Dynamic Community Detection into Analyzing of Wildfires Events

The study and comprehension of complex systems are crucial intellectual and scientific challenges of the 21st century. In this scenario, network science has emerged as a mathematical tool to support the study of such systems. Examples include environmental processes such as wildfires, which are known for their considerable impact on human life. However, there is a considerable lack of studies of wildfire from a network science perspective. Here, employing the chronological network concept -- a temporal network where nodes are linked if two consecutive events occur between them -- we investigate the information that dynamic community structures reveal about the wildfires' dynamics. Particularly, we explore a two-phase dynamic community detection approach, i.e., we applied the Louvain algorithm on a series of snapshots. Then we used the Jaccard similarity coefficient to match communities across adjacent snapshots. Experiments with the MODIS dataset of fire events in the Amazon basing were conducted. Our results show that the dynamic communities can reveal wildfire patterns observed throughout the year.Comment: 16 pages, 8 figure

Reviewing the use of resilience concepts in forest sciences

Purpose of the review Resilience is a key concept to deal with an uncertain future in forestry. In recent years, it has received increasing attention from both research and practice. However, a common understanding of what resilience means in a forestry context, and how to operationalise it is lacking. Here, we conducted a systematic review of the recent forest science literature on resilience in the forestry context, synthesising how resilience is defined and assessed. Recent findings Based on a detailed review of 255 studies, we analysed how the concepts of engineering resilience, ecological resilience, and social-ecological resilience are used in forest sciences. A clear majority of the studies applied the concept of engineering resilience, quantifying resilience as the recovery time after a disturbance. The two most used indicators for engineering resilience were basal area increment and vegetation cover, whereas ecological resilience studies frequently focus on vegetation cover and tree density. In contrast, important social-ecological resilience indicators used in the literature are socio-economic diversity and stock of natural resources. In the context of global change, we expected an increase in studies adopting the more holistic social-ecological resilience concept, but this was not the observed trend. Summary Our analysis points to the nestedness of these three resilience concepts, suggesting that they are complementary rather than contradictory. It also means that the variety of resilience approaches does not need to be an obstacle for operationalisation of the concept. We provide guidance for choosing the most suitable resilience concept and indicators based on the management, disturbance and application context

Forest-rainfall cascades buffer against drought across the Amazon

Tree transpiration in the Amazon may enhance rainfall for downwind forests. Until now it has been unclear how this cascading effect plays out across the basin. Here, we calculate local forest transpiration and the subsequent trajectories of transpired water through the atmosphere in high spatial and temporal detail. We estimate that one-third of Amazon rainfall originates within its own basin, of which two-thirds has been transpired. Forests in the southern half of the basin contribute most to the stability of other forests in this way, whereas forests in the south-western Amazon are particularly dependent on transpired-water subsidies. These forest-rainfall cascades buffer the effects of drought and reveal a mechanism by which deforestation can compromise the resilience of the Amazon forest system in the face of future climatic extremes.</p

Family Structure and the Nature of Couple Relationships: Relationship Distress, Separation, Divorce, and Repartnering

The goal of this chapter is to review the current state of theoretical and empirical knowledge on the quality of the couple relationship and the family structure as determinants of parenting behavior. Ample evidence has accumulated over the past few decades that the functioning of the interparental relationship is pivotal for positive and supportive parenting. Supporting the spillover theory, relationship distress among parenting couples may increase child maladjustment, both directly and indirectly, by disrupted child-rearing and less optimal coparenting. In separated or divorced families, coparenting is a key concept to explain why some couples succeed in compartmentalizing their parenting from their spousal role. As such, cooperative coparenting has been firmly established as a central protective factor buffering the impact of parental separation on children. Based on the reviewed data among stepfamilies, it can be tentatively concluded that a cohabiting stepparent may become a significant new caregiver for the child, but only on condition of good stepparent–child relationship quality, which has emerged as crucially important for children’s adjustment in the new family environment. This chapter posits that the interparental relationship can be regarded as the key relation which is responsible for family functioning across different family types (nuclear, divorced, and stepfamilies). As a practical implication, it might, therefore, be wise to strengthen this core relationship as a potential leverage point to positively affect parents’ individual parenting and their joint coparental alliance

Self-amplified Amazon forest loss due to vegetation-atmosphere feedbacks

Reduced rainfall increases the risk of forest dieback, while in return forest loss might intensify regional droughts. The consequences of this vegetation–atmosphere feedback for the stability of the Amazon forest are still unclear. Here we show that the risk of self-amplified Amazon forest loss increases nonlinearly with dry-season intensification. We apply a novel complexnetwork approach, in which Amazon forest patches are linked by observation-based atmospheric water fluxes. Our results suggest that the risk of self-amplified forest loss is reduced with increasing heterogeneity in the response of forest patches to reduced rainfall. Under dry-season Amazonian rainfall reductions, comparable to Last Glacial Maximum conditions, additional forest loss due to self-amplified effects occurs in 10–13% of the Amazon basin. Although our findings do not indicate that the projected rainfall changes for the end of the twenty-first century will lead to complete Amazon dieback, they suggest that frequent extreme drought events have the potential to destabilize large parts of the Amazon forest.peerReviewe