Using social media to measure the contribution of Red List species to the nature-based tourism potential of African protected areas

Cultural ecosystem services are defined by people’s perception of the environment, which make them hard to quantify systematically. Methods to describe cultural benefits from ecosystems typically include resource-demanding survey techniques, which are not suitable to assess cultural ecosystem services for large areas. In this paper we explore a method to quantify cultural benefits through the enjoyment of natured-based tourism, by assessing the potential tourism attractiveness of species for each protected area in Africa using the IUCN’s Red List of Threatened Species. We use the number of pictures of wildlife posted on a photo sharing website as a proxy for charisma, popularity, and ease of observation, as these factors combined are assumed to determine how attractive species are for the global wildlife tourist. Based on photo counts of 2473 African animals and plants, species that seem most attractive to nature-based tourism are the Lion, African Elephant and Leopard. Combining the photo counts with species range data, African protected areas with the highest potential to attract wildlife tourists based on attractive species occurrence were Samburu National Reserve in Kenya, Mukogodo Forest Reserve located just north of Mount Kenya, and Addo Elephant National Park in South-Africa. The proposed method requires only three data sources which are freely accessible and available online, which could make the proposed index tractable for large scale quantitative ecosystem service assessments. The index directly links species presence to the tourism potential of protected areas, making the connection between nature and human benefits explicit, but excludes other important contributing factors for tourism, such as accessibility and safety. This social media based index provides a broad understanding of those species that are popular globally; in many cases these are not the species of highest conservation concern.JRC.H.5-Land Resources Managemen

Indicators of biodiversity in agroecosystems: insights from Article 17 of the Habitat Directive and IUCN Red List of Threatened Species

In the current decade, the main goals for biodiversity conservation and environmental protection at the level of the European Union are set in the EU Biodiversity Strategy to 2020: halting biodiversity loss and restoring ecosystem services. A key requirement for the implementation of the Strategy in terms of targeting measures and funds, and monitoring trends is the construction of a biodiversity knowledge base, including spatially explicit information on biodiversity distribution and ecosystem condition. The work presented in this report is based on the analysis of two primary datasets on biodiversity and habitat status. The first one is the Habitats assessment carried out by EU Members States under Art.17 of the Habitats and Birds Directive. Information reported by Member States is analysed to derive the links between pressures and conservation status, showing that agriculture-related habitats have, on average, a worse conservation status when compared to other habitats. Consequently, threats and pressures having most influenced the status of the agricultural-related habitats can be identified. The second one is the global dataset on species threat status elaborated by The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Spatially explicit representations of species distribution, status and richness across the EU 28 are provided, and most importantly the identification of wide geographic variables linked to ecological theory is presented, that explain to a large extent the continental trend in species richness. Finally, an example is presented of how the two exploited datasets can be jointly used by cross-tabulating data on habitats assessments and species threat status in a spatially explicit way at 10 km resolution, aiming at identifying hotspots were policy intervention is needed

The Digital Observatory for Protected Areas (DOPA) Explorer 1.0

The Digital Observatory for Protected Areas (DOPA) has been developed to support the European Union’s efforts in strengthening our capacity to mobilize and use biodiversity data, information and forecasts so that they are readily accessible to policymakers, managers, experts and other users. Conceived as a set of web based services, DOPA provides a broad set of free and open source tools to assess, monitor and even forecast the state of and pressure on protected areas at local, regional and global scale. DOPA Explorer 1.0 is a web based interface available in four languages (EN, FR, ES, PT) providing simple means to explore the nearly 16,000 protected areas that are at least as large as 100 km2. Distinguishing between terrestrial, marine and mixed protected areas, DOPA Explorer 1.0 can help end users to identify those with most unique ecosystems and species, and assess the pressures they are exposed to because of human development. Recognized by the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) as a reference information system, DOPA Explorer is based on the best global data sets available and provides means to rank protected areas at the country and ecoregion levels. Inversely, DOPA Explorer indirectly highlights the protected areas for which information is incomplete. We finally invite the end-users of DOPA to engage with us through the proposed communication platforms to help improve our work to support the safeguarding of biodiversity

The Digital Observatory for Protected Areas (DOPA) Explorer 1.0

The Digital Observatory for Protected Areas (DOPA) has been developed to support the European Union’s efforts in strengthening our capacity to mobilize and use biodiversity data, information and forecasts so that they are readily accessible to policymakers, managers, experts and other users. Conceived as a set of web based services, DOPA provides a broad set of free and open source tools to assess, monitor and even forecast the state of and pressure on protected areas at local, regional and global scale. DOPA Explorer 1.0 is a web based interface available in four languages (EN, FR, ES, PT) providing simple means to explore the nearly 16,000 protected areas that are at least as large as 100 km2. Distinguishing between terrestrial, marine and mixed protected areas, DOPA Explorer 1.0 can help end users to identify those with most unique ecosystems and species, and assess the pressures they are exposed to because of human development. Recognized by the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) as a reference information system, DOPA Explorer is based on the best global data sets available and provides means to rank protected areas at the country and ecoregion levels. Inversely, DOPA Explorer indirectly highlights the protected areas for which information is incomplete. We finally invite the end-users of DOPA to engage with us through the proposed communication platforms to help improve our work to support the safeguarding of biodiversity.JRC.H.5-Land Resources Managemen

