Find research datasets worth reusing

opencc-zeroMar 2023View details →

Residents perspectives on human-wildlife conflict management to build community resilience in Chitwan National Park, Nepal

<ol> <li>Human-wildlife conflict can significantly impact economic, social, and ecological systems critical to promoting sustainable development. Effectively managing conflicts between people and wildlife that share a common landscape requires the implementation of effective management strategies that aim to reduce the impacts of HWC and promote coexistence as preferred by the community. However, many studies have often overlooked social aspects, especially the residents' perceptions of HWC management, that can help build community resilience.</li> <li>Residents and wildlife share a common landscape in the Chitwan National Park in Nepal. Competition for resources grows as the human-modified landscape provides a new form of habitat for wildlife. We used Importance-Performance Analysis (IPA) to capture the residents' (n=506) perspectives on the importance of HWC management strategies and their performance by park management to prioritize strategies that could help build community resilience.</li> <li>We found notable mean performance-importance gaps for the eight HWC management strategies, representing the park management's inability to meet the desired need of farmers and non-farmers. The IPA matrix grid shows the three strategies - skill, livelihood, and compensation - that need immediate attention from park management as they fall under high-priority strategies in quadrant II. The two-way ANOVA results revealed that the residents' perspectives on importance and performance in all management sectors differ.</li> <li>We conclusively recommend developing site-and context-specific HWC management plans that consider the affected community's livelihood needs, which are essential for increasing the operational effectiveness of HWC management. Park management should prioritize strategies in sectors more vulnerable to HWCs to secure community support for long-term conservation goals.</li> <li>This study will be a key reference for identifying context-specific management strategies that incorporate community resilience in the management of human-wildlife conflict. This could inform HWC management policy and conservation planning to achieve coexistence that benefits both people and wildlife, particularly in low-income countries with similar socio-ecological settings. Overall, our findings provide a new perspective on human-wildlife conflict management that policymakers, researchers, and protected area managers around the world can use to build community resilience to facilitate coexistence.</li> </ol>

opencc-zeroMar 2023View details →

Incorporating pyrodiversity into wildlife habitat assessments for rapid post-fire management: A woodpecker case study

Spatial and temporal variation in fire characteristics – termed pyrodiversity – are increasingly recognized as important factors that structure wildlife communities in fire-prone ecosystems, yet there have been few attempts to incorporate pyrodiversity or post-fire habitat dynamics into predictive models of animal distributions and abundance to support post-fire management. We use the black-backed woodpecker – a species associated with burned forests – as a case study to demonstrate a pathway for incorporating pyrodiversity into wildlife habitat assessments for adaptive management. Employing monitoring data (2009–2019) from post-fire forests in California, we developed three competing occupancy models describing different hypotheses for habitat associations: (1) a static model representing an existing management tool, (2) a temporal model accounting for years since fire, and (3) a temporal-landscape model which additionally incorporates emerging evidence from field studies about the influence of pyrodiversity. Evaluating predictive ability, we found superior support for the temporal-landscape model, which showed a positive relationship between occupancy and pyrodiversity and interactions between habitat associations and years since fire. We incorporated this new temporal-landscape model into an RShiny application to make this decision-support tool accessible to decision-makers: <a href="https://birdpop.org/pages/bbwoPredPostFireDist.php">https://birdpop.org/pages/bbwoPredPostFireDist.php</a>.

A plea for scale, and why it matters for invasive species management, biodiversity, and conservation

