| 1. |
- Giannantoni, Corrado, et al.
(författare)
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Analysis of investments based on the trilateral externality approach (firm, citizen, state)
- 2002
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Ingår i: Ecological Indicators. - : Elsevier. - 1470-160X .- 1872-7034. ; 2:1-2, s. 27-38
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The Trilateral Externality Approach takes its origin from a several year integration activity of various evaluation methodologies (Energetic, Exergetic, Emergetic, Economic, etc.) and aims at giving a rigorous synthesis of such an integration process in the context of Neo-Classical Economics through the fundamental category of externality, in its extensive and intensive meaning.After having shown the different (but complementary) perspectives of elaborating a unifying concept of externality (bottom-up and top-down approaches), the paper presents a limited set of synthetic Indicators for possible strategies of investment (at a regional and national level). An example of application devoted to Hydrogen technologies will show how renewable (or “equipollent”) Sources are already widely “competitive” with respect to fossil fuel technologies, obviously if analyzed in the light of such a general evaluation approach, which involves a unique trilateral relationship between firm, citizen and state.In this context it will be thus much easier to show why the so-called “incentives” (in their several different possible forms) are nothing but a “remuneration” of positive externalities that a firm produces in favor of the collectivity, whereas the state recuperates such “incentives” because of a consequential increase in economic activities induced by those primary externalities, in a non-zero sum global process.
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| 2. |
- Abdi, Abdulhakim M., et al.
(författare)
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Biodiversity decline with increasing crop productivity in agricultural fields revealed by satellite remote sensing
- 2021
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Ingår i: Ecological Indicators. - : Elsevier BV. - 1470-160X. ; 130
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Increasing land-use intensity is a main driver of biodiversity loss in farmland, but measuring proxies for land-use intensity across entire landscapes is challenging. Here, we develop a novel method for the assessment of the impact of land-use intensity on biodiversity in agricultural landscapes using remote sensing parameters derived from the Sentinel-2 satellites. We link crop phenology and productivity parameters derived from time-series of a two-band enhanced vegetation index with biodiversity indicators (insect pollinators and insect-pollinated vascular plants) in agricultural fields in southern Sweden, with contrasting land management (i.e. conventional and organic farming). Our results show that arable land-use intensity in cereal systems dominated by spring-sown cereals can be approximated using Sentinel-2 productivity parameters. This was shown by the significant positive correlations between the amplitude and maximum value of the enhanced vegetation index on one side and farmer reported yields on the other. We also found that conventional cereal fields had 17% higher maximum and 13% higher amplitude of their enhanced vegetation index than organic fields. Sentinel-2 derived parameters were more strongly correlated with the abundance and species richness of bumblebees and the richness of vascular plants than the abundance and species richness of butterflies. The relationships we found between biodiversity and crop production proxies are consistent with predictions that increasing agricultural land-use intensity decreases field biodiversity. The newly developed method based on crop phenology and productivity parameters derived from Sentinel-2 data serves as a proof of concept for the assessment of the impact of land-use intensity on biodiversity over cereal fields across larger areas. It enables the estimation of arable productivity in cereal systems, which can then be used by ecologists and develop tools for land managers as a proxy for land-use intensity. Coupled with spatially explicit databases on agricultural land-use, this method will enable crop-specific cereal productivity estimation across large geographical regions.
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| 3. |
- Alatalo, Juha M, 1966-, et al.
(författare)
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Testing reliability of short-term responses to predict longer-term responses of bryophytes and lichens to environmental change
- 2015
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Ingår i: Ecological Indicators. - : Elsevier BV. - 1470-160X .- 1872-7034. ; 58, s. 77-85
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Environmental changes are predicted to have severe and rapid impacts on polar and alpine regions. At high latitudes/altitudes, cryptogams such as bryophytes and lichens are of great importance in terms of biomass, carbon/nutrient cycling, cover and ecosystem functioning. This seven-year factorial experiment examined the effects of fertilizing and experimental warming on bryophyte and lichen abundance in an alpine meadow and a heath community in subarctic Sweden. The aim was to determine whether shortterm responses (five years) are good predictors of longer-term responses (seven years). Fertilizing and warming had significant negative effects on total and relative abundance of bryophytes and lichens, with the largest and most rapid decline caused by fertilizing and combined fertilizing and warming. Bryophytes decreased most in the alpine meadow community, which was bryophyte-dominated, and lichens decreased most in the heath community, which was lichen-dominated. This was surprising, as the most diverse group in each community was expected to be most resistant to perturbation. Warming alone had a delayed negative impact. Of the 16 species included in statistical analyses, seven were significantly negatively affected. Overall, the impacts of simulated warming on bryophytes and lichens as a whole and on individual species differed in time and magnitude between treatments and plant communities (meadow and heath). This will likely cause changes in the dominance structures over time. These results underscore the importance of longer-term studies to improve the quality of data used in climate change models, as models based on short-term data are poor predictors of long-term responses of bryophytes and lichens. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
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| 4. |
- Alexandridis, Nikolaos, et al.
