Find research datasets worth reusing

opencc-by-4.0Nov 2024View details →

Determining the Impacts of Stone Quarry Works On Riparian Vegetation of River Molo in Rongai Sub-County, Nakuru County, Kenya

The contribution made by stone quarrying to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in many countries globally is enormous. Whether small or large-scale, stone quarrying is inherently disruptive and can cause detrimental effects on the fragile riparian vegetation. This research therefore, aimed at determining the status of riparian vegetation between 2000- 2023 along river Molo and establishing the effects of stone quarry works on riparian vege-tation. A descriptive survey design was adopted where 404 household heads were randomly sampled from a total of 35,545 households in Visoi, Soin and Mosop wards. 15 key informants were purposively sampled for interviews. Questionnaires, interview schedules and Geographical Information System (GIS) and Remote sensing (RS) instruments were used in data collection. The obtained data was analyzed using SPSS (Version 25), ArchMap and remote sensing (time series) to analyze changes in riparian vegetation using the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI). The findings revealed a significant decline in riparian vegetation attributed to land use changes driven by poor agricultural practices and quarrying activities. The five purposively selected quarries were found to be located between 49 - 330 meters away from the river, where one was abandoned with no sign of reclamation, thus directly affecting the health and integrity of the riparian vegetation. It was also noted that massive heaping of quarry overburden and deep excavation accelerated felling of trees, reduced natural regeneration and increased soil erosion. These findings will be useful to inform the best quarrying practices to reduce detrimental impacts on riparian vegetation and a foundation for policy development in quarrying sector at county and national level.

opencc-by-4.0Nov 2024View details →

Impact of night-time cold-air flow on particulate matter concentration at Tempelhofer Feld, Berlin, Germany

The dataset consists of particulate matter concentration and meteorology data, measured in Berlin-Hasenheide and Berlin-Temeplhof from June 15, 2022 to June 18, 2022. <a href="https://zenodo.org/api/records/14046315/draft/files/Hasenheide_cargo-bike_PM_HUB.geojson/content" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Hasenheide_cargo-bike_PM_HUB.geojson</a> : The observed PM concentration and meteorology, at 10 measurement points around Tempelhofer Feld, Hasenheide and Kreuzberg. The mesurements were carried out on a mobile-platform, using a cargo-bike.  Information on working with geojson file can be found under <a href="https://geojson.readthedocs.io/en/latest/">GeoJSON</a> . <a href="https://zenodo.org/api/records/14046315/draft/files/Hasenheide_Crane_HUB.csv/content" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Hasenheide_Crane_HUB.csv</a> : The observed PM concentration and meteorology at 2 m, 5 m, 10 m, 15 m, and 20 m in Hasenheide. The measurments were carried out using a crane to move the instruments to different heights. <a href="https://zenodo.org/api/records/14046315/draft/files/Hasenheide_Crane_HUB.csv/content" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Hasenheide_Stationary_Meteorology_HUB.csv</a> and <a href="https://zenodo.org/api/records/14046315/draft/files/Hasenheide_Stationary_PM_HUB.csv/content" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Hasenheide_Stationary_PM_HUB.csv</a> contain the stationary and continuous, meteorology and PM measurement data collected in Berlin Hasenheide. The data was collected at 0.5m and 2m above ground level. <a href="https://zenodo.org/api/records/14046315/draft/files/Hasenheide_Crane_HUB.csv/content" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Tempelhof_Stationary_Meteorology_HUB.csv</a> and <a href="https://zenodo.org/api/records/14046315/draft/files/Hasenheide_Stationary_PM_HUB.csv/content" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Tempelhof_Stationary_PM_HUB.csv</a> contain the stationary and continuous, meteorology and PM measurement data collected in Berlin Hasenheide. The data was collected at 0.5m and 2m above ground level. Units:  PM : µg/m³ Air temperature: °C Surface temperature: °C Potential temperature: K Relative humidity: % Specific humidity: g Water vapour per kg dry air Pressure: hPa Solar radiation: W/m² Wind speed: m/s Wind direction: Degree   The original article providing all necessary background information on study sites, methodology and data processing is the following: Venkatraman Jagatha, J., T. Sauter, C. Schneider (2024): Impact of night-time cold-air flow on particulate matter concentration at Tempelhofer Feld, Berlin, Germany.  The article will be submitted to the journal "Die Erde", ISSN:  0013-9998.