<ol> <li>Invasive species are suspected to be major contributors to biodiversity declines worldwide. Counterintuitively, however, invasive species effects are likely scale-dependent, and are hypothesized to be positively related to biodiversity at large spatial scales. Past studies investigating the effect of invasion on biodiversity have been mostly conducted at small scales (<100 m2) that cannot represent large-dynamic landscapes by design. Therefore, replicated experimental evidence supporting a negative effect of invasive plants on biodiversity is lacking across many landscape types, including large grasslands.</li> <li>We collected data across eight large (333–809 ha) grassland landscapes managed with pyric herbivory—i.e., the recoupling of fire and grazing—to test how an invasive legume (Lespedeza cuneata) affected plant and bird communities at spatial grains ranging from 0.1 m2 to >3,000,000 m2.</li> <li> L. cuneata invasion effects on grassland plant diversity and composition changed with scale; being negative at small spatial grains (0.1 m2) and neutral or positive at large spatial grains (>3,000,000 m2).</li> <li> L. cuneata abundance did not significantly affect bird diversity at any spatial grain measured.</li> <li> L. cuneata may negatively affect biodiversity if abundances are greater than those observed in this study. However, previous research suggests that L. cuneata may not be capable of exceeding 20% canopy cover across large landscapes (>400 ha). Control and eradication strategies can be costly and are fraught with risk. If data do not clearly support a negative L. cuneata abundance-biodiversity relationship, and if invasion is spatially limited across large landscapes, ongoing control and eradication efforts may be unwarranted and ineffective.</li> <li> Synthesis and applications: Invasive species effects gleaned from small-scale studies may not reliably predict their effects at larger scales. Although we recognize the importance of small-scale studies in potentially isolating individual mechanisms, management strategies based solely on results from small-scale studies of invasion are unlikely to increase or conserve biodiversity across large landscapes. Rather, processes that generate landscape heterogeneity—like pyric herbivory—are probably more important for promoting biodiversity across all scales. Scale is a central problem in ecology, and defining scale in management objectives is essential for effective biodiversity conservation.</li> </ol>

opencc-by-4.0Apr 2023View details →

Adapting Clinical Practice Guidelines for Chronic Kidney Disease: Blood Pressure Management and Kidney Replacement Therapy in Adults and Children in the Saudi Arabian context using the GRADE-ADOLOPMENT methodology

This compressed ZIP file includes three components The Full Guideline Document (FINAL COPY) for the 2022 Saudi Guideline for Chronic Kidney Disease: Blood Pressure Management and Kidney Replacement Therapy in Adults and Children In addition to two guideline reporting checklists to ensure the quality of this adoloped guideline:- 1- AGREE Reporting Checklist 2- RIGHT-Ad@pt Checklist As a supplementary to the submitted article entitled:_ Adapting Clinical Practice Guidelines for Chronic Kidney Disease: Blood Pressure Management and Kidney Replacement Therapy in Adults and Children in the Saudi Arabian context using the GRADE-ADOLOPMENT methodology

Management intensity affects insect pests and natural pest control on Arabica coffee in its native range

Agroforestry systems provide opportunities to reduce the trade-off between agricultural production and biodiversity, for example by enhancing a diverse community of species potentially acting as natural pest control agents. While management of agroforestry systems is intensifying across the globe, we lack insights into the impact of management intensity on pest levels and natural pest control, especially along broad management gradients and as compared with natural forests. We assessed the impact of management intensity on major insect pests (the coffee blotch miner, the serpentine leaf miner, the coffee leaf skeletonizer, and damage by other free-feeding herbivores) and natural pest control by parasitoid wasps across sixty sites in the center of origin of Arabica coffee in southwestern Ethiopia. Within this region, coffee is growing along a broad management gradient ranging from little or no management in the natural forest to intensively managed commercial plantations. In the wet season, pest levels were largely similar in the natural forest, semi-forest, and semi-plantation systems, whereas pests reached outbreak densities in the most intensively managed plantation system. In contrast, management intensity did not significantly affect pest levels in the dry season. The insect pests differed in their seasonal dynamics, consistently declined with elevation, and were largely unaffected by shade levels. Parasitism rate of the coffee blotch miner was lower, and the parasitoid community was distinct, in the most intensively managed plantation system. Synthesis and applications: Our findings support the hypothesis that the weaker top-down control by parasitoids in the intensively managed plantation sites leads to higher pest levels, and that – at least for some pest species – there is a threshold in the effect of management intensity on pest levels and natural pest control. It is important to consider such non-linear relationships to maintain or enhance the sustainability of agroforestry systems during management intensification. Overall, our findings highlight that ecological knowledge of natural pest control can be used to intensify production to improve the livelihood of smallholders without jeopardizing natural pest control, at least up to a certain point.

opencc-by-4.0May 2022View details →

Additional Material for Paper: IT Managers' Perspective on Technical Debt Management

