Modelling above-ground carbon dynamics using multi-temporal airborne lidar: Insights from a Mediterranean woodland

Abstract. Woodlands represent highly significant carbon sinks globally, though could lose this function under future climatic change. Effective large-scale monitoring of these woodlands has a critical role to play in mitigating for, and adapting to, climate change. Mediterranean woodlands have low carbon densities, but represent important global carbon stocks due to their extensiveness and are particularly vulnerable because the region is predicted to become much hotter and drier over the coming century. Airborne lidar is already recognized as an excellent approach for high-fidelity carbon mapping, but few studies have used multi-temporal lidar surveys to measure carbon fluxes in forests and none have worked with Mediterranean woodlands. We use a multi-temporal (5-year interval) airborne lidar data set for a region of central Spain to estimate above-ground biomass (AGB) and carbon dynamics in typical mixed broadleaved and/or coniferous Mediterranean woodlands. Field calibration of the lidar data enabled the generation of grid-based maps of AGB for 2006 and 2011, and the resulting AGB change was estimated. There was a close agreement between the lidar-based AGB growth estimate (1.22 Mg ha−1 yr−1) and those derived from two independent sources: the Spanish National Forest Inventory, and a tree-ring based analysis (1.19 and 1.13 Mg ha−1 yr−1, respectively). We parameterised a simple simulator of forest dynamics using the lidar carbon flux measurements, and used it to explore four scenarios of fire occurrence. Under undisturbed conditions (no fire) an accelerating accumulation of biomass and carbon is evident over the next 100 years with an average carbon sequestration rate of 1.95 Mg C ha−1 yr−1. This rate reduces by almost a third when fire probability is increased to 0.01 (fire return rate of 100 years), as has been predicted under climate change. Our work shows the power of multi-temporal lidar surveying to map woodland carbon fluxes and provide parameters for carbon dynamics models. Space deployment of lidar instruments in the near future could open the way for rolling out wide-scale forest carbon stock monitoring to inform management and governance responses to future environmental change.The authors would like to acknowledge the personnel of the Airborne Research and Survey Facility (NERC). We thank the MAGRAMA for granting access to the Spanish Forest Inventory. WS was funded by FunDivEurope and the Isaac Newton Trust. PRB was supported by The International Post doc Fellowship Programme in Plant Sciences (PLANT FELLOWS).This is the final version of the article. It first appeared from Copernicus via http://dx.doi.org/10.5194/bg-13-961-201

Shadowing unstable orbits of the Sitnikov elliptic 3-body problem

Errors in numerical simulations of gravitating systems can be magnified exponentially over short periods of time. Numerical shadowing provides a way of demonstrating that the dynamics represented by numerical simulations are representative of true dynamics. Using the Sitnikov Problem as an example, it is demonstrated that unstable orbits of the 3-body problem can be shadowed for long periods of time. In addition, it is shown that the stretching of phase space near escape and capture regions is a cause for the failure of the shadowing refinement procedure.Comment: 9 pages, 13 figures, accepted in MNRA

Climate modulates the effects of tree diversity on forest productivity

Despite growing evidence that, on average, diverse forests tend to be more productive than species‐poor ones, individual studies often report strongly contrasting relationships between tree species richness and above‐ground wood production (AWP). In the attempt to reconcile these apparently inconsistent results, we explored whether the strength and shape of AWP–diversity relationships shifts along spatial and temporal environmental gradients in forests across Europe. We used tree ring data from a network of permanent forest plots distributed at six sites across Europe to estimate annual AWP over a 15‐year period (1997–2011). We then tested whether the relationship between tree species richness and AWP changes (i) across sites as a function of large‐scale gradients in climatic productivity and tree packing density and (ii) among years within each sites as a result of fluctuating climatic conditions. AWP–species richness relationships varied markedly among sites. As predicted by theory, the relationship shifted from strongly positive at sites where climate imposed a strong limitation on wood production and tree packing densities were low, to weakly negative at sites where climatic conditions for growth were most suitable. In contrast, we found no consistent effect of interannual fluctuations in climate on the strength of AWP–species richness relationships within sites. Synthesis. Our results indicate that the shape and strength of the relationship between tree diversity and forest productivity depends critically on environmental context. Across Europe, tree diversity shows the greatest potential to positively influence forest productivity at either end of the latitudinal gradient, where adverse climatic conditions limit productivity and lead to the development of less densely packed stands.The research leading to these results received funding from the European Union Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreement n° 265171.This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Wiley via http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1365-2745.1252

Pseudorandom Selective Excitation in NMR

In this work, average Hamiltonian theory is used to study selective excitation in a spin-1/2 system evolving under a series of small flip-angle $\theta-$pulses $(\theta\ll 1)$ that are applied either periodically [which corresponds to the DANTE pulse sequence] or aperiodically. First, an average Hamiltonian description of the DANTE pulse sequence is developed; such a description is determined to be valid either at or very far from the DANTE resonance frequencies, which are simply integer multiples of the inverse of the interpulse delay. For aperiodic excitation schemes where the interpulse delays are chosen pseudorandomly, a single resonance can be selectively excited if the $\theta$-pulses' phases are modulated in concert with the time delays. Such a selective pulse is termed a pseudorandom-DANTE or p-DANTE sequence, and the conditions in which an average Hamiltonian description of p-DANTE is found to be similar to that found for the DANTE sequence. It is also shown that averaging over different p-DANTE sequences that are selective for the same resonance can help reduce excitations at frequencies away from the resonance frequency, thereby improving the apparent selectivity of the p-DANTE sequences. Finally, experimental demonstrations of p-DANTE sequences and comparisons with theory are presented.Comment: 23 pages, 8 figure

