Most Attractive Scenic Sites of the Bulgarian Black Sea Coast: Characterization and Sensitivity to Natural and Human Factors

Beach management is a complex process that demands a multidisciplinary approach, as beaches display a large variety of functions, e.g., protection, recreation and associated biodiversity conservation. Frequently, conflicts of interest arise, since management approaches are usually focused on recreation, preferring short-term benefits over sustainable development strategies; meanwhile, coastal areas have to adapt and face a changing environment under the effects of long-term climate change. Based on a “Sea, Sun and Sand (3S)” market, coastal tourism has become a major economic sector that depends completely on the coastal ecosystem quality, whilst strongly contributing to its deterioration by putting at risk its sustainability. Among beach users’ preferences, five parameters stand out: safety, facilities, water quality, litter and scenery (the “Big Five”), and the latter is the focus of this paper. Bulgaria has impressive scenic diversity and uniqueness, presenting real challenges and opportunities as an emerging tourist destination in terms of sustainable development. However, most developing countries tend to ignore mistakes made previously by developed ones. In this paper, scenic beauty at 16 coastal sites was field-tested by using a well-known methodology, i.e., the Coastal Scenic Evaluation System (CSES), which enables the calculation of an Evaluation Index “D” based on 26 physical and human parameters, utilizing fuzzy logic matrices. An assessment was made of these high-quality sites located in Burgas (8), Varna (3) and Dobrich (4) provinces. Their sensitivity to natural processes (in a climate change context) and human pressure (considering tourist trends and population increases at the municipality scale) were quantified via the Coastal Scenic Sensitivity Indexes (CSSIs) method. The CSES and CSSI methods allowed us to conduct site classification within different scenic categories, reflecting their attractiveness (Classes I–V; CSES) and level of sensitivity (Groups I–III; CSSI). Their relationship made it possible to identify management priorities: the main scenic impacts and sensitivity issues were analyzed in detail and characterized, and judicious measures were proposed for the scenic preservation and enhancement of the investigated sites. Seven sites were classified as extremely attractive (Class I; CSES), but with slight management efforts; several Class II sites could be upgraded as top scenic sites, e.g., by cleaning and monitoring beach litter. This paper also reveals that investigated sectors were more sensitive to environmental impacts than human pressure; for example, eight were categorized as being very sensitive to natural processes (Group III; CSSI).

Marine Life Features and Their Transmissibility Through Broadcasting

Avid readers find in literature real or imaginary scenarios, which are written in such a way that make them visit the portrayed places. The same goes for films, or documentary series, where the narrator plays a fundamental role in captivating the viewer. Both means are inductors of cultural and/or nature tourism, regardless of everyone's personal motivations. The transmission of values is important and varies over time. In the past some marine animals were perceived negatively by humans, which has faded over time. Ecotourism with activities related to the sea is a relatively recent tourism niche. Nature films or series are often boosters of impulses in tourists for the search for natural, unexplored places or places with little human pressure. Some tourist activities in the nature tourism line developed all over the world—from this induction—such as the cases of diving and observation of marine animals.

Exergy Footprint Assessment of Cotton Textile Recycling to Polyethylene

Circular economy implementations tend to decrease the human pressure on the environment, but not all produce footprint reductions. That observation brings the need for tools for the evaluation of recycling processes. Based on the Exergy Footprint concept, the presented work formulates a procedure for its application to industrial chemical recycling processes. It illustrates its application in the example of cotton waste recycling. This includes the evaluation of the entire process chain of polyethylene synthesis by recycling cotton waste. The chemical recycling stages are identified and used to construct the entire flowsheet that eliminates the cotton waste and its footprints at the expense of additional exergy input. The exergy performance of the process is evaluated. The identified exergy assets and liabilities are 138 MJ/kg ethylene and 153 MJ/kg ethylene, reducing the Exergy Footprint by 75% and the greenhouse gas footprint by 43% compared to the linear pattern of polyethylene production. The exergy requirements for producing raw cotton constitute a large fraction of the liabilities, while the polyethylene degradation provides the main asset in the reduction of the Exergy Footprint.

Human pressure drives biodiversity–multifunctionality relationships in neotropical wetlands

Many studies have shown that biodiversity regulates a multitude of ecological functions that are needed to maintain the productivity and efficiency of a variety of types of ecosystems. What is not known is how human activities may change the ‘multifunctionality’ of ecosystems as they have both direct impacts on ecosystems and indirect effects on the biodiversity that serves to control ecological functions. Using a database on hundreds of lakes spanning four large neotropical wetlands, we demonstrate that species richness and the functional diversity of fish, macrophytes, microcrustaceans, rotifers, protists, and phytoplankton are positively associated with ecosystem multifunctionality, including nutrient concentrations, standing biomass, and ecosystem metabolism. However, we also found that the relationship between biodiversity and multifunctionality is weakened by human pressures and that part of this impact occurs through changes in biodiversity. Our results suggest that human activities may break down the biological controls needed to maintain the suite of ecosystem functions that sustain wetlands.