(författare)
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Revealing perturbation responses with limited observations of biological communities
- 2021
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Ingår i: Ecological Indicators. - : Elsevier BV. - 1470-160X. ; 128
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Restrictions in empirical research of biological communities have limited our understanding of the combined influence of environmental variability and system structure on community composition. Spatial patterns of community composition in less accessible systems, such as marine benthos, can often not be explained by many factors beyond the direct impact of the environment on community members. We present a method that combines commonly collected data of community composition with analyses of qualitative mathematical models, to assess not only direct impacts of environmental variability, but also the propagation of impacts through complex interaction networks. Transformed spatial data of community composition describe the community members’ observed similarity of response to an external input. The output of qualitative mathematical models describes the community members’ predicted similarity of response to input entering the system through any of its variables. A statistically significant agreement between the observed and any of the predicted response similarities indicates the respective system variable as a likely gateway for environmental variability into the system. The method is applied to benthic macroinvertebrate communities in the Rance estuary (Brittany, France). Organisms identified as likely gateways have traits that agree with their predicted response to documented spatially and temporally structured environmental variability. We suggest use of this novel framework for more comprehensive identification of environmental drivers of community change, including gateway community members and cascades of environmentally driven change through community structure.
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| 5. |
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| 6. |
- Ali, Arshad, et al.
(författare)
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Wood density is a sustainability indicator for the management of dry zone homegarden agroforests: Evidences from biodiversity–ecosystem function relationships
- 2019
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Ingår i: Ecological Indicators. - : Elsevier BV. - 1470-160X. ; 105, s. 474-482
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Recent studies have advanced our understanding regarding the niche complementarity and mass ratio effects on the ecosystem function, in both natural and experimental systems. However, biodiversity–ecosystem function (BEF) relationships may be fundamentally different across dense-wooded and light-wooded species, as they are clustered at two opposite extremes of the wood economics spectrum. Here we analyzed BEF relationships through mediations of functional dominance (i.e. community-weighted mean, CWM) and functional divergence (FDvar) of plant maximum height (H) while accounting for the effects of other characteristics of homegardens, across dense-wooded, light-wooded and all species, by using structural equation modelling (SEM) on 45 homegarden agroforestry systems in the dry zone of Sri Lanka. The dense-wooded SEM accounted for 69% variation in aboveground biomass through significant positive direct effects of CWM H (β = 0.51) and FDvar H (β = 0.20), and indirect effect of species diversity via FDvar H on aboveground biomass (β = 0.12). Although the light-wooded SEM accounted for 19% variation in aboveground biomass, the BEF relationships were non-significant. Regardless of SEMs, FDvar H but not CWM H was significantly positively related to species diversity. None of the BEF relationships was statistically significant when dense-wooded and light-wooded species were mixed. From a theoretical aspect, these positive BEF relationships are driven by both dominant and complementarity dense-wooded species. From a practical aspect, the positive BEF relationships support the feasibility of UN Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) initiative in studied agroforests, which aims to enhance carbon storage in aboveground biomass while conserving biodiversity. Hence, this study suggests that wood density is a potential sustainability indicator for better management of agroforest-ecosystem while driving positive BEF relationships.
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| 7. |
- Alikas, Krista, et al.
(författare)
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Improved retrieval of Secchi depth for optically-complex waters using remote sensing data
- 2017
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Ingår i: Ecological Indicators. - : Elsevier BV. - 1470-160X .- 1872-7034. ; 77, s. 218-227
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Water transparency is one of the ecological indicators for describing water quality and the underwater light field which determines its productivity. In the European Water Framework Directive (WFD) as well as in the European Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) water transparency is used for ecological status classification of inland, coastal and open sea waters and it is regarded as an indicator for eutrophication in Baltic Sea management (HELCOM, 2007). We developed and compared different empirical and semi-analytical algorithms for lakes and coastal Nordic waters to retrieve Secchi depth (Z(SD)) from remote sensing data (MERIS, 300 m resolution).The algorithms were developed in water bodies with high coloured dissolved organic matter absorption (a(CNOM)(442) ranging 1.7-4.0 m(-1)), Chl a concentration (0.5-73 mg m(-3)) and total suspended matter (0.7-37.5 g m(-3)) and validated against an independent data set over inland and coastal waters (0.6 m < Z(SD) < 14.8 m). The results indicate that for empirical algorithms, using longer wavelengths in the visible spectrum as a reference band decreases the RMSE and increases the coefficient of determination (R-2). The accuracy increased (R-2 = 0.75, RMSE = 1.33 m, n = 134) when Z(SD) was retrieved via an empirical relationship between Z(SD) and K-d (490). The best agreement with in situ data was attained when Z(SD) was calculated via both the diffuse and the beam attenuation coefficient (R-2 = 0.89, RMSE = 0.77 m, n = 89). The results demonstrate that transparency can be retrieved with high accuracy over various optical water types by the means of ocean color remote sensing, improving both the spatial and temporal coverage. The satellite derived Z(SD) product could be therefore used as an additional source of information for WFD and MSFD reporting purposes.
