Rehabilitation of degraded dryland ecosystems – review

Land degradation is widespread and a serious threat affecting the livelihoods of 1.5 billion people worldwide of which one sixth or 250 million people reside in drylands. Globally, it is estimated that 10–20% of drylands are already degraded and about 12 million ha are degraded each year. Driven by unsustainable land use practices, adverse climatic conditions and population increase, land degradation has led to decline in provision of ecosystem services, food insecurity, social and political instability and reduction in the ecosystem’s resilience to natural climate variability. Several global initiatives have been launched to combat land degradation, including rehabilitation of degraded drylands. This review aimed at collating the current state-of-knowledge about rehabilitation of degraded drylands. It was found that the prospect of restoring degraded drylands is technically promising using a suite of passive (e.g. area exclosure, assisted natural regeneration, rotational grazing) and active (e.g. mixed-species planting, framework species, maximum diversity, and use of nurse tree) rehabilitation measures. Advances in soil reclamation using biological, chemical and physical measures have been made. Despite technical advances, the scale of rehabilitation intervention is small and lacks holistic approach. Development of process based models that forecast outcomes of the various rehabilitation activities will be useful tools for researchers and practitioners. The concept of forest landscape restoration approach, which operates at landscape-level, could also be adopted as the overarching framework for rehabilitation of degraded dryland ecosystems. The review identified a data gap in cost-benefit analysis of rehabilitation interventions. However, the cost of rehabilitation and sustainable management of drylands is opined to be lower than the losses that accrue from inaction, depending on the degree of degradation. Thus, local communities’ participation, incorporation of traditional ecological knowledge, clear division of tasks and benefits, strengthening local institutions are crucial not only for cost-sharing, but also for the long-term success of rehabilitation activities.Peer reviewe

Juventud entre la ruralidad y la rurbanidad. San Isidro Libertador y su proceso de transformación física-cultural

Como objetivo central se planteó el analizar el cambio en la cultura de los jóvenes que habitan el contexto en rurbanización de la comarca San Isidro Libertador, ubicada en el distrito III del municipio de Managua. Se emplearon métodos cuantitativos y cualitativos, para la recopilación e interpretación de los datos. Como la Etnografía, la estadística descriptiva y la etnohistoria, levantando entrevistas y encuestas a 20 jóvenes y adultos de la comarca, durante el periodo de 2015 a 2016 para obtener datos demográficos y conocer la percepción de los jóvenes sobre el modo de vida rural. Como principal resultado se obtuvo que la percepción de los jóvenes ha sufrido cambios, que pueden ser interpretados como una consecuencia de la expansión urbana de la ciudad de Managua hacia la comarca, alterando el paisaje y composición de la comarca ya que se trata de un proceso de rurbanización. A pesar de los cambios ocasionados por la rurbanización existen sectores dentro de la comarca que resisten a estos cambios, fortaleciendo sus identidades territoriales. Esto tiene un efecto sobre los jóvenes, puesto que conviven con estos sectores y conocimientos sobre los modos de vida rural tradicionales de la comarca

Preliminary study for the measurement of the Lense-Thirring effect with the Galileo satellites

The precession of the orbital node of a particle orbiting a rotating mass is known as Lense-Thirring effect (LTE) and is a manifestation of the general relativistic phenomenon of dragging of inertial frames or frame-dragging. The LTE has already been measured by using the node drifts of the LAGEOS satellites and GRACE-based Earth gravity field models with an accuracy of about 10% and will be improved down to a few percent with the recent LARES experiment. The Galileo system will provide 27 new node observables for the LTE estimation and their combination with the LAGEOS and LARES satellites can potentially reduce even more the error due to the mismodeling in Earth's gravity field. However, the accurate determination of the Galileo orbits requires the estimation of many different parameters, which can absorb the LTE on the orbital nodes. Moreover, the accuracy of the Galileo orbits and hence, of their node drifts, is mainly limited by the mismodeling in the Solar Radiation Pressure (SRP). Using simulated data we analyze the effects of the mismodeling in the SRP on the Galileo nodes and propose optimal orbit parameterizations for the measurement of the LTE from the future Galileo observations

SilvAdapt.Net: A Site-Based Network of Adaptive Forest Management Related to Climate Change in Spain

