The Economic Contribution of Instream Flows to the Lower Connecticut River Watershed, New England, USA

River recreation is a rapidly expanding source of economic productivity. Angler spending has been used as the basis for estimating the regional economic estimates of local income and jobs in several water-limited systems of the western United States and Mexico. However, the contribution of outdoor recreation to the economies of regions that do not experience water scarcity continues to be underappreciated. This paper estimates the economic contribution of angling to the lower Connecticut River Watershed (CRW) economy. The authors draw upon existing angler expenditure, river flow and geographic information system (GIS) data to relate anger use of the lower CRW and expenditures to river flows. The authors then translate angler expenditures into state income and employment using a regional economic multiplier. The results show that fishing expenditures of $62.8 million per year equate to$74.2 million annually in supply chain revenues which supports 1660 jobs. The authors identified a significant positive relationship between fishing intensity and river flow rates, which suggests that decreasing current water diversions on the lower CRW by just 25% would add an additional $37 million and 638 jobs to Connecticut’s economy. The findings demonstrate that investments in managing the health the CRW through flow restoration can have large economic and ecological pay-offs

Stan praktyk publikacyjnych polskich czasopism naukowych w 2017 roku

Celem raportu jest prezentacja informacji o polskich czasopismach naukowych. Uwzględnione zostały czasopisma ze wszystkich obszarów nauki, które – według źródeł je indeksujących – uznawane są za czasopisma naukowe. Dane na temat wydawanych czasopism naukowych w Polsce są rozproszone i niepełne. Jednocześnie wiele gromadzonych informacji nie jest publicznie dostępna bądź odpowiednio eksponowana. Dlatego istotne jest pokazanie tego, co wiemy o polskich czasopismach oraz wskazanie, czego nie wiemy, a powinniśmy wiedzieć, aby prowadzić efektywną politykę wydawniczą: zarówno na poziomie pojedynczego czasopisma i wydawnictwa, jak i na poziomie kraju.Publikacja finansowana jest w ramach projektu „Badanie wzorców doskonałości w nauce i sztuce” w ramach programu Ministra Nauki i Szkolnictwa Wyższego pod nazwą „DIALOG” w latach 2017-2019

The cytochrome P450 CYP6P4 is responsible for the high pyrethroid resistance in knockdown resistance-free Anopheles arabiensis.

Pyrethroid insecticides are the front line vector control tools used in bed nets to reduce malaria transmission and its burden. However, resistance in major vectors such as Anopheles arabiensis is posing a serious challenge to the success of malaria control. Herein, we elucidated the molecular and biochemical basis of pyrethroid resistance in a knockdown resistance-free Anopheles arabiensis population from Chad, Central Africa. Using heterologous expression of P450s in Escherichia coli coupled with metabolism assays we established that the over-expressed P450 CYP6P4, located in the major pyrethroid resistance (rp1) quantitative trait locus (QTL), is responsible for resistance to Type I and Type II pyrethroid insecticides, with the exception of deltamethrin, in correlation with field resistance profile. However, CYP6P4 exhibited no metabolic activity towards non-pyrethroid insecticides, including DDT, bendiocarb, propoxur and malathion. Combining fluorescent probes inhibition assays with molecular docking simulation, we established that CYP6P4 can bind deltamethrin but cannot metabolise it. This is possibly due to steric hindrance because of the large vdW radius of bromine atoms of the dihalovinyl group of deltamethrin which docks into the heme catalytic centre. The establishment of CYP6P4 as a partial pyrethroid resistance gene explained the observed field resistance to permethrin, and its inability to metabolise deltamethrin probably explained the high mortality from deltamethrin exposure in the field populations of this Sudano-Sahelian An. arabiensis. These findings describe the heterogeneity in resistance towards insecticides, even from the same class, highlighting the need to thoroughly understand the molecular basis of resistance before implementing resistance management/control tools

