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Averting biodiversity collapse in tropical forest protected areas
The rapid disruption of tropical forests probably imperils global biodiversity more than any other contemporary phenomenon¹⁻³. With deforestation advancing quickly, protected areas are increasingly becoming final refuges for threatened species and natural ecosystem processes. However, many protected areas in the tropics are themselves vulnerable to human encroachment and other environmental stresses⁴⁻⁹. As pressures mount, it is vital to know whether existing reserves can sustain their biodiversity. A critical constraint in addressing this question has been that data describing a broad array of biodiversity groups have been unavailable for a sufficiently large and representative sample of reserves. Here we present a uniquely comprehensive data set on changes over the past 20 to 30 years in 31 functional groups of species and 21 potential drivers of environmental change, for 60 protected areas stratified across the world’s major tropical regions. Our analysis reveals great variation in reserve ‘health’: about half of all reserves have been effective or performed passably, but the rest are experiencing an erosion of biodiversity that is often alarmingly widespread taxonomically and functionally. Habitat disruption, hunting and forest-product exploitation were the strongest predictors of declining reserve health. Crucially, environmental changes immediately outside reserves seemed nearly as important as those inside in determining their ecological fate, with changes inside reserves strongly mirroring those occurring around them. These findings suggest that tropical protected areas are often intimately linked ecologically to their surrounding habitats, and that a failure to stem broad-scale loss and degradation of such habitats could sharply increase the likelihood of serious biodiversity declines.Keywords: Ecology, Environmental scienc
IAALD 2013 World Congress Paper Presentations, D-M
IAALD 2013 World Congress Paper Presentations, first presenter last names D-
Agricultural Information Worldwide, vol. 6, 2014
Agricultural Information Worldwide, Volume 6, 2014In this issue: FROM THE EDITOR’S DESK / Jim Morris-Knower (3); Conference Reflections / Antoinette Paris Greider (4). ARTICLES: Keynote Address: The State of Information Literacy Policy: A Global Priority / Sharon Weiner (5); Framing of Climate Change News in Four National Daily Newspapers in Southern Nigeria / Agwu Ekwe Agwu, Chiebonam Justina Amu (11); Access and Use of Information Communication Technologies by Women Staff of Public Extension Service in the North Central Zone of Nigeria / Agwu Ekwe Agwu, Elizabeth Ene Ogbonnah (18); Providing User Preferred Information Resources for a New Faculty of Agriculture, Nnamdi Azikiwe Univeristy, Awka, Nigeria / Chinwe V. Anunobi, Andrew U. Ogbonna (25); Diffusion of Scientific Knowledge in Agriculture: The Case for Africa / Shimelis Assefa, Daniel Gelaw Alemneh, Abebe Rorissa (34); The Use of Social Media in Agricultural Research Workflows in Ghana and Kenya / Justin Chisenga, Richard Kedemi, Joel Sam (48); Towards Mobile Agricultural Information Services in Zimbabwean Libraries: Challenges and Opportunities for Small Sacle Farmers in Utilizing ICTs for Sustainable Food Production / Collence Takaingenhamo Chisita, Thembani Malapela (58); Agriculture and Natural Resource Scientists' Biodiversity Information Needs: Barriers and Facilitators to Use and Access in the U.S. Southeast / Miriam L.E. Steiner Davis, Carol Tenopir, Suzie Allard (66); French Agricultural Research Institute Paves the Way to Open Access: Feedback from CIRAD / Marie-Claude Deboin, Cécile Fovet-Rabot (77); Exploring Relevance of Agro Input Dealers in Disseminating and Communicating of Soil Fertility Management Knowledge: The Case of Siaya and Trans Nzoia Counties, Kenya / T. B. Etyang, J. J. Okello, S. Zingore, P. F. Okoth, F. S. Mairura, A. Mureithi, B. S. Waswa (82); Plantwise Knowledge Bank: Building Sustainable Data and Information Processes to Support Plant Clinics in Kenya / Cambria