40 research outputs found

    Beyond Functional Diversity: The Importance of Trophic Position to Understanding Functional Processes in Community Evolution

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    Ecosystem structure—that is the species present, the functions they represent, and how those functions interact—is an important determinant of community stability. This in turn aects how ecosystems respond to natural and anthropogenic crises, and whether species or the ecological functions that they represent are able to persist. Here we use fossil data from museum collections, literature, and the Paleobiology Database to reconstruct trophic networks of Tethyan paleocommunities fromthe Anisian and Carnian (Triassic), Bathonian (Jurassic), and Aptian (Cretaceous) stages, and compare these to a previously reconstructed trophic network from a modern Jamaican reef community. We generated model food webs consistent with functional structure and taxon richnesses of communities, and compared distributions of guild level parameters among communities, to assess the eect of the Mesozoic Marine Revolution on ecosystem dynamics. We found that the trophic space of communities expanded from the Anisian to the Aptian, but this pattern was notmonotonic.We also found that trophic position for a given guild was subject to variation depending on what other guilds were present in that stage. The Bathonian showed the lowest degree of trophic omnivory by top consumers among all Mesozoic networks, and was dominated by longer food chains. In contrast, the Aptian network displayed a greater degree of short food chains and trophic omnivory that we attribute to the presence of large predatory guilds, such as sharks and bony fish. Interestingly, the modern Jamaican community appeared to have a higher proportion of long chains, as was the case in the Bathonian. Overall, results indicate that trophic structure is highly dependent on the taxa and ecological functions present, primary production experienced by the community, and activity of top consumers. Results from this study point to a need to better understand trophic position when planning restoration activities because a community may be so altered by human activity that restoring a species or its interactions may no longer be possible, and alternatives must be considered to restore an important function. Further work may also focus on elucidating the precise roles of top consumers in moderating network structure and community stability

    From vineyards to feedlots: a fund-flow scanning of sociometabolic transition in the VallĂšs County (Catalonia) 1860-1956-1999

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    We analyse the changes to agricultural metabolism in four municipalities of VallĂšs County (Catalonia, Iberia) by accounting for their agroecosystemfunds and flows during the socioecological transition from organic to industrial farming between the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The choice of three different stages in this transition allows us to observe the transformation of its funds and flows over time, the links established between them and the effect on their energy profiles.We emphasize the relevance of the integration and consistency of agroecosystem funds for energy efficiency in agriculture and their role as underlying historical drivers of this socioecological transition. While readjustment to market conditions and availability and affordability of external inputs are considered the main drivers of the transition, we also highlight the role of societal energy and nutritional transitions. An analysis of advanced organic agriculture c. 1860 reveals the great effort required to reproduce soil fertility and livestock from the internal recirculation of biomass. Meanwhile, a balance between land produce and livestock densities enabled the integration of funds, with a positive impact on energy performance. The adoption of fossil fuels and synthetic fertilizers c. 1956 reduced somewhat the pressure exerted on the land by overcoming the former dependence on local biomass flows to reproduce the agroecosystem. Yet external inputs diminished sustainability. Partial dependence on external markets existed congruently with internal crop diversity and the predominance of organic over industrial farm management. A shift towards animal production and consumption led to a new specialization process c. 1999 that resulted in crop homogenization and agroecological landscape disintegration. The energy returns of this linear feed-food livestock bioconversion declined compared to earlier mixed farming. Huge energy flows driven by a globalized economy ran through this agroecosystem, provoking deep impacts at both a local and external scale

    Landslide Mapping Using Two Main Deep-Learning Convolution Neural Network Streams Combined by the Dempster-Shafer Model

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    Beyond the direct hazards of earthquakes, the deposited mass of earthquake-induced landslide (EQIL) in the riverbeds causes the river to thrust upward. The EQIL inventories are generated mostly by the traditional or semisupervised mapping approaches, which required a parameter's tuning or binary threshold decision in the practical application. In this study, we investigated the impact of optical data from the PlanetScope sensor and topographic factors from the ALOS sensor on EQIL mapping using a deep-learning convolution neural network (CNN). Thus, six training datasets were prepared and used to evaluate the performance of the CNN model using only optical data and using these data along with each and all topographic factors across the west coast of the Trishuli river in Nepal. For the first time, the Dempster-Shafer (D-S) model was applied for combining the resulting maps from each CNN stream that trained with different datasets. Finally, seven different resulting maps were compared against a detailed and accurate inventory of landslide polygons by a mean intersection-over-union (mIOU). Our results confirm that using the training dataset of the spectral information along with the topographic factor of the slope is helpful to distinguish the landslide bodies from other similar features, such as barren lands, and consequently increases the mapping accuracy. The improvement of the mIOU was a range from approximately zero to more than 17%. Moreover, the D-S model can be considered as an optimizer method to combine the results from different scenarios
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