This is the additional material for the Paper "IT Managers’ Perspective on Technical Debt Management" submitted to the Journal of Systems and Software. The folder contains the following files:   <ul> <li>Consent form - blinded.pdf / Consent form.pdf: The consent form was used to gather the participants' consent to participate in this study.</li> <li>PreliminarySurvey.pdf: The survey was sent to all participants in advance to gather basic statistical data.</li> <li>ParticipantsOverview.pdf / ParticipantsOverview.xslx The overview of all participants was extracted from the preliminary survey. For anonymity reasons, we can not provide the country/language of the participants.</li> <li>InterviewGuide.pdf The interview guide was followed by the interviewers, including all questions and the rationale for questions added before the 2nd iteration.</li> <li>CodeSystem.xlsx All Codes were gathered from the interviews with a short explanation (in Excel to use the grouping function for a better overview).</li> <li>AnalyticMemos_Themes.pdf All free memos were created during the study, including all themes that led to the main concerns described in the paper.</li> <li>Focusgroup-discussion_Themes_slides.pdf The slides were created for the focus group discussion. The participants were introduced to the "main concerns" and asked to comment on these findings.</li> <li>V4C_model.drawio This is the original drawio file of our V4C model, including all diagrams from the paper. Additionally, we provide the complete version of the visibility diagram, which had to be reduced in the paper due to the page limitation. Also, the file contains one more diagram with another example of the model's usage.</li> <li>V4Cmodel.pdf, V4Cmodel_example.pdf, VisibilityOfCausesConsequences.pdf; VisibilityCycles.pdf All diagrams of the paper are in single PDF files.</li> <li>V4CTDmodel+example.pptx A short presentation of the model and an example of its usage in PowerPoint format to immediately use.</li> </ul>

opencc-by-4.0Apr 2023View details →

Data from: Bat activity is related to habitat type and structure in managed pine barrens in New England

Background. Several insectivorous bat species are found in New England, yet research on them is still scarce. Current research shows the ecological importance of bats due to their control of insect populations, but they are endangered by habitat loss and White Nose Syndrome, among other threats. Pine barrens are an uncommon ecosystem found in New England that supports other rare taxa and could be important for these bat species. Methods. With hand-held audio recorders, we surveyed for bats in Montague Plains Wildlife Management Area in Massachusetts and Concord Pine Barrens in New Hampshire in June 2022. Our study objectives were to 1) describe the most common bat species and 2) compare bat activity across different habitat types at two managed pine barrens in New England. In particular, we examined bat activity related to habitat type (scrub oak, mature pitch pine, treated pitch pine, hardwood forest), habitat structure (i.e., canopy closure), and time since prescribed fire. We analyzed our data through linear mixed effects modeling and Fisher’s exact tests. Results. Overall, we were able to measure the presence of five out of the nine total species found in the area, including the endangered Myotis lucifugus (little brown bat). We recorded 293 bat calls, with the majority of calls from big brown bats (71%). We found significant differences (P < 0.05) in bat activity in relation to habitat types and structure. The index of bat activity was greatest in pitch pine and hardwood forests and lowest in scrub oak and treated pitch pine habitats. With preliminary data, we also found that there was more bat activity in areas that had not been burned recently. Discussion. These findings demonstrate the importance of pine barrens as an ecosystem that supports bats in New England. According to the activity of bats in our study, closed canopy and mature pitch pine habitats may be prioritized in conservation efforts at managed barrens for bat species. Further research is recommended to better understand the relationship between prescribed fires, which are common in managed barrens, and bat activity.

Data for: Effects of habitat management on rodent diversity, abundance, and virus infection dynamics

As anthropogenic factors continue to degrade natural areas, habitat management is needed to restore and maintain biodiversity. However, the impacts of different habitat management regimes on ecosystems have largely focused on vegetation analyses, with limited evaluation of downstream effects on wildlife. We compared the effects of grassland management regimes (prescribed burning, cutting/haying, or no active management) on rodent communities and the viruses they hosted. Rodents were trapped in 13 existing grassland sites in Northwest Arkansas, USA during 2020 and 2021. Rodent blood samples were screened for antibodies against three common rodent-borne virus groups: orthohantaviruses, arenaviruses, and orthopoxviruses. We captured 616 rodents across 5953 trap nights. Burned and unmanaged sites had similarly high abundance and diversity, but burned sites had a higher proportion of grassland species than unmanaged sites; cut sites had the highest proportion of grassland species but the lowest rodent abundance and diversity. A total of 38 rodents were seropositive for one of the three virus groups (34 orthohantavirus, three arenavirus, and one orthopoxvirus). Thirty-six seropositive individuals were found in burned sites, and two orthohantavirus-seropositive individuals were found in cut sites. Cotton rats and prairie voles, two grassland species, accounted for 97% of the rodents seropositive for orthohantavirus. Our study indicates that prescribed burns lead to a diverse and abundant community of grassland rodent species when compared to other management regimes; as keystone taxa, these results also have important implications for many other species in food webs. Higher prevalence of antibodies against rodent-borne viruses in burned prairies shows an unexpected consequence likely resulting from robust host population densities supported by the increased habitat quality of these sites. Ultimately, these results provide empirical evidence that can inform grassland restoration and ongoing management strategies.