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| 8. |
- Andersson, Erik, et al.
(författare)
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Memory carriers and stewardship of metropolitan landscapes
- 2016
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Ingår i: Ecological Indicators. - : Elsevier BV. - 1470-160X .- 1872-7034. ; 70, s. 606-614
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- History matters, and can be an active and dynamic component in the present. We explore social-ecological memory as way to diagnose and engage with urban green space performance and resilience. Rapidly changing cities pose a threat and a challenge to the continuity that has helped to support biodiversity and ecological functions by upholding similar or only slowly changing adaptive cycles over time. Continuity is perpetuated through memory carriers, slowly changing variables and features that retain or make available information on how different situations have been dealt with before. Ecological memory carriers comprise memory banks, spatial connections and mobile link species. These can be supported by social memory carriers, represented by collectively created social features like habits, oral tradition, rules-in-use and artifacts, as well as media and external sources. Loss or lack of memory can be diagnoses by the absence or disconnect between memory carriers, as will be illustrated by several typical situations. Drawing on a set of example situations, we present an outline for a look-up table approach that connects ecological memory carriers to the social memory carriers that support them and use these connections to set diagnoses and indicate potential remedies. The inclusion of memory carriers in planning and management considerations may facilitate preservation of feedbacks and disturbance regimes as well as species and habitats, and the cultural values and meanings that go with them.
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| 9. |
- Angeler, David
(författare)
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Evaluating environmental conditions of a temporary pond complex using rotifer emergence from dry soils
- 2010
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Ingår i: Ecological Indicators. - : Elsevier BV. - 1470-160X .- 1872-7034. ; 10, s. 545–549-
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In this study we evaluated the usefulness of rotifer emergence from dry soils to indicate the environmental status of a remnant temporary pond complex in an agricultural area in central Spain. Because the ponds did not flood during our project, emergence was studied in relation to environmental variables in outdoor microcosms. Redundancy analysis and nestedness analysis showed that salinity and total nitrogen concentrations shaped the emerged communities. Depauperate rotifer assemblages from pond microcosms with higher salinity and nitrogen levels were nested subsets of species-rich communities from microcosms of less enriched sites. Rotifer community structure also identified small ponds as reference sites that should receive priority in conservation and degradation mitigation programs. Results suggest that rotifer emergence from rewetted sediments using microcosms can be useful for evaluating the nutrient status during the dry phase of temporary wetlands. While results from this approach are conservative, requiring comparisons with field observations, their tentative value lies in alerting management and providing a basis for future research of poorly studied but threatened temporary habitats. Rotifer emergence could be a useful alternative to traditional biological indicators of nutrient status that depend on the presence of water. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
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| 10. |
- Angeler, David
(författare)
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Tracking spatial regimes in animal communities: Implications for resilience-based management
- 2022
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Ingår i: Ecological Indicators. - : Elsevier BV. - 1470-160X .- 1872-7034. ; 136
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Spatial regimes (the spatial extents of ecological states) exhibit strong spatiotemporal order as they expand or contract in response to retreating or encroaching adjacent spatial regimes (e.g., woody plant invasion of grasslands) and human management (e.g., fire treatments). New methods enable tracking spatial regime boundaries via vegetation landcover data, and this approach is being used for strategic management across biomes. A clear advancement would be incorporating animal community data to track spatial regime boundaries alongside vegetation data. In a 41,170-hectare grassland experiencing woody plant encroachment, we test the utility of using animal community data to track spatial regimes via two hypotheses. (H1) Spatial regime boundaries identified via independent vegetation and animal datasets will exhibit spatial synchrony; specifically, grassland:woodland bird community boundaries will synchronize with grass:woody vegetation boundaries. (H2) Negative feedbacks will stabilize spatial regimes identified via animal data; specifically, frequent fire treatments will stabilize grassland bird community boundaries. We used 26 years of bird community and vegetation data alongside 32 years of fire history data. We identified spatial regime boundaries with bird community data via a wombling approach. We identified spatial regime boundaries with vegetation data by calculating spatial covariance between remotely-sensed grass and woody plant cover per pixel. For fire history data, we calculated the cumulative number of fires per pixel. Setting bird boundary strength (wombling R-2 values) as the response variable, we tested our hypotheses with a hierarchical generalized additive model (HGAM). Both hypotheses were supported: animal boundaries synchronized with vegetation boundaries in space and time, and grassland bird communities stabilized as fire frequency increased (HGAM explained 38% of deviance). We can now track spatial regimes via animal community data pixel-by-pixel and year-by-year. Alongside vegetation boundary tracking, tracking animal community boundaries can inform the scale of management necessary to maintain animal communities endemic to desirable ecological states. Our approach will be especially useful for conserving animal communities requiring large-scale, unfragmented landscapes-like grasslands and steppes.
