Spatially-explicit model of sole larvae in the Southern North Sea: sensitivity of the dispersal to hydrodynamic/environment variability and biological parameters

Sole (Solea solea) is one of the most valuable commercial species in the North Sea. The size of the spawning stock is above the level of sustainable exploitation, but fishing mortality is high. The stock is therefore at risk of being harvested unsustainably. Moreover, interannual recruitment variability is very high. It is crucial to understand the contribution of hydrodynamics, environment and biological parameters to recruitment variability in order to propose appropriate measures for the management of the North Sea stock. Here we use a particle-tracking transport model coupled to a 3D hydrodynamic model to study the relative effect of hydrodynamic variability, environment variability (throughout temperature) and biological parameters on the dispersal of sole larvae in the Southern North Sea

Reconstructing Colonization Dynamics of the Human Parasite Schistosoma mansoni following Anthropogenic Environmental Changes in Northwest Senegal

© 2015 Van den Broeck 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 credited. The attached file is the published version of the article

Suction-controlled experiments on Boom clay

The understanding of the thermo-hydro-mechanical behaviour of a clay barrier is needed for the prediction of its final in situ properties after the hydration and thermal transient in a radioactive waste repository. As part of the CEC 1990-1994 R&D programme on radioactive waste management and storage, the CEA (Fr), CIEMAT (Sp). ENRESA (Sp). SCK CEN (B). UPC (Sp) and UWCC (UK) have carried out a joint project on unsaturated clay behaviour (Volckaert et al.. 1996). The aim of the study is to analyse and model the behaviour of a clay-based engineered barrier during its hydration phase under real repository conditions. The hydro-mechanical and thermo-hydraulic models developed in this project have been coupled to describe stress/strain behaviour, moisture migration and heat transfer. A thermo-hydraulic model has also been coupled to a geochemical code to describe the migration and formation of chemical species. In this project. suction-controlled experiments have been performed on Boom clay (B), FoCa clay (Fr) and Almeria bentonite (Sp). The aim of these experiments is to test the validity of the interpretive model developed by Alonso and Gens (Alonso et al., 1990). and to build a database of unsaturated clay thermo-hydro-mechanical parameters. Such a database can then be used for validation exercises in which in situ experiments are simulated. The Boom clay is a moderately swelling clay of Rupellian age. It is studied at the SCK. CEN in Belgium as a potential host rock for a radioactive waste repository. In this paper, suction-controlled experiments carried out on Boom clay by SCK CEN are described. SCK CEN has performed experiments to measure the relation between suction, water content and temperature and the relation between suction, stress and deformation. The applied suctioncontrol techniques and experimental setups are detailed. The results of these experiments are discussed in the perspective of the model of Alonso and Gens. The influence of temperature on water uptake was rather small. The measured swelling-collapse behaviour can be explained by the Alonso and Gens model.Peer Reviewe

The European sea bass Dicentrarchus labrax genome puzzle: comparative BAC-mapping and low coverage shotgun sequencing

Abstract Background Food supply from the ocean is constrained by the shortage of domesticated and selected fish. Development of genomic models of economically important fishes should assist with the removal of this bottleneck. European sea bass Dicentrarchus labrax L. (Moronidae, Perciformes, Teleostei) is one of the most important fishes in European marine aquaculture; growing genomic resources put it on its way to serve as an economic model. Results End sequencing of a sea bass genomic BAC-library enabled the comparative mapping of the sea bass genome using the three-spined stickleback Gasterosteus aculeatus genome as a reference. BAC-end sequences (102,690) were aligned to the stickleback genome. The number of mappable BACs was improved using a two-fold coverage WGS dataset of sea bass resulting in a comparative BAC-map covering 87% of stickleback chromosomes with 588 BAC-contigs. The minimum size of 83 contigs covering 50% of the reference was 1.2 Mbp; the largest BAC-contig comprised 8.86 Mbp. More than 22,000 BAC-clones aligned with both ends to the reference genome. Intra-chromosomal rearrangements between sea bass and stickleback were identified. Size distributions of mapped BACs were used to calculate that the genome of sea bass may be only 1.3 fold larger than the 460 Mbp stickleback genome. Conclusions The BAC map is used for sequencing single BACs or BAC-pools covering defined genomic entities by second generation sequencing technologies. Together with the WGS dataset it initiates a sea bass genome sequencing project. This will allow the quantification of polymorphisms through resequencing, which is important for selecting highly performing domesticated fish.Peer Reviewe

Risk analysis of marine activities in the Belgian part of the North Sea (RAMA): final report

RAMA is a 2-year project (04/2004 - 04/2006) executed by two Belgian partners, Ecolas NV (Environmental Consultancy Agency) and the Maritime Institute (University of Ghent), and financed by the SPSD II research program, specific actions, of the Belgian Science Policy (BELPSO). RAMA aims to assess the environmental risks of spills by commercial shipping activities on the Belgian Part of the North Sea. Shipping patterns, transports of dangerous goods, probability of risks and the potential impact of spill incidents (oil & hazardous and noxious substances) will be assessed. The risk analysis within this project studies both the chances of a spill accident happening and the environmental impacts in case of an accident. The valorisation of the RAMA project will result in a thorough analysis of the current status of the shipping at the North Sea in relation to the issue of safety. The scope of the project will however go beyond the mere result of a fundamental risk analysis of the commercial shipping at the North Sea. It is also aiming at the formulation of recommendations to improve the safety level for the environment and at an optimization of response in the framework of the Belgian "North Sea Disaster Plan"