Community reorganization stabilizes freshwater ecosystems in intensively managed agricultural fields

<ol> <li>Sustainable intensification may depend on associating precision farming with the harnessing of ecological principles in crop fields and with integrating farms and non-farmed land in productive landscapes. Small wetlands could play an important role in both pursuits for having high per-unit-area rates of element cycling and species richness while deeply penetrating crop fields. However, their potential for ecosystem service provisioning is unlikely to be met if land management intensification promotes ecosystem destabilization in biomass production. </li> <li>We tested the consequences of land use intensification on various dimensions of freshwater ecosystem stability by means of a large-scale field experiment converting extensive pastures to intensive pastures and sugarcane plantations in Southeastern Brazil. Nested within experimental plots were 4,000-L mesocosms simulating ponds and puddles commonly found in productive landscapes. Mesocosms were monitored for basic physico-chemical parameters, nutrients, pesticides, phytoplankton standing crop, and the spontaneously colonizing biodiversity.</li> <li>3. Despite severe environmental change, the stability of sugarcane communities was no different from that of extensive and intensive pastures. This occurred because the local extinction of a sensitive top dragonfly predator following the application of vinasse and insecticide was compensated by colonization of a suite of more tolerant invertebrate mesopredators such as beetles and bugs. Community stability tended to increase with biomass asynchrony and species richness, evidencing a portfolio effect of biodiversity. Unfortunately, the species richness necessary to stabilize biomass production is unlikely to be available in many sugarcane fields and several other row crops.</li> <li> Synthesis and applications. Ponds and puddles could be effective centers of irradiation of ecosystem service provisioning in agricultural fields in terms of pest control; nutrient accumulation, cycling, and export back to fields; and habitat and stepping stones for freshwater biodiversity. However, the impoverished biodiversity that results from a combination of harsh local conditions and spatial isolation renders pond communities inherently unstable. Given the unlikely, immediate reduction in agrochemical use in much of the intensively managed crop area, a combination of large, protected source wetlands at the margin of fields and small constructed or naturally forming ponds and puddles in plantations could contribute to sustainable intensification.</li> </ol>

Effective management for deadwood-dwelling lichen diversity requires landscape-scale habitat protection

<ol> <li>Habitat loss is considered a major threat for biodiversity. However, the scales on which its effects occur are still insufficiently understood, namely, is the amount of available habitat important for species richness on both local and landscape scales? We studied the effects of local and landscape-scale habitat amount on local-scale species density of deadwood-dependent lichens in Swedish boreal forests. Creation and retention of dead wood are common practices to benefit forest biodiversity, and recognizing the relevant scale is critical for them to be successful.</li> <li>We surveyed deadwood-dependent lichens in 90 unmanaged forest stands that differed in the local and landscape habitat amount. The local habitat amount was measured as the amount of dead wood in the sampled stands (m2 dead wood/ha), while six alternative proxies were used to estimate the landscape habitat amount, i.e., the amount of dead wood in the landscapes surrounding the sampled forest stands. Lichen species density (number of species per standardized dead wood area of 3.7 m2) was modelled as a function of local habitat amount and landscape habitat amount at multiple scales (300 m – 5 km from the stands).</li> <li>We found that lichen species density increased with the landscape habitat amount. The proportion of old forests (> 100 years, including newly clear-cut stands that until recently were old forests) within 5 km from the studied stands explained species density better than the other proxies of landscape habitat amount. Local dead wood amount did not affect species density, and there was no interaction between the local and landscape habitat amount. </li> <li> Synthesis and applications: To promote the conservation of deadwood-dependent lichens, the amount of old forests in managed forest landscapes should be maintained or increased. A certain amount of dead wood hosted more lichen species when situated in a landscape with more old forest, while there was no effect of the local dead wood amount. This suggests that management aimed at increasing the local species density of deadwood-dwelling lichens should focus on creating and maintaining habitat in the surrounding landscape rather than on only adding deadwood to that local site. In other words, effective management for deadwood-dependent lichen diversity requires landscape-scale habitat protection.</li> </ol>

opencc-by-4.0Mar 2023View details →

The Case of the Missing Meleagris: Diet and Animal Management at Copán, Honduras

Senior thesis at Harvard College. Topic: Diet and Animal Management at Copán, Honduras

opencc-zeroMay 2023View details →

Fire severity as a key determinant of aboveground and belowground biological community recovery in managed even-aged boreal forests