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| 11. |
- Ari Noriega, Jorge, et al.
(författare)
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Does ecotourism impact biodiversity? : An assessment using dung beetles (Coleoptera: Scarabaeinae) as bioindicators in a tropical dry forest natural park
- 2020
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Ingår i: Ecological Indicators. - : Elsevier. - 1470-160X .- 1872-7034. ; 117
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Ecotourism can be defined as an environmental activity that takes place in well-preserved areas for recreation and with the responsibility of promoting their conservation. Nowadays, ecotourism is seen as a friendly pastime, but it can potentially affect negatively community diversity and structure by a number of processes such as soil compaction, erosion, and habitat alteration, among many others. Nonetheless, there is hardly any information on the impact of ecotourism in the Tropical Dry Forests and protected areas of the Neotropical region. In an attempt to fill this knowledge gap, the effect of ecotourism was evaluated in a study of a Tropical Dry Forest in the Tayrona National Natural Park of Colombia using dung beetles as bioindicators. A large-scale sampling of three sites with different levels of tourism intensity (no tourism - NT, low tourism - LT, and high tourism - HT) was performed using pitfall tramps baited with human/pig dung during two climatic seasons (rainy and dry). A total of 3238 individuals belonging to nine genera and 15 species were collected. Significant differences in abun-dances, richness, and the Shannon Wiener diversity index were observed between areas with tourism and those without. These differences disappeared during the dry season in response to the strong reduction in species abundance and richness associated to that time of year. All areas maintained a homogeneous beetle structure in terms of functional groups present irrelevant of the intensity level of tourism. Beta diversity analysis shows that the dung beetle assemblage has a nested structure, indicating that the pressure exerted by tourism entails the loss of particular species. Our results advocate that it is necessary to implement conservation strategies in order to reduce the negative impact of tourism on the National Park's biodiversity.
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| 12. |
- Banabazi, Mohammad Hossein
(författare)
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Anthropogenic and natural fragmentations shape the spatial distribution and genetic diversity of roe deer in the marginal area of its geographic range
- 2023
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Ingår i: Ecological Indicators. - 1470-160X .- 1872-7034. ; 154
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Habitat destruction and fragmentation are major factors in the destruction of genetic diversity and affect the movement behavior of the Roe deer population in the remaining habitats. Here, we study the population and landscape genetics of Capreolus capreolus (roe deer) in northern and northwestern Iran using twelve polymorphism microsatellite markers. From 111 total specimens, 63 had successful extraction (6 feces, 35 tissues, 9 bones, and 13 antlers). We considered 30 microsatellite polymorphic loci, of which only 12 were amplified for our further analysis. For genetic diversity analysis, the Weir-Cockerham method was applied to measure the inbreeding coefficient (FIS) and fixation index (FST) for each locus as well as for each population. For landscape genetics, the susceptibility patterns of genetic variations were assessed using three hypotheses including isolation by distance (IBD), isolation by environment (IBE), isolation by resistance (IBR), and individual landscape genetic analysis. A habitat suitability map as an indicator of landscape resistance was constructed from several species distribution models (SDMs) algorithms including Generalized Boosting Models (GBM), Maximum Entropy (Maxent), Random Forest (RF), Generalized Linear Model (GLM), Multivariate Adaptive Regression Splines (MARS) and artificial neural networks (ANN) and an ensemble model. Our estimated FIs index showed that the Golestan, Arasbaran, and Guilan populations had the highest and lowest genetic diversity among roe deer populations. According to the Fst criterion, our results showed that Golestan and East Azarbaijan (Arasbaran) had the highest and Mazandaran had the lowest genetic distance patterns. Our results do not suggest that there is high genetic differentiation for roe deer in the region, with high levels of gene flow between study areas. We found that geographic distance has no significant relationship with genetic distance and that there is no significant relationship between the ecological niche non-similarity matrix and the genetic distance matrix. The most influential factors affecting gene flow in roe deer were aspect and elevation variables. The analysis suggests that the landscape has no significant influence on the structuring of the studied population and shows little genetic differentiation.
