Repository CRAN

Description Package for geostatistical interpolation of data with irregular spatial support such as runoff related data or data from administrative units

The Effects of Parental Involvement with Preschoolers At Risk for Developmental and Behavioral Problems

Parental involvement 1n early childhood intervention with children at risk has been reported as an effective variable in treatment both in popular literature and research reviews. However, the results of meta-analyses of early intervention literature have concluded that research evidence is not currently available to support this notion. Therefore, research which employs strong methodology to study the efficacy of parental involvement in early interventions with children at risk is needed. The purpose of this study was to determine whether, in a sample of preschoolers exhibiting developmental and behavioral risk, there are posttreatment differences between different levels of parent-involved groups in developmental skill, problem behavior, or parents\u27 childrearing behaviors and knowledge of behavioral principles. Forty-two 3- to 5-year-old children and their parents served as the study sample. The selection criteria included showing evidence of mild or moderate developmental or behavioral problems or other risk indices. Risk data was obtained by parent report and by scores on the Battelle Developmental Inventory. Demographic data was also obtained. Three intervention groups provided either high parental involvement, low parental involvement, or a no-treatment waiting list. Children in the high and low parental involvement groups participated 1n a four-month center - based program. Parents in the high involvement group participated in an intensive center-based program and home-based activities. Parents in the low involvement group completed only homebased activities. The children were assessed with the Battelle Developmental Inventory and the Burk\u27s Behavior Inventory. Parents were assessed with the Iowa Parent Behavior Inventory and the Knowledge of Behavioral Principles as Applied to Children. The three study groups were found to be comparable in terms of demographic variables and pretreatment developmental screening scores. No significant differences were found between groups on any of the child assessments. Mothers in the high parental involvement group scored significantly higher on a test of Knowledge of Behavioral Principles as Applied to Children. Additional information was provided in the study on actual (vs. intended) treatment participation and on quality of parent-child interactions. Possible reasons for lack of child treatment effects and strengths and weaknesses of this study were discussed. It was recommended that future research combine high - quality research designs with a strong conceptual framework and assess both quantitative and qualitative treatment outcomes in exploring the benefits of parental involvement in early intervention with children at risk

eHabitat: Large scale modelling of habitats types and similarities for conservation and management of protected areas.

eHabitat, which is one of the services supporting the DOPA, the Digital Observatory for Protected Areas, proposes a habitat replaceability index (HRI) which can be used for characterizing each protected area worldwide. More precisely, eHabitat computes for each protected area a map of probabilities to find areas within the corresponding ecoregion presenting ecological characteristics that are similar to those found in the selected protected area. The HRI is then computed as the ratio between similar areas outside park and the park area itself. We here present an improved version which includes an automatic segmentation of the parks prior to HRI computation. This allows for a discrimination of different habitats types inside of protected areas. By reducing the variability within landscape patches, similarity values can be considered to be more accurate. This approach should also further improve the associated niche modelling tools.JRC.H.5-Land Resources Managemen

Uncertainty propagation in the Model Web: A case study with e-Habitat

e-Habitat is a Web Processing Service (WPS) designed to compute the likelihood of finding ecosystems with equal properties. Inputs to the WPS, typically thematic geospatial ¿layers¿, can be discovered using standardised catalogues, and the outputs tailored to specific end user needs. Because these layers can range from geophysical data captured through remote sensing to socio-economical indicators, e-Habitat is exposed to a broad range of different types and levels of uncertainties. Potentially chained to other services to perform ecological forecasting for example, e-Habitat would be an additional component further propagating uncertainties from a potentially long chain of model services. This integration of complex resources increases the challenges in dealing with uncertainty. For such a system, as envisaged by initiatives such as the Group on Earth Observation¿s ¿Model Web¿, to be used for policy or decision making, users must be provided with information on the quality of the outputs since all system components will be subject to uncertainty. UncertWeb will create the Uncertainty enabled Model Web by promoting interoperability between data and models with quantified uncertainty, building on existing open, international standards. UncertWeb will thus develop open source implementations of encoding standards, service interface profiles, discovery and chaining mechanisms, and generic tools to realize a "Model Web" taking uncertainty in data and models into account. It is the objective of this paper to discuss the main types of uncertainties e-Habitat has to deal with and to present the benefits of the use of the UncertWeb framework.JRC.H.3-Global environement monitorin

Streamflow data availability in Europe: a detailed dataset of interpolated flow-duration curves

