114 research outputs found
Indicators for wild animal offtake: methods and case study for African mammals and birds
Unsustainable exploitation of wild animals is one of the greatest threats to biodiversity and to millions of people depending on wild meat for food and income. The international conservation and development community has committed to implementing plans for sustainable use of natural resources and has requested development of monitoring systems of bushmeat offtake and trade. Although offtake monitoring systems and indicators for marine species are more developed, information on harvesting terrestrial species is limited. Building on approaches developed to monitor exploitation of fisheries and population trends, we have proposed two novel indicators for harvested terrestrial species: the mean body mass indicator (MBMI) assessing whether hunters are relying increasingly on smaller species over time, as a measure of defaunation, by tracking body mass composition of harvested species within samples across various sites and dates; and the offtake pressure indicator (OPI) as a measure of harvesting pressure on groups of wild animals within a region by combining multiple time series of the number of harvested individuals across species. We applied these two indicators to recently compiled data for West and Central African mammals and birds. Our exploratory analyses show that the MBMI of harvested mammals decreased but that of birds rose between 1966/1975 and 2010. For both mammals and birds the OPI increased substantially during the observed time period. Given our results, time-series data and information collated from multiple sources are useful to investigate trends in body mass of hunted species and offtake volumes. In the absence of comprehensive monitoring systems, we suggest that the two indicators developed in our study are adequate proxies of wildlife offtake, which together with additional data can inform conservation policies and actions at regional and global scales
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COVID-19, systemic crisis, and possible implications for the wild meat trade in sub-Saharan Africa
Wild animals play an integral and complex role in the economies and ecologies of many
countries across the globe, including those of West and Central Africa, the focus of this
policy perspective. The trade in wild meat, and its role in diets, have been brought into
focus as a consequence of discussions over the origins of COVID-19. As a result, there
have been calls for the closure of Chinaâs âwet marketsâ; greater scrutiny of the wildlife
trade in general; and a spotlight has been placed on the potential risks posed by growing human populations and shrinking natural habitats for animal to human transmission of
zoonotic diseases. However, to date there has been little attention given to what the consequences of the COVID-19 economic shock may be for the wildlife trade; the people who
rely on it for their livelihoods; and the wildlife that is exploited. In this policy perspective,
we argue that the links between the COVID-19 pandemic, rural livelihoods and wildlife
are likely to be more complex, more nuanced, and more far-reaching, than is represented in
the literature to date. We develop a causal model that tracks the likely implications for the
wild meat trade of the systemic crisis triggered by COVID-19. We focus on the resulting
economic shockwave, as manifested in the collapse in global demand for commodities such
as oil, and international tourism services, and what this may mean for local African economies and livelihoods. We trace the shockwave through to the consequences for the use
of, and demand for, wild meats as households respond to these changes. We suggest that
understanding and predicting the complex dynamics of wild meat use requires increased
collaboration between environmental and resource economics and the ecological and conservation sciences
The effect of the geomagnetic field on cosmic ray energy estimates and large scale anisotropy searches on data from the Pierre Auger Observatory
We present a comprehensive study of the influence of the geomagnetic field on
the energy estimation of extensive air showers with a zenith angle smaller than
, detected at the Pierre Auger Observatory. The geomagnetic field
induces an azimuthal modulation of the estimated energy of cosmic rays up to
the ~2% level at large zenith angles. We present a method to account for this
modulation of the reconstructed energy. We analyse the effect of the modulation
on large scale anisotropy searches in the arrival direction distributions of
cosmic rays. At a given energy, the geomagnetic effect is shown to induce a
pseudo-dipolar pattern at the percent level in the declination distribution
that needs to be accounted for.Comment: 20 pages, 14 figure
Multiple Scenario Generation of Subsurface Models:Consistent Integration of Information from Geophysical and Geological Data throuh Combination of Probabilistic Inverse Problem Theory and Geostatistics
Neutrinos with energies above 1017 eV are detectable with the Surface Detector Array of the Pierre Auger Observatory. The identification is efficiently performed for neutrinos of all flavors interacting in the atmosphere at large zenith angles, as well as for Earth-skimming \u3c4 neutrinos with nearly tangential trajectories relative to the Earth. No neutrino candidates were found in 3c 14.7 years of data taken up to 31 August 2018. This leads to restrictive upper bounds on their flux. The 90% C.L. single-flavor limit to the diffuse flux of ultra-high-energy neutrinos with an E\u3bd-2 spectrum in the energy range 1.0
7 1017 eV -2.5
7 1019 eV is E2 dN\u3bd/dE\u3bd < 4.4
7 10-9 GeV cm-2 s-1 sr-1, placing strong constraints on several models of neutrino production at EeV energies and on the properties of the sources of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays
Barrieren bei der Etablierung von und Versorgung in Medizinischen Zentren fĂŒr Erwachsene mit Behinderung (MZEB) - eine bundesweite Iststandanalyse zum Etablierungsstand, Versorgungsschwerpunkten und Strukturmerkmalen von MZEB im Rahmen des BEta-Projektes
A new method to compensate the longitudinal component of the end-fields in 4-rod RFQ accelerators
30 Hausarztpraxen, 6 PflegestĂŒtzpunkte, 2 virtuelle Treffen, 1 Ziel - von einem partizipativem Kooperationsaufbau
Hinderliche und förderliche Faktoren bei der Etablierung von und medizinischen Versorgung in Medizinischen Zentren fĂŒr Erwachsene mit Behinderung (MZEB) im Zuge der Corona-Pandemie
MZEB (Medizinischen Zentren fĂŒr Erwachsene mit Behinderung) und der Kampf um eine adĂ€quate medizinische Versorgungsstruktur fĂŒr Menschen mit Behinderung aufzubauen
Soziale BeratungsanlĂ€sse in der Hausarztpraxis - eine berlinweite Fragebogenerhebung unter HausĂ€rzt*innen zu ihren Erfahrungen mit PflegestĂŒtzpunkten
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