The North American tree-ring fire-scar network

Fire regimes in North American forests are diverse and modern fire records are often too short to capture important patterns, trends, feedbacks, and drivers of variability. Tree-ring fire scars provide valuable perspectives on fire regimes, including centuries-long records of fire year, season, frequency, severity, and size. Here, we introduce the newly compiled North American tree-ring fire-scar network (NAFSN), which contains 2562 sites, >37,000 fire-scarred trees, and covers large parts of North America. We investigate the NAFSN in terms of geography, sample depth, vegetation, topography, climate, and human land use. Fire scars are found in most ecoregions, from boreal forests in northern Alaska and Canada to subtropical forests in southern Florida and Mexico. The network includes 91 tree species, but is dominated by gymnosperms in the genus Pinus. Fire scars are found from sea level to >4000-m elevation and across a range of topographic settings that vary by ecoregion. Multiple regions are densely sampled (e.g., >1000 fire-scarred trees), enabling new spatial analyses such as reconstructions of area burned. To demonstrate the potential of the network, we compared the climate space of the NAFSN to those of modern fires and forests; the NAFSN spans a climate space largely representative of the forested areas in North America, with notable gaps in warmer tropical climates. Modern fires are burning in similar climate spaces as historical fires, but disproportionately in warmer regions compared to the historical record, possibly related to under-sampling of warm subtropical forests or supporting observations of changing fire regimes. The historical influence of Indigenous and non-Indigenous human land use on fire regimes varies in space and time. A 20th century fire deficit associated with human activities is evident in many regions, yet fire regimes characterized by frequent surface fires are still active in some areas (e.g., Mexico and the southeastern United States). These analyses provide a foundation and framework for future studies using the hundreds of thousands of annually- to sub-annually-resolved tree-ring records of fire spanning centuries, which will further advance our understanding of the interactions among fire, climate, topography, vegetation, and humans across North America

Do Mixed Fire Regimes Shape Plant Flammability and Post-Fire Recovery Strategies?

The development of frameworks for better-understanding ecological syndromes and putative evolutionary strategies of plant adaptation to fire has recently received a flurry of attention, including a new model hypothesizing that plants have diverged into three different plant flammability strategies due to natural selection. We provide three case studies of pyromes/taxa (Pinus, the Proteaceae of the Cape Floristic Region, and Eucalyptus) that, contrary to model assumptions, reveal that plant species often exhibit traits of more than one of these flammability and post-fire recovery strategies. We propose that such multiple-strategy adaptations have been favoured as bet-hedging strategies in response to selective pressure from mixed-fire regimes experienced by these species over evolutionary time

Tree mortality from a short-duration freezing event and global-change-type drought in a Southwestern piñon-juniper woodland, USA

This study documents tree mortality in Big Bend National Park in Texas in response to the most acute one-year drought on record, which occurred following a five-day winter freeze. I estimated changes in forest stand structure and species composition due to freezing and drought in the Chisos Mountains of Big Bend National Park using permanent monitoring plot data. The drought killed over half (63%) of the sampled trees over the entire elevation gradient. Significant mortality occurred in trees up to 20 cm diameter (P < 0.05). Pinus cembroides Zucc. experienced the highest seedling and tree mortality (P < 0.0001) (55% of piñon pines died), and over five times as many standing dead pines were observed in 2012 than in 2009. Juniperus deppeana vonSteudal and Quercus emoryi Leibmann also experienced significant declines in tree density (P < 0.02) (30.9% and 20.7%, respectively). Subsequent droughts under climate change will likely cause even greater damage to trees that survived this record drought, especially if such events follow freezes. The results from this study highlight the vulnerability of trees in the Southwest to climatic change and that future shifts in forest structure can have large-scale community consequences

Dam Removal Effects on Benthic Macroinvertebrate Dynamics: A New England Stream Case Study (Connecticut, USA)

Dam removal is an increasingly common stream restoration tool. Yet, removing dams from small streams also represents a major disturbance to rivers that can have varied impacts on environmental conditions and aquatic biota. We examined the effects of dam removal on the structure, function, and composition of benthic macroinvertebrate (BMI) communities in a temperate New England stream. We examined the effects of dam removal over the dam removal time-series using linear mixed effects models, autoregressive models, non-metric multidimensional scaling, and indicator and similarity analyses. The results indicated that the dam removal stimulated major shifts in BMI community structure and composition above and below the dam, and that the BMI communities are becoming more similar over time. The mixed model analysis revealed that BMI functional groups and diversity were significantly influenced by sample site and several BMI groups also experienced significant interactions between site and dam stage (P &lt; 0.05), while the multivariate analyses revealed that community structure continues to differ among sites, even three years after dam removal. Our findings indicate that stream restoration through dam removal can have site-specific influences on BMI communities, that interactions among BMI taxa are important determinants of the post-dam removal community, and that the post-dam-removal BMI community continues to be in a state of reorganization

