Why are Some Plant Species Missing from Restorations? A Diagnostic Tool for Temperate Grassland Ecosystems

The U.N. Decade on Ecosystem Restoration aims to accelerate actions to prevent, halt, and reverse the degradation of ecosystems, and re-establish ecosystem functioning and species diversity. The practice of ecological restoration has made great progress in recent decades, as has recognition of the importance of species diversity to maintaining the long-term stability and functioning of restored ecosystems. Restorations may also focus on specific species to fulfill needed functions, such as supporting dependent wildlife or mitigating extinction risk. Yet even in the most carefully planned and managed restoration, target species may fail to germinate, establish, or persist. To support the successful reintroduction of ecologically and culturally important plant species with an emphasis on temperate grasslands, we developed a tool to diagnose common causes of missing species, focusing on four major categories of filters, or factors: genetic, biotic, abiotic, and planning & land management. Through a review of the scientific literature, we propose a series of diagnostic tests to identify potential causes of failure to restore target species, and treatments that could improve future outcomes. This practical diagnostic tool is meant to strengthen collaboration between restoration practitioners and researchers on diagnosing and treating causes of missing species in order to effectively restore them

Comparison of Two Convolutional Orthogonal Coding Techniques for CDMA Radio Communications Systems

For CDMA (code-division multiple-access) wireless communications systems, orthogonal signaling with noncoherent detection has been proposed when a reference phase is not available. In this paper, orthogonal signaling using Walsh signals is considered. Performance of the channel using error-correcting coding together with 1) bit-by-bit interleaving or 2) Walsh word-by-word interleaving is investigated. Simulation results show that for several types of fading and non-fading channels with practical amounts of interleaving and with practical power control, the second technique with complete soft decision decoding that has added complexity in the decoder gives significant reduction in the required signal to interference ratio (SIR) over the first technique