Road and railway verges serve as dispersal corridors for grassland plants

The role of linear habitat strips as dispersal corridors is a disputed topic. Reports concerning their significance for animals have been contradictory, and the functions of corridors have been difficult to study in the case of sedentary organisms such as plants. Previous studies on dispersal of plants along corridors have concentrated on a single or a few species at a time. We developed a general method, a generalisation of the binomial test, for considering dispersal or spatial relations of a large group of species. Particularly, we studied the ability of grassland plants to spread along road and railway verges. Our data set consists of plant lists collected at study plots scattered irregularly along road and railway networks. The dispersal ability was assessed by testing whether the species composition at neighbouring sites – measured along roads and railways – reflects spatial dependence within each species. Our result showed that similar combinations of grassland species occurred at neighbouring sites more often than expected in a spatially independent case. We argue that management of verges and spatial autocorrelation of environmental factors were not responsible for the result and thereby we conclude that grassland plants use road and railway corridors for dispersal. This result is encouraging in regards to preservation of grassland plant populations. Although semi-natural and natural grasslands have become scarce, road and railway embankments may partly compensate for this loss, serving as substitute habitats and dispersal routes

Conservation implications of exporting domestic wood harvest to neighboring countries

Among wealthy countries, increasing imports of natural resources to allow for unchecked consumption and greater domestic environmental conservation has become commonplace. This practice can negatively affect biodiversity conservation planning if natural resource harvest is merely pushed across political borders. As an example, we focus on the boreal forest ecosystem of Finland and northwest Russia. While the majority of protected forests are in northern Finland, the majority of biodiversity is in southern Finland, where protection is more difficult due to high private ownership, and the effectiveness of functioning conservation networks is more uncertain due to a longer history of land use. In northwest Russia, the current protected areas are inadequate to preserve most of the region’s naturally dynamic and old growth forests. Increased importation of wood from northwest Russia to Finland may jeopardize the long-term viability of species in high diversity conservation areas in both Russia and Finland, through isolating conservation areas and lowering the age of the surrounding forest mosaic. The boreal forest ecosystem of Fennoscandia and northwest Russia would thus be best conserved by a large scale, coordinated conservation strategy that addresses long-term conservation goals and wood consumption, forest industries, logging practices and trade

Conservation contracts in habitat protection in southern Finland

Demands for additional conservation of forests have been strong in Finland where a remarkable number of threatened species need wooded lands. In the southern half of the country the proportion of strictly protected forestland is as low as 1.1% and three quarters of forests are owned by private individuals and families. In order to promote forest protection on private lands the possibilities of landowners to participate in decision making should be improved. To assess the role of voluntary or incentive-based conservation contracts in protection of privately owned forestlands two existing conservation practices were studied: (1) voluntary establishment of permanent nature reserves and (2) payment of environmental grants that are appropriated for fixed-periods and that compensate for statutory preservation of woodland key habitats. Mean areas and compensation sums associated with sites protected using these two practices were simply compared to each other. Nature reserves were on average larger than key habitat sites. However, in the long run fixed-period environmental grants paid for key habitats provide landowners with higher compensation than that paid for establishing permanent nature reserves. These results are assessed in the light of international discussion on social, economic and ecological factors related to protection of private lands. © 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved

Importing Timber, Exporting Ecological Impact

Covering 32% of the planet, boreal forests are one of the last relatively intact terrestrial biomes, and are a critical carbon sink in global climate dynamics. Mature and old-growth boreal forests provide a large number of products that are culturally and economically important, from wood-based lumber, pulp, and fuel wood, to numerous nonwood products. Intensive wood harvest and conservation of naturally dynamic intact forests tend to be mutually exclusive; where biodiversity is highly valued, wood harvests are limited or banned outright. The authors of this Policy Forum advise that increasing domestic forest protection without decreasing demand for wood necessitates an increase in foreign imports, which introduces a negative impact on forest biodiversity elsewhere. In some cases, exporting impact across the border may cause negative impacts to boomerang back into the country's protected forests

Runs of homozygosity do not influence survival to old age

Runs of homozygosity (ROH) are extended tracts of adjacent homozygous single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) that are more common in unrelated individuals than previously thought. It has been proposed that estimating ROH on a genome-wide level, by making use of the genome-wide single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) data, will enable to indentify recessive variants underlying complex traits. Here, we examined ROH larger than 1.5 Mb individually and in combination for association with survival in 5974 participants of the Rotterdam Study. In addition, we assessed the role of overall homozygosity, expressed as a percentage of the autosomal genome that is in ROH longer than 1.5 Mb, on survival during a mean follow-up period of 12 years. None of these measures of homozygosity was associated with survival to old age

Digital volunteer networks and humanitarian crisis reporting

Digital technologies and big data are rapidly transforming humanitarian crisis response and changing the traditional roles and powers of its actors. This article looks at a particular aspect of this transformation – the appearance of digital volunteer networks – and explores their potential to act as a new source for media coverage, in addition to their already established role as emergency response supporters. I argue that digital humanitarians can offer a unique combination of speed and safe access, while escaping some of the traditional constraints of the aid-media relationship and exceeding the conventional conceptualizations of citizen journalism. Journalists can find both challenges and opportunities in the environment where multiple crisis actors are assuming some of the media roles. The article draws on interviews with humanitarian organizations, journalists, and digital volunteer networks about their understanding of digital humanitarian communication and its significance for media coverage of crises

Improving the robustness to input errors on touch-based self-service kiosks and transportation apps

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