Місце спецкурсу «Аналітичні дослідження в екології» у формуванні фахових компетентностей майбутніх екологів освітнього ступеня «магістр»

The study substantiates the expedience of implementing the special course of the chemical direction “Analytic studies in ecology” to the variational part of the curriculum of specialists’ training for the specialty “Ecology” of the “master” educational level in Zhitomir national agroecological university. It was proved, that studying this special course by future ecologists widens possibilities for forming their special competences. There was determined the system of special competences of future ecologists, formed at studying the special course “Analytic studies in ecology”. There was elaborated the program of the special course, determined themes of practical and laboratory works and their content. There were grounded the possibilities of the content of this special course for forming groups of organizational, research, technical, prognostic and controlling special competences of future ecologists that provide their ability to realize the qualitative and quantitative determination of the content of environment objects and to interpret obtained data as to the harmful influence of chemical substances on the environment correctly, favor the improvement of the effectiveness of solving ecological problems of society in their further professional activityУ дослідженні обґрунтовано можливості використання змісту спецкурсу «Аналітичні дослідження в екології» для формування системи фахових компетентностей майбутніх екологів освітнього ступеня «магістр». Розроблено програму спецкурсу «Аналітичні дослідження в екології». Визначено групи організаційних, дослідницьких, технічних, прогностичних і контролюючих фахових компетентностей майбутніх екологів, які формуватимуться при вивченні розробленого спецкурс

Natural radioactivity of forest landscape soils

The article discusses the study of the content of natural radionuclides (40К, 226Ra, 228Th) in ordinary chernozems of the Kamennaya Steppe reserve. The studies were carried out in soils not subject to any anthropogenic impact under the forest belt, as well as in the mowed and unmowed fallow. The development of nuclear energy, the widespread use of radioactive sources in industry, medicine, and agriculture has led to an increase in the content of not only artificial, but also natural radionuclides. It was revealed that the accumulation of natural radionuclides is determined by the organic matter of soils. In the chernozems under the forest belt, with the highest carbon content of organic compounds, a slightly larger amount of natural radionuclides (40К, 226Ra, 228Th) is noted. This phenomenon occurs due to selective complex formation with soil organic ligands, which enrich the studied soils. The highest coefficient of variation is typical for 226Ra, which indicates the inhomogeneity of the activity of the radionuclide in space. 40К and 228Th are characterized by lower values of this indicator. Activity data radionuclides are more uniformly distributed in space. The results obtained are recommended to be used in monitoring studies. In order to prevent soil contamination with radionuclides

The fungal literature-based occurrence database in southern West Siberia (Russia)

The abstract presents the initiative to develop the Fungal Literature-based Occurrence Database for Southern West Siberia (FuSWS), which mobilizes occurrences of fungi from published literature (literature-based occurrences, Darwin Core MaterialCitation). The FuSWS database includes 28 fields describing species name, publication source, herbarium number (if exists), date of sampling or observation, locality information, vegetation, substrate, and others. The initiative on digitization of literature-based occurrence data started in the northern part of Western Siberia two years ago (Filippova et al. 2021a). The present project extends the initiative to the south and includes eight administrative regions (Sverdlovsk, Omsk, Kurgan, Tomsk, Novosibirsk, Kemerovo, Altay, and Gorny Altay). The area occupies the central to southern part of the West Siberian Plain. It extends for about 1.5 thousand km from the west to the east from the eastern slopes of the Ural Mountains to Yenisey River, and from north to south—about 1.3 thousand km. The total area equals about 1.2 million km2.Currently, the project is actively growing in spatial, collaboration and data accumulation terms. The working group of about 30 mycologists from 16 organizations dedicated to the digitization initiative was created as part of the Siberian Mycological Society (informal organization since 2019). They have created the most complete bibliographic list of mycology-related papers for the Southern West Siberia, including over 800 publications for the last two centuries (the earliest dated 1800). At abstract submission, the database had been populated with a total of about 10K records from about 100 sources. The dataset is uploaded to GBIF, where it is available for online search of species occurrences and/or download (Filippova et al. 2021b) Fig. 1. The project's page with the introduction, templates, bibliography list, video-presentations and written instructions is available at the website of the Siberian Mycological Society (https://sibmyco.org/literaturedatabase).The following protocol describes the digitization workflow in detail:The bibliography of related publications is compiled using Zotero bibliographic manager. Only published works (peer-reviewed papers, conference proceedings, PhD theses, monographs or book chapters) are selected. If possible, the sources are digitized and added to the library as PDF files. The template of the FuSWS database is made with Google Sheets, which allows simultaneous use by several specialists, in a common data format provided. The simple Microsoft Excel template is also available for the offline databasing. The Darwin Core standard is applied to the database field structure to accommodate the relevant information extracted from the publications.From the available bibliography of publications related to the region, only works with species occurrences are selected for the databasing purpose. The main source of occurrences is annotated species lists with exact localities of the records. However, different sorts of other species citations are also extracted, provided that they had the connection to any geography. All occurrences are georeferenced, either from the coordinates provided in the paper, or from the verbatim description of the field work locality. The georeferencing of the verbatim descriptions is made using Yandex or Google map services. Depending on the quality of georeference provided in publications, the uncertainty is estimated as follows: 1) the coordinate of a fruiting structure or a plot provided in the publication gives the uncertainty about 3-30 meters; 2) the coordinate of the field work locality provided in publication gives the uncertainty about 500 m to 5 km; 3) the report of the species presence in a particular region gives the centroid of the area with the uncertainty radius to include its borders.The locality names reported in Russian are translated to English and written in the «locality» field. Russian descriptions are reserved in the field «verbatimLocality» for accuracy.When possible, the «eventDate» is extracted from the annotation data. Whenever this information is absent, the date of the publication is used instead with the remarks in the «verbatimEventDate» field.The ecological features, habitat and substrate preferences are written in the «habitat» field and reserved in Russian.The original scientific names reported in publications are filled in the «originalNameUsage» field. Correction of spelling errors is made using the GBIF Species Matching tool. This tool is also used to create the additional fields of taxonomic hierarchy from species to kingdom, to fill in the «taxonRank» field and to synonymize according to the GBIF Backbone Taxonomy.To track the digitization process, a worksheet is maintained. Each bibliographic record has a series of fields to describe the digitization process and its results: the total number of extracted occurrence records, general description of the occurrence quality, presence of the observation date, details of georeferencing and the name of a person responsible for the digitization