Changes in fire regime of boreal forests in response to climate warming are expected to impact post-fire recovery. However, quantitative data on how managed forests sustain and recover from recent fire disturbance are limited. Two years after a large wildfire in managed even-aged boreal forests in Sweden, we investigated how recovery of aboveground and belowground communities, i.e., understory vegetation and soil microbial and faunal communities, responded to variation in the severity of soil (i.e., consumption of soil organic matter) and canopy fires (i.e., tree mortality). While fire overall enhanced diversity of understory vegetation through colonization of fire adapted plant species, it reduced the abundance and diversity of soil biota. We observed contrasting effects of tree- and soil-related fire severity on survival and recovery of understory vegetation and soil biological communities. Severe fires that killed overstory Pinus sylvestris promoted a successional stage dominated by the mosses Ceratodon purpureus and Polytrichum juniperum, but reduced regeneration of tree seedlings and disfavoured the ericaceous dwarf-shrub Vaccinium vitis-idaea and the grass Deschampsia flexuosa. Moreover, high tree mortality from fire reduced fungal biomass and changed fungal community composition, in particular that of ectomycorrhizal fungi, and reduced the fungivorous soil Oribatida. In contrast, soil-related fire severity had little impact on vegetation composition, fungal communities and soil animals. Bacterial communities responded to both tree- and soil-related fire severity. Synthesis: Our results two years post-fire suggest that a change in fire regime from a historically low-severity ground-fire regime, with fires that mainly burns into the soil organic layer, to a stand-replacing fire regime with a high degree of tree mortality, as may be expected with climate change, is likely to impact the short-term recovery of stand structure and above- and belowground species composition of even-aged P. sylvestris boreal forests.

opencc-by-4.0May 2023View details →

Digital Appendix of "Continuous Rationale Management" Doctoral Thesis

Digital appendix to the doctoral thesis "Continuous Rationale Management". Kleebaum A Continuous Rationale Management PhD Thesis, Heidelberg University, Germany, 2023, <a href="https://doi.org/10.11588/heidok.00033470">https://doi.org/10.11588/heidok.00033470</a> The  appendix contains the following artifacts for the chapters: <ul> <li>Chapter 4: Protocol of systematic mapping study and R script for analysis.</li> <li>Chapter 9: Anonymized decision knowledge documentation of the case study projects and R script for analysis.</li> <li>Chapter 10: Ground truth data used to evaluate the automatic text classification.</li> <li>Chapter 11: R script for analysis of usage frequencies from log files.</li> </ul> The source code of the ConDec plug-ins is published as follows: <ul> <li>ConDec Jira: <a href="https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7953646">https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7953646</a></li> <li>ConDec Confluence: <a href="https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7948296">https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7948296</a></li> <li>ConDec Bitbucket: <a href="https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6866299">https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6866299</a></li> <li>ConDec Eclipse: <a href="https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7958350">https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7958350</a></li> <li>ConDec Visual Studio Code: <a href="https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7954331">https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7954331</a></li> <li>ConDec Slack: <a href="https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7955051">https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7955051</a></li> </ul> The respective binary releases are provided in GitHub: <a href="https://github.com/cures-hub">https://github.com/cures-hub</a>

opencc-zeroMay 2023View details →

Use of density-impact functions to inform and improve the environmental outcomes of feral horse management

The available science often demonstrates the need for feral horse population control but not the degree of control required to achieve environmental conservation objectives. To better manage the influence of feral horses, we must first understand the relationship between feral horse density and environmental impact. We recorded vegetation and soil disturbance, and the sign of potential causes of this impact in two parts of the Australian Alps, the Bogong High Plains (BHP) and the Eastern Victorian Alps (EVA). We calculated density-impact functions to assist managers with determining feral horse density targets for control programmes. Minimal sign of feral horse impact was detected on the BHP, with no impact of feral horses observed along 99% of the length of transects. In contrast, impacts assigned to feral horses were significantly higher in the EVA, where a larger, higher-density population of feral horses existed. However, greater than 83% of the walked transect length was still undisturbed by feral horses in the EVA. We detected a threshold of horse impact at ~250 horse faecal piles per ha. Above this threshold, a slight increase in horse density resulted in a disproportionately large increase in impact. In this context, a relatively small population control effort may substantially reduce direct horse impact. But where horse densities exist below this threshold, considerably more expense and control effort (resulting from the difficulties related to control at low density) is likely to make very little difference to an already low level of direct impact. The combined impacts associated with the sign of deer, feral pigs, fire and humans were large compared to that of feral horses. Management of feral horses to reduce their direct impact is unlikely to be beneficial without complementary management to reduce the effects of these other agents of impact.