opencc-zeroMar 2020View details →

Optical traits perform equally well as directly-measured functional traits in explaining the impact of an invasive plant on litter decomposition

1. Functional traits can help elucidate and predict the impact of invasive plant species on ecosystem functioning. Yet, this approach requires comprehensive and labor-intensive trait collection campaigns, covering intraspecific trait variation of both the invader and native species in the invaded community. One potential way to overcome these logistic constraints is using hyperspectral remote sensing technology to efficiently quantify functional trait values. Although such spectrally derived or 'optical' traits are known to closely link to directly-measured functional traits, little research has explored how well these optical traits perform in assessing invader-induced ecosystem impact. 2. Here, we explored the trait-mediated impact of the invasive Rosa rugosa on litter decomposition and evaluated whether optical traits perform equally well as directly-measured traits in predicting litter decomposition variation. We collected data on species-specific functional traits, leaf hyperspectral reflectance and standardized 'tea bag index' litter decomposition across 25 invaded and 25 uninvaded coastal grassland plots. The selected traits were all potentially related to litter decomposition and covered the leaf economics spectrum, additional leaf structural components and competitive ability. Optical traits were quantified through a combination of a physical radiative transfer model inversion and vegetation indices calculations. 3. Invasion significantly increased the stabilization factor, i.e. the amount of resulting recalcitrant litter. Invader impact on litter decomposition could be entirely explained by changes it induced in the functional traits of the native community, rather than by the invader's traits itself. More specifically, the invader pushed the invaded community towards traits associated with high litter quality. Optical traits performed equally well as directly-measured traits in explaining the invasion impact on the stabilization factor (R2= 41.9% vs. 38.5%). Furthermore, the interpretation of the results based on optical traits resulted in a similar functional understanding of the invader impact. 4. Synthesis: Our results indicate the potential of hyperspectral data to explain changes in ecosystem functioning. The combination of radiative transfer models and vegetation indices allowed to extract all relevant trait information from the hyperspectral data. This framework thus presents a practical short-cut to assess relevant leaf traits, requiring only a limited amount of field trait measurements.

opencc-zeroDec 2015View details →

Data from: Geohistorical records indicate no impact of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill on oyster body size

Documentation of the near- and long-term effects of the Deepwater Horizon (DWH) oil spill, one of the largest environmental disasters in US history, is still ongoing. We used a novel before-after-control-impact analysis to test the hypothesis that average body size of intertidal populations of the eastern oyster (Crassostrea virginica) inhabiting impacted areas in Louisiana decreased due to increased stress/mortality related to the oil spill. Time-averaged death assemblages of oysters were used to establish a pre-spill baseline of body-size structure for four impacted and four control locations along a 350 km stretch of Louisiana's coastline. Post-spill body sizes were then measured from live oysters at each site in order to evaluate the differences in body size between oiled (i.e. impact) and unoiled (i.e. control) locations before and after the spill. Our results indicate that average body size of oysters remained relatively unchanged after the oil spill. There were also no temporal patterns in temperature, salinity or disease prevalence that could have explained our results. Together, these findings suggest that oysters either recovered rapidly following the immediate impact of the DWH oil spill, or that its impact was not severe enough to influence short-term population dynamics of the oyster beds.

Dataset of Psychological Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Families of People with Severe Mental Disorders in Brazil

The objective of the study is to understand how the families of patients with severe mental disorders experienced the beginning of the pandemic in Brazil and how they fared during the period of restricted social contact.

Pedestrian single file movement on stairway: Investigating the impact of stair construct on pedestrian ascent and descent fundamental diagram

Pedestrian single-file movement on stairs

opencc-zeroDec 2017View details →

Data from: Whole-genome analysis of Mustela erminea finds that pulsed hybridization impacts evolution at high-latitudes

At high-latitude, climatic shifts hypothetically drove episodes of divergence during isolation in glacial refugia, or ice-free pockets of land that enabled terrestrial species persistence. Upon glacial recession, populations can expand and often come into contact, resulting in admixture between previously isolated groups. To understand how recurrent periods of isolation and contact have impacted evolution at high latitudes, we investigated introgression in the stoat (Mustela erminea), a Holarctic mammalian carnivore, using whole-genome sequences. We identify two temporally isolated introgression events coincident with large-scale climatic shifts: contemporary introgression in a mainland contact zone and ancient contact ~ 200 km south along North America's North Pacific Coast. Repeated episodes of gene flow highlight the central role of cyclic climates in structuring high-latitude diversity, through refugial divergence and subsequent introgressive hybridization. Introgression followed by allopatry (e.g., insularization) may contribute to expedited divergence of island taxa experiencing substantial glacial flux.

