Tracking the rapid loss of tidal wetlands in the Yellow Sea

In the Yellow Sea region of East Asia, tidal wetlands are the frontline ecosystem protecting a coastal population of more than 60 million people from storms and sea-level rise. However, unprecedented coastal development has led to growing concern about the status of these ecosystems. We developed a remote-sensing method to assess change over ∼4000 km of the Yellow Sea coastline and discovered extensive losses of the region's principal coastal ecosystem - tidal flats - associated with urban, industrial, and agricultural land reclamations. Our analysis revealed that 28% of tidal flats existing in the 1980s had disappeared by the late 2000s (1.2% annually). Moreover, reference to historical maps suggests that up to 65% of tidal flats were lost over the past five decades. With the region forecast to be a global hotspot of urban expansion, development of the Yellow Sea coastline should pursue a course that minimizes the loss of remaining coastal ecosystems

A New Way to Measure the World's Protected Area Coverage

Protected areas are effective at stopping biodiversity loss, but their placement is constrained by the needs of people. Consequently protected areas are often biased toward areas that are unattractive for other human uses. Current reporting metrics that emphasise the total area protected do not account for this bias. To address this problem we propose that the distribution of protected areas be evaluated with an economic metric used to quantify inequality in income— the Gini coefficient. Using a modified version of this measure we discover that 73% of countries have inequitably protected their biodiversity and that common measures of protected area coverage do not adequately reveal this bias. Used in combination with total percentage protection, the Gini coefficient will improve the effectiveness of reporting on the growth of protected area coverage, paving the way for better representation of the world's biodiversity

Disease prevention versus data privacy : using landcover maps to inform spatial epidemic models

The availability of epidemiological data in the early stages of an outbreak of an infectious disease is vital for modelers to make accurate predictions regarding the likely spread of disease and preferred intervention strategies. However, in some countries, the necessary demographic data are only available at an aggregate scale. We investigated the ability of models of livestock infectious diseases to predict epidemic spread and obtain optimal control policies in the event of imperfect, aggregated data. Taking a geographic information approach, we used land cover data to predict UK farm locations and investigated the influence of using these synthetic location data sets upon epidemiological predictions in the event of an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease. When broadly classified land cover data were used to create synthetic farm locations, model predictions deviated significantly from those simulated on true data. However, when more resolved subclass land use data were used, moderate to highly accurate predictions of epidemic size, duration and optimal vaccination and ring culling strategies were obtained. This suggests that a geographic information approach may be useful where individual farm-level data are not available, to allow predictive analyses to be carried out regarding the likely spread of disease. This method can also be used for contingency planning in collaboration with policy makers to determine preferred control strategies in the event of a future outbreak of infectious disease in livestock

Theology, News and Notes - Vol. 34, No. 04

Theology News & Notes was a theological journal published by Fuller Theological Seminary from 1954 through 2014.https://digitalcommons.fuller.edu/tnn/1096/thumbnail.jp

Periodontitis and cognitive decline in Alzheimer's disease.

Periodontitis is common in the elderly and may become more common in Alzheimer's disease because of a reduced ability to take care of oral hygiene as the disease progresses. Elevated antibodies to periodontal bacteria are associated with an increased systemic pro-inflammatory state. Elsewhere raised serum pro-inflammatory cytokines have been associated with an increased rate of cognitive decline in Alzheimer's disease. We hypothesized that periodontitis would be associated with increased dementia severity and a more rapid cognitive decline in Alzheimer's disease. We aimed to determine if periodontitis in Alzheimer's disease is associated with both increased dementia severity and cognitive decline, and an increased systemic pro inflammatory state. In a six month observational cohort study 60 community dwelling participants with mild to moderate Alzheimer's Disease were cognitively assessed and a blood sample taken for systemic inflammatory markers. Dental health was assessed by a dental hygienist, blind to cognitive outcomes. All assessments were repeated at six months. The presence of periodontitis at baseline was not related to baseline cognitive state but was associated with a six fold increase in the rate of cognitive decline as assessed by the ADAS-cog over a six month follow up period. Periodontitis at baseline was associated with a relative increase in the pro-inflammatory state over the six month follow up period. Our data showed that periodontitis is associated with an increase in cognitive decline in Alzheimer's Disease, independent to baseline cognitive state, which may be mediated through effects on systemic inflammation

Setting conservation priorities for migratory networks under uncertainty

Conserving migratory species requires protecting connected habitat along the pathways they travel. Despite recent improvements in tracking animal movements, migratory connectivity remains poorly resolved at a population level for the vast majority of species, thus conservation prioritization is hampered. To address this data limitation, we developed a novel approach to spatial prioritization based on a model of potential connectivity derived from empirical data on species abundance and distance traveled between sites during migration. We applied the approach to migratory shorebirds of the East Asian-Australasian Flyway. Conservation strategies that prioritized sites based on connectivity and abundance metrics together maintained larger populations of birds than strategies that prioritized sites based only on abundance metrics. The conservation value of a site therefore depended on both its capacity to support migratory animals and its position within the migratory pathway; the loss of crucial sites led to partial or total population collapse. We suggest that conservation approaches that prioritize sites supporting large populations of migrants should, where possible, also include data on the spatial arrangement of sites

Rapid population decline in migratory shorebirds relying on Yellow Sea tidal mudflats as stopover sites

Migratory animals are threatened by human-induced global change. However, little is known about how stopover habitat, essential for refuelling during migration, affects the population dynamics of migratory species. Using 20 years of continent-wide citizen science data, we assess population trends of ten shorebird taxa that refuel on Yellow Sea tidal mudflats, a threatened ecosystem that has shrunk by >65% in recent decades. Seven of the taxa declined at rates of up to 8% per year. Taxa with the greatest reliance on the Yellow Sea as a stopover site showed the greatest declines, whereas those that stop primarily in other regions had slowly declining or stable populations. Decline rate was unaffected by shared evolutionary history among taxa and was not predicted by migration distance, breeding range size, non-breeding location, generation time or body size. These results suggest that changes in stopover habitat can severely limit migratory populations