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| 13. |
- Behboudian, Massoud, et al.
(författare)
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Comparison of three group decision-making frameworks for evaluating resilience time series of water resources systems under uncertainty
- 2024
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Ingår i: Ecological Indicators. - : Elsevier BV. - 1470-160X .- 1872-7034. ; 158
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This study compared three uncertainty-based decision-making frameworks (considering/not considering the hierarchical structure of stakeholders) using resilience-based indices for evaluating different water resources management (WRM) scenarios under the impacts of climate change. The first step involved identifying significant stakeholders in the study area and establishing their relative weights. In the next step, stakeholders were asked to evaluate the management scenarios in the three different decision-making frameworks based on their decision criteria (nine resilience-based indices, implementation cost, and employment). Different types of weights (explicit and interval) were assigned to each stakeholder and their decision criteria, to account for the uncertainty associated with estimating their respective weights. This methodology was applied to the case of the Zarrinehrud River basin in northwest Iran. The best management scenario identified (MSC1346) was able increase lake elevation by 2.6 m (from 1271.3 m to 1273.9 m), improve the resilience of the system by 25 %, and enhance provisioning ecosystem services such as water and food supply and regulating services such as air quality. Comparing the results of the three decision-making frameworks revealed that the two which considered the hierarchical structure of stakeholders were more effective in determining the best scenario. The best scenario selected in the framework that ignored the hierarchical structure of stakeholders (MSC13567) had USD 202 million higher overall implementation and construction costs and gave a negligible difference in resilience value (0.04 difference) compared with scenario MSC1346.
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| 14. |
- Belinchon, Rocio
(författare)
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A survey method for assessing the richness of epiphytic lichens using growth forms
- 2016
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Ingår i: Ecological Indicators. - : Elsevier BV. - 1470-160X .- 1872-7034. ; 62, s. 101-105
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The species richness of epiphytic lichens is continuously decreasing by degradation and loss of habitat. Considering that taxonomic identification of all species is time and resource consuming, rapid assessment methods to extrapolate the total number of species are needed for practical conservation. This paper describes an alternative method using the correlation between lichens growth forms and species richness. The study was conducted in 406 forest stands located in Central Spain, covering a wide range of mediterranean-climate ecosystem regions, management intensity levels, canopy cover conditions, and tree sizes. The presence/absence of epiphytic lichens was determined in 6090 trees, which were dominated by oak species (Quercus ilex, Q, faginea, and Q. pyrenaica). In all type of forests, the diversity of growth forms was positively correlated with the total epiphytic lichen richness. In all cases, species richness increased in non-managed forest stands with dense canopies. Thus, we propose the use of lichen growth forms as a helpful surrogate of species richness to detect potentially conservation priority areas in the Mediterranean region. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
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| 15. |
- Bergek, Sara
(författare)
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Strong isolation-by-distance in the absence of genetic population structure in the eelpout (Zoarces viviparus, Linnaeus 1758)
- 2013
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Ingår i: Ecological Indicators. - : Elsevier BV. - 1470-160X .- 1872-7034. ; 27, s. 116-122
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The eelpout (Zoarces viviparus) is a benthic marine fish, which has long been assumed to be philopatric. This made it particularly suitable for environmental monitoring programs as it allows matching its content of pollutants to the area of catch. However, a recent small scale genetic study in the Baltic Proper suggested that gene-flow might be stronger than generally believed and may occur frequently up to a distance of at least 90 km. As challenging the assumption of philopatry might have strong implications for environmental monitoring studies, we tested the hypothesis of philopatry at a larger geographical scale using ten microsatellite loci. A total of 220 individuals sampled from eight locations covering almost the entire geographic range of the species was genotyped. Our results show that genetic diversity decreases from the North Sea to the northeastern Baltic Sea. No strong population structuring was found, but a highly significant isolation-by-distance pattern was detected, suggesting a stepwise migration pattern among populations. Thus, the hypothesis of long-distance migration can be falsified. It is more likely that only limited gene flow exists among adjacent populations without any barriers between them. Our results suggest that dispersal in the eelpout is weak enough to retain this species as an important bioindicator. However, we suggest that reference stations should be placed in an appropriate distance to avoid misleading results from migrating individuals. We conclude that a more precise knowledge on migration rates of the eelpout is required in order to get more reliable insights into the potential area over which the concentration of environmental pollutants is integrated. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
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| 16. |
- Bergez, J-E, et al.