The fungal literature-based occurrence database for southern West Siberia (Russia)

The paper presents the initiative on literature-based occurrence data mobilisation of fungi and fungi-related organisms (literature-based occurrences, Darwin Core MaterialCitation) to develop the Fungal literature-based occurrence database for the southern West Siberia (FuSWS). The initiative on mobilisation of literature-based occurrence data started in the northern part of West Siberia in 2016. The present project extends the initiative to the southern regions and includes ten administrative territories (Tyumen Region, Sverdlovsk Region, Chelyabinsk Region, Omsk Region, Kurgan Region, Tomsk Region, Novosibirsk Region, Kemerovo Region, Altai Territory and Republic of Altai). The area occupies the central to southern part of the West Siberian Plain and extends for about 1.5 K km from the west to the east from the eastern slopes of the Ural Mountains to Yenisey River and from north to south—about 1.3 K km. The total area equals about 1.4 million km . The initiative is actively growing in spatial, collaboration and data accumulation terms. The working group of about 30 mycologists from eight organisations dedicated to the data mobilisation was created as part of the Siberian Mycological Society (informal organisation since 2019). They have compiled the almost complete bibliographic list of mycology-related papers for the southern West Siberia, including over 900 publications for the last two centuries (the earliest dated 1800). All literature sources were digitised and an online library was created to integrate bibliography metadata and digitised papers using Zotero bibliography manager. The analysis of published sources showed that about two-thirds of works contain occurrences of fungi for the scope of mobilisation. At the time of the paper submission, the database had been populated with a total of about 8 K records from 93 sources. The dataset is uploaded to GBIF, where it is available for online search of species occurrences and/or download. The project's page with the introduction, templates, bibliography list, video-presentations and written instructions is available (in Russian) at the web site of the Siberian Mycological Society. The initiative will be continued in the following years to extract the records from all published sources. New information The paper presents the first project with the aim of literature-based occurrence data mobilisation of fungi and fungi-related organisms in the southern West Siberia. The full bibliography and a digital library of all regional mycological publications created for the first time includes about 900 published works. By the time of paper submission, nearly 8 K occurrence records were extracted from about 90 literature sources and integrated into the FuSWS database published in GBIF

Phenological shifts of abiotic events, producers and consumers across a continent

Ongoing climate change can shift organism phenology in ways that vary depending on species, habitats and climate factors studied. To probe for large-scale patterns in associated phenological change, we use 70,709 observations from six decades of systematic monitoring across the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Among 110 phenological events related to plants, birds, insects, amphibians and fungi, we find a mosaic of change, defying simple predictions of earlier springs, later autumns and stronger changes at higher latitudes and elevations. Site mean temperature emerged as a strong predictor of local phenology, but the magnitude and direction of change varied with trophic level and the relative timing of an event. Beyond temperature-associated variation, we uncover high variation among both sites and years, with some sites being characterized by disproportionately long seasons and others by short ones. Our findings emphasize concerns regarding ecosystem integrity and highlight the difficulty of predicting climate change outcomes. The authors use systematic monitoring across the former USSR to investigate phenological changes across taxa. The long-term mean temperature of a site emerged as a strong predictor of phenological change, with further imprints of trophic level, event timing, site, year and biotic interactions.Peer reviewe

Chronicles of nature calendar, a long-term and large-scale multitaxon database on phenology

