Habitat use at fine spatial scale: how does patch clustering criteria explain the use of meadows by red deer ?

Large mammalian herbivores are keystone species in different ecosystems. To mediate the effects of large mammalian herbivores on ecosystems, it is crucial to understand their habitat selection pattern. At finer scales, herbivore patch selection depends strongly on plant community traits and therefore its understanding is constrained by patch definition criteria. Our aim was to assess which criteria for patch definition best explained use of meadows by wild, free-ranging, red deer (Cervus elaphus) in a study area in Northeast Portugal. We used two clustering criteria types based on floristic composition and gross forage classes, respectively. For the floristic criteria, phytosociological approach was used to classify plant communities, and its objectivity evaluated with a mathematical clustering of the floristic relevés. Cover of dominant plant species was tested as a proxy for the phytosociological method. For the gross forage classes, the graminoids/forbs ratio and the percentage cover of legumes were used. For assessing deer relative use of meadows we used faecal accumulation rates. Patches clustered according to floristic classification better explained selection of patches by deer. Plant community classifications based on phytosociology, or proxies of this, used for characterizing meadow patches resulted useful to understand herbivore selection pattern at fine scales and thus potentially suitable to assist wildlife management decisions

State-of-the-Art Report of the RILEM Technical Committee 206-ATB, Advances in Interlaboratory Testing and Evaluation of Bituminous Materials, chapter 1- Introduction

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State-of-the-Art Report of the RILEM Technical Committee 206-ATB, Advances in Interlaboratory Testing and Evaluation of Bituminous Materials, chapter 1- Introduction

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Determination of rutting and water susceptibility of selected pavement materials using MMLS3

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Characterization and modelling of creep and recovery behaviour of waterborne epoxy resin modified bitumen emulsion

202303 bcfcAccepted ManuscriptOthersHong Kong Innovation and Technology Commission through the Guangdong-Hong Kong Technology Cooperation Funding Scheme (TCFS) projectPublishe

A new test to study the flow of mixtures at early stages of compaction

Workability is one of the most commonly used indicators for the capability of asphalt mixtures tobe placed and compacted on the roads with long lasting quality and minimum maintenancethroughout its service life. Despite of valuable previous efforts for measuring and characterizingworkability, none of them has proven successful in representing the field conditions of roadconstructions. This paper is an attempt towards developing a systematic workability test methodfocusing on compaction, the so-called Compaction Flow Test (CFT), by simulating fieldcompaction at early stages and at laboratory scale with the main focus on mixture flow. The CFTwas applied for different mixtures in order to identify the parameters with highest impact on theasphalt particle movements under compaction forces. A new setting inside X-ray ComputationalTomography (CT) allowed tracing asphalt particles during the CFT and acquiring CT imagesunderlining the reliability of the CFT results. In addition, simple Discrete Element Models (DEM)were successfully generated to justify some of the CFT results.</p

Innovative applications of the MLS10 for developing pavement design systems

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