Small mammal sampling incidents related to wild boar (Sus scrofa) in natural peri–urban areas

The wild boar (Sus scrofa) has recently shown continuous population increases in many countries, leading to a rise in conflicts with human activities, including habituation to people and urban areas. Wild boar can disrupt the sampling of small mammals by reducing the number of potential captures. In this study we analysed whether sampling incidents recorded within a small mammal monitoring programme (SEMICE, www.semice.org) might be related to the density of wild boar in a network of protected parks. Our results suggested a peri–urban effect that was independent of wild boar densities in the protected parks; the number of damaged traps increased (rendering them inoperable for captures) and potentially resulted in underestimates of small mammals due to fewer functioning traps in the study area. We hypothesised that this high rate of damage to traps in a small and localised area in a peri–urban park could be related to wild boar associating human presence with greater opportunities to obtain food items of anthropogenic origin.

Urban Effect on Sea-Breeze-Initiated Rainfall: A Case Study for Seoul Metropolitan Area

We examined the sea-breeze-initiated rainfall in the Seoul Metropolitan area (SMA) on 6 July 2017 using the weather research and forecasting (WRF) model. The model captures the arrival of the sea breeze front (SBF), the development of afternoon rainfall in the SMA, and the location of the sea-breeze-initiated maximum rainfall in the northeastern SMA reasonably well but overestimates the subsequent rainfall. We conducted sensitivity tests to better understand the urban effect on the sea-breeze-initiated rainfall event. Through factor separation analysis, we first examined the explicit role of sea and urban effect on sea-breeze-initiated rainfall. The results show that the interaction of sea and urban effects cause rainfall in the northwest and northeast of the SMA, indicating that both urban heat island circulation (UHIC) and sea breeze play an important role in the study case’s rainfall. We further examined the relative role of urban roughness and anthropogenic heat on the sea-breeze-initiated rainfall through factor separation analysis. Both anthropogenic heat and urban roughness play a role in increasing precipitation in the northeastern area of the SMA, with a larger contribution of anthropogenic heat than urban roughness. The relationship between low-level convergence at the SBF and urban factors is discussed.

The application of selected invasion frameworks to urban ecosystems

Urbanization is a major driver of global change. Profound human-mediated changes to urban environments have provided increased opportunities for species to invade. The desire to understand and manage biological invasions has led to an upsurge in frameworks describing the mechanisms underpinning the invasion process and the ecological and socio-economic impacts of invading taxa. This paper assesses the applicability of three commonly used invasion frameworks to urban ecosystems. The first framework describes the mechanisms leading to invasion; the second and third frameworks assess individual species, and their associated environmental and socio-economic impacts, respectively. In urban areas, the relative effectiveness of the barriers to invasion is diminished (to varying degrees) allowing a greater proportion of species to move through each subsequent invasion stage, i.e. “the urban effect” on invasion. Impact classification schemes inadequately circumscribe the full suite of impacts (negative and positive) associated with invasions in urban areas. We suggest ways of modifying these frameworks to improve their applicability to understanding and managing urban invasions.

The functional composition of the neophytic flora changes in response to environmental conditions along a rural-urban gradient

Compared to rural environments, cities are known to be extraordinarily rich in plant species. In particular, the proportion of alien plant species is higher in urban areas. This is attributed to specific urban conditions, which provide a large variety of habitats due to high geological heterogeneity. It can also be attributed to the role of cities as centres for plant introductions and the consequential increased propagule pressure. Neophytes, alien plant species introduced after the discovery of the Americas, appear to contribute especially strongly to the increased proportion of alien plants in cities. To investigate whether the plant traits of neophytes can be explained by environmental variables, we modelled the composition of their pollination types and growth forms as well as their diaspore weight and the onset of flowering in response to a selection of climatic, geological, land cover and traffic network variables with data from Germany. To test for a specific urban effect, we included their interactions with the area of urban land use. In general, we found that climatic variables were the most important predictors for all traits. However, when considering interactions with urbanisation, non-climatic variables, which often were not significant as the main effect, remained in the final models. This points to an existing ‘urban effect’. However, it is much smaller compared to the purely climatic effects. We conclude that interferences and alterations mainly related to urbanisation and human activity in general are responsible for the different ecological processes found in cities compared to rural areas. In addition, we argue that considering functional traits is an appropriate way to identify the ecological mechanisms related to urbanisation.

Impact of Exports on Economic Aggregates of Pakistan

The study employs CGE model, on the data provided in SAM 2001-02 for Pakistan designed by Dorosh et al. (2006), to investigate the impact of Pakistan’s exports on the major aggregates of the economy. To this end, three experiments have been conducted, exportsare increased by 5% in the first simulation (SIM-I), in the second simulation (SIM-II) by 10% and in the third simulation (SIM-III) by 15%. The findings of the study reveal that increase in exports has favourable impact on the performance of macroeconomic variables of the economy i.e. GDP, public and private consumption, savings and investment. Domestic output level of most of the commodities has risen except mine, food manufacturing and other manufacturing. Incomes and expenditures of all the households have risen that results in rise of utility level of all the households. Moreover, all the households have also recorded an increase in the values of compensating variation which implies higher level of welfare for households. However, the value of compensating variation for non-agriculture households has risen more than that of agriculture households indicating pro-urban effect. Equality among the households has improved as the inequality indices have registered declining trend. The study suggests that export promotion measures should be incorporated in poverty alleviation, income equality and economic growth strategies.