We present an extensive, large-scale, long-term and multitaxon database on phenological and climatic variation, involving 506,186 observation dates acquired in 471 localities in Russian Federation, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Belarus and Kyrgyzstan. The data cover the period 1890-2018, with 96% of the data being from 1960 onwards. The database is rich in plants, birds and climatic events, but also includes insects, amphibians, reptiles and fungi. The database includes multiple events per species, such as the onset days of leaf unfolding and leaf fall for plants, and the days for first spring and last autumn occurrences for birds. The data were acquired using standardized methods by permanent staff of national parks and nature reserves (87% of the data) and members of a phenological observation network (13% of the data). The database is valuable for exploring how species respond in their phenology to climate change. Large-scale analyses of spatial variation in phenological response can help to better predict the consequences of species and community responses to climate change.Peer reviewe

МісцЕ спецкУрсУ «АналІтичнІ дослідженнЯ В екології» У формуваннІ фаХовиХ компетентностеЙ майбутніХ екологіВ ОсвітньОгО ступенЯ «магістр»

У дослідженні обґрунтовано можливості використання змісту спецкурсу «Аналітичні дослідження в екології» для формування системи фахових компетентностей майбутніх екологів освітнього ступеня «магістр». Розроблено програму спецкурсу «Аналітичні дослідження в екології». Визначено групи організаційних, дослідницьких, технічних, прогностичних і контролюючих фахових компетентностей майбутніх екологів, які формуватимуться при вивченні розробленого спецкурс

Natural radioactivity of forest landscape soils

The article discusses the study of the content of natural radionuclides (40К, 226Ra, 228Th) in ordinary chernozems of the Kamennaya Steppe reserve. The studies were carried out in soils not subject to any anthropogenic impact under the forest belt, as well as in the mowed and unmowed fallow. The development of nuclear energy, the widespread use of radioactive sources in industry, medicine, and agriculture has led to an increase in the content of not only artificial, but also natural radionuclides. It was revealed that the accumulation of natural radionuclides is determined by the organic matter of soils. In the chernozems under the forest belt, with the highest carbon content of organic compounds, a slightly larger amount of natural radionuclides (40К, 226Ra, 228Th) is noted. This phenomenon occurs due to selective complex formation with soil organic ligands, which enrich the studied soils. The highest coefficient of variation is typical for 226Ra, which indicates the inhomogeneity of the activity of the radionuclide in space. 40К and 228Th are characterized by lower values of this indicator. Activity data radionuclides are more uniformly distributed in space. The results obtained are recommended to be used in monitoring studies. In order to prevent soil contamination with radionuclides

The Use of Computer Vision to Improve the Affinity of Rootstock-Graft Combinations and Identify Diseases of Grape Seedlings

This study explores the application of computer vision for enhancing the selection of rootstock-graft combinations and detecting diseases in grape seedlings. Computer vision has various applications in viticulture, but publications and research have not reported the use of computer vision in rootstock-graft selection, which defines the novelty of this research. This paper presents elements of the technology for applying computer vision to rootstock-graft combinations and includes an analysis of grape seedling cuttings. This analysis allows for a more accurate determination of the compatibility between rootstock and graft, as well as the detection of potential seedling diseases. The utilization of computer vision to automate the grafting process of grape cuttings offers significant benefits in terms of increased efficiency, improved quality, and reduced costs. This technology can replace manual labor and ensure economic efficiency and reliability, among other advantages. It also facilitates monitoring the development of seedlings to determine the appropriate planting time. Image processing algorithms play a vital role in automatically determining seedling characteristics such as trunk diameter and the presence of any damage. Furthermore, computer vision can aid in the identification of diseases and defects in seedlings, which is crucial for assessing their overall quality. The automation of these processes offers several advantages, including increased efficiency, improved quality, and reduced costs through the reduction of manual labor and waste. To fulfill these objectives, a unique robotic assembly line is planned for the grafting of grape cuttings. This line will be equipped with two conveyor belts, a delta robot, and a computer vision system. The use of computer vision in automating the grafting process for grape cuttings offers significant benefits in terms of efficiency, quality improvement, and cost reduction. By incorporating image processing algorithms and advanced robotics, this technology has the potential to revolutionize the viticulture industry. Thanks to training a computer vision system to analyze data on rootstock and graft grape varieties, it is possible to reduce the number of defects by half. The implementation of a semi-automated computer vision system can improve crossbreeding efficiency by 90%. Reducing the time spent on pairing selection is also a significant advantage. While manual selection takes between 1 and 2 min, reducing the time to 30 s using the semi-automated system, and the prospect of further automation reducing the time to 10–15 s, will significantly increase the productivity and efficiency of the process. In addition to the aforementioned benefits, the integration of computer vision technology in grape grafting processes brings several other advantages. One notable advantage is the increased accuracy and precision in pairing selection. Computer vision algorithms can analyze a wide range of factors, including size, shape, color, and structural characteristics, to make more informed decisions when matching rootstock and graft varieties. This can lead to better compatibility and improved overall grafting success rates