Protecting and restoring habitat to help Australia’s threatened species adapt to climate change

Summary for policy makers Australia’s biodiversity is threatened by climate change, but we currently know little about the scale of the threat or how to deploy on ground conservation actions to protect biodiversity against the changes expected. In this project we predict the impacts of climate change for threatened species and delineate the best options for climate adaptation for all these species collectively via protecting and restoring their habitat.For 504 of Australia’s currently threatened species we predict their distributional responses to climate change, under three climate change scenarios of increasing severity: early mitigation, delayed mitigation and business-as-usual. We then simulate the optimal placement of new protected areas and where necessary, restoration of critical habitat for those species most affected by a changing climate, taking into account variation in the costs and benefits of taking action in different places.We measured the benefits of protecting and restoring habitat by considering the long-term availability and quality of habitat for threatened species as climate changes. We undertook a state-of-the-art multi-action optimisation that accounts for spatial and temporal habitat connectivity under climate change. The scale of the prioritisation analysis implemented here is unprecedented in the conservation literature, and is only possible because of recent advances in software sophistication and parallel computer processing power.We discovered that:• Fifty-nine of the 355 threatened plant species and 11 of the 149 threatened animals considered could completely lose their climatically suitable range by 2085 under the most pessimistic (business as usual) climate change scenario, while four plant species face almost certain extinction due to complete loss of suitable range even under the most optimistic mitigation scenario tested.• Climate is predicted to become unsuitable across more than half of their geographic distribution for 310 (61%) of the modelled species under the business-as-usual scenario and for 80 (16%) species under the early mitigation scenario.• For an available budget of $3 billion, protecting an additional 877,415 km2 of intact habitat, and restoring 1,190 km2 of degraded habitat immediately was identified by our analysis as the optimal set of actions to help the 504 threatened species adapt to climate change assuming early mitigation. Under a more pessimistic business-as-usual climate change scenario, 837,914 km2 of protection is required, along with 77 km2 of restoration. In all cases, appropriate threat management within the protected areas is required.• Within the$3 billion budget, optimal allocation of protection focuses on forests and woodland areas of eastern Australia, Northern Territory, the Great Western Woodlands of Western Australia, and southern South Australia. Restoration effort is required mostly in south-eastern Australia.• We tested a range of conservation budgets from $500 million to$8 billion, and found that the spatial pattern of priority does not change dramatically, and that conservation gains do not level off within that range, i.e. that each dollar invested up to at least 8 billion generates additional benefits for threatened species under climate change.Our analysis deals only with threatened species, i.e. those currently most vulnerable to threats including climate change, and while this doesn’t represent all Australian native animals and plants and how they may all be best provided for, these species have great immediate significance for national biodiversity policy.In summary, the 504 threatened species considered in this study require an increase of between 838,077 km2 and 878,590 km2 in areas protected against loss or degradation either through legislation to protect habitat, designation of protected areas, or negotiations of long-lasting voluntary conservation covenants.Please cite this report as: Maggini, R, Kujala, H, Taylor, MFJ, Lee, JR, Possingham, HP, Wintle, BA, Fuller, RA 2013 Protecting and restoring habitat to help Australia’s threatened species adapt to climate change, National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility,  Gold Coast, pp. 59.Australia’s biodiversity is threatened by climate change, but we currently know little about the scale of the threat or how to deploy on ground conservation actions to protect biodiversity against the changes expected. In this project we predict the impacts of climate change for threatened species and delineate the best options for climate adaptation for all these species collectively via protecting and restoring their habitat.For 504 of Australia’s currently threatened species we predict their distributional responses to climate change, under three climate change scenarios of increasing severity: early mitigation, delayed mitigation and business-as-usual. We then simulate the optimal placement of new protected areas and where necessary, restoration of critical habitat for those species most affected by a changing climate, taking into account variation in the costs and benefits of taking action in different places.We measured the benefits of protecting and restoring habitat by considering the long-term availability and quality of habitat for threatened species as climate changes. We undertook a state-of-the-art multi-action optimisation that accounts for spatial and temporal habitat connectivity under climate change. The scale of the prioritisation analysis implemented here is unprecedented in the conservation literature, and is only possible because of recent advances in software sophistication and parallel computer processing power.We discovered that: Fifty-nine of the 355 threatened plant species and 11 of the 149 threatened animals considered could completely lose their climatically suitable range by 2085 under the most pessimistic (business as usual) climate change scenario, while four plant species face almost certain extinction due to complete loss of suitable range even under the most optimistic mitigation scenario tested.Climate is predicted to become unsuitable across more than half of their geographic distribution for 310 (61%) of the modelled species under the business-as-usual scenario and for 80 (16%) species under the early mitigation scenario.For an available budget of 3 billion, protecting an additional 877,415 km2 of intact habitat, and restoring 1,190 km2 of degraded habitat immediately was identified by our analysis as the optimal set of actions to help the 504 threatened species adapt to climate change assuming early mitigation. Under a more pessimistic business-as-usual climate change scenario, 837,914 km2 of protection is required, along with 77 km2 of restoration. In all cases, appropriate threat management within the protected areas is required.Within the $3 billion budget, optimal allocation of protection focuses on forests and woodland areas of eastern Australia, Northern Territory, the Great Western Woodlands of Western Australia, and southern South Australia. Restoration effort is required mostly in south-eastern Australia.We tested a range of conservation budgets from$500 million to $8 billion, and found that the spatial pattern of priority does not change dramatically, and that conservation gains do not level off within that range, i.e. that each dollar invested up to at least$8 billion generates additional benefits for threatened species under climate change. Our analysis deals only with threatened species, i.e. those currently most vulnerable to threats including climate change, and while this doesn’t represent all Australian native animals and plants and how they may all be best provided for, these species have great immediate significance for national biodiversity policy.In summary, the 504 threatened species considered in this study require an increase of between 838,077 km2 and 878,590 km2 in areas protected against loss or degradation either through legislation to protect habitat, designation of protected areas, or negotiations of long-lasting voluntary conservation covenants.Please cite this report as: Maggini, R, Kujala, H, Taylor, MFJ, Lee, JR, Possingham, HP, Wintle, BA, Fuller, RA 2013 Protecting and restoring habitat to help Australia’s threatened species adapt to climate change, National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility,  Gold Coast, pp. 59.&nbsp

