Precision restoration: a necessary approach to foster forest recovery in the 21st century

We thank S. Tabik, E. Guirado, and Garnata Drone SL for fruitful debates about the application of remote sensing and artificial intelligence in restoration. E. McKeown looked over the English version of the manuscript. Original drawings were made by J. D. Guerrero. This work was supported by projects RESISTE (P18-RT-1927) from the Consejeria de Economia, Conocimiento, y Universidad from the Junta de Andalucia, and AVA201601.19 (NUTERA-DE I), DETECTOR (A-RNM-256-UGR18), and AVA2019.004 (NUTERA-DE II), cofinanced (80%) by the FEDER Program. F.M.-R. acknowledges the support of the Agreement 4580 between OTRI-UGR and the city council of La Zubia. We thank an anonymous reviewer for helpful comments that improved the manuscript.Forest restoration is currently a primary objective in environmental management policies at a global scale, to the extent that impressive initiatives and commitments have been launched to plant billions of trees. However, resources are limited and the success of any restoration effort should be maximized. Thus, restoration programs should seek to guarantee that what is planted today will become an adult tree in the future, a simple fact that, however, usually receives little attention. Here, we advocate for the need to focus restoration efforts on an individual plant level to increase establishment success while reducing negative side effects by using an approach that we term “precision forest restoration” (PFR). The objective of PFR will be to ensure that planted seedlings or sowed seeds will become adult trees with the appropriate landscape configuration to create functional and self-regulating forest ecosystems while reducing the negative impacts of traditional massive reforestation actions. PFR can take advantage of ecological knowledge together with technologies and methodologies from the landscape scale to the individual- plant scale, and from the more traditional, low-tech approaches to the latest high-tech ones. PFR may be more expensive at the level of individual plants, but will be more cost-effective in the long term if it allows for the creation of resilient forests able to providemultiple ecosystemservices. PFR was not feasible a few years ago due to the high cost and low precision of the available technologies, but it is currently an alternative that might reformulate a wide spectrum of ecosystem restoration activities.Junta de Andalucia P18-RT-1927European Commission AVA201601.19 A-RNM-256-UGR18 AVA2019.004OTRI-UGR 4580city council of La Zubia 458

Glyphosate Resistance of C3 and C4 Weeds under Rising Atmospheric CO2.

The present paper reviews current knowledge on how changes of plant metabolism under elevated CO2 concentrations (e[CO2]) can affect the development of the glyphosate resistance of C3 and C4 weeds. Among the chemical herbicides, glyphosate, which is a non-selective and post-emergence herbicide, is currently the most widely used herbicide in global agriculture. As a consequence, glyphosate resistant weeds, particularly in major field crops, are a widespread problem and are becoming a significant challenge to future global food production. Of particular interest here it is known that the biochemical processes involved in photosynthetic pathways of C3 and C4 plants are different, which may have relevance to their competitive development under changing environmental conditions. It has already been shown that plant anatomical, morphological, and physiological changes under e[CO2] can be different, based on (i) the plant's functional group, (ii) the available soil nutrients, and (iii) the governing water status. In this respect, C3 species are likely to have a major developmental advantage under a CO2 rich atmosphere, by being able to capitalize on the overall stimulatory effect of e[CO2]. For example, many tropical weed grass species fix CO2 from the atmosphere via the C4 photosynthetic pathway, which is a complex anatomical and biochemical variant of the C3 pathway. Thus, based on our current knowledge of CO2 fixing, it would appear obvious that the development of a glyphosate-resistant mechanism would be easier under an e[CO2] in C3 weeds which have a simpler photosynthetic pathway, than for C4 weeds. However, notwithstanding this logical argument, a better understanding of the biochemical, genetic, and molecular measures by which plants develop glyphosate resistance and how e[CO2] affects these measures will be important before attempting to innovate sustainable technology to manage the glyphosate-resistant evolution of weeds under e[CO2]. Such information will be of essential in managing weed control by herbicide use, and to thus ensure an increase in global food production in the event of increased atmospheric [CO2] levels

Annual ryegrass (Lolium rigidum Gaud) competition altered wheat grain quality: A study under elevated atmospheric CO2 levels and drought conditions

Annual ryegrass is one of the most serious, costly weeds of winter cropping systems in Australia. To determine whether its competition-mediated plant defence mechanisms effect on wheat grain quality, wheat (cv. Yitpi) and annual ryegrass were grown under two levels of CO2 (400 ppm; (a[CO2]) vs 700 ppm; (e[CO2]), two levels of water (well-watered vs drought) and two types of competition (wheat only; (W), and wheat × annual ryegrass; (W × R) with four replicates. The competition × [CO2] interaction had a significant effect on wheat grain protein content, where it was increased in W × R under both e[CO2] (+17%) and a[CO2] (+21%). Grain yield, total grain reducing power and phenolic content were significantly affected by [CO2] × drought × competition. In a summary, annual ryegrass competition significantly altered the wheat grain quality under both [CO2] levels (depending on the soil water level), while also decreasing the grain yield. © 2018 Elsevier Lt