opencc-by-4.0May 2023View details →

How Safe and Technical Is Modified Dunn Osteotomy in the Management of Patients with SCFE: A Clinical Trial with Short Term Followup

This is the master datasheet used to support the findings of this study and Video 1 containing intraoperative scenes to show bleeding femoral head

opencc-zeroMay 2023View details →

Data for: Tree species size class patterns portend compositional shifts and low resilience in managed northern hardwood forests

Declining biodiversity is a global challenge to sustainability and resilience of ecosystems facing multiple novel stressors, including climate change and invasive pests-pathogens. Northern hardwood forests (NHF) of the Great Lakes region have experienced declines in canopy tree diversity since European colonization, with current tree regeneration patterns in some areas suggesting perpetuation of this trend. However, regional (106 ha) patterns and possible causes are underexplored. To address this information gap, we used data from 141 managed NHF stands, Michigan, USA to examine diversity indices across tree size classes (seedling, sapling, and canopy); stand-level drivers of regeneration (seedling and sapling) diversity and individual species density; and patterns among species in relative abundances across size classes. Diversity was similar across size classes (mean asymptotic species richness of 6 – 7 species and <3 effective common species); however, some species contributing to sapling diversity are unlikely to contribute to future canopy diversity (Fraxinus americana and Fagus grandifolia, insect/pathogen limited; Ostrya virginiana, small maximum size). For the 11 most common species, conspecific canopy density (+, significant for 11 seedlings, 11 species) and stand basal area (-, saplings, 3 species) were the most consistent drivers of density, with less consistent effects for deer use, site quality, and substrate. Patterns of relative density by size class among the 18 species present on > 10 % of sites were consistent with theories of establishment or recruitment limitations due to deer browsing, deep shade, or limited suitable substrate. For seven species (including e.g., Tsuga canadensis, Betula alleghaniensis, Populus grandidentata, Tilia americana), relative abundance was lowest in the seedling layer and increased in larger size classes, suggesting seedling establishment substrate and/or early shade mortality limitations. For two species (Acer saccharum, Quercus rubra.), patterns of reduced sapling relative abundance compared to seedling or canopy strata suggests a sapling recruitment bottleneck from deer browsing/shade, whereas six species (e.g., Fagus grandifolia, Ostrya virginiana, Pinus strobus) had highest relative density for saplings suggesting sapling to canopy recruitment limitations. Lastly, seedlings were relatively most abundant for Acer rubrum and Prunus spp., indicating disproportionally high seedling establishment, if not sapling or canopy recruitment, and for F. Americana, consistent with recent pest-related canopy mortality. Our results suggest sustained low diversity and shifting composition are being driven by limited local seed availability, deep shading, limited seedling establishment substrate, and abundant deer. Management aimed at overcoming these specific limitations may be necessary to promote future NHF resilience.

opencc-zeroJun 2023View details →

Passive acoustic monitoring indicates Barred Owls are established in northern coastal California and management intervention is warranted

Barred Owls (Strix varia) have recently expanded westward from eastern North America, contributing to substantial declines in Northern Spotted Owls (Strix occidentalis caurina). Passive acoustic monitoring (PAM) represents a potentially powerful approach for tracking range expansions like the Barred Owl's, but further methods development is needed to ensure that PAM-informed occupancy models meaningfully reflect population processes. Focusing on the leading edge of the Barred Owl range expansion in coastal California, we used a combination of PAM data, GPS-tagging, and active surveys to (1) estimate breeding home range size, (2) identify patterns of vocal activity that reflect resident occupancy, and (3) estimate resident occupancy rates. Mean breeding season home range size (452 ha) was reasonably consistent with the size of cells (400 ha) sampled with autonomous recording units (ARUs). Nevertheless, false-positive acoustic detections of Barred Owls frequently occurred within cells not containing an activity center such that site occupancy estimates derived using all detected vocalizations (0.61) were unlikely to be representative of resident occupancy. However, the proportion of survey nights with confirmed vocalizations (VN) and the number of ARUs within a sampling cell with confirmed vocalizations (VU) were indicative of Barred Owl residency. Moreover, the false positive error rate could be reduced for occupancy analyses by establishing thresholds of VN and VU to define detections, although doing so increased false negative error rates in some cases. Using different thresholds of VN and VU, we estimated resident occupancy to be 0.29–0.44, which indicates that Barred Owls have become established in the region but also that timely lethal removals could still help prevent the extirpation of Northern Spotted Owls. Our findings provide a scalable framework for monitoring Barred Owl populations throughout their expanded range and, more broadly, a basis for converting site occupancy to resident occupancy in PAM programs.