Atlas of Global Surface Water Dynamics

It is impossible to overstate the importance of freshwater in our daily lives – for proof, try going without it for any length of time. Surface waterbodies (lakes, ponds, rivers, creeks, estuaries… it doesn't matter what name they go under) are particularly important because they come into direct contact with us and our biophysical environment. But our knowledge concerning where and when waterbodies might be found was, until recently, surprisingly sparse. The paucity of information was because trying to map a moving target is actually very difficult – and waterbodies undeniably move, in both geographical space and time. By 2013 the U.S. Geological Survey and NASA were making petabyte scale archives of satellite imagery freely available, archives that covered the entire planet's surface and stretched back decades. Other's such as the European Commission / European Space Agency Copernicus programme were also putting full free and open data access policies into place, and Google's Earth Engine had become a mature, powerful cloud-based platform for processing very large geospatial datasets. Back in 2013 a small team working at the European Commission's Joint Research Centre were looking at ways satellite imagery could be used to capture surface waterbody dynamics, and create new maps that accurately incorporated time dimensions. Concurrently the Google Earth Engine team were focussing their massive computational capabilities on major issues facing humanity, such as deforestation, food security, climate change - and water management. The two teams came together in a partnership based not on financial transactions but on a mutual exchange of complementary capabilities, and devoted thousands of person hours and thousands of CPU years into turning petabytes of Landsat satellite imagery into unique, validated surface water maps, first published in 2016, and made available to everyone through a dedicated web portal, the Global Surface Water Explorer. Since then satellites have continued to image the Earth, surface water has continued to change and the JRC Goole Earth Engine partnership has continued to work on improving our knowledge of surface water dynamics and making sure this knowledge benefits as many people as possible. This Atlas is part of the outreach; it is not a guide to the Global Surface Water Explorer, it is not a Google Earth Engine tutorial (though if it inspires you to visit either of these resources then it has achieved one of its objectives), but it is a stand-alone window into how people and nature affect, and are affected by the 4.46 million km2 of the Earth's landmass that have been under water at some time over the past 35 years.JRC.D.5-Food Securit

Fluorescent IGF-II analogues for FRET-based investigations into the binding of IGF-II to the IGF-1R

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licence. Material from this article can be used in other publications provided that the correct acknowledgement is given with the reproduced material.The interaction of IGF-II with the insulin receptor (IR) and type 1 insulin-like growth factor receptor (IGF-1R) has recently been identified as potential therapeutic target for the treatment of cancer. Understanding the interactions of IGF-II with these receptors is required for the development of potential anticancer therapeutics. This work describes an efficient convergent synthesis of native IGF-II and two nonnative IGF-II analogues with coumarin fluorescent probes incorporated at residues 19 and 28. These fluorescent analogues bind with nanomolar affinities to the IGF-1R and are suitable for use in fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) studies. From these studies the F19Cou IGF-II and F28Cou IGF-II proteins were identified as good probes for investigating the binding interactions of IGF-II with the IGF-1R and its other high affinity binding partners

Integrating multiple spatial datasets to assess protected areas:lessons learnt from the Digital Observatory for Protected Areas (DOPA)

The Digital Observatory for Protected Areas (DOPA) has been developed to support the European Union’s efforts in strengthening our capacity to mobilize and use biodiversity data so that they are readily accessible to policymakers, managers, researchers and other users. Assessing protected areas for biodiversity conservation at national, regional and international scales implies that methods and tools are in place to evaluate characteristics such as the protected areas’ connectivity, their species assemblages (including the presence of threatened species), the uniqueness of their ecosystems, and the threats these areas are exposed to. Typical requirements for such analyses are data on protected areas, information on species distributions and threat status, and information on ecosystem distributions. By integrating all these global data consistently in metrics and indicators, the DOPA provides the means to allow end-users to evaluate protected areas individually but also to compare protected areas at the country and ecoregion level to, for example, identify potential priorities for further conservation research, action and funding. Since the metrics and indicators are available through web services, the DOPA further allows end-users to develop their own applications without requiring management of large databases and processing capacities. In addition to examples illustrating how the DOPA can be used as an aid to decision making, we discuss the lessons learnt in the development of this global biodiversity information system, and outline planned future developments for further supporting conservation strategie

Constraining the Radii of Neutron Stars with Terrestrial Nuclear Laboratory Data

Neutron star radii are primarily determined by the pressure of isospin asymmetric matter which is proportional to the slope of the nuclear symmetry energy. Available terrestrial laboratory data on the isospin diffusion in heavy-ion reactions at intermediate energies constrain the slope of the symmetry energy. Using this constraint, we show that the radius (radiation radius) of a 1.4 solar mass neutron star is between 11.5 (14.4) and 13.6 (16.3) km.Comment: 11 pages, 3 figures; version to be published in Phys. Lett.

An introduction to the Digital Observatory for Protected Areas (DOPA) and the DOPA Explorer (Beta)

The Digital Observatory for Protected Areas (DOPA) is conceived around a set of interacting Critical Biodiversity Informatics Infrastructures (databases, web modelling services, broadcasting services, ...) hosted at different institutions, including the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission, the World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC), the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) and BirdLife International. The current services of DOPA provide to a large variety of end-users, ranging from park managers, funding agencies to researchers, with means to assess, monitor and possibly forecast the state and pressure of protected areas at the local, national and global scales. With an introduction to the DOPA, the readers will find here a user manual of the beta version of DOPA Explorer, a first web based assessment tool where information on 9 000 protected areas covering almost 90% of the global protected surface has been processed automatically to generate a set of indicators on ecosystems, climate, phenology, species, ecosystem services and pressures. DOPA Explorer can so help identify the protected areas with most unique ecosystems and species and assess the pressures they are exposed to because of human development. Ecological data derived from and near real-time earth observations are also made available for the African continent. Inversely, DOPA Explorer indirectly highlights the protected areas for which the information is incomplete.JRC.H.5-Land Resources Managemen