For about 24 000 river basins across Europe, we provide a continuous representation of the stream-flow regime in terms of empirical flow-duration curves (FDCs), which are key signatures of the hydrological behaviour of a catchment and are widely used for supporting decisions on water resource management as well as for assessing hydrologic change. In this study, FDCs are estimated by means of the geostatistical procedure termed total negative deviation top-kriging (TNDTK), starting from the empirical FDCs made available by the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission (DG-JRC) for about 3000 discharge measurement stations across Europe. Consistent with previous studies, TNDTK is shown to provide high accuracy for the entire study area, even with different degrees of reliability, which varies significantly over the study area. In order to provide this kind of information site by site, together with the estimated FDCs, for each catchment we provide indicators of the accuracy and reliability of the performed large-scale geostatistical prediction. The dataset is freely available at the PANGAEA open-access library (Data Publisher for Earth & Environmental Science) at https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.938975 (Persiano et al., 2021b)

eHabitat: A Contribution to the Model Web for Habitat Assessments and Ecological Forecasting

In striving to improve the predictive capabilities of ecological forecasting we face three basic choices ¿ develop new models, improve existing ones or increase the connectivity of models so they can work together. The latter approach of chaining different interoperable models is of particular interest, as technical developments have made it increasingly viable to combine models that can answer more questions than the individual models alone, allowing users to address complex questions, often of a multi-disciplinary nature. This concept of a Model Web encourages the setting up of a dynamic network of interoperating models, communicating with each other using standardized web services. It is the purpose of this paper to introduce the potential contribution of e-Habitat to the Model Web. e-Habitat is conceived as a Web Processing Service for computing the likelihood of finding ecosystems with equal properties. By developing e-Habitat according to Model Web principles, end-users can define the thematic layers for input to the model from various sources. These input layers are discovered using standards-based catalogues, which are a fundamental component of Model Web and generic Spatial Data Infrastructures. e-Habitat integrates data ranging from remote sensing data to socio-economical indicators, thus offering a huge potential for multi-disciplinary modelling. We will show that e-Habitat can be used for the identification of habitats that are most vulnerable or of the optimal locations for monitoring stations or, when coupled with climate change model services, for ecological forecasting. As such, it is an excellent example of the Model Web in practice.JRC.H.3-Global environement monitorin

Risk ranking of pathogens in ready-to-eat unprocessed foods of non-animal origin (FoNAO) in the EU: Initial evaluation using outbreak data (2007-2011).

International audienceFoods of non-animal origin (FoNAO) are consumed in a variety of forms, being a major component of almost all meals. These food types have the potential to be associated with large outbreaks as seen in 2011 associated with VTEC 0104. In order to identify and rank specific food/pathogen combinations most often linked to human cases originating from FoNAO in the EU, a semi-quantitative model was developed using seven criteria: strength of associations between food and pathogen based on the foodborne outbreak data from EU Zoonoses Monitoring (2007-2011), incidence of illness, burden of disease, dose-response relationship, consumption, prevalence of contamination and pathogen growth potential during shelf life. The top ranking food/pathogen combination was Salmonella spp. and leafy greens eaten raw followed by (in equal rank) Salmonella spp. and bulb and stem vegetables, Salmonella spp. and tomatoes, Salmonella spp. and melons, and pathogenic Escherichia coli and fresh pods, legumes or grains. Despite the inherent assumptions and limitations, this risk model is considered a tool for risk managers, as it allows ranking of food/pathogen combinations most often linked to foodborne human cases originating from FoNAO in the EU. Efforts to collect additional data even in the absence of reported outbreaks as well as to enhance the quality of the EU-specific data, which was used as input for all the model criteria, will allow the improvement of the model outputs. Furthermore, it is recommended that harmonised terminology be applied to the categorisation of foods collected for different reasons, e.g. monitoring, surveillance, outbreak investigation and consumption. In addition, to assist future microbiological risk assessments, consideration should be given to the collection of additional information on how food has been processed, stored and prepared as part of the above data collection exercises

An introduction to the Digital Observatory for Protected Areas (DOPA) and the DOPA Explorer (Beta)

The Digital Observatory for Protected Areas (DOPA) is conceived around a set of interacting Critical Biodiversity Informatics Infrastructures (databases, web modelling services, broadcasting services, ...) hosted at different institutions, including the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission, the World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC), the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) and BirdLife International. The current services of DOPA provide to a large variety of end-users, ranging from park managers, funding agencies to researchers, with means to assess, monitor and possibly forecast the state and pressure of protected areas at the local, national and global scales. With an introduction to the DOPA, the readers will find here a user manual of the beta version of DOPA Explorer, a first web based assessment tool where information on 9 000 protected areas covering almost 90% of the global protected surface has been processed automatically to generate a set of indicators on ecosystems, climate, phenology, species, ecosystem services and pressures. DOPA Explorer can so help identify the protected areas with most unique ecosystems and species and assess the pressures they are exposed to because of human development. Ecological data derived from and near real-time earth observations are also made available for the African continent. Inversely, DOPA Explorer indirectly highlights the protected areas for which the information is incomplete.JRC.H.5-Land Resources Managemen