Adaptive forest management (AFM) is an urgent need because of the uncertainty regarding how changes in the climate will affect the structure, composition and function of forests during the next decades. Current research initiatives for the long-term monitoring of impacts of silviculture are scattered and not integrated into research networks, with the consequent losses of opportunities and capacity for action. To increase the scientific and practical impacts of these experiences, it is necessary to establish logical frameworks that harmonize the information and help us to define the most appropriate treatments. In this context, a number of research groups in Spain have produced research achievements and know-how during the last decades that can allow for the improvement in AFM. These groups address the issue of AFM from different fields, such as ecophysiology, ecohydrology and forest ecology, thus resulting in valuable but dispersed expertise. The main objective of this work is to introduce a comprehensive strategy aimed to study the implementation of AFM in Spain. As a first step, a network of 34 experimental sites managed by 14 different research groups is proposed and justified. As a second step, the most important AFM impacts on Mediterranean pines, as one of the most extended natural and planted forest types in Spain, are presented. Finally, open questions dealing with key aspects when attempting to implement an AFM framework are discussed. This study is expected to contribute to better outlining the procedures and steps needed to implement regional frameworks for AFMA.J. Molina is beneficiary of an “APOSTD” fellowship (APOSTD/2019/111) funded by the Generalitat Valenciana. M. Moreno-de las Heras is beneficiary of a Serra Hunter fellowship (UB-LE-9055) funded by the Generalitat de Catalunya. F.J. Ruiz-Gómez is supported by a postdoctoral fellowship of the Junta de Andalucía (Sevilla, Spain), and the European Social Fund 2014–2020 Program (DOC_0055). The authors received national and international funding through the following projects: SILVADAPT.NET (RED2018-102719-T), ESPECTRAMED (CGL2017-86161-R), Life-FOREST CO2 (LIFE14 CCM/ES/001271), ALTERACLIM (CGL2015-69773-C2-1-P), INERTIA (PID2019-111332RB-C22-BDV), CEHYRFO-MED (CGL2017-86839-C3-2-R), DEHESACLIM (IB16185), RESILIENTFORESTS (LIFE17 CCA/ES/000063), Rhysotto (PID2019-106583RB-I00), AGL2017-83828- C2-2-R, RTI2018-096884-B-C31, ESPAS (CGL2015-65569-R), and caRRRascal (RTI2018-095037-B-I00) : We thank the financial support from the “Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación -Redes de Investigación 2018, Programa Estatal de Generación de Conocimiento y Fortalecimiento Científico y Tecnológico del Sistema de I + D + I

Características de los hospitales españoles

The aim of this article is to show the current situation of Spanish hospitals, as the result of research into both the public and private sector. The National Health System budget in 2002 was of over 28,000 million Euros. The bulk of the budget, over 90%, goes towards patient care and treatment, with specialised care, and specifically hospitals the main destination for funds. Hospitals constitute an important part of the tertiary sector with a series of specific characteristics, unknown to many, that make them different from the other companies in the services sector. The first, and fundamental difference of these enterprises is that their mission is illness prevention and the recovery of lost health.Hospitals, functional dependency, budget, beds, age and workers.

Obfuscation of Malicious Behaviors for Thwarting Masquerade Detection Systems Based on Locality Features

In recent years, dynamic user verification has become one of the basic pillars for insider threat detection. From these threats, the research presented in this paper focuses on masquerader attacks, a category of insiders characterized by being intentionally conducted by persons outside the organization that somehow were able to impersonate legitimate users. Consequently, it is assumed that masqueraders are unaware of the protected environment within the targeted organization, so it is expected that they move in a more erratic manner than legitimate users along the compromised systems. This feature makes them susceptible to being discovered by dynamic user verification methods based on user profiling and anomaly-based intrusion detection. However, these approaches are susceptible to evasion through the imitation of the normal legitimate usage of the protected system (mimicry), which is being widely exploited by intruders. In order to contribute to their understanding, as well as anticipating their evolution, the conducted research focuses on the study of mimicry from the standpoint of an uncharted terrain: the masquerade detection based on analyzing locality traits. With this purpose, the problem is widely stated, and a pair of novel obfuscation methods are introduced: locality-based mimicry by action pruning and locality-based mimicry by noise generation. Their modus operandi, effectiveness, and impact are evaluated by a collection of well-known classifiers typically implemented for masquerade detection. The simplicity and effectiveness demonstrated suggest that they entail attack vectors that should be taken into consideration for the proper hardening of real organizations