Variation in soil microbiome impacts on spring foliar phenology and productivity (Van Nuland et al. 2021 New Phytologist)

Data associated with "Natural soil microbiome variation affects spring foliar phenology with consequences for plant productivity and climate-driven range shifts" (Van Nuland et al. 2021 New Phytologist). Please contact corresponding author for any questions.

Testing the Skill-based Approach: Consolidation strategy impacts Attentional Blink performance

Data accompanying the journal article Testing the Skill-based Approach: Consolidation strategy impacts Attentional Blink performance published in PLOS ONE. It contains the datasets (without personal information) for both experiments and a small R file that can be used to read in the data.

Simulation results for "COVID-19 vaccination in Sindh Province, Pakistan: a modelling study of health impact and cost-effectiveness"

The high-performance computing results for raw epidemiological simulations and quantiled scenarios associated with https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.02.24.21252338. All results stored as compressed rds files of data.table objects (use-able as data.frame objects) for use with R programming language.

opencc-by-4.0May 2021View details →

SNAPP Flow Impacts Literature Review Datasets

Datasets created and used in the SNAPP Flow Impacts project (https://snappartnership.net/teams/water-flow-impact/) SNAPPFlowImpacts_agRangeDB_20210702.zip contains a SQLite database with the results of a systematic review of agricultural and rangeland BMP effects on water flows in these systems.  Please see the included documentation regarding the status of quality control, as the database includes results from a somewhat broader literature search than could be fully quality controlled.  SNAPPFlowImpacts_Forest_placeholder.xlsx is an excel spreadsheet containing the results of a "review of reviews" of the effects of forest management on water flows. The current version is a placeholder without the full set of citations, which will be updated in the near future. SNAPPFlowImpacts_Wetland_Final.xlsx is an excel spreadsheet containing the results of a "review of reviews" of the effects of wetland management on water flows, including both a summary sheet and details for each citation.  SNAPP Flow Impacts Literature Review Datasets - metadata_02July2021.pdf contains metadata information for the database and the spreadsheet. It is also included in the .zip file for easy access.

Data for "Impact of prior terrestrial carbon flux on atmospheric CO2 concentration simulation"

Data for "Impact of prior terrestrial carbon flux on atmospheric CO2 concentration simulation"

opencc-by-4.0Dec 2020View details →

The Shape of Water in Zeolites and its Impact on Epoxidation Catalysis

The Shape of Water in Zeolites and its Impact on Epoxidation Catalysis Daniel T. Bregante,1 Matthew Chan,1 Jun Zhi Tan,1 E. Zeynep Ayla,1 Christopher P. Nicholas,2,3 Diwakar Shukla,1 and David W. Flaherty1,* 1Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61802 2Exploratory Materials and Catalysis Research, Honeywell UOP, Des Plaines, IL 60016 3C2P Sciences L3C, Evanston, IL 60202 *Corresponding Author: dwflhrty@illinois.edu   Molecular dynamics simulations for zeolite framework studied in "The Shape of Water in Zeolites and its Impact on Epoxidation Catalysis".  Repository contains the last 100 nanoseconds of classical molecular dynamics equilibration, ab initio molecular dynamics trajectories, initial and final simulated zeolite structures, and scripts used for analyzing MD trajectories.

Data from paper "Impact of milling machine parameters on the properties of reclaimed asphalt pavement"

The dataset includes test results of road cores and samples gathered from the same locations after milling of asphalt pavement. Milling machine parameters, including moving speed, milling depth, and drum rotational speed were intentionally varied during milling. Results from four jobsites are included in the dataset. The results include binder content, penetration, softening point, coarse and fine aggregate flow coefficients, gradation of RAP, gradation of extracted RAP aggregates, as well as the calculated chunk, breakdown, and filler increase indexes. These three indexes were used to quantitatively characterize the milling operations.

opencc-zeroFeb 2020View details →

Pollen defenses negatively impact foraging and fitness in a generalist bee (Bombus impatiens: Apidae)

