2,836 research outputs found
A literature review of connectedness to nature and its potential for environmental management
Understanding how people's relationships with nature form, how they influence personal values and
attitudes, and what behavioural implications they may have could provide more insight into how
connectedness to nature (CNT) can effectively contribute to environmental management goals. This
paper undertakes a review of literature published over the past decade (2002e2011) on SCOPUS; and
describes the current state of knowledge regarding CNT, assesses any efforts towards the spatial mapping
of CNT for environmental management, and identifies measures of CNT defined in the broader literature.
This review suggests that there is quite some overlap in the literature on CNT concepts, and that more
effort needs to be made towards multi-disciplinary research which explores how CNT can be useful to
environmental planning and conservation research on the field. It also further corroborates the need and
relevance of applying more social and affective strategies to promote conservation behaviour. The main
progress in CNT theory seems to have been made in the development of measurement tools, and it is
clear that there is a strong convergent validity amongst the different measures due to their similarity, and
functional associations. Further efforts towards the exploration of multi-dimensional measures is recommended
since they consistently stand out as showing better results. The geographic visualisation of
CNT constructs is another area of research that deserves attention since it can provide a unique point of
view towards guiding participatory protected area planning and management.peer-reviewe
From Models to Simulations
This book analyses the impact computerization has had on contemporary science and explains the origins, technical nature and epistemological consequences of the current decisive interplay between technology and science: an intertwining of formalism, computation, data acquisition, data and visualization and how these factors have led to the spread of simulation models since the 1950s.
Using historical, comparative and interpretative case studies from a range of disciplines, with a particular emphasis on the case of plant studies, the author shows how and why computers, data treatment devices and programming languages have occasioned a gradual but irresistible and massive shift from mathematical models to computer simulations
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Reserve Size And Fragmentation Alter Community Assembly, Diversity, And Dynamics
Researchers have disputed whether a single large habitat reserve will support more species than many small reserves. However, relatively little is known from a theoretical perspective about how reserve size affects competitive communities structured by spatial abiotic gradients. We investigate how reserve size affects theoretical communities whose assembly is governed by dispersal limitation, abiotic niche differentiation, and source-sink dynamics. Simulations were conducted with varying scales of dispersal across landscapes with variable environmental spatial autocorrelation. Landscapes were inhabited by simulated trees with seedling and adult stages. For a fixed total area in reserves, we found that small reserve systems increased the distance between environments dominated by different species, diminishing the effects of source-sink dynamics. As reserve size decreased, environmental limitations to community assembly became stronger, species richness decreased, and richness increased. When dispersal occurred across short distances, a large reserve strategy caused greater stochastic community variation, greater richness, and lower richness than in small reserve systems. We found that reserve size variation trades off between preserving different aspects of natural communities, including diversity versus diversity. Optimal reserve size will depend on the importance of source-sink dynamics and the value placed on different characteristics of natural communities. Anthropogenic changes to the size and separation of remnant habitats can have far-reaching effects on community structure and assembly.Integrative Biolog
Bricklayer: An Authentic Introduction to the Functional Programming Language SML
Functional programming languages are seen by many as instrumental to
effectively utilizing the computational power of multi-core platforms. As a
result, there is growing interest to introduce functional programming and
functional thinking as early as possible within the computer science
curriculum. Bricklayer is an API, written in SML, that provides a set of
abstractions for creating LEGO artifacts which can be viewed using LEGO Digital
Designer. The goal of Bricklayer is to create a problem space (i.e., a set of
LEGO artifacts) that is accessible and engaging to programmers (especially
novice programmers) while providing an authentic introduction to the functional
programming language SML.Comment: In Proceedings TFPIE 2014, arXiv:1412.473
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