Relational coupling of multiple streams: The case of COVID‐19 infections in German abattoirs

After a series of COVID-19 outbreaks among employees in the German meat-processing industry, the Work Safety Control Act protecting these workers made it on the government's agenda in July 2020. From a Multiple Streams perspective, local corona hotspots may be understood as policy windows for introducing respective measures. However, this alone is not sufficient to explain agenda setting. This study investigates the coupling of streams within policy windows. Introducing the notion of relational coupling to the MSF research agenda, discourse network analysis provides a new methodology to reveal entrepre-neurial activities. Studying the German mass media discourse on the issue identifies two stages: (1) An initial problem broker-age without coupling of core policies, followed by (2) a coupling across all streams based on a focusing event. We argue that relational coupling allows for an enhanced understanding of agenda setting

Revisión de la teledetección activa y la fusión de datos para la caracterización de bosques en modelos especie-hábitat

Revista oficial de la Asociación Española de Teledetección[EN] Spatially explicit maps of wildlife habitat relationships have proven to be valuable tools for conservation and management applications including evaluating how and which species may be impacted by large scale climate change, ongoing fragmentation of habitat, and local land-use practices. Studies have turned to remote sensing datasets as a way to characterize vegetation for the examination of habitat selection and for mapping realized relationships across the landscape. Potentially one of the more difficult habitat types to try to characterize with remote sensing are the vertically and horizontally complex forest systems. Characterizing this complexity is needed to explore which aspects may represent driving and/or limiting factors for wildlife species. Active remote sensing data from lidar and radar sensors has thus caught the attention of the forest wildlife research and management community in its potential to represent three dimensional habitat features. The purpose of this review was to examine the applications of active remote sensing for characterizing forest in wildlife habitat studies through a keyword search within Web of Science. We present commonly used active remote sensing metrics and methods, discuss recent advances in characterizing aspects of forest habitat, and provide suggestions for future research in the area of new remote sensing data/techniques that could benefit forest wildlife studies that are currently not represented or may be underutilized within the wildlife literature. We also highlight the potential value in data fusion of active and passive sensor data for representing multiple dimensions and scales of forest habitat. While the use of remote sensing has increased in recent years within wildlife habitat studies, continued communication between the remote sensing, forest management, and wildlife communities is vital to ensure appropriate data sources and methods are understood and utilized, and so that creators of mapping products may better realize the needs of secondary users.[ES] Se ha probado que los mapas que muestran explícitamente las relaciones especie-hábitat constituyen herramientas valiosas en aplicaciones de conservación y gestión, incluyendo la evaluación sobre qué especies y de qué forma se pueden ver afectadas por el cambio climático a gran escala, la fragmentación progresiva del hábitat y los usos del suelo a nivel local. Diversos estudios se han centrado en utilizar la teledetección como herramienta que permite caracterizar la vegetación para el análisis de la selección del hábitat y para cartografiar las relaciones con el entorno natural. Uno de los tipos de hábitats más difíciles de caracterizar mediante teledetección son los sistemas forestales verticales y horizontales complejos. Su caracterización es necesaria para estudiar los aspectos determinantes y/o limitantes para las especies. El uso de la teledetección activa mediante sensores LiDAR y RADAR ha suscitado gran interés en el ámbito de la investigación de especies de fauna silvestre en áreas forestales así como su gestión, dado el potencial de esta tecnología para representar características tridimensionales de estos hábitats. El objetivo de este artículo de revisión es analizar las aplicaciones de teledetección activa en los estudios de hábitat de fauna silvestre en zonas forestales a través de búsquedas de palabras claves en la WebofScience. Se presentan las métricas y métodos comúnmente utilizados, los avances recientes en la caracterización de hábitats forestales y se recomiendan líneas futuras de investigación en el área de teledetección que podrían beneficiar estudios sobre fauna silvestre en ámbitos forestales que actualmente o no existen o están infrautilizados. También se destaca el valor potencial de la fusión de datos de sensores activos y pasivos para la representación de múltiples dimensiones y escalas del hábitat forestal. Si bien el uso de la teledetección en estudios de hábitat de fauna silvestre se ha incrementado en los últimos años, la comunicación fluida entre las comunidades científicas relacionadas con la teledetección, la gestión forestal y la ecología es vital para garantizar el uso y comprensión adecuados de los datos, permitiendo un mejor conocimiento de las necesidades de los usuarios.Our review was funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Carbon Cycle Program (NASA Grant 10-CARBON10-45).Vogeler, JC.; Cohen, WB. (2016). A review of the role of active remote sensing and data fusion for characterizing forest in wildlife habitat models. Revista de Teledetección. (Special Issue):1-14. https://doi.org/10.4995/raet.2016.3981SWORD114Special Issu

