predictor of self-esteem at the collective level.


2019 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 18-34
Author(s):  
Edward C. Warburton

This essay considers metonymy in dance from the perspective of cognitive science. My goal is to unpack the roles of metaphor and metonymy in dance thought and action: how do they arise, how are they understood, how are they to be explained, and in what ways do they determine a person's doing of dance? The premise of this essay is that language matters at the cultural level and can be determinative at the individual level. I contend that some figures of speech, especially metonymic labels like ‘bunhead’, can not only discourage but dehumanize young dancers, treating them not as subjects who dance but as objects to be danced. The use of metonymy to sort young dancers may undermine the development of healthy self-image, impede strong identity formation, and retard creative-artistic development. The paper concludes with a discussion of the influence of metonymy in dance and implications for dance educators.


Author(s):  
Pauline Oustric ◽  
Kristine Beaulieu ◽  
Nuno Casanova ◽  
Francois Husson ◽  
Catherine Gibbons ◽  
...  

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher James Hopwood ◽  
Ted Schwaba ◽  
Wiebke Bleidorn

Personal concerns about climate change and the environment are a powerful motivator of sustainable behavior. People’s level of concern varies as a function of a variety of social and individual factors. Using data from 58,748 participants from a nationally representative German sample, we tested preregistered hypotheses about factors that impact concerns about the environment over time. We found that environmental concerns increased modestly from 2009-2017 in the German population. However, individuals in middle adulthood tended to be more concerned and showed more consistent increases in concern over time than younger or older people. Consistent with previous research, Big Five personality traits were correlated with environmental concerns. We present novel evidence that increases in concern were related to increases in the personality traits neuroticism and openness to experience. Indeed, changes in openness explained roughly 50% of the variance in changes in environmental concerns. These findings highlight the importance of understanding the individual level factors associated with changes in environmental concerns over time, towards the promotion of more sustainable behavior at the individual level.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keith Payne ◽  
Heidi A. Vuletich ◽  
Kristjen B. Lundberg

The Bias of Crowds model (Payne, Vuletich, & Lundberg, 2017) argues that implicit bias varies across individuals and across contexts. It is unreliable and weakly associated with behavior at the individual level. But when aggregated to measure context-level effects, the scores become stable and predictive of group-level outcomes. We concluded that the statistical benefits of aggregation are so powerful that researchers should reconceptualize implicit bias as a feature of contexts, and ask new questions about how implicit biases relate to systemic racism. Connor and Evers (2020) critiqued the model, but their critique simply restates the core claims of the model. They agreed that implicit bias varies across individuals and across contexts; that it is unreliable and weakly associated with behavior at the individual level; and that aggregating scores to measure context-level effects makes them more stable and predictive of group-level outcomes. Connor and Evers concluded that implicit bias should be considered to really be noisily measured individual construct because the effects of aggregation are merely statistical. We respond to their specific arguments and then discuss what it means to really be a feature of persons versus situations, and multilevel measurement and theory in psychological science more broadly.


2019 ◽  
pp. 78-106
Author(s):  
Aruna Dayanatha ◽  
J A S K Jayakody

Information system (IS) projects have been seen to be failing at an alarmingly high rate. The prevailing explanations of IS failure have had only a limited success. Thus, the time may be right to look at the reasons for IS failure through an alternative perspective. This paper proposes that IS success should be explained in terms of managerial leadership intervention, from the sensemaking perspective. Managers are responsible for workplace outcomes; thus, it may be appropriate to explain their role in IS success as well. The sensemaking perspective can explain IS success through holistic user involvement, a concept which critiques of existing explanations have stated to be a requirement for explaining IS failure. This paper proposes a framework combining the theory of enactment and leadership enactment to theorize managerial leadership intervention for “IS success.” The proposed explanation postulates that the managerial leader’s envisioning of the future transaction set influences the liberation of the follower and cast enactment, while liberating followers and cast enactment constitute manager sensegiving. The managerial leader’s sense-giving influences follower sensemaking. Follower sensemaking, under the influence of managerial sensegiving, will lead to followers’ IS acceptance, and that constitutes IS success at the individual level. Further, collective level IS acceptance constitutes IS adaption/success, and this will influence the leader’s sensegiving, for the next round of sensemaking.


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