Finegold, MaryLucy Oronje, Margo C. Leach, Teresia Karanja, Florence Chege, Shaun L.A. Hobbs (96); Innovation in Extension Services for Improved Farmer Access to Agricultural Information in Uganda / Patrick Kasangaki (102); Managing a Web Portal Adapting to New Technologies / Soonho Kim, Kathryn Pace Kincheloe, Yuan Gao, Valdete Berisha (107); Library Outreach to University Farm Staff / Emily MacKenzie, Natalie Waters (114); Enhancing Access to Research in Institutional Repositiories through API / Ryan Miller, Indira Yerramareddy (118); Building Capacity of Smallholder Farmers in Agribusiness and Entrepreneurship Skills in Northern Uganda / Basil Mugonola, Callistus Baliddawa (122); The Data Landscpe of the Coral Triangle / Jeanette Norris (127); Agricultural Information Access Among Smallholder Farmers: Comparative Assessment of Peri-Urban and Rural Settings in Kenya / Dorine Odongo (133); From Local to Global: Launching the New Rangelands West Portals and Database / Jeanne L. Pfander, Barbara S. Hutchinson, Valeria Pesce, Matt Rahr (138); Seed Village Programme: An Innovative Approach for Small Farmers / Dheeraj Singh, M. K. Chaudhary, M. L. Meena, M. M. Roy (143); Transformation of Indian Agricultural Libraries in a Digital and Collaborative Era: A Case Study / Neena Singh, Anil Chikate (147); Collaboration for Impact / Indira Yerramareddy, Luz Marina Alvaré, Katarlah Taylor (157
Manuscript 2012-02-02558B Averting biodiversity collapse in tropical forest protected areas
Soft object manipulation has recently gained popularity within the robotics community due to its potential applications in many economically important areas. Although great progress has been recently achieved in these types of tasks, most state-of-the-art methods are case-specific; They can only be used to perform a single deformation task (e.g. bending), as their shape representation algorithms typically rely on "hard-coded" features. In this paper, we present LaSeSOM, a new feedback latent representation framework for semantic soft object manipulation. Our new method introduces internal latent representation layers between low-level geometric feature extraction and high-level semantic shape analysis; This allows the identification of each compressed semantic function and the formation of a valid shape classifier from different feature extraction levels. The proposed latent framework makes soft object representation more generic (independent from the object's geometry and its mechanical properties) and scalable (it can work with 1D/2D/3D tasks). Its high-level semantic layer enables to perform (quasi) shape planning tasks with soft objects, a valuable and underexplored capability in many soft manipulation tasks. To validate this new methodology, we report a detailed experimental study with robotic manipulators.</p
Averting biodiversity collapse in tropical forest protected areas
The rapid disruption of tropical forests probably imperils global biodiversity more than any other contemporary phenomenon. With deforestation advancing quickly, protected areas are increasingly becoming final refuges for threatened species and natural ecosystem processes. However, many protected areas in the tropics are themselves vulnerable to human encroachment and other environmental stresses. As pressures mount, it is vital to know whether existing reserves can sustain their biodiversity. A critical constraint in addressing this question has been that data describing a broad array of biodiversity groups have been unavailable for a sufficiently large and representative sample of reserves. Here we present a uniquely comprehensive data set on changes over the past 20 to 30 years in 31 functional groups of species and 21 potential drivers of environmental change, for 60 protected areas stratified across the world’s major tropical regions. Our analysis reveals great variation in reserve ‘health’: about half of all reserves have been effective or performed passably, but the rest are experiencing an erosion of biodiversity that is often alarmingly widespread taxonomically and functionally. Habitat disruption, hunting and forest-product