Mitigating Impacts of Natural Hazards on Fishery Ecosystems

<em>Abstract.</em>—Natural hazards are inevitable but unpredictable—both spatially and temporally. Because of their ubiquitous distribution in aquatic ecosystems, fish and their associated fisheries could potentially serve as important in situ bioindicators of natural hazard effects. Many fish attributes suit this purpose, including response variables at individual, species, and community levels of organization. Given that resources for investigations are often limited, some attributes are more efficient, effective, and biologically meaningful than others. To help establish research plans to investigate natural hazard effects, a matrix was created with regard to space, time, and variable response (i.e., biological attributes) potential. A series of additional criteria appropriate for investigation and based on biological attributes according to levels of organization such as species, stocks, populations, and communities is provided. More subjective criteria, such as the presence of historical databases that are species-specific, were included, as well as the economic and social value of the fishery as viewed by the public. Last, a national or international network of research facilities should be established that is both multijurisdictional and multidisciplinary to fully evaluate the spatial and temporal effects of natural hazards on fishery ecosystems. Integration of long-term fisheries- and species-response data will allow a full evaluation of fish responses to natural hazards as well as help set goals for mitigation and restoration efforts.

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennien Raffington ◽  
Dirk Steinke ◽  
Dan Tulpan

Abstract BackgroundThe task of recognizing species names in scientific articles is a quintessential step for a large number of applications in high-throughput text mining and data analytics, such as species-specific information collection, construction of species food networks and trophic relationship extraction. These tasks become even more important in fast-paced species-discovery areas such as entomology, where an impressive number of new arthropod species are discovered each year. This article explores the use of twocharacter n-grams (bigrams) in machine learning models for arthropod species name recognition. This particular method has been previously applied successfully to the task of language identification [1] but the application to species name identification had yet to be explored.ResultsArthropod species names, regular English words used in scientific publications and person names were collected from the public domain and bigrams were extracted and used as classifier features. A number of learning classifiers spanning 7 algorithmic categories (tree-based, rule-based, artificial neural network, Bayesian, boosting, lazy and kernel-based) were tested and the highest accuracies were consistently obtained with LIBLINEAR [2], Bayesian Logistic Regression [3], the Multilayer Perceptron [4], Random Forest [5], and the LIBSVM [6] classifiers. When compared with dictionary-based external software tools such as GNRD [7] and TaxonFinder [8], our top-3 classifiers were insensitive to words capitalization and were able to correctly classify novel species names that are absent in dictionary-based approaches with accuracies between 88.6% and 91.6%.ConclusionsOur results suggest that character bigram-based classification is a suitable method for distinguishing arthropod species names from regular English words and person names commonly found in scientific literature. Moreover, our method can also be used to reduce the number of false positives produced by dictionary-based methods.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sean P. Gordon ◽  
Joshua J. Levy ◽  
John P. Vogel

AbstractExisting methods for assigning sequences to individual species from pooled DNA samples rely on differences in genome properties like GC content or sequences from related species. These approaches do not work for closely related species where gross features are indistinguishable and related genomes are lacking. We describe a method and associated software package that uses rapidly evolving repetitive DNA to circumvent these limitations. By using short, repetitive, DNA sequences as species-specific signals we separated closely related genomes without any prior knowledge. This approach is ideal for separating the subgenomes of polyploid species with unsequenced or unknown progenitor genomes.


1994 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 80-88 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eddie Perez ◽  
Paul Thompson

This course is an introduction to the topic of natural hazards, their causes and their consequences. The subject is so vast that this course cannot begin to provide a definitive treatment of all aspects of these hazards. Instead, it seeks to present an overview of the general subject.The course begins with a definition of each major natural hazard that disaster managers may encounter in developing countries. Historical examples are presented to give perspective to the potential scope of these natural events and their actual effects within a community or country. The geographical distribution of the hazard type, indicating the possibility of its occurrence in all parts of the world, is shown. The natural pre-conditions that must exist for the phenomenon to occur are described. The actual event is described in its physical/natural manifestation, with a detailed account of what happens and why, before, during, and after the event. The impact on the natural and human-produced environment—the reason it becomes a “disaster” rather than simply a natural phenomenon—is reviewed. Each lesson then discusses what disaster managers, in particular, and the public, in general, can do to respond.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Arangasamy Yazhini ◽  
Narayanaswamy Srinivasan ◽  
Sankaran Sandhya

AbstractAfrotheria is a clade of African-origin species with striking dissimilarities in appearance and habitat. In this study, we compared whole proteome sequences of six Afrotherian species to obtain a broad viewpoint of their underlying molecular make-up, to recognize potentially unique proteomic signatures. We find that 62% of the proteomes studied here, predominantly involved in metabolism, are orthologous, while the number of homologous proteins between individual species is as high as 99.5%. Further, we find that among Afrotheria, L. africana has several orphan proteins with 112 proteins showing < 30% sequence identity with their homologues. Rigorous sequence searches and complementary approaches were employed to annotate 156 uncharacterized protein sequences and 28 species-specific proteins. For 122 proteins we predicted potential functional roles, 43 of which we associated with protein- and nucleic-acid binding roles. Further, we analysed domain content and variations in their combinations within Afrotheria and identified 141 unique functional domain architectures, highlighting proteins with potential for specialized functions. Finally, we discuss the potential relevance of highly represented protein families such as MAGE-B2, olfactory receptor and ribosomal proteins in L. africana and E. edwardii, respectively. Taken together, our study reports the first comparative study of the Afrotherian proteomes and highlights salient molecular features.


