Managing Invasive Plants on Great Plains Grasslands: A Discussion of Current Challenges

The Great Plains of North America encompass approximately 1,300,000 km2 of land from Texas to Saskatchewan. The integrity of these lands is under continual assault by long-established and newly-arrived invasive plant species, which can threaten native species and diminish land values and ecological goods and services by degrading desired grassland resources. The Great Plains are a mixture of privately and publicly owned lands, which leads to a patchwork of varying management goals and strategies for controlling invasive plants. Continually updated knowledge is required for efficient and effective management of threats posed by changing environments and invasive plants. Here we discuss current challenges, contemporary management strategies, and management tools and their integration, in hopes of presenting a knowledge resource for new and experienced land managers and others involved in making decisions regarding invasive plant management in the Great Plains

Managing Invasive Plants on Great Plains Grasslands: A Discussion of Current Challenges

The Great Plains of North America encompass approximately 1,300,000 km2 of land from Texas to Saskatchewan. The integrity of these lands is under continual assault by long-established and newly-arrived invasive plant species, which can threaten native species and diminish land values and ecological goods and services by degrading desired grassland resources. The Great Plains are a mixture of privately and publicly owned lands, which leads to a patchwork of varying management goals and strategies for controlling invasive plants. Continually updated knowledge is required for efficient and effective management of threats posed by changing environments and invasive plants. Here we discuss current challenges, contemporary management strategies, and management tools and their integration, in hopes of presenting a knowledge resource for new and experienced land managers and others involved in making decisions regarding invasive plant management in the Great Plains

Field trial of three different Plasmodium vivax-detecting rapid diagnostic tests with and without evaporative cool box storage in Afghanistan

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Accurate parasitological diagnosis of malaria is essential for targeting treatment where more than one species coexist. In this study, three rapid diagnostic tests (RDTs) (AccessBio CareStart (CSPfPan), CareStart PfPv (CSPfPv) and Standard Diagnostics Bioline (SDBPfPv)) were evaluated for their ability to detect natural <it>Plasmodium vivax </it>infections in a basic clinic setting. The potential for locally made evaporative cooling boxes (ECB) to protect the tests from heat damage in high summer temperatures was also investigated.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Venous blood was drawn from <it>P. vivax </it>positive patients in Jalalabad, Afghanistan and tested against a panel of six RDTs. The panel comprised two of each test type; one group was stored at room temperature and the other in an ECB. RDT results were evaluated against a consensus gold standard based on two double-read reference slides and PCR. The sensitivity, specificity and a measure of global performance for each test were determined and stratified by parasitaemia level and storage condition.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>In total, 306 patients were recruited, of which 284 were positive for <it>P. vivax</it>, one for <it>Plasmodium malariae </it>and none for <it>Plasmodium falciparum</it>; 21 were negative. All three RDTs were specific for malaria. The sensitivity and global performance index for each test were as follows: CSPfPan [98.6%, 95.1%], CSPfPv [91.9%, 90.5%] and SDBPfPv [96.5%, 82.9%], respectively. CSPfPv was 16% less sensitive to a parasitaemia below 5,000/μL. Room temperature storage of SDBPfPv led to a high proportion of invalid results (17%), which reduced to 10% in the ECB. Throughout the testing period, the ECB maintained ~8°C reduction over ambient temperatures and never exceeded 30°C.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Of the three RDTs, the CSPfPan test was the most consistent and reliable, rendering it appropriate for this <it>P. vivax </it>predominant region. The CSPfPv test proved unsuitable owing to its reduced sensitivity at a parasitaemia below 5,000/μL (affecting 43% of study samples). Although the SDBPfPv device was more sensitive than the CSPfPv test, its invalid rate was unacceptably high. ECB storage reduced the proportion of invalid results for the SDBPfPv test, but surprisingly had no impact on RDT sensitivity at low parasitaemia.</p

Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Habitat Selection in Female-Calf Humpback Whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) Pairs on the Hawaiian Breeding Grounds