Plants may benefit from limiting the community of generalist floral visitors if the species that remain are more effective pollinators and less effective pollenivores. Plants can reduce access to pollen through altered floral cues or morphological structures, but can also reduce consumption through direct pollen defenses. We observed that Eucera (Peponapis) pruinosa, a specialist bee on Cucurbita plants, collected pure loads of pollen while generalist honey bees and bumble bees collected negligible amounts of cucurbit pollen, even though all groups of bees visited these flowers. Cucurbit flowers have no morphological adaptations to limit pollen collection by bees, thus we assessed their potential for physical, nutritional, and chemical pollen traits that might act as defenses to limit pollen loss to generalist pollinators. Bumble bee (Bombus impatiens) microcolonies experienced reduced pollen consumption, mortality, and reproduction as well as increased stress responses when exposed to nutritional and mechanical pollen defenses. These bees also experienced physiological effects of these defenses in the form of hindgut expansion and gut melanization. Chemical defenses alone increased the area of gut melanization in larger bees and induced possible compensatory feeding. Together, these results suggest that generalist bumble bees avoid collecting cucurbit pollen due to the physiological costs of physical and chemical pollen defenses.

Looking in the medicine cabinet: methods for using real-world data to assess the impact of measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) and recombinant adjuvanted varicella-zoster vaccines on coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) prevention and case fatality

Supplementary File S1.  20210712_vx_off_target_pubdraft_S1 (Tables, Graphs and scripts associated with publication) Data file 1. Basic_Analysis.R (descriptive analysis script in R, for use with cleaned data files 3, 4 and 6) Data file 2. Cleaning (Script demonstrating how Cerner data was cleaned upon download) Data file 3. COVID_all_cleaned (CSV file with all COVID+ subjects in Cerner institutions) Data file 4. COVID_mmr_data_cleaned (CSV file with COVID+ patients between 25-64 years old, including institution id, age category, gender, whether patient is in emergency department or inpatient, flu vaccine history, MMR vaccine history and mortality outcomes) Data file 5. COVID_mmr_data_matched (CSV file matching MMR vaccine-exposed cases to controls based on propensity scores) Data file 6. COVID_zoster_data_cleaned (CSV file with COVID+ patients above 50 years old, including institution id, age category, gender, whether patient is in emergency department or inpatient, flu vaccine history, zoster vaccine history and mortality outcomes) Data file 7. COVID_zoster_data_matched (CSV file matching zoster vaccine-exposed cases to controls based on propensity scores) Data file 8. General_25_64_data_cleaned (CSV file, all patients in Cerner institutions between 25 – 64 years old, including institution id, age category, gender, whether patient is in emergency department or inpatient, flu vaccine history, MMR vaccine history, SARS-CoV-2 infection and COVID-19 mortality outcomes ). Data file 9. General_over50_data_cleaned (CSV file, all patients in Cerner institutions above 50 years old, including institution id, age category, gender, whether patient is in emergency department or inpatient, flu vaccine history, zoster vaccine history, SARS-CoV-2 infection and COVID-19 mortality outcomes). Data file 10. Included_tenants (CSV file, institution IDs whose contributed cases comprise at least 0.5% of the aggregate sample size). Data file 11. MMR_ps (R script to run for MMR-related files analysis) Data file 12. Zoster_ps (R script to run for zoster-related files analysis)

opencc-zeroJul 2021View details →

Thermal flight performance reveals impact of warming on bumblebee foraging potential

The effects of environmental temperature on components of insect flight determine life-history traits, fitness, adaptability, and ultimately, organism ecosystem functional roles. Despite the crucial role of flying insects across landscapes, our understanding of how temperature affects insect flight performance remains limited. Many insect pollinators are considered under threat from climatic warming. Quantifying the relationship between temperature and behavioural performance traits allows us to understand where species are operating in respect to their thermal limits, helping predict responses to projected temperature increases and/or erratic weather events. Using a tethered flight mill, we quantify how flight performance of a widespread bumblebee, Bombus terrestris, varies over a temperature range (12-30oC). Given that body mass constrains insect mobility and behaviour, bumblebees represent a useful system to study temperature-mediated size-dependence of flight performance owing to the large intra-colony variation in worker body size they exhibit. Workers struggled to fly over a few hundred metres at the lowest tested temperature of 12oC, however flight endurance increased as temperatures rose, peaking around 25oC after which it declined. Our findings further revealed variation in flight capacity across the workforce, with larger workers flying further, longer, and faster than their smaller nestmates. Body mass was also positively related with the likelihood of flight, although importantly this relationship became stronger as temperatures cooled, such that at 12oC only the largest workers were successful fliers. Our study thus highlights that colony foraging success under variable thermal environments can be dependent on the body mass distribution of constituent workers, and more broadly suggests smaller-bodied insects may benefit disproportionately more from warming than larger-bodied ones in terms of flight performance. By incorporating both flight endurance and likelihood of flight, we calculated a simple metric termed 'temperature-mediated foraging potential' to gain a clearer understanding of how temperature may constrain colony foraging. Of our tested temperatures, 27oC supported the highest potential, indicating that for much of the range of this species, higher mean daily temperatures as forecasted under climate warming will push colonies closer to their thermal optimum for flight. Subsequently, warming may have positive implications for bumblebee foraging returns and pollination provision.