2017 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 143-151 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carlos B. de Araújo ◽  
Paulo A. M. Marques ◽  
Jacques M. E. Vielliard

Toxins ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (11) ◽  
pp. 460 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vesna Krnjaja ◽  
Slavica Stanković ◽  
Ana Obradović ◽  
Tanja Petrović ◽  
Violeta Mandić ◽  
...  

Fusarium graminearum as the main causal agent of Fusarium head blight (FHB) and its ability to produce trichothecenes was investigated by molecular techniques. A total of 37 strains isolated from the wheat, harvested in Serbia in 2005, 2008 and 2015, and previously designated by morphological observation as F. graminearum, were used for trichothecene genotypes characterization. The strains were identified using the species-specific primer set FG16R/FG16F while genotypic characterization was done using specific TRI13 and TRI3 sequences of the trichothecene gene clusters. The PCR assays identified all strains as species of F. graminearum sensu stricto with the DON/15-ADON genotype. The quantification of the mycotoxin (DON) was performed using the biochemical assay. The high levels of DON (>20,000 µg kg−1) were recorded in all of the strains from 2005, four strains from 2008 and two strains from 2015. Weather data of the investigated seasons, showed that the optimal temperature, frequent rains and high relative humidity (RH) was very favourable for the development of F. graminearum, affecting the DON biosynthesis.


Author(s):  
José Vicente Amórtegui

The strength and stiffness of the pipelines allow them to tolerate the effects of natural hazards for some period of time. The amount of time depends on the strength and deformability, the stress state, the age, the conditions of installation and operation of the pipeline and their geometric arrangement with regard to the hazardous process. Accordingly, some of the hazards due to weather conditions and external forces would not be time independent. In consequence the designing of monitoring systems to predict the behavior of the pipelines against natural hazards is required in order to carry out the preventive actions which are necessary to avoid failure of the pipes due to the exposition to those hazards. In this paper a method for assessing the transport system vulnerability is developed, a function for risk analysis is proposed (which is determined by the probability of the natural hazard, the pipeline’s vulnerability to the hazard and the consequences of the pipe rupture). The elements that are part of that evaluation are presented and illustrated by means of examples.


2016 ◽  
Vol 371 (1694) ◽  
pp. 20150269 ◽  
Author(s):  
Santiago Soliveres ◽  
Peter Manning ◽  
Daniel Prati ◽  
Martin M. Gossner ◽  
Fabian Alt ◽  
...  

Species diversity promotes the delivery of multiple ecosystem functions (multifunctionality). However, the relative functional importance of rare and common species in driving the biodiversity–multifunctionality relationship remains unknown. We studied the relationship between the diversity of rare and common species (according to their local abundances and across nine different trophic groups), and multifunctionality indices derived from 14 ecosystem functions on 150 grasslands across a land-use intensity (LUI) gradient. The diversity of above- and below-ground rare species had opposite effects, with rare above-ground species being associated with high levels of multifunctionality, probably because their effects on different functions did not trade off against each other. Conversely, common species were only related to average, not high, levels of multifunctionality, and their functional effects declined with LUI. Apart from the community-level effects of diversity, we found significant positive associations between the abundance of individual species and multifunctionality in 6% of the species tested. Species-specific functional effects were best predicted by their response to LUI: species that declined in abundance with land use intensification were those associated with higher levels of multifunctionality. Our results highlight the importance of rare species for ecosystem multifunctionality and help guiding future conservation priorities.


2015 ◽  
Vol 15 (9) ◽  
pp. 1963-1972 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. Turconi ◽  
D. Tropeano ◽  
G. Savio ◽  
S. K. De ◽  
P. J. Mason

Abstract. The study area (600 km2), consisting of Orco and Soana valleys in the Western Italian Alps, experienced different types of natural hazards, typical of the whole Alpine environment. Some of the authors have been requested to draw a civil protection plan for such mountainous regions. This offered the special opportunity (1) to draw a lot of unpublished historical data, dating back several centuries mostly concerning natural hazard processes and related damages, (2) to develop original detailed geo-morphological studies in a region still poorly known, (3) to prepare detailed thematic maps illustrating landscape components related to natural conditions and hazards, (4) to thoroughly check present-day situations in the area compared to the effects of past events and (5) to find adequate natural hazard scenarios for all sites exposed to risk. The method of work has been essentially to compare archival findings with field evidence in order to assess natural hazard processes, their occurrence and magnitude, and to arrange all such elements in a database for GIS-supported thematic maps. Several types of natural hazards, such as landslides, rockfalls, debris flows, stream floods and snow avalanches cause huge damage to lives and properties (housings, roads, tourist sites). We aim to obtain newly acquired knowledge in this large, still poorly understood area as well as develop easy-to-interpret products such as natural risk maps.


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