The Au'au Channel between the islands of Maui and Lanai, Hawaii comprises critical breeding habitat for humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) of the Central North Pacific stock. However, like many regions where marine mega-fauna gather, these waters are also the focus of a flourishing local eco-tourism and whale watching industry. Our aim was to establish current trends in habitat preference in female-calf humpback whale pairs within this region, focusing specifically on the busy, eastern portions of the channel. We used an equally-spaced zigzag transect survey design, compiled our results in a GIS model to identify spatial trends and calculated Neu's Indices to quantify levels of habitat use. Our study revealed that while mysticete female-calf pairs on breeding grounds typically favor shallow, inshore waters, female-calf pairs in the Au'au Channel avoided shallow waters (<20 m) and regions within 2 km of the shoreline. Preferred regions for female-calf pairs comprised water depths between 40–60 m, regions of rugged bottom topography and regions that lay between 4 and 6 km from a small boat harbor (Lahaina Harbor) that fell within the study area. In contrast to other humpback whale breeding grounds, there was only minimal evidence of typical patterns of stratification or segregation according to group composition. A review of habitat use by maternal females across Hawaiian waters indicates that maternal habitat choice varies between localities within the Hawaiian Islands, suggesting that maternal females alter their use of habitat according to locally varying pressures. This ability to respond to varying environments may be the key that allows wildlife species to persist in regions where human activity and critical habitat overlap

Origin and significance of decameter-scale polygons in the lower Peace Vallis fan of Gale crater, Mars

Decameter-scale polygons are extensively developed in the Bedded Fractured (BF) Unit of the lower Peace Vallis fan. The polygons occur in a likely extension of the Gillespie Lake Member, north of Yellowknife Bay, the section first drilled by the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission. We examine hypotheses for the origin of these polygons to provide insight into the history of Gale crater. The polygons are ∼4–30 m across, square to rectangular, and defined by ∼0.5–4 m wide, generally straight troughs with orthogonal intersections. Polygon networks are typically oriented-orthogonal systems, with occasional nearly circular patterns, hundreds of meters across. Potential origins include cooling of lava, and for sedimentary units, syneresis, unloading, weathering, desiccation, impact processes, and cold-climate thermal contraction. Cold-climate thermal contraction is the hypothesis most consistent with the sedimentary nature of the BF Unit and the polygon morphology, geometry, networks, and apparent restriction to the coarse-grained Gillespie Lake Member. A periglacial setting further provides the best analogs for the circular networks and is consistent with geologic context and MSL data. Most of the decametric polygons appear to be ancient. They are confined to the Hesperian BF Unit, and only a few of their bounding fractures extend into younger or recently exposed units. In this regard, they differ from the majority of proposed thermal-contraction polygons on Mars, as those are generally thought to be young features, and, accordingly, the history of formation, preservation and reactivation of the decametric polygons is likely to be more complex than that of any proposed young polygons on Mars. The decametric polygons in the BF Unit may represent landforms developed in a cold but still comparatively wet interlude between a clement early Mars and the much drier and colder planet of today.DZO was supported by the Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science (ARES) Division at Johnson Space Center and the NASA Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) Participating Scientist Grant No. 10-MSLPSP10-0094. French authors (NM and LL) were supported by grants from the French National Agency for Space Studies, Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES). BH and RSS were supported by NASA Mars Science Laboratory via Malin Space Science Systems. AGF was supported by the Project “icyMARS”, funded by the European Research Council Starting Grant No. 307,496.Peer reviewe

CHEMISTRY OF MANGANESE-BEARING MATERIALS AT THE GROKEN DRILL SITE, GALE CRATER, MARS

International audienceIn July 2020, the Curiosity rover encountered a region of bedrock that contained an abundance of layered nodular features and highly unusual Mn- and sometimes P-rich chemistries (Fig.1a) in Glen Torridon (GT), a phyllosilicate-rich mudstone to sandstone deposit [1]. This sampling location was originally targeted at a distance as a site for the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument to perform one of its two tetramethylammonium hydroxide (TMAH) wet chemistry experiments [2] in the hopes that the new location would provide similar rocks to the previously analyzed clay-rich Glen Etive targets at approximately the same elevation [3]