opencc-by-4.0Aug 2008View details →

The NicIcon Database of Handwritten Icons for Crisis Management

The NicIcon Database of Handwritten Icons for Crisis Management The NicIcon collection comprises simultaneously acquired online pen trajectories and offline scans of 14 classes of icons that are important in the domain of crisis management and incident response systems. The icons were designed such that (i) they have a visual resemblance to the objects they represent or correspond to well known corresponding symbols (so that they are easy to learn by the users), and (ii) are distinguishable by the computer. Furthermore, each participant was requested to write the so-called "London Letter", a well-known piece of text which is used to collect handwriting for forensic document examination purposes. The NicIcon database contains 24,441 hand drawn icons that are available both offline (as scans of pen-on-paper drawn icons) and online (recorded as time series coordinates on a digitizing tablet). In total, 32 participants, all volunteers, participated inthe experiment. They were all Dutch students in the age range of 19 to 30 (μ = 21.63, σ = 2.35), of which 29 were male, and 3 were female. A detailed description of the data and the collection can be found in the publication "The NicIcon Database of Handwritten Icons for Crisis Management" by Ralph Niels, Don Willems and Louis Vuurpijl. This paper can for example be found at <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228664054_The_NicIcon_Database_of_Handwritten_Icons_for_Crisis_Management/citations">https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228664054_The_NicIcon_Database_of_Handwritten_Icons_for_Crisis_Management/citations</a>   .DATA_INFO      The NicIcon collection contains data acquired from 33                 students. The collection contains so-called "iconic                 gestures", representing symbolic drawings of situations and                 events to be marked on so-called "interactive maps".                 Gesture classes are inspired by symbolic representations of,                 e.g., cars, persons, police, floods, accidents, etcetera.                 In total 14 classes of gestures were collected.         Furthermore, each participant was requested to write the so-                 called "London Letter", a well-known piece of text which is                 used to collect handwriting for forensic document examination                 purposes.         The data is segmented and labeled in pages and icons.                 The texts remain unsegmented, but segmentation in                 line/word/character is on our agenda. .SETUP          A Wacom Intuos2 A4 oversize tablet was used as digital                 input device. This tablet was set at a resolution of                 100 dpi, a reading height of 10 mm, and a maximum data                 rate of 100 pps. The device distinguishes 1024 pressure                 levels. The tablet was connected to a computer running                 Microsoft Windows XP. Specially developed software was                 used to record spatial coordinates and                 pressure coordinates. An A4-sized sheet of 160 grams/$m^2$                 paper was clamped to the tablet. A Wacom writing pen,                 with a green Lamy M21 pen tip                 (see www.lamy.com/eng/b2c/Refills and inks/M 21), was                 used by the participants to draw the data.                 Each sheet of paper was scanned using a HP Scanjet 7400C                 flatbed scanner at 300dpi resolution in 24bits color. Both                 online and offline data are available for download from                 http://unipen.nici.ru.nl/NicIcon                 Each paper sheet contained seven rows of five columns,                 resulting in 35 drawing areas. For each row, 5 instances of                 the same class were drawn at a certain size. Each of the 33                 participants had to fill in 22 of such paper sheets,                 resulting in 770 icon gestures per participant. .LEXICON_INFO   The 14 gesture classes are:                     Accident     - a triangle with exclamation mark inside                     Bomb         - a circle with fuse                     Car          - side-view of a car                     Casualty     - a circle with an 'X' cross below it                     Electricity  - a "lightning" arrow with head downwards                     Flood        - two horizontal curly lines                     FireBrigade  - a triangle with character 'F' inside                     Fire         - a gestures with flames                     Gas          - three vertical curly lines                     Injury       - a person laying horizontal                     Paramedics   - a square with a '+' cross inside                     Person       - a vertical (standing) human figure                     Police       - a diamond with a 'P' inside                     RoadBlock    - a circle with a '-' sign inside                  Each label associated with an icon contains 6 fields:                        <www>-<pp>-<r>-<c>-<l>-<size> , where:                            www   =   writer identification (000-034)                            pp    =   page number (00-23)                            r     =   row (0-6)                            c     =   column (0-4)                            l     =   classlabel                            s     =   size                  For example, the icon labeled as "000-19-5-4-flood-M"                  was written by writer "000" on page "19", at row=5 and col=4,                  the label is "flood" and the size is "medium". Note that the                  first two sheets were used for practising and contain icons                  labeled with size='A' (any). The other size categories are                  'S' (small), 'M' (medium), and 'L' (large).                  The text from the London letter reads:                         Our Londen business is good, but Vienna an Berlin are                         quiet. Mr. D. Lloyd has gone to Switzerland and I hope                         for good news. He will be there for a week at 1496                         Zermatt Street and then goes to Turin and Rome and                         will join Colonel Parry and arrive at Athens, Greece,                         November 27th or December 2nd. Letters there should be                         addressed King James Blvd. 3580. We expect Charles E.                         Fuller Tuesday. Dr. L. Mc Quaid and Robert Unger,                         Esq., left on the 'Y. X.' Express tonight. .PAD           Wacom Intuos2 A4 oversize .COMMENT Below, the settings used during data collection. So, resolution was at          100 dpi and sampling rate at 100Hz. Pressure is given in tablet units.          Both X and Y coordinates are given in micrometer (transformed from the          original tablet coordinates). .COMMENT xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx   TABLET TEMPORAL RESOLUTION .POINTS_PER_SECOND 100 .COMMENT xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx   TABLET SPATIAL RESOLUTION = 100dpi, but coordinates are in micro-meter .X_POINTS_PER_MM 1000 .Y_POINTS_PER_MM 1000 .COMMENT xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx   actually, pressure is not in gram but in tablet units   TABLET PRESSURE RESOLUTION = 1024 .POINTS_PER_GRAM   1024