Livestock Farming at the Expense of Water Resources?: The Water–Energy–Food Nexus in Regions with Intensive Livestock Farming

Policymaking in the water–energy–food nexus is characterized by complex ecological, social, and economic interdependencies. Nexus research assumes these interactions to be overseen in the respective resource governance resulting in sectoral perspectives contributing to unsustainable outcomes. In Germany, the political priority given to the formation of an internationally competitive livestock sector by means of intensification, specialization and regional concentration has exerted sustained pressure on water and soil resources. The expansion of bioenergy plants promoted by the renewable energy act has exacerbated the situation. Despite the persistency of the ecological challenges, German policymakers only reacted when the European Commission referred Germany to the European Court of Justice. Current policy eorts to tackle the ecological problems are now provoking disruptions in the agrarian sector in regions with high nitrate concentrations in water resources. By combining the social-ecological systems framework with hypotheses derived from nexus research, we explore the interactions between food, water and energy systems and aim at understanding the unsustainable outcomes. We argue that the non-consideration of the complex interdependencies between the agricultural, the water and the energy system in policymaking and the divergence of policy goals constitute a major cause of unsustainable governance

Lidar-derived canopy architecture predicts brown creeper occupancy of two western coniferous forests

In western conifer-dominated forests where the abundance of old-growth stands is decreasing, species such as the Brown Creeper (Certhia americana) may be useful as indicator species for monitoring the health of old-growth systems because they are strongly associated with habitat characteristics associated with old growth and are especially sensitive to forest management. Light detection and ranging (lidar) is useful for acquiring fine-resolution, three-dimensional data on vegetation structure across broad areas. We evaluated Brown Creeper occupancy of forested landscapes by using lidar-derived canopy metrics in two coniferous forests in Idaho. Density of the upper canopy was the most important variable for predicting Brown Creeper occupancy, although mean height and height variability were also included in the top models. The upper canopy was twice as dense and the mean height was almost 50% higher at occupied than at unoccupied sites. Previous studies have found indicators of canopy density to be important factors for Brown Creeper habitat; however, this represents the first time that lidar data have been used to examine this relationship empirically through the mapping of the upper canopy density that cannot be continuously quantified by field-based methods or passive remote sensing. Our model’s performance was classified as “good” by multiple criteria. We were able to map probabilities of Brown Creeper occupancy in ~50 000 ha of forest, probabilities that can be used at the local, forest-stand, and landscape scales, and illustrate the potential utility of lidar-derived data for studies of avian distributions in forested landscapes.En los bosques dominados por coníferas del oeste, donde está disminuyendo la abundancia de rodales maduros, las especies como Certhia americana pueden ser útiles como especies indicadoras para monitorear la salud de los sistemas maduros debido a que están fuertemente asociadas con las características del hábitat vinculadas con el bosque maduro y son especialmente sensibles al manejo del bosque. El sistema de detección y alcance de luz (denominado lidar, un acrónimo del inglés “light detection and ranging”) es útil para adquirir datos tridimensionales de alta resolución de la estructura de la vegetación a través de grandes áreas. Evaluamos la ocupación de C. americana de paisajes boscosos usando métricas del dosel derivadas de lidar en dos bosques de coníferas en Idaho. La densidad del dosel alto fue la variable más importante para predecir la ocupación de C. americana, aunque la altura media y la variabilidad de la altura también fueron incluidas en los mejores modelos. El dosel alto fue dos veces más denso y la altura media fue casi 50% más alta en los sitios ocupados que en los sitios desocupados. Estudios previos han encontrado que los indicadores de densidad del dosel son factores importantes del hábitat de C. americana; sin embargo, esto representa la primera vez que datos de lidar han sido usados para examinar esta relación de modo empírico a través del mapeo de la densidad del dosel alto, de un modo continuo que no puede ser cuantificado por métodos basados en trabajo de campo o muestreo remoto pasivo. El desempeño de nuestro modelo fue clasificado como “bueno” por múltiples criterios. Fuimos capaces de mapear las probabilidades de ocupación de C. americana en ~50 000 ha de bosque, probabilidades que pueden ser usadas a las escalas local, de rodal de bosque y de paisaje, y que ilustran la utilidad potencial de los datos derivados de lidar para estudios de distribución de aves en paisajes boscosos.Keywords: Brown Creeper, Certhia americana, mapping, habitat, forest, occupancy, lida

