Developing an Effective Enforcement System for a Marine Reserve in the Pitcairn Islands

This paper details how monitoring and enforcement of the Pitcairn Island's exclusive economic zone could be effectively undertaken for a relatively low level of expenditure. It is important to note that there is no such thing as perfect enforcement, although, in general, the greater the funds available, the closer to perfection an enforcement system is likely to get. This paper does not attempt to detail how near-to-perfect enforcement might be achieved because establishing such a system would be far too costly to be a realistic policy option. Rather, it outlines the most important steps that could be taken to create a robust enforcement system and reviews some affordable technologies that could be deployed to support it. Creating a marine reserve and deploying these relatively low-cost options would protect Pitcairn Islands' exclusive economic zone far better than it currently is, and far better than the vast majority of oceans worldwide. These actions would distinguish the United Kingdom as a world leader in responsible stewardship of the marine environment

Evaluating detection limits of next-generation sequencing for the surveillance and monitoring of international marine pests

Most surveillance programmes for marine invasive species (MIS) require considerable taxonomic expertise, are laborious, and are unable to identify species at larval or juvenile stages. Therefore, marine pests may go undetected at the initial stages of incursions when population densities are low. In this study, we evaluated the ability of the benchtop GS Junior™ 454 pyrosequencing system to detect the presence of MIS in complex sample matrices. An initial in-silico evaluation of the mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase subunit I (COI) and the nuclear small subunit ribosomal DNA (SSU) genes, found that multiple primer sets (targeting a ca. 400 base pair region) would be required to obtain species level identification within the COI gene. In contrast a single universal primer set was designed to target the V1–V3 region of SSU, allowing simultaneous PCR amplification of a wide taxonomic range of MIS. To evaluate the limits of detection of this method, artificial contrived communities (10 species from 5 taxonomic groups) were created using varying concentrations of known DNA samples and PCR products. Environmental samples (water and sediment) spiked with one or five 160 hr old Asterias amurensis larvae were also examined. Pyrosequencing was able to recover DNA/PCR products of individual species present at greater than 0.64% abundance from all tested contrived communities. Additionally, single A. amurensis larvae were detected from both water and sediment samples despite the co-occurrence of a large array of environmental eukaryotes, indicating an equivalent sensitivity to quantitative PCR. NGS technology has tremendous potential for the early detection of marine invasive species worldwide

Well Performance Tracking in a Mature Waterflood Asset

Imperial Users onl

Space-time Characteristics and Experimental Analysis of Broadening First-order Sea Clutter in HF Hybrid Sky-surface Wave Radar

In high frequency (HF) hybrid sky-surface wave radar, the first-order sea clutter broadening is very complex and serious under the influence of ionosphere and bistatic angle, which affects the detection of ship target. This paper analyzes the space-time characteristics based on the HF sky-surface wave experimental system. We first introduce the basic structure, working principle and position principle based on our experimental system. Also analyzed is the influence of ionosphere and bistatic angle on the space-time coupling characteristics of broadening first-order sea clutter and the performance of space-time adaptive processing (STAP). Finally, the results of theoretic analysis are examined with the experimental data. Simulation results show that the results of experiment consist with that of theoretic analysis

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) in environmental biology: A Review

Acquiring information about the environment is a key step during each study in the field of environmental biology at different levels, from an individual species to community and biome. However, obtaining information about the environment is frequently difficult because of, for example, the phenological timing, spatial distribution of a species or limited accessibility of a particular area for the field survey. Moreover, remote sensing technology, which enables the observation of the Earth’s surface and is currently very common in environmental research, has many limitations such as insufficient spatial, spectral and temporal resolution and a high cost of data acquisition. Since the 1990s, researchers have been exploring the potential of different types of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for monitoring Earth’s surface. The present study reviews recent scientific literature dealing with the use of UAV in environmental biology. Amongst numerous papers, short communications and conference abstracts, we selected 110 original studies of how UAVs can be used in environmental biology and which organisms can be studied in this manner. Most of these studies concerned the use of UAV to measure the vegetation parameters such as crown height, volume, number of individuals (14 studies) and quantification of the spatio-temporal dynamics of vegetation changes (12 studies). UAVs were also frequently applied to count birds and mammals, especially those living in the water. Generally, the analytical part of the present study was divided into following sections: (1) detecting, assessing and predicting threats on vegetation, (2) measuring the biophysical parameters of vegetation, (3) quantifying the dynamics of changes in plants and habitats and (4) population and behaviour studies of animals. At the end, we also synthesised all the information showing, amongst others, the advances in environmental biology because of UAV application. Considering that 33% of studies found and included in this review were published in 2017 and 2018, it is expected that the number and variety of applications of UAVs in environmental biology will increase in the future