(författare)
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Integrating agri-environmental indicators, ecosystem services assessment, life cycle assessment and yield gap analysis to assess the environmental sustainability of agriculture.
- 2022
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Ingår i: Ecological Indicators. - : Elsevier BV. - 1470-160X. ; 141
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Agriculture’s primary function is the production of food, feed, fibre and fuel for the fast-growing world population. However, it also affects human health and ecosystem integrity. Policymakers make policies in order to avoid harmful impacts. How to assess such policies is a challenge. In this paper, we propose a conceptual framework to help evaluate the impacts of agricultural policies on the environment. Our framework represents the global system as four subsystems and their interactions. These four components are the cells of a 2 by 2 matrix [Agriculture, Rest of the word]; [Socio-eco system, Ecological system]. We then developed a set of indicators for environmental issues and positioned these issues in the framework. To assess these issues, we used four well-known existing approaches: Life Cycle Assessment, Ecosystem Services Analysis, Yield Gap Analysis and Agro-Environmental Indicators. Using these four approaches together provided a more holistic view of the impacts of a given policy on the system. We then applied our framework on existing cover crop policies using an extensive literature survey and analysing the different environmental issues mobilised by the four assessment approaches. This demonstration case shows that our framework may be of help for a full systemic assessment. Despite their differences (aims, scales, standardization, data requirements, etc.), it is possible and profitable to use the four approaches together. This is a significant step forward, though more work is needed to produce a genuinely operational tool.
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| 17. |
- Birk, Sebastian, et al.
(författare)
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The potential of remote sensing in ecological status assessment of coloured lakes using aquatic plants
- 2014
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Ingår i: Ecological Indicators. - : Elsevier BV. - 1470-160X .- 1872-7034. ; 46, s. 398-406
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Field-based survey methods for aquatic vegetation have been identified as resource-demanding. Recent advances in remote sensing (RS) with sub-decimetre resolution allow for surveying aquatic vegetation at the species level. Coloured lakes, mainly due to high concentrations of humic substances, are globally widespread. However, high colour impedes the identification of submerged vegetation via remote sensing. Here, we evaluate the potential of using only emergent, floating and floating-leaved taxa that are detectable by high-resolution RS (RS-taxa) to assess the ecological status of lakes. In a dataset covering 72 Swedish low alkaline coloured lakes, we identified 31 RS-taxa. The power of RS-taxa assemblages to predict non-RS assemblages was analysed by a combination of ordination (Detrended Correspondence Analysis, DCA, and Redundancy Analysis) and multiple regression analysis. We compared the performance of a trophic metric score based on RS-taxa with that based on field data from all taxa along different environmental gradients. Forty percent of the variability of the first non-RS taxa DCA-axis was predicted by the DCA-results based on RS-taxa. Correlations of the trophic metric score and total nitrogen concentrations were equally strong for the dataset based on RS-taxa compared to the dataset based on all taxa. For total phosphorous concentrations, the correlation was stronger for the dataset based on all taxa, but for a complex water quality gradient (including sulphate, N-species, chlorophyll and percent cover of wetlands in the riparian buffer) the correlation was higher for the RS-taxa dataset. The significant linkage between the two community fractions (remotely-sensible and non-sensible) revealed considerable assemblage concordance, suggesting a notable potential of the use of remote sensing in lake macrophyte monitoring. The established trophic metric score seems most qualified for surveillance monitoring that, in combination with the eased efforts of data acquisition, detects long-term changes of the aquatic environment caused by shifts in climate, land use and (related) eutrophication. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
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| 18. |
- Birkhofer, Klaus, et al.
(författare)
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A framework to identify indicator species for ecosystem services in agricultural landscapes
- 2018
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Ingår i: Ecological Indicators. - : Elsevier BV. - 1470-160X .- 1872-7034. ; 91, s. 278-286
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Improving our understanding of the relationships between biodiversity and the delivery of ecosystem services is crucial for the development of sustainable agriculture. We introduce a novel framework that is based on the identification of indicator species for single or multiple ecosystem services across taxonomic groups based on indicator species analyses. We utilize multi-species community data (unlike previous single species approaches) without giving up information about the identity of species in our framework (unlike previous species richness approaches). We compiled a comprehensive community dataset including abundances of 683 invertebrate, vertebrate and plant species to identify indicator species that were either positively or negatively related to biological control, diversity of red-listed species or crop yield in agricultural landscapes in southern Sweden. Our results demonstrate that some taxonomic groups include significantly higher percentages of indicator species for these ecosystem services. Spider communities for example included a higher percentage of significant positive indicator species for biological control than ground or rove beetle communities. Bundles of indicator species for the analysed ecosystem service potentials usually included species that could be linked to the respective ecosystem service based on their functional role in local communities. Several of these species are conspicuous enough to be monitored by trained amateurs and could be used in bundles that are either crucial for the provision of individual ecosystem services or indicate agricultural landscapes with high value for red-listed species or crop yields. The use of bundles of characteristic indicator species for the simultaneous assessment of ecosystem services may reduce the amount of labour, time and cost in future assessments. In addition, future analysis using our framework in other ecosystems or with other subsets of ecosystem services and taxonomic groups will improve our understanding of service-providing species in local communities. In any case, expert knowledge is needed to select species from the identified subsets of significant indicator species and these species should be validated by existing data or additional sampling prior to being used for ecosystem service monitoring.