Migratory strategies in the Northern Wheatear (Oenanthe oenanthe)

Kurzfassung der Dissertation an der Carl von Ossietzky-Universität Oldenburg, angefertigt am Institut für Vogelforschung "Vogelwarte Helgoland", Wilhelmshaven, betreut durch Prof. Dr. Franz Bairlein, Institut für Vogelforschung Wilhelmshaven (Erstbetreuer) sowie Prof. Dr. Henrik Mouritsen, Universität Oldenburg (Zweitbetreuer

IGEA - A chronic disease management project for people with diabetes

Chronic diseases can be prevented and controlled using available knowledge. Moreover, the solutions are not only effective but can be highly cost-effective. Chronic care model and disease management have emerged, in the last decades, as new models of care delivery. The two models share the objective of improving the quality of care for people with chronic diseases while optimizing health care expenditure. In Italy, within the National Prevention Plan, the Italian Centre for Disease Prevention and Control of the Ministry of Health, and the Istituto Superiore di Sanita (ISS) are developing the IGEA project, which defines a comprehensive strategy for implementing a chronic disease management intervention for people with diabetes

RESHAPING ORGANIZATIONAL PROCESSES AND WORKFLOWS THROUGH INTEGRATION OF BLOCKCHAIN TECHNOLOGY

Cybercrime is becoming increasingly sophisticated and devastating as time carries on while many processes and workflows that exist within organizations are stagnant. This project analyzed Blockchain Technology as a use-case for building upon simple processes and workflows that are often overlooked within organizations for the purpose of hardening security and strengthening non-repudiation. This project examined three main questions relating to; how Blockchain can enhance traditional cyber security practices, how Blockchain can be introduced to organizations as a ground-breaking and worthwhile solution to countering cyber-attacks, and the benefits and risks of implementing Blockchain within an organization. An investigation of traditional cyber security practices and existing use-cases of Blockchain Technology was conducted alongside the development of two prototype Blockchain applications in order to illustrate organizational use-cases. The results of this study concluded that Blockchain is capable of enhancing traditional cyber security best practices by serving as an effective method of access control; Blockchain can be introduced to organizations through platforms such as SIMBA that are easy to use and simple to understand; and lastly, there are various benefits and risks of implementing Blockchain within an organization such as the benefit of increased transparency and accountability and the risk of the technology being costly and complicated to implement. Areas of further research include the utilization of Blockchain-based voting systems to ensure the integrity of elections, as well as tracking those who have or have not received vaccinations