opencc-zeroJun 2023View details →

Data for: How do harvesting methods applied in continuous-cover forestry and rotation forest management impact soil carbon storage and degradability in boreal Scots pine forests?

Forest management affects soil carbon (C) storage through forest composition, microclimate and litter inputs. How two major forest management systems, continuous-cover forestry (CCF) and clear-cut-based rotation forest management (RFM), differ in their impact on soil C in boreal forests is still poorly understood, however. We compared their effects on soil organic carbon (SOC) storage and quality in boreal Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) dominated forests in eastern Finland. We tested the hypotheses that (1) colder microclimates and continuous litter inputs will lead to higher SOC stocks in CCF plots than in clear-cuts and (2) the more labile litter in clear-cuts with varying ground vegetation will enhance SOC decomposition rates. We sampled uncut mature forests, clear-cuts, retention-cuts and gap-cuts, in which we analysed SOC concentrations and calculated the stocks. We measured stand characteristics such as diameter-at-breast height, basal area, dominant tree height, and understorey species coverage of the various treatments and modelled the above- and belowground litter inputs based on these parameters. We used laboratory incubation and sequential fractionation of SOC to assess its degradability under standardized conditions. To estimate the decomposition rate in the various environments we incubated cellulose bags in situ. We assessed the impact of microclimate on SOC decomposition, using data from soil-temperature and soil-moisture field measurements. We quantified the microbial biomass C pool, using chloroform fumigation extraction to gain insight on the impact of forest management practice on soil microbes. The SOC concentrations and SOC stocks did not differ significantly between the treatments, despite the presence of a warmer microclimate and lower litter inputs in the clear-cut plots. However, we found differences in the quality of the SOC. Soils in clear-cut sites showed lower proportions of labile SOC compounds than did the other treatments. As hypothesized, the decomposition rates were elevated in clear-cuts, but were equally as high within the canopy gaps on gap-cut stands. Our work highlights that forest management affects the quality, degradability, long-term accumulation and storage of SOC. We conclude that the accumulation of labile compounds in uncut forests and retention-cuts, combined with the decreased decomposition rates, indicate a higher potential for future C accumulation in the soil than in clear-cuts.