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| 19. |
- Blazquez-Cabrera, Sandra, et al.
(författare)
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Indicators of the impacts of habitat loss on connectivity and related conservation priorities : Do they change when habitat patches are defined at different scales?
- 2014
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Ingår i: Ecological Indicators. - : Elsevier BV. - 1470-160X .- 1872-7034. ; 45, s. 704-716
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Delivering indicators of habitat connectivity first requires identifying the habitat units that will be treated as individual entities for spatially explicit analyses. These units can be defined at different spatial scales or hierarchical levels, from single habitat patches to aggregations of multiple neighbor patches. Many studies have assessed the scale sensitivity of landscape-level pattern metrics when changing spatial resolution or extent. However, how patch-level connectivity indicators change across hierarchical levels (independently from modifications in resolution or extent) has been largely overlooked, despite the potentially strong and determinant effects on their outcomes and final uses. We evaluated how the hierarchical level at which habitat units are defined affects two types of outcomes frequently derived from connectivity indicators: (i) the importance values (or estimated amount of decrease in landscape connectivity that would be caused by the loss of certain habitat areas), and (ii) the priority ranking (key areas to conserve to minimize connectivity loss), as given by a selected set of widely used metrics (habitat availability, network centrality, metapopulation capacity). We found that importance values can largely vary depending on how habitat units are defined, suggesting that such results may be flawed by a particular a priori selection of hierarchical levels. However, the identification of which parts of the landscape contain the key connectivity providers (priority ranking) was robust, particularly for those metrics that account for the amount of connectivity within habitat units. We conclude that current connectivity indicators based on patch removals do not allow, considering their scale dependence, to consistently assess the magnitude of connectivity decrease resulting from large-scale habitat loss, but that they can be used with much more confidence for detecting those key areas that most contribute to maintain current connectivity levels.
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| 20. |
- Bravo, Giangiacomo
(författare)
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The Human Sustainable Development Index: New calculations and a first critical analysis
- 2014
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Ingår i: Ecological Indicators. - : Elsevier BV. - 1470-160X .- 1872-7034. ; 37, s. 145-150
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The Human Sustainable Development Index (HSDI) has been proposed as a way to amend the United Nations’ Human Development Index (HDI) by adding an environmental dimension. Despite some attention in the media, the HSDI remained largely ignored by the scientific community. This paper aims at overcoming this issue by presenting an updated version of the index, based on recently available UN data, including a complete description of the procedure leading to its calculation and a critical assessment of its relation with some established environmental indicators. We found that, while the HSDI represents a step ahead from the HDI, it remains insufficient in its representation of environmental sustainability. A better equilibrium between social, economic and environmental goals is needed to reach a true index of sustainable development.
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| 21. |
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| 22. |
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| 23. |
- Burdon, Francis
(författare)
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Towards a simple global-standard bioassay for a key ecosystem process: organic-matter decomposition using cotton strips
- 2019
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Ingår i: Ecological Indicators. - : Elsevier BV. - 1470-160X .- 1872-7034. ; 106
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Cotton-strip bioassays are increasingly used to assess ecosystem integrity because they provide a standardized measure of organic-matter decomposition - a fundamental ecosystem process. However, several different cotton-strip assays are routinely used, complicating the interpretation of results across studies, and hindering broader synthesis. Here, we compare the decay rates and assemblages of bacteria and fungi colonizing the three most commonly used cotton materials: Artist's canvas, Calico cloth, and Empa fabric. Cotton strips from each material type were incubated in 10 streams that span a wide range of physicochemical properties across five ecoregions. Additionally, to evaluate responses to environmental stress without potentially confounding biogeographical effects, we deployed identical bioassays in five streams across an acidification gradient within a single ecoregion.Across all streams decomposition rates (as tensile strength loss [TSL]) differed among the three cotton materials; Calico cloth decomposed fastest (time to 50% TSL [T-50] = 16.7 d), followed by the Empa fabric (T-50 = 18.3 d) and then Artist's canvas (T-50 = 21.4 d). Despite these differences, rates of TSL of the three cotton materials responded consistently to variation in environmental conditions; TSL of each fabric increased with stream temperature, dissolved-nutrient concentrations and acid-neutralizing capacity, although Artist's canvas and Calico cloth were more sensitive than Empa fabric. Microbial communities were similar among the materials, and values of community structure (e.g., phylotype richness and diversity) were comparable to those reported for decaying leaves in streams from the same region, the major natural basal carbon resource in forested-stream ecosystems. We present linear calibrations among pairs of assays so that past and future studies can be expressed in a "common currency" (e.g., Artist's-fabric equivalents) 'past and future studies' repeated two times in the sentence. Lastly, given its relatively low within-site variability, and the large number of streams where it has been used ( > 700 across the globe), we recommend Artist's fabric for future work. These results show that cotton provides an effective and realistic standardized substrate for studying heterotrophic microbial assemblages, and acts as a reasonable proxy for more chemically complex forms of detritus. These findings add to growing evidence that cotton-strip bioassays are simple, effective and easily standardized indicators of heterotrophic microbial activity and the ecosystem processes that result.