Understanding Students: A Developmental Approach to Financial Aid Services

The professional practice of financial aid administration can be improved through a better understanding of the student clientele for whom aid administrators work. This article presents an overview of two student development theories and suggests interventions for improving financial aid services through an application of those theories

Review: Using Technology to Promote Student Learning: Opportunities for Today and Tomorrow

Catherine McHugh Engstrom and Kevin Kruger’s book reveals how the widespread use of technology is reshaping the higher education and student affairs landscape. Just the arcana of the Internet leads one to conclude that, like Dorothy and Toto, “We’re not in Kansas anymore.” Concepts like structured query languages, intellectual property infringement, cybernars, technology clusters, computer use policies, MUDs (multi-user domains), MOOs (multi-user domains, objectoriented) and Mushes (multi-user shared hallucinations) require that student affairs educators reconsider their roles and purposes on the college campus

Combining spatial data with survey data improves predictions of boundaries between settlements

Studies of land-use change often require the combination of socioeconomic survey data with spatially continuous maps of land-cover change. One approach is to define maps of land ownership, assuming that all land-use change can be attributed to the owners or managers of each parcel of land. Unfortunately, records of administrative boundaries between towns and villages are commonly unavailable in developing countries and prohibitively costly or time consuming to map for individual projects. However, point locations of the settlements themselves can be obtained easily from existing maps or remotely-sensed imagery. In this paper we compare three methods – circular buffers, unweighted Voronoi polygons (sometimes referred to as Thiessen polygons) and multiplicatively weighted Voronoi polygons – for estimating boundaries between villages in an agricultural landscape in West Africa. The benefits and limitations of each approach are discussed, and their accuracy assessed using 98 independently collected GPS coordinates of village boundaries. We present a novel method for generating and optimising weights for multiplicatively weighted Voronoi polygons using survey data of village sizes from a subset of villages. By using both spatial information and survey data from villages, we show that multiplicatively weighted Voronoi polygons outperform other methods of predicting village boundaries, and increase the correlation coefficient between surveyed village area and mapped areas from 0.18 to 0.68 compared with more commonly used unweighted Voronoi polygons. Our method of weighting Voronoi polygons can be implemented with data and software commonly available to researchers and non-governmental organisations.Funding for this research was contributed by the Cambridge Conservation Initiative and the Natural Environment Research Council (NE/H52449x/1).This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Elsevier via https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apgeog.2016.09.00

Nitrous oxide emissions from soils under sugarcane fields in the Cerrado.

Soil fertilization with mineral nitrogen and organic fertilizers, such as the vinasse ? a liquid waste from bio-ethanol production, is a common practice on the sugarcane produced in Brazil that can lead to increasing emissions of greenhouse gases. Nitrous oxide (N2O) is a greenhouse gas even more harmful than the carbon dioxide (CO2), and has longer residence time in the atmosphere. The present study has been conducted on a sugarcane irrigated experiment established at the EMBRAPA Cerrados research station, in Brazil. We hypothesized that N2O emissions would be higher in the sugarcane fields, especially in the fertilized areas that combined mineral nitrogen (N) and vinasse (V), than in the native vegetation remnants (Cerrado); and that irrigated soils would have the highest fluxes of N2O. First measurements were done after the application of N and vinasse in May 2014 until June 2014 as an intensive campaign, and continuous monitoring have been conducted so far. Preliminary results showed that higher emissions occurred on soils combining N and V, showing fluxes that were twice as higher than the fluxes from other treatments, and 100 times bigger than fluxes from soils with native vegetation (469±158, 62.3±6.9, and 0.8±0.1 for V+N, N and Cerrado areas, respectively). The present study is pioneer in the Cerrado region and data are important to assess the regional variations on the N2O fluxes in Brazil, to reduce the bias on national estimations of N2O emissions, and to find more sustainable solutions for the production of bio-ethanol from sugarcane

TRY plant trait database - enhanced coverage and open access

Plant traits-the morphological, anatomical, physiological, biochemical and phenological characteristics of plants-determine how plants respond to environmental factors, affect other trophic levels, and influence ecosystem properties and their benefits and detriments to people. Plant trait data thus represent the basis for a vast area of research spanning from evolutionary biology, community and functional ecology, to biodiversity conservation, ecosystem and landscape management, restoration, biogeography and earth system modelling. Since its foundation in 2007, the TRY database of plant traits has grown continuously. It now provides unprecedented data coverage under an open access data policy and is the main plant trait database used by the research community worldwide. Increasingly, the TRY database also supports new frontiers of trait-based plant research, including the identification of data gaps and the subsequent mobilization or measurement of new data. To support this development, in this article we evaluate the extent of the trait data compiled in TRY and analyse emerging patterns of data coverage and representativeness. Best species coverage is achieved for categorical traits-almost complete coverage for 'plant growth form'. However, most traits relevant for ecology and vegetation modelling are characterized by continuous intraspecific variation and trait-environmental relationships. These traits have to be measured on individual plants in their respective environment. Despite unprecedented data coverage, we observe a humbling lack of completeness and representativeness of these continuous traits in many aspects. We, therefore, conclude that reducing data gaps and biases in the TRY database remains a key challenge and requires a coordinated approach to data mobilization and trait measurements. This can only be achieved in collaboration with other initiatives

Of Visions, Values, and Voices: Consolidating ACPA and NASPA

In this paper, we discuss the history of the two organizations and the history of other attempts at organizational consolidation; explore the similarities and differences in the organizations’ missions and values, structures, and activities; and consider each organization’s unique characteristics. We conclude with a set of recommendations concerning organizational consolidation and will raise a number of pertinent questions we feel the profession must address as it considers consolidating ACPA and NASPA