Evaluating GEDI data fusions for continuous characterizations of forest wildlife habitat

Continuous characterizations of forest structure are critical for modeling wildlife habitat as well as for assessing trade-offs with additional ecosystem services. To overcome the spatial and temporal limitations of airborne lidar data for studying wide-ranging animals and for monitoring wildlife habitat through time, novel sampling data sources, including the space-borne Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation (GEDI) lidar instrument, may be incorporated within data fusion frameworks to scale up satellite-based estimates of forest structure across continuous spatial extents. The objectives of this study were to: 1) investigate the value and limitations of satellite data sources for generating GEDI-fusion models and 30 m resolution predictive maps of eight forest structure measures across six western U.S. states (Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, Oregon, Washington, and Montana); 2) evaluate the suitability of GEDI as a reference data source and assess any spatiotemporal biases of GEDI-fusion maps using samples of airborne lidar data; and 3) examine differences in GEDI-fusion products for inclusion within wildlife habitat models for three keystone woodpecker species with varying forest structure needs. We focused on two fusion models, one that combined Landsat, Sentinel-1 Synthetic Aperture Radar, disturbance, topographic, and bioclimatic predictor information (combined model), and one that was restricted to Landsat, topographic, and bioclimatic predictors (Landsat/topo/bio model). Model performance varied across the eight GEDI structure measures although all representing moderate to high predictive performance (model testing R2 values ranging from 0.36 to 0.76). Results were similar between fusion models, as well as for map validations for years of model creation (2019–2020) and hindcasted years (2016–2018). Within our wildlife case studies, modeling encounter rates of the three woodpecker species using GEDI-fusion inputs yielded AUC values ranging from 0.76–0.87 with observed relationships that followed our ecological understanding of the species. While our results show promise for the use of remote sensing data fusions for scaling up GEDI structure metrics of value for habitat modeling and other applications across broad continuous extents, further assessments are needed to test their performance within habitat modeling for additional species of conservation interest as well as biodiversity assessments

Modeling Denitrification : Can We Report What We Don't Know?

Funding Information: This study is the products of a workshop funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft through the research unit DFG‐FOR 2337: Denitrification in Agricultural Soils: Integrated Control and Modelling at Various Scales (DASIM), and by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) under the “Make our Planet Great Again—German Research Initiative”, Grant 306060, implemented by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). This work was supported by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme project VERIFY (grant agreement no. 776810). We would like to thank the contribution of all workshop participants of the II. DASIM Modeler Workshop. Publisher Copyright: © 2023. The Authors.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

An adjoint method for the assimilation of statistical characteristics into eddy-resolving ocean models

The study investigates perspectives of the parameter estimation problem with the adjoint method in eddy-resolving models. Sensitivity to initial conditions resulting from the chaotic nature of this type of model limits the direct application of the adjoint method by predictability. Prolonging the period of assimilation is accompanied by the appearance of an increasing number of secondary minima of the cost function that prevents the convergence of this method. In the framework of the Lorenz model it is shown that averaged quantities are suitable for describing invariant properties, and that secondary minima are for this type of data transformed into stochastic deviations. An adjoint method suitable for the assimilation of statistical characteristics of data and applicable on time scales beyond the predictability limit is presented. The approach assumes a greater predictability for averaged quantities. The adjoint to a prognostic model for statistical moments is employed for calculating cost function gradients that ignore the fine structure resulting from secondary minima. Coarse resolution versions of eddy-resolving models are used for this purpose. Identical twin experiments are performed with a quasigeostrophic model to evaluate the performance and limitations of this approach in improving models by estimating parameters. The wind stress curl is estimated from a simulated mean stream function. A very simple parameterization scheme for the assimilation of second-order moments is shown to permit the estimation of gradients that perform efficiently in minimizing cost functions

