2,533 research outputs found
Nesting Success and Mortality of Nestlings in a Coastal Alabama Heron - Egret Colony, 1976
A heronry at Cat Island, Alabama was surveyed throughout the 1976 breeding season to determine colony structure and survivability of young Ardeidae during varying weather conditions. A total of 155 nests were tagged and the clutch of each monitored until the nestlings abandoned the nests. Offspring of herons nesting during unfavorable weather conditions of late Spring suffered significantly higher mortality than birds nesting in mid-summer. Species nesting on Cat Island include the Louisiana Heron, Snowy Egret, Great Egret, Cattle Egret, Little Blue Heron, Green Heron, and Glossy Ibis
The size, concentration, and growth of biodiversity-conservation nonprofits
Nonprofit organizations play a critical role in efforts to conserve biodiversity. Their success in this regard will be determined in part by how effectively individual nonprofits and the sector as a whole are structured. One of the most fundamental questions about an organizationâs structure is how large it should be, with the logical counterpart being how concentrated the whole sector should be. We review empirical patterns in the size, concentration, and growth of over 1700 biodiversity-conservation nonprofits registered for tax purposes in the United States within the context of relevant economic theory. Conservation-nonprofit sizes vary by six to seven orders of magnitude and are positively skewed. Larger nonprofits access more revenue streams and hold more of their assets in land and buildings than smaller or midsized nonprofits do. The size of conservation nonprofits varies with the ecological focus of the organization, but the growth rates of nonprofits do not
Simple compactifications and Black p-branes in Gauss-Bonnet and Lovelock Theories
We look for the existence of asymptotically flat simple compactifications of
the form in -dimensional gravity theories with higher
powers of the curvature. Assuming the manifold to be spherically
symmetric, it is shown that the Einstein-Gauss-Bonnet theory admits this class
of solutions only for the pure Einstein-Hilbert or Gauss-Bonnet Lagrangians,
but not for an arbitrary linear combination of them. Once these special cases
have been selected, the requirement of spherical symmetry is no longer relevant
since actually any solution of the pure Einstein or pure Gauss-Bonnet theories
can then be toroidally extended to higher dimensions. Depending on and the
spacetime dimension, the metric on may describe a black hole or a
spacetime with a conical singularity, so that the whole spacetime describes a
black or a cosmic -brane, respectively. For the purely Gauss-Bonnet theory
it is shown that, if is four-dimensional, a new exotic class of black
hole solutions exists, for which spherical symmetry can be relaxed.
Under the same assumptions, it is also shown that simple compactifications
acquire a similar structure for a wide class of theories among the Lovelock
family which accepts this toroidal extension.
The thermodynamics of black -branes is also discussed, and it is shown
that a thermodynamical analogue of the Gregory-Laflamme transition always
occurs regardless the spacetime dimension or the theory considered, hence not
only for General Relativity.
Relaxing the asymptotically flat behavior, it is also shown that exact black
brane solutions exist within a very special class of Lovelock theories.Comment: 30 pages, no figures, few typos fixed, references added, final
version for JHE
Land cover classification using multi-temporal MERIS vegetation indices
The spectral, spatial, and temporal resolutions of Envisat's Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS) data are attractive for regional- to global-scale land cover mapping. Moreover, two novel and operational vegetation indices derived from MERIS data have considerable potential as discriminating variables in land cover classification. Here, the potential of these two vegetation indices (the MERIS global vegetation index (MGVI), MERIS terrestrial chlorophyll index (MTCI)) was evaluated for mapping eleven broad land cover classes in Wisconsin. Data acquired in the high and low chlorophyll seasons were used to increase inter-class separability. The two vegetation indices provided a higher degree of inter-class separability than data acquired in many of the individual MERIS spectral wavebands. The most accurate landcover map (73.2%) was derived from a classification of vegetation index-derived data with a support vector machine (SVM), and was more accurate than the corresponding map derived from a classification using the data acquired in the original spectral wavebands
SN 2016jhj at redshift 0.34: extending the Type II supernova Hubble diagram using the standard candle method
Although Type Ia supernova cosmology has now reached a mature state, it is important to develop as many independent methods as possible to understand the true nature of dark energy. Recent studies have shown that Type II supernovae (SNe II) offer such a path and could be used as alternative distance indicators. However, the majority of these studies were unable to extend the Hubble diagram above redshift z = 0.3 because of observational limitations. Here, we show that we are now ready to move beyond low redshifts and attempt high-redshift (z âł 0.3) SN II cosmology as a result of new-generation deep surveys such as the Subaru/Hyper Suprime-Cam survey. Applying the ÂŽstandard candle methodÂŽ to SN 2016jhj (z = 0.3398 ± 0.0002; discovered by HSC) together with a low-redshift sample, we are able to construct the highest-redshift SN II Hubble diagram to date with an observed dispersion of 0.27 mag (i.e. 12-13 per cent in distance). This work demonstrates the bright future of SN II cosmology in the coming era of large, wide-field surveys like that of the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope.Fil: de Jaeger, T.. University of California at Berkeley; Estados UnidosFil: Galbany, L.. University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown; Estados UnidosFil: Filippenko, A. V.. University of California at Berkeley; Estados UnidosFil: GonzĂĄlez GaitĂĄn, S.. Universidad de Chile; ChileFil: Yasuda, N.. University of Tokio; JapĂłnFil: Maeda, K.. University of Tokio; JapĂłnFil: Tanaka, M.. University of Tokio; JapĂłnFil: Morokuma, T.. University of Tokio; JapĂłnFil: Moriya, T. J.. National Astronomical Observatory of Japan; JapĂłnFil: Tominaga, N.. University of Tokyo; JapĂłnFil: Nomoto, Kenâichi. University of Tokyo; JapĂłnFil: Komiyama, Y.. National Astronomical Observatory of Japan; JapĂłnFil: Anderson, J. P.. European Southern Observatory; ChileFil: Brink, T. G.. University of California at Berkeley; Estados UnidosFil: Carlberg, R. G.. University of Toronto; CanadĂĄFil: Folatelli, Gaston. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Ciencias AstronĂłmicas y GeofĂsicas; Argentina. University of Tokyo; JapĂłnFil: Hamuy, M.. Universidad de Chile; ChileFil: Pignata, G.. Universidad AndrĂ©s Bello; ChileFil: Zheng, W.. University of California at Berkeley; Estados Unido
EP-1386: Adjuvant pelvic radiotherapy for pathological high-risk muscle-invasive bladder cancer
Analytic Lifshitz black holes in higher dimensions
We generalize the four-dimensional R^2-corrected z=3/2 Lifshitz black hole to
a two-parameter family of black hole solutions for any dynamical exponent z and
for any dimension D. For a particular relation between the parameters, we find
the first example of an extremal Lifshitz black hole. An asymptotically
Lifshitz black hole with a logarithmic decay is also exhibited for a specific
critical exponent depending on the dimension. We extend this analysis to the
more general quadratic curvature corrections for which we present three new
families of higher-dimensional D>=5 analytic Lifshitz black holes for generic
z. One of these higher-dimensional families contains as critical limits the z=3
three-dimensional Lifshitz black hole and a new z=6 four-dimensional black
hole. The variety of analytic solutions presented here encourages to explore
these gravity models within the context of non-relativistic holographic
correspondence.Comment: 14 page
Miniaturized data loggers and computer programming improve seabird risk and damage assessments for marine oil spills in Atlantic Canada
Obtaining useful information on marine birds that can aid in oil spill (and other hydrocarbon release) risk and damage assessments in offshore environments is challenging. Technological innovations in miniaturization have allowed archival data loggers to be deployed successfully on marine birds vulnerable to hydrocarbons on water. A number of species, including murres (both Common, Uria aalge, and Thick-billed, U. lomvia) have been tracked using geolocation
devices in eastern Canada, increasing our knowledge of the seasonality and colony-specific nature of their susceptibility to oil on water in offshore hydrocarbon production areas and major shipping lanes. Archival data tags are starting to resolve questions around behaviour of vulnerable seabirds at small spatial scales relevant to oil spill impact modelling, specifically to determine the duration and frequency at which birds fly at sea. Advances in data capture methods using voice activated software have eased the burden on seabird observers who are collecting
increasingly more detailed information on seabirds during ship-board and aerial transects. Computer programs that integrate seabird density and bird behaviour have been constructed, all with a goal of creating more credible seabird oil spill risk and damage assessments. In this paper, we discuss how each of these technological and computing innovations can help define critical inputs into seabird risk and damage assessments, and when combined, can provide a more realistic understanding of the impacts to seabirds from any hydrocarbon release
Models of spatiotemporal variation in rabbit abundance reveal management hot spots for an invasive species
First published: 25 January 2020The European rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus) is a notorious economic and environmental pest species in its invasive range. To better understand the population and range dynamics of this species, 41 years of abundance data have been collected from 116 unique sites across a broad range of climatic and environmental conditions in Australia. We analyzed this time series of abundance data to determine whether interâannual variation in climatic conditions can be used to map historic, contemporary, and potential future fluctuations in rabbit abundance from regional to continental scales. We constructed a hierarchical Bayesian regression model of relative abundance that corrected for observation error and seasonal biases. The corrected abundances were regressed against environmental and disease variables in order to project high spatiotemporal resolution, continentâwide rabbit abundances. We show that rabbit abundance in Australia is highly variable in space and time, being driven primarily by interâannual variation in temperature and precipitation in concert with the prevalence of a nonâpathogenic virus. Moreover, we show that interâannual variation in local spatial abundances can be mapped effectively at a continental scale using highly resolved spatiotemporal predictors, allowing âhotspotsâ of persistently high rabbit abundance to be identified. Importantly, crossâvalidated model performance was fair to excellent within and across distinct climate zones. Longâterm monitoring data for invasive species can be used to map fineâscale spatiotemporal fluctuations in abundance patterns when accurately accounting for inherent sampling biases. Our analysis provides ecologists and pest managers with a clearer understanding of the determinants of rabbit abundance in Australia, offering an important new approach for predicting spatial abundance patterns of invasive species at the nearâterm temporal scales that are directly relevant to resource management.Stuart C Brown, Konstans Wells, Emilie Roy-Dufresne, Susan Campbell, Brian Cooke, Tarnya Cox, Damien A. Fordha
Correction: Popular interest in vertebrates does not reflect extinction risk and is associated with bias in conservation investment
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