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| 24. |
- Callaghan, C. T., et al.
(författare)
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Validation of a globally-applicable method to measure urban tolerance of birds using citizen science data
- 2021
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Ingår i: Ecological Indicators. - : Elsevier BV. - 1470-160X. ; 120
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Understanding species-specific responses to urbanization is essential to mitigate and preserve biodiversity in the face of increasing urbanization, but a major challenge is how to estimate urban tolerances for a wide array of species applicable over disparate regions. A promising approach is to assess urban tolerance by integrating georeferenced information on species detections from citizen science data with estimations of urbanization intensity based on remotely-sensed night-time lights. While such citizen science urbanness scores (CSUS) are cost-effective, intuitive, and easily-repeatable anywhere in the world, whether the scores accurately describe urban tolerance still awaits empirical verification. By analysing > 900 bird species worldwide, we find that CSUS cor relates well with a standard measure of urban tolerance based on changes in abundance between urbanized and non-urbanized nearby habitats. Our analyses show that there is substantial variability in the relationship between these two metrics, but nevertheless highlights the potential for the CSUS approach in the future. Future improvements to the index, including incorporating rare species, and understanding the influence of intraspecific variability in response to urbanization, will be necessary to maximize the broad utility of the approach.
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| 25. |
- Carlson, Peter, et al.
(författare)
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Assessing acidity impacts in Nordic lakes and streams: Development of a macroinvertebrate-based multimetric index to quantify degradation and recovery
- 2023
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Ingår i: Ecological Indicators. - 1470-160X .- 1872-7034. ; 155
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- 1) Emissions of acidifying compounds have decreased over several decades, nevertheless acidification impacts on aquatic ecosystems remains as a regionally important environmental driver resulting in biodiversity loss and impaired function in many lakes and streams. 2) Many metrics based on macroinvertebrates are currently used to assess the biological impacts of acidification. However, few include measures of community composition, abundance, diversity, and the presence/absence of tolerant/sensitive taxa, and fewer still are calibrated simultaneously for both lentic and lotic waters and across large geographic regions. 3) Data on water chemistry and benthic macroinvertebrates was extracted from a database compiled by representatives from Norway, Sweden and Finland. Using lake-and stream data on water chemistry and macroinvertebrates from Norway and Sweden, we developed a Nordic macroinvertebrate-based multimetric index (MMI) for acidity (NAMI) to assess impacts of and recovery from acidity using information on measures of community structure and traits. 4) Lake and stream datasets were explored together and independently for correlation between measures of community structure and traits to acid neutralizing capacity (ANC), modified ANC regarding 1/3 of the organic acids as strong (ANCo1) and pH. Significantly correlated candidate metrics with highest correlations were chosen using forward stepwise linear regression models against ANC, ANCo1 and pH. Results showed that the combined lake and stream MMI had the highest correlation (r-squared) with ANCo1. 5) Seven metrics were included in NAMI: one measure of composition (sum of the combined relative abundance of Gastropoda, Bivalvia and Crustacea), two measures of diversity (the number of Ephemeroptera taxa excluding leptophlebiids and the number of Bivalvia taxa), one effect trait (taxa with life cycle duration > 1 year), two response traits (taxa with resistance forms: eggs and plastron respiration) and one tolerance trait (preference > 5 pH < 5.5). 6) The NAMI is a promising metric to standardize lake and stream macroinvertebrate assessments of acidity impacts and recovery across the Nordic countries, and to harmonize chemical and biological classifications of water quality, including progress towards achieving international objectives.
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