The 2013 election results: protest voting and political stalemate

The economic crisis, the fall of the Berlusconi's cabinet in November 2011 and the formation of the technocratic cabinet led by Mario Monti provided the ground for the general elections held in February 2013, which reached a stalemate, contrary to what most observers expected. The center-left coalition won in the Chamber but not in the Senate. The result in the Senate made it impossible to form a majority coalition between Bersani's left and Monti's center, which many considered the most likely outcome of these elections. In the end, the only available option for the PD, the winner in the Chamber, was to form a cabinet with Berlusconi's PdL. There are many factors explaining this destabilizing result. The first and most important is the success of a brand new anti-establishment party, the Five Star Movement, which attracted voters from across the political spectrum and became the largest party in the country. The second is the inability of the center-left not only to extend its electoral base at a time when the center-right lost almost half of the votes received in 2008, but also to keep its previous electorate. The third factor is the peculiar nature and functioning of the electoral system for the Senate

Comparative US-MRI evaluation of the Insall–Salvati index

Purpose: To investigate whether the universally accepted range of normal patellar height ratio derived from MRI for the Insall–Salvati (IS) method could be similarly applied to ultrasound (US). Materials and methods: This study included 52 patients (age range 11–75 years) who underwent a bi-modality (US and MRI) examination, with a total of 60 knees evaluated. IS index (ratio of the patella tendon length to length of the patella) was acquired with both methods. Two operators, with different experiences of musculoskeletal imaging and blinded to the results of other investigators, separately performed the MRI and US measurements. Results: For the two operators, MRI reported a mean value of patellar height ratio of 1.10 ± 0.16 (mean ± standard deviation SD), while US a mean value of 1.17 ± 0.16 (mean ± SD). For comparable results, the small addition of 0.16 is needed for the measurements on US compared with MRI. Inter-observer agreements using intra-class correlation coefficient (ICC) was, respectively, 0.97 for MRI and 0.98 for US. The difference of mean values in patellar height ratios between MRI and US was not statistically significant (p = 0.15). The ICC between the two modalities was 0.94. Conclusion: According to our experience, IS index can be appropriately evaluated on US images, reducing the need of other imaging techniques

Aligned and Non-Aligned Double JPEG Detection Using Convolutional Neural Networks

Due to the wide diffusion of JPEG coding standard, the image forensic community has devoted significant attention to the development of double JPEG (DJPEG) compression detectors through the years. The ability of detecting whether an image has been compressed twice provides paramount information toward image authenticity assessment. Given the trend recently gained by convolutional neural networks (CNN) in many computer vision tasks, in this paper we propose to use CNNs for aligned and non-aligned double JPEG compression detection. In particular, we explore the capability of CNNs to capture DJPEG artifacts directly from images. Results show that the proposed CNN-based detectors achieve good performance even with small size images (i.e., 64x64), outperforming state-of-the-art solutions, especially in the non-aligned case. Besides, good results are also achieved in the commonly-recognized challenging case in which the first quality factor is larger than the second one.Comment: Submitted to Journal of Visual Communication and Image Representation (first submission: March 20, 2017; second submission: August 2, 2017

Obsessive-compulsive disorder followed by psychotic episode in long-term ecstasy misuse

Aim. We report the case of two young subjects who developed an obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) during a heavy use of ecstasy. After several months of discontinuation of the drug, major depression with psychotic features developed in one subject and a psychotic disorder in the other individual. No mental disorder preceded the use of ecstasy in any subject. Findings. A familial and personality vulnerability for mental disorder was revealed in one subject, but not in the other, and all physical, laboratory and cerebral NMR evaluations showed normal results in both patients. Remission of OCD and depressive episode or psychotic disorder was achieved after treatment with a serotoninergic medication associated with an antipsychotic. Conclusions. The heavy long-term use of ecstasy may induce an alteration in the brain balance between serotonin and dopamine, which might constitute a pathophysiological mechanism underlying the onset of obsessive-compulsive, depressive and psychotic symptoms. The heavy use of ecstasy probably interacted with a vulnerability to psychiatric disorder in one subject, whereas we cannot exclude that an "ecstasy disorder" ex novo affected the other individual. © 2009 Informa UK Ltd All rights reserved