exploitation were the strongest predictors of declining reserve health. Crucially, environmental changes immediately outside reserves seemed nearly as important as those inside in determining their ecological fate, with changes inside reserves strongly mirroring those occurring around them. These findings suggest that tropical protected areas are often intimately linked ecologically to their surrounding habitats, and that a failure to stem broad-scale loss and degradation of such habitats could sharply increase the likelihood of serious biodiversity declines.William F. Laurance, D. Carolina Useche, Julio Rendeiro, Margareta Kalka, Corey J. A. Bradshaw, Sean P. Sloan, Susan G. Laurance, Mason Campbell, Kate Abernethy, Patricia Alvarez, Victor Arroyo-Rodriguez, Peter Ashton, Julieta Benítez-Malvido, Allard Blom, Kadiri S. Bobo, Charles H. Cannon, Min Cao, Richard Carroll, Colin Chapman, Rosamond Coates, Marina Cords, Finn Danielsen, Bart De Dijn, Eric Dinerstein, Maureen A. Donnelly, David Edwards, Felicity Edwards, Nina Farwig, Peter Fashing, Pierre-Michel Forget, Mercedes Foster, George Gale, David Harris, Rhett Harrison, John Hart, Sarah Karpanty, W. John Kress, Jagdish Krishnaswamy, Willis Logsdon, Jon Lovett, William Magnusson, Fiona Maisels, Andrew R. Marshall, Deedra McClearn, Divya Mudappa, Martin R. Nielsen, Richard Pearson, Nigel Pitman, Jan van der Ploeg, Andrew Plumptre, John Poulsen, Mauricio Quesada, Hugo Rainey, Douglas Robinson, Christiane Roetgers, Francesco Rovero, Frederick Scatena, Christian Schulze, Douglas Sheil, Thomas Struhsaker, John Terborgh, Duncan Thomas, Robert Timm, J. Nicolas Urbina-Cardona, Karthikeyan Vasudevan, S. Joseph Wright, Juan Carlos Arias-G., Luzmila Arroyo, Mark Ashton, Philippe Auzel, Dennis Babaasa, Fred Babweteera, Patrick Baker, Olaf Banki, Margot Bass, Inogwabini Bila-Isia, Stephen Blake, Warren Brockelman, Nicholas Brokaw, Carsten A. Brühl, Sarayudh Bunyavejchewin, Jung-Tai Chao, Jerome Chave, Ravi Chellam, Connie J. Clark, José Clavijo, Robert Congdon, Richard Corlett, H. S. Dattaraja, Chittaranjan Dave, Glyn Davies, Beatriz de Mello Beisiegel, Rosa de Nazaré Paes da Silva, Anthony Di Fiore, Arvin Diesmos, Rodolfo Dirzo, Diane Doran-Sheehy, Mitchell Eaton, Louise Emmons, Alejandro Estrada, Corneille Ewango, Linda Fedigan, François Feer, Barbara Fruth, Jacalyn Giacalone Willis, Uromi Goodale, Steven Goodman, Juan C. Guix, Paul Guthiga, William Haber, Keith Hamer, Ilka Herbinger, Jane Hill, Zhongliang Huang, I Fang Sun, Kalan Ickes, Akira Itoh, Natália Ivanauskas, Betsy Jackes, John Janovec, Daniel Janzen, Mo Jiangming, Chen Jin, Trevor Jones, Hermes Justiniano, Elisabeth Kalko, Aventino Kasangaki, Timothy Killeen, Hen-biau King, Erik Klop, Cheryl Knott, Inza Koné, Enoka Kudavidanage, José Lahoz da Silva Ribeiro, John Lattke, Richard Laval, Robert Lawton, Miguel Leal, Mark Leighton, Miguel Lentino, Cristiane Leonel, Jeremy Lindsell, Lee Ling-Ling, K. Eduard Linsenmair, Elizabeth Losos, Ariel Lugo, Jeremiah Lwanga, Andrew L. Mack, Marlucia Martins, W. Scott McGraw, Roan McNab, Luciano Montag, Jo Myers Thompson, Jacob Nabe-Nielsen, Michiko Nakagawa, Sanjay Nepal, Marilyn Norconk, Vojtech Novotny, Sean O'Donnell, Muse Opiang, Paul Ouboter, Kenneth Parker, N. Parthasarathy, Kátia Pisciotta, Dewi Prawiradilaga, Catherine Pringle, Subaraj Rajathurai, Ulrich Reichard, Gay Reinartz, Katherine Renton, Glen Reynolds, Vernon Reynolds, Erin Riley, Mark-Oliver Rödel, Jessica Rothman, Philip Round, Shoko Sakai, Tania Sanaiotti, Tommaso Savini, Gertrud Schaab, John Seidensticker, Alhaji Siaka, Miles R. Silman, Thomas B. Smith, Samuel Soares de Almeida, Navjot Sodhi, Craig Stanford, Kristine Stewart, Emma Stokes, Kathryn E. Stoner, Raman Sukumar, Martin Surbeck, Mathias Tobler, Teja Tscharntke, Andrea Turkalo, Govindaswamy Umapathy, Merlijn van Weerd, Jorge Vega Rivera, Meena Venkataraman, Linda Venn, Carlos Verea, Carolina Volkmer de Castilho, Matthias Waltert, Benjamin Wang, David Watts, William Weber, Paige West, David Whitacre, Ken Whitney, David Wilkie, Stephen Williams, Debra D. Wright, Patricia Wright, Lu Xiankai, Pralad Yonzon & Franky Zamzan