Mammal fauna during the Late Pleistocene and Holocene in the far northeast of Europe

The paper summarises materials on the mammal remains in northeastern Europe, dated by radiocarbon. Altogether, 23 local faunas of small mammals and 47 local faunas of large mammals were analysed. Multidimensional statistical analysis shows a strong correlation between changes in small mammal fauna composition and climate changes throughout time. The correlations with the spatial gradients, however, are less pronounced. The faunas are classified into three groups: (1) faunas of Holocene age; (2) Late Pleistocene ‘stadial’ assemblages; and (3) Late Pleistocene ‘interstadial’ assemblages. In some cases, changes in species abundance are better understood in terms of biotic interrelations rather than of climatic effects. The most pronounced change in small mammal fauna composition and structure occurred at the Preboreal/Boreal boundary, and a less conspicuous alteration took place at the LGM/Lateglacial transition. The most noticeable transformation in the large mammal fauna composition is dated to the early Holocene. Less significant changes are observed at the Middle Weichselian/LGM transition and at the LGM/Lateglacial transition. It is safely concluded that variations in the faunas of small and large mammals recorded in NE Europe during the last 35 000 years occurred synchronously and unidirectionally.

Erot spatiaalisissa ja ajallisissa reaktionormeissa kevään ja syksyn fenologisille tapahtumille

For species to stay temporally tuned to their environment, they use cues such as the accumulation of degree-days. The relationships between the timing of a phenological event in a population and its environmental cue can be described by a population-level reaction norm. Variation in reaction norms along environmental gradients may either intensify the envi- ronmental effects on timing (cogradient variation) or attenu- ate the effects (countergradient variation). To resolve spatial and seasonal variation in species’ response, we use a unique dataset of 91 taxa and 178 phenological events observed across a network of 472 monitoring sites, spread across the nations of the former Soviet Union. We show that compared to local rates of advancement of phenological events with the advancement of temperature-related cues (i.e., variation within site over years), spatial variation in reaction normsPeer reviewe

Chronicles of nature calendar, a long-term and large-scale multitaxon database on phenology

We present an extensive, large-scale, long-term and multitaxon database on phenological and climatic variation, involving 506,186 observation dates acquired in 471 localities in Russian Federation, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Belarus and Kyrgyzstan. The data cover the period 1890–2018, with 96% of the data being from 1960 onwards. The database is rich in plants, birds and climatic events, but also includes insects, amphibians, reptiles and fungi. The database includes multiple events per species, such as the onset days of leaf unfolding and leaf fall for plants, and the days for first spring and last autumn occurrences for birds. The data were acquired using standardized methods by permanent staff of national parks and nature reserves (87% of the data) and members of a phenological observation network (13% of the data). The database is valuable for exploring how species respond in their phenology to climate change. Large-scale analyses of spatial variation in phenological response can help to better predict the consequences of species and community responses to climate change.publishedVersio

Chronicles of nature calendar, a long-term and large-scale multitaxon database on phenology

We present an extensive, large-scale, long-term and multitaxon database on phenological and climatic variation, involving 506,186 observation dates acquired in 471 localities in Russian Federation, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Belarus and Kyrgyzstan. The data cover the period 1890-2018, with 96% of the data being from 1960 onwards. The database is rich in plants, birds and climatic events, but also includes insects, amphibians, reptiles and fungi. The database includes multiple events per species, such as the onset days of leaf unfolding and leaf fall for plants, and the days for first spring and last autumn occurrences for birds. The data were acquired using standardized methods by permanent staff of national parks and nature reserves (87% of the data) and members of a phenological observation network (13% of the data). The database is valuable for exploring how species respond in their phenology to climate change. Large-scale analyses of spatial variation in phenological response can help to better predict the consequences of species and community responses to climate change.Peer reviewe

Phenological shifts of abiotic events, producers and consumers across a continent

Ongoing climate change can shift organism phenology in ways that vary depending on species, habitats and climate factors studied. To probe for large-scale patterns in associated phenological change, we use 70,709 observations from six decades of systematic monitoring across the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Among 110 phenological events related to plants, birds, insects, amphibians and fungi, we find a mosaic of change, defying simple predictions of earlier springs, later autumns and stronger changes at higher latitudes and elevations. Site mean temperature emerged as a strong predictor of local phenology, but the magnitude and direction of change varied with trophic level and the relative timing of an event. Beyond temperature-associated variation, we uncover high variation among both sites and years, with some sites being characterized by disproportionately long seasons and others by short ones. Our findings emphasize concerns regarding ecosystem integrity and highlight the difficulty of predicting climate change outcomes. The authors use systematic monitoring across the former USSR to investigate phenological changes across taxa. The long-term mean temperature of a site emerged as a strong predictor of phenological change, with further imprints of trophic level, event timing, site, year and biotic interactions.Peer reviewe

Dispersed Cloud Rendering

The main goal of this bachelor's thesis was to improve the existing solution of rendering the three-dimensional dispersed clouds for a flagship product developed at the commissioner company Observis Oy. The current solution shows the 2D flat layers of a three-dimensional cloud, where every layer is switched by a button. The thesis was aimed to creating the Electron web application with the Mapbox map system and an extra layer of 3D clouds on top of it. In this case, the cloud will be shown as a whole 3D object with no need to switch layers and lose attention to perform unwanted actions. It should have interaction capabilities like observing the cloud state in a different point of time and automatic cloud animation. The project’s core development stack was Electron framework, React UI library and TypeScript programming language. The main visualization technologies were Mapbox for a map providing and deck.gl for rendering a three-dimensional point cloud layer. A special algorithm for processing multidimensional raw data was created. It prepared coming information to separated points of data with the exact geographical coordinate, material concentration value and calculated colour in multichannel mode. The interpolation technique was studied and implemented in practice. However, the Electron environment could not handle the interpolation workload and the whole codebase was migrated to a website environment with no rewriting code. A custom algorithm for interpolating cloud points was created, it successfully applied linear interpolation within three phases for three-dimensional clouds. The applied technique improved the visualization of clouds by generating more points between existing ones. It makes clouds to be denser and to look more realistic and appealing. The resulting application delivered a new vision of the same data. Every dispersed cloud is represented as a set of thousands of coloured spheres all together forming the realistic cloud shape. Moreover, a unique user experience came true in observing cloud state for different time periods with manual hour slider and automatic animation

Chronicle of Nature - Phenology of Amphibia of Pechoro-Ilych State Nature Reserve

Amphibia Phenology dataset compiled in the context of Chronicle of Nature program in Pechoro-Ilych State Nature Reserve (Russian Federation) consisting of 144 records collected during 74 years between 1938 and 2015

Chronicle of Nature - Phenology of Reptiles of Pechoro-Ilych State Nature Reserve

Reptiles Phenology dataset compiled in the context of Chronicle of Nature program in Pechoro-Ilych State Nature Reserve (Russian Federation) consisting of 51 records collected during 51 years between 1938 and 2014