Observer effects in a remote population of large-headed capuchins, Sapajus macrocephalus

Human observers often are present when researchers record animal behavior, which can create observer effects. These effects are rarely explicitly investigated, often due to the assumption that the study animal is habituated to or unaffected by a human’s presence. We investigated the effect of human pressure gradients on a remote population of large-headed capuchins, Sapajus macrocephalus, looking specifically at the effects of number of observers, distance to observers, and distance to the research base. We conducted this study over 4 months in the Pacaya-Samiria Nature Reserve, Peru, and collected 199 two-minute focal samples of capuchin behavior. We found that capuchin monkeys fed less when human observers were closer to the focal individual, when more observers were present, and when capuchins were closer to the research base. We found no other consistent differences in capuchin monkey behavior across the measured human pressure gradients, although capuchins directed a high proportion of their vigilance toward humans (29% in adults and 47% in infants). Our results support the hypothesis that human pressure gradients influence animal behavior. Given the proportion of human directed vigilance, we recommend that all studies that use human observers to record animal behavior consider human-directed vigilance, record the number of observers, as well as the observer-focal animal distance, to check for these effects.

Carried away by a moonlight shadow: activity of wild boar in relation to nocturnal light intensity

An increase of nocturnal activity of ungulate species may represent a compensatory opportunity for energy intake, when activity in daylight is hindered by some disturbance events (e.g. hunting or predation). Therefore, mostly-diurnal and crepuscular species may be active in bright moonlight nights whereas others may shift their diurnal activity towards darkest nights to limit their exposure to predators. In natural and undisturbed conditions, the wild boar may be active both during the day and the night, with alternating periods of activity and resting. In this work, we tested whether activity patterns of wild boar, a species with poor visive abilities, were dependent on moon phases and environmental lightening. We aimed to assess if nocturnal activity could be better explained by variations of the lunar cycle or by the variations of environmental lightening conditions, evaluated by means of different measures of night brightness. Data were collected through camera-trapping in Central Italy in 2019–2020. Despite the poor visive abilities of the wild boar, we observed that this ungulate significantly reduced their activity by avoiding the brightest nights. In our study area, the wild boar has to cope with both human pressure (i.e. mostly hunters and poachers) and predation by the grey wolf. Furthermore, the nocturnal activity of wild boar peaked in mid-Autumn, i.e. when hunting pressure is the highest and when leaf fall may bring wild boar to range for long distances to find suitable resting sites for diurnal hours.

Multi-sensor recognition of human pressure

At present, skin pressure ulcers are a common problem in the care of bedridden patients. Solving this problem usually involves turning the patient over regularly, which requires a lot of manpower and material resources. This paper designs a human body pressure recognition model, which can solve the problem of human pressure ulcers very well in combination with intelligent nursing beds. This paper collects the bone data of the human body by using the Kinect sensor, and then processes the collected data. The film pressure sensor is used to collect the pressure information of the human body, and the pressure information is matched with the bone data of the human body, so as to obtain the pressure of the corresponding part of the human body, and judge the current posture of the human body through the pressure information. When the pressure of the compression part of the human body reaches the threshold, the intelligent nursing bed automatically turns over to reduce the pressure of the compression part of the human body.

Conifer Forest Dynamics in the Iberian Pyrenees during the Middle Ages

This study compares the Medieval (ca. 400–1500 CE; Common Era) dynamics of forests from low-mountain (Montcortès; ca. 1000 m a.s.l.) and high-mountain (Sant Maurici; 1900 m a.s.l.) areas of the Iberian Pyrenees, both of which experienced similar climatic forcing but different anthropogenic pressures. The main aim is to identify forest changes over time and associate them with the corresponding climatic and anthropogenic drivers (or synergies among them) to test how different forests at different elevations respond to external forcings. This can be useful to evaluate the hypothesis of general Pyrenean deforestation during the Middle Ages leading to present-day landscapes and to improve the background for forest conservation. The study uses the palynological analysis of lake sediments, historical documents and paleoecological reconstructions based on pollen-independent proxies. The two sites studied showed different forest trajectories. The Montcortès area was subjected to intense human pressure during regional deforestation up to a maximum of ca. 1000 CE. Further forest recovery took place until the end of the Middle Ages due to a change in forest management, including the abandonment of slash-and-burn practices. Climatic shifts indirectly influenced forest trends by regulating human migrations and the resulting shifts in the type and intensity of forest exploitation. The highland Sant Maurici forests exhibited a remarkably long-standing constancy and an exceptional resilience to climatic shifts, which were unable to affect forest extension and composition, and to local human pressure, from which they rapidly recovered. The Montcortès and Sant Maurici records did not follow the rule of an irreversible forest clearing during the Middle Ages leading to present-day landscapes. The present Montcortès landscape was shaped after a Medieval forest recovery, new Modern-Age deforestation and further forest recovery during the last centuries. The Sant Maurici forests remained apparently untouched since the Bronze Age and were never cleared during the Middle Ages. The relevance of these findings for forest conservation is briefly addressed, and the need for the development of more high-resolution studies on Pyrenean forest dynamics is highlighted.