opencc-zeroJul 2021View details →

Environmental impacts on diapause and survival of the alfalfa leafcutting bee, Megachile rotundata

Megachile rotundata exhibits a facultative prepupal diapause but the cues regulating diapause initiation are not well understood. Possible cues include daylength and temperature. Megachile rotundata females experience changing daylengths over the nesting season that may influence diapause incidence in their offspring through a maternal effect. Juvenile M. rotundata spend their developmental period confined in a nesting cavity, potentially subjected to stressful temperatures that may affect diapause incidence and survival. To estimate the impact of daylength and nest cavity temperature on offspring diapause, we designed a 3D printed box with iButtons that measured nest cavity temperature. We observed nest building throughout the season, monitored nest cavity temperature, and followed offspring through development to measure diapause incidence and mortality. We found that daylength was a cue for diapause, and nest cavity temperature did not influence diapause incidence. Eggs laid during long days had a lower probability of diapause. Siblings tended to have the same diapause status, explaining a lot of the remaining variance in diapause incidence. Some females established nests that contained both diapausing and nondiapausing individuals, which were distributed throughout the nest. Nest cavities reached stressful temperatures, which decreased survival. Mortality was significantly higher in nondiapausing bees and the individuals that were laid first in the nest. In conclusion, we demonstrate a maternal effect for diapause that is mediated by daylength and is independent of nest box temperature.

opencc-zeroJul 2021View details →

Extracted data from primary literature examining impacts of recreational activities on freshwater ecosystems

Aquatic ecosystems are attractive sites for recreation. However, human presence at or on aquatic ecosystems can have a range of ecological impacts, creating trade-offs between recreation as ecosystem service and biodiversity conservation. There is currently no synthesis of evidence regarding the ecological impacts associated with various forms of aquatic recreation, to compare the magnitude of effects between types of recreation. Therefore, conservation conflicts surrounding water-based recreation are difficult to manage. We conducted a global meta-analysis, differentiating various recreational impacts and the type of recreational uses in four categories: shore use, shoreline angling, swimming and boating; and studied ecological impacts directed at three levels of biological organization: individuals, populations, and communities. We screened over 13,000 articles and identified 94 suitable studies providing 701 effect sizes for inclusion in the meta-analysis. Aggregated across all animal and plant taxa, impacts of boating and shore use resulted in highly significant effects on almost all levels of biological organization. Regarding taxonomic groups, the most negative effects of water-based recreation were observed in invertebrates, whereas effects on birds were most pronounced at individual levels and not significant at community levels. From a conservation perspective, fostering water-based recreation and the ecological services they provide must be balanced with ecological impacts associated with the activities. Although generalizations are challenging, local scale effects of activity-specific constraints seem unlikely to be effective if other forms of water-based recreation continue.

R code and dataset to "Monetizing Spillover Effects in the Creative Industries: the Impact of Live Music Performances on Youtube Searches"

Content: <ol> <li>The script main_script.R includes code to run a regression discontinuity (RD) design and validation and falsification of estimated results</li> <li>The folder data contains two files: <ol> <li>bands_2016_2019.csv: a dataset of performers with additional information for each one.</li> <li>festivals_2016_2019.csv: a dataset of video search activity (as retrieved from Google Trends) for performers in file bands_2016_2019.csv</li> </ol> </li> <li>The folder source contains two additional  R scripts: <ol> <li>data_preparation.R: generates the long dataset used to estimate RD effects</li> <li>status_simulation.R: randomly assigns treattment status to performers and estimates RD effects.  Note this may take a long time to run. Parallel code is used: the number of cores has been set to 4. </li> </ol> </li> <li>The folder simulation_results contains simulated data after running the script status_simulation.R.</li> </ol>