Arizona cypress (Hesperocyparis arizonica) to the Horseshoe Two Megafire in a south-eastern Arizona Sky Island mountain range

We examined the response of Arizona cypress (Hesperocyparis arizonica) to the 2011 Horseshoe Two Megafire in the Chiricahua Mountains, Arizona, USA. We documented cover type, fire severity, cypress mortality and seedling establishment in 60 plots. In plots subject to severe fire, most mature cypresses were killed, the canopy opened and seedlings established abundantly. These results were consistent across three canyons differing in topography and vegetation. Successful regeneration of Arizona cypress contrasts with low seedling establishment for pines in the same area after the Horseshoe Two Fire, a difference possibly explained by abundant serotinous seed production in cypress or its preference for riparian sites protected from extreme fire. Our results firmly establish Arizona cypress as a fire-sensitive but fire-embracing species that depends on stand-replacing fire for regeneration. Given the fire sensitivity of Arizona cypress, however, recent increases in the frequency of high-severity fires in the south-west USA could pose a threat to the long-term viability of this species by preventing individuals from reaching sexual maturity during fire intervals. This scenario, termed the ‘interval squeeze’, has been documented in tecate cypress (H. forbesii) in California. A drier future with more frequent wildfires could pose serious threats to all New World cypresses

Pine vs. oaks revisited: Conversion of Madrean pine-oak forest to oak shrubland after high-severity wildfire in the Sky Islands of Arizona

Fire regimes have changed dramatically in most dry woodlands and forests of the American Southwest from frequent surface fires prior to Euro-American settlement, to fire suppression in the 20th century, to a current era characterized by large, higher-severity wildfires. The recent increase in fire activity and consequent changes in forest communities are key management concerns across the region. We use sampling from before and after the 1994 Rattlesnake and 2011 Horseshoe Two Wildfires in the Chiricahua Mountains to address the extent to which higher-severity fire is converting Madrean pine-oak forest to oak shrubland in the Sky Islands of Arizona. Plant communities changed from mixed pine-oak forest before the wildfires to oak shrublands and grasslands by 2016 where fires burned at high-severity. In those sites, nearly all stems were killed above ground, oaks regenerated vigorously, mainly by resprouting, and pines recruited at very low levels. These patterns were consistent after each fire and for up to 14 years after the Rattlesnake Fire. Across the Horseshoe Two Fire, seedling recruitment of pines and oaks declined with increasing fire-severity, but oak resprouting increased. Differential recruitment success of oaks over pines was amplified by their far greater juvenile height and more ramets per resprouting genet. Resprouting in Pinus leiophylla (Chihuahua pine) after top-kill was low, but sufficient to suggest that this behavior may maintain this species at low density after high-severity fire. The impact of fire depended on topography, as less exposed plots (e.g. in drainages) experienced lower-severity fire and less conversion to oak shrublands, suggesting that these sites provided refugia for species, such as pines, sensitive to high-severity fire. Low pine recruitment occurred in all plots, not only in sites subject to high-severity fire, suggesting that vegetation conversion may have been exacerbated by the extreme drought of the past two decades. Given the episodic nature of their regeneration, pine recovery is possible in the future, but projections call for intensification of aridity and fire activity in the Southwest, which could lead to continued transition of Madrean pine-oak forests to more fire- and drought-resilient communities dominated by oaks. The results of this study point to the need for protective vegetation management and restoration experiments targeting pines

Oreos Versus Orangutans: The Need for Sustainability Transformations and Nonhierarchical Polycentric Governance in the Global Palm Oil Industry

While the myriad benefits of palm oil as a food, makeup, and cleaning product additive drive its demand, globally, the palm oil industry remains largely unsustainable and unregulated. The negative externalities of palm oil production are diverse and devastating to tropical ecosystem integrity and human livelihoods in palm oil nations. Given the current trend in increasing sustainability and transparency in global supply chains, we suggest that sustainability policy reforms are feasible and have the potential to promote 21st century U.S. and international sustainability standards. Polycentric governance may improve the attainment of sustainable global palm oil standards with a set of rules that interact across linear and nonlinear hierarchies and structures, thereby improving collaboration efforts, and increasing connectivity and learning across scales and cultures. Transformations towards sustainability in international palm oil governance has the potential to make valuable contributions to global sustainable development and improve the prosperity of poor rural communities in the tropics by providing a framework for achieving palm oil trade transparency and aligning the sustainability goals across a range of actors