Inelastic buckling of tubular section beams

104 σ.Στη μηχανική με τον όρο “λυγισμό”, νοείται αστοχία λόγω απώλειας της ευστάθειας ενός φορέα που υπόκειται μόνο σε αυστηρά κεντρικό αξονικό φορτίο. Η ύπαρξη, ωστόσο, αρχικών ατελειών ή εκκεντρότητας του φορτίου, οδηγεί στην καμπτοθλιπτική καταπόνηση του μέλους. Έτσι, η κατανομή των τάσεων καθ’ ύψος της διατομής δεν είναι ομοιόμορφη, και η τάση στη δυσμενέστερη ίνα του μέλους, που είναι η ακραία θλιβόμενη της μεσαίας διατομής, μπορεί να φτάσει την τιμή της τάσης διαρροής πριν φτάσει η φόρτιση το κρίσιμο φορτίο λυγισμού, οπότε και έχουμε πλαστικό λυγισμό. Το φαινόμενο του πλαστικού λυγισμού εμφανίζεται περισσότερο σε ένα εύρος τιμών της λυγηρότητας των υποστυλωμάτων. Στη συγκεκριμένη εργασία επιλέξαμε διάφορες διατομές κλιμακωτά αυξανόμενης διαμέτρου ,τις οποίες ελέγξαμε στο φαινόμενο του πλαστικού λυγισμού, αφού θεωρήσαμε σε αυτές διάφορες τιμές αρχικών βελών, επί του ισχυρού άξονα. Για να το κάνουμε αυτό, θέσαμε κάποιες παραδοχές και εν συνεχεία προσεγγίσαμε θεωρητικά την εκδήλωση του φαινομένου. Το επόμενο βήμα είναι η σύγκριση των αποτελεσμάτων που προέκυψαν από την προσέγγισή μας, με τις αντίστοιχες κρίσιμες τιμές που προκύπτουν από τον Ευρωπαικό Κανονισμό (EC3) και η επαλήθευση των αποτελεσμάτων από πρόγραμμα Η/Υ με τη μέθοδο των πεπερασμένων στοιχείων (Abaqus). Τέλος, παρουσιάζονται διάφορες καμπύλες για τις υπό μελέτη διατομές, όπου φαίνεται η επίδραση της αλλαγής των γεωμετρικών τους στοιχείων,η ποιότητα χάλυβα,οι αρχικές ατέλειες κτλ,στην εκδήλωση του πλαστικού λυγισμού. Το φαινόμενο του πλαστικού λυγισμού, χαρακτηρίζεται από μικρές τιμές του ποσοστού της διαφοράς ανάμεσα στο κρίσιμο φορτίο (πλαστικό) και του ελαστικού φορτίου (φορτίο πρώτης διαρροής) ως προς το δεύτερο. Οι τιμές αυτές της πλαστικής “υπεραντοχής” εξαρτώνται από τη διατομή και την ποιότητα του χάλυβα, αλλά ακόμη περισσότερο από τη λυγηρότητα του κάθε υποστυλώματος. Επίσης, είδαμε ότι όσο πιο μεγάλη είναι η αρχική ατέλεια (αρχικό βέλος κάμψης), τόσο μικρότερο είναι το κρίσιμο φορτίο και τόσο πιο μεγάλη η τελική παραμόρφωση του υποστυλώματος.In mechanics, the term "buckling" means failure due to loss of stability of a member, that is subject of strictly central axial load. The presence, however, of initial imperfections or load eccecintricity leads to compressive and flexural loading of the member. Thus, the stress distribution on height of the section is not uniform., and the stress of the least favourable fiber of the member, which is the farther fiber under compression at the middle section of the member, can reach the value of the characteristic yield stress of the steel, before the load reaches the critical buckling load, so it appears the effect of inelastic buckling. This effect appears more in a value range of the slenderness of the columns.In this particular thesis we chose various sections of increasing diameter ,which we had them tested on the effect of inelastic buckling, since we considered different values of initial bending displacement, on the strong axis. To do that, we have some assumptions and then we approached theoritically the progress of the effect. The next step is the comparison of the theoritical results of our approach, with the corresponding critical values result-ing by the Eurocodes. (EC3) and the verification of the results with the use of a PC programm with finite elements analysis (Abaqus). Finally, are being presented some curves for the studied sections, where we can see the effects of the geometrical changes,steel quality,initial imperfections etc. at inelastic buckling. The effect of inelastic buckling, characterized by small values of the percentage of the difference between the critical load (inelastic) and the elastic load (first failure) divided by the second. The values of this inelastic “overstrength”, depend on the section and the quality of the steel, but even more on the slenderness of each column. We also noticed, that the bigger the initial imperfection (initial bending displacement), the less the critical load, and the bigger the final displacement of the column.Αντώνιος Χ. Ανουσάκη