Graph Data-Models and Semantic Web Technologies in Scholarly Digital Editing

This volume is based on the selected papers presented at the Workshop on Scholarly Digital Editions, Graph Data-Models and Semantic Web Technologies, held at the Uni- versity of Lausanne in June 2019. The Workshop was organized by Elena Spadini (University of Lausanne) and Francesca Tomasi (University of Bologna), and spon- sored by the Swiss National Science Foundation through a Scientific Exchange grant, and by the Centre de recherche sur les lettres romandes of the University of Lausanne. The Workshop comprised two full days of vibrant discussions among the invited speakers, the authors of the selected papers, and other participants.1 The acceptance rate following the open call for papers was around 60%. All authors – both selected and invited speakers – were asked to provide a short paper two months before the Workshop. The authors were then paired up, and each pair exchanged papers. Paired authors prepared questions for one another, which were to be addressed during the talks at the Workshop; in this way, conversations started well before the Workshop itself. After the Workshop, the papers underwent a second round of peer-review before inclusion in this volume. This time, the relevance of the papers was not under discus- sion, but reviewers were asked to appraise specific aspects of each contribution, such as its originality or level of innovation, its methodological accuracy and knowledge of the literature, as well as more formal parameters such as completeness, clarity, and coherence. The bibliography of all of the papers is collected in the public Zotero group library GraphSDE20192, which has been used to generate the reference list for each contribution in this volume. The invited speakers came from a wide range of backgrounds (academic, commer- cial, and research institutions) and represented the different actors involved in the remediation of our cultural heritage in the form of graphs and/or in a semantic web en- vironment. Georg Vogeler (University of Graz) and Ronald Haentjens Dekker (Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences, Humanities Cluster) brought the Digital Humanities research perspective; the work of Hans Cools and Roberta Laura Padlina (University of Basel, National Infrastructure for Editions), as well as of Tobias Schweizer and Sepi- deh Alassi (University of Basel, Digital Humanities Lab), focused on infrastructural challenges and the development of conceptual and software frameworks to support re- searchers’ needs; Michele Pasin’s contribution (Digital Science, Springer Nature) was informed by his experiences in both academic research, and in commercial technology companies that provide services for the scientific community. The Workshop featured not only the papers of the selected authors and of the invited speakers, but also moments of discussion between interested participants. In addition to the common Q&A time, during the second day one entire session was allocated to working groups delving into topics that had emerged during the Workshop. Four working groups were created, with four to seven participants each, and each group presented a short report at the end of the session. Four themes were discussed: enhancing TEI from documents to data; ontologies for the Humanities; tools and infrastructures; and textual criticism. All of these themes are represented in this volume. The Workshop would not have been of such high quality without the support of the members of its scientific committee: Gioele Barabucci, Fabio Ciotti, Claire Clivaz, Marion Rivoal, Greta Franzini, Simon Gabay, Daniel Maggetti, Frederike Neuber, Elena Pierazzo, Davide Picca, Michael Piotrowski, Matteo Romanello, Maïeul Rouquette, Elena Spadini, Francesca Tomasi, Aris Xanthos – and, of course, the support of all the colleagues and administrative staff in Lausanne, who helped the Workshop to become a reality. The final versions of these papers underwent a single-blind peer review process. We want to thank the reviewers: Helena Bermudez Sabel, Arianna Ciula, Marilena Daquino, Richard Hadden, Daniel Jeller, Tiziana Mancinelli, Davide Picca, Michael Piotrowski, Patrick Sahle, Raffaele Viglianti, Joris van Zundert, and others who preferred not to be named personally. Your input enhanced the quality of the volume significantly! It is sad news that Hans Cools passed away during the production of the volume. We are proud to document a recent state of his work and will miss him and his ability to implement the vision of a digital scholarly edition based on graph data-models and semantic web technologies. The production of the volume would not have been possible without the thorough copy-editing and proof reading by Lucy Emmerson and the support of the IDE team, in particular Bernhard Assmann, the TeX-master himself. This volume is sponsored by the University of Bologna and by the University of Lausanne. Bologna, Lausanne, Graz, July 2021 Francesca Tomasi, Elena Spadini, Georg Vogele

