Estimation of above ground biomass of forest trees using dbh as a single parameter

Forests in Sri Lanka contribute to the mitigation of climate change through sequestrating a net amountof carhon dioxide and also maintaining carbon stock as biomass. Total tree biomass comprised ofabove ground and below ground biomass of trees. This paper presents a methodology developed toestimate individual tre-e above ground biomass using allometric relationships. The advantage of thismethod is that the above ground biomass per unit area can be determined by estimating these valuesfor different species separately within that area. The present study was conducted in Yagirala Natural Forest Reserve situated in Kalutara District, low country wet zone of Sri Lanka. In this study, theabove ground biomass of different species available in that forest were predicted using the diameterat breast height (dbh).45 tree species were identified in the forest and models were separately developed for each species.For each species, 3 classes were established using the size, i.e., small, medium, and large. For class 1and 2 trees, the main stem and the average size branch were divided into sections and for eachsection end diameters and length were measured. The volume of each section was estimated usingSmal ian's formula. The total branch volume was estimated by multiplying the average branch volumeby number of branches. Then a volume and biomass relationship was estimated for each species bymeasuring the biomass of a known volume.The leaf biomass in the crown was estimated by measuring that in I m''of crown volume. Then it wasconverted to the entire crown via crown volume. Finally above ground tree biomass was calculatedby adding branch and crown biomass to stem biomass.Then allometric relationships were developed to predict the above ground biomass of each of 45species separately using dbh. A strong relationship was found between total tree biomass and dbh ofall species with R2 values over 95%. Tn order to test further improvement of the models, total heightwas added as the second explanatory variable. However, it did not improve the R~ and for mostspecies height became non-significant. Therefore the finally selected basic model structure was logbiomass = a + b log dbh. The model parameters however, indicated different values for a and b forthe different species, varying a from -1.71 (Mastixia tetranda) to - 0.73 (Xylopia parvifolia) and bfrom 2.01 (Putranjiva zeylanica) to 3.29 (Syzygium cordifolium). 

Evidence of Similarities in Ecosystem Service Flow across the Rural-Urban Spectrum

In 2006, the world’s population passed the threshold of being equally split between rural and urban areas. Since this point, urbanisation has continued, and the majority of the global population are now urban inhabitants. With this ongoing change, it is likely that the way people receive benefits from nature (ecosystem services; ES) has also evolved. Environmental theory suggests that rural residents depend directly on their local environment (conceptualised as green-loop systems), whereas urban residents have relatively indirect relationships with distant ecosystems (conceptualised as red-loop systems). Here, we evaluate this theory using survey data from >3000 households in and around Hyderabad, India. Controlling for other confounding socioeconomic variables, we investigate how flows of 10 ES vary across rural, peri-urban and urban areas. For most of the ES we investigated, we found no statistical differences in the levels of direct or indirect use of an ecosystem, the distance to the ecosystem, nor the quantities of ES used between rural and urban residents (p > 0.05). However, our results do show that urban people themselves often travel shorter distances than rural people to access most ES, likely because improved infrastructure in urban areas allows for the transport of ES from wider ecosystems to the locality of the beneficiaries’ place of residence. Thus, while we find some evidence to support red-loop–green-loop theory, we conclude that ES flows across the rural-urban spectrum may show more similarities than might be expected. As such, the impact of future urbanisation on ES flows may be limited, because many flows in both rural and urban areas have already undergone globalisation

Nature provides valuable sanitation services

Much previous research shows that safe disposal of human waste has a positive impact on human wellbeing, while preventing the degradation of ecosystems. However, to date, the role that ecosystems themselves play in treating human waste has been largely neglected. We conceptualize the role nature plays in treating human waste—acting as a pipeline and/or treatment plant. We estimate that nature is treating ~41.7 million tons of human waste per year worldwide, a service worth at least 4.4 ± 3.0 billion USD year−1. We demonstrate the opportunities and challenges of quantifying these “sanitation ecosystem services,” using 48 cities across the globe as a worked example. In highlighting this, we are not marginalizing the vital role of engineered infrastructure, but instead are promoting better understanding of how engineered and natural infrastructure interact within a circular economy. This is a promising route for further research and may allow adaptive design and management, reducing costs, and improving effectiveness and sustainability

A Crowdsourced Gameplay for Whole-Genome Assembly via Short Reads

Next-generation sequencing has revolutionized the field of genomics by producing accurate, rapid and cost-effective genome analysis with the use of high throughput sequencing technologies. This has intensified the need for accurate and performance efficient genome assemblers to assemble a large set of short reads produced by next-generation sequencing technology. Genome assembly is an NP-hard problem that is computationally challenging. Therefore, the current methods that rely on heuristic and approximation algorithms to assemble genomes prevent them from arriving at the most accurate solution. This paper presents a novel approach by gamifying whole-genome shotgun assembly from next-generation sequencing data; we present "Geno", a human-computing game designed with the aim of improving the accuracy of whole-genome shotgun assembly. We evaluate the feasibility of crowdsourcing the problem of whole-genome shotgun assembly by breaking the problem into small subtasks. The evaluation results, for single-cell Escherichia coli K-12 substr. MG1655 with a read length of 25 bp that produced 144,867 game instances of mean 25 sequences per instance at 40x coverage indicate the feasibility of sub-tasking the problem of genome assembly to be solved using crowdsourcing

A Framework for adaptive user interface generation based on user behavioural patterns

The concept of adaptivity is crucial in enterprise software systems with a large user base. Adaptive user interfaces (AUI) is an emerging research area that enables customized user experience based on user activities. Most of the existing studies that are in the conceptual level do not provide production level adaptivity for mainstream user interaction. This paper presents a generic software platform for automatic AUI generation by analyzing user behaviour patterns and customizing web user interfaces using machine learning. AdaBoost classifier showed 100% accuracy for large UI components and user scenarios (n=800). The AUI generator supports the configuration and automation of capturing user behaviour, data storage, processing, querying analysis results and dynamic rendering of the user interface. AUI platform had SUS value of 80.75. The SUS scores for the UIs without AUI was 57.3 and with AUI scored 64.35 on average. The proposed AUI platform provides production level UI design means to meet dynamic adaptability on user traits