The nuclear receptors of Biomphalaria glabrata and Lottia gigantea: Implications for developing new model organisms

© 2015 Kaur et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are creditedNuclear receptors (NRs) are transcription regulators involved in an array of diverse physiological functions including key roles in endocrine and metabolic function. The aim of this study was to identify nuclear receptors in the fully sequenced genome of the gastropod snail, Biomphalaria glabrata, intermediate host for Schistosoma mansoni and compare these to known vertebrate NRs, with a view to assessing the snail's potential as a invertebrate model organism for endocrine function, both as a prospective new test organism and to elucidate the fundamental genetic and mechanistic causes of disease. For comparative purposes, the genome of a second gastropod, the owl limpet, Lottia gigantea was also investigated for nuclear receptors. Thirty-nine and thirty-three putative NRs were identified from the B. glabrata and L. gigantea genomes respectively, based on the presence of a conserved DNA-binding domain and/or ligand-binding domain. Nuclear receptor transcript expression was confirmed and sequences were subjected to a comparative phylogenetic analysis, which demonstrated that these molluscs have representatives of all the major NR subfamilies (1-6). Many of the identified NRs are conserved between vertebrates and invertebrates, however differences exist, most notably, the absence of receptors of Group 3C, which includes some of the vertebrate endocrine hormone targets. The mollusc genomes also contain NR homologues that are present in insects and nematodes but not in vertebrates, such as Group 1J (HR48/DAF12/HR96). The identification of many shared receptors between humans and molluscs indicates the potential for molluscs as model organisms; however the absence of several steroid hormone receptors indicates snail endocrine systems are fundamentally different.The National Centre for the Replacement, Refinement and Reduction of Animals in Research, Grant Ref:G0900802 to CSJ, LRN, SJ & EJR [www.nc3rs.org.uk]

Evaluating carbon storage, timber harvest, and habitat possibilities for a Western Cascades (USA) forest landscape

Forest policymakers and managers have long sought ways to evaluate the capability of forest landscapes to jointly produce timber, habitat, and other ecosystem services in response to forest management. Currently, carbon is of particular interest as policies for increasing carbon storage on federal lands are being proposed. However, a challenge in joint production analysis of forest management is adequately representing ecological conditions and processes that influence joint production relationships. We used simulation models of vegetation structure, forest sector carbon, and potential wildlife habitat to characterize landscape-level joint production possibilities for carbon storage, timber harvest, and habitat for seven wildlife species across a range of forest management regimes. We sought to (1) characterize the general relationships of production possibilities for combinations of carbon storage, timber, and habitat, and (2) identify management variables that most influence joint production relationships. Our 160 000-ha study landscape featured environmental conditions typical of forests in the Western Cascade Mountains of Oregon (USA). Our results indicate that managing forests for carbon storage involves trade-offs among timber harvest and habitat for focal wildlife species, depending on the disturbance interval and utilization intensity followed. Joint production possibilities for wildlife species varied in shape, ranging from competitive to complementary to compound, reflecting niche breadth and habitat component needs of species examined. Managing Pacific Northwest forests to store forest sector carbon can be roughly complementary with habitat for Northern Spotted Owl, Olive-sided Flycatcher, and red tree vole. However, managing forests to increase carbon storage potentially can be competitive with timber production and habitat for Pacific marten, Pileated Woodpecker, and Western Bluebird, depending on the disturbance interval and harvest intensity chosen. Our analysis suggests that joint production possibilities under forest management regimes currently typical on industrial forest lands (e.g., 40- to 80-yr rotations with some tree retention for wildlife) represent but a small fraction of joint production outcomes possible in the region. Although the theoretical boundaries of the production possibilities sets we developed are probably unachievable in the current management environment, they arguably define the long-term potential of managing forests to produce multiple ecosystem services within and across multiple forest ownerships