Are changes in the structure of nematode assemblages reliable indicators of moderate petroleum contamination?     

Daniel Silva Leite  Leonardo Sandrini-Neto  Manuela Zeglin Camargo  Micheli Cristina Thomas  Paulo C. Lana 《Marine pollution bulletin》2014

This study assesses through a multiple before-after-control-impact (MBACI) design the effects of diesel oil on the structure of nematode assemblages in unvegetated tidal flats of a subtropical estuary. Oil-exposed treatments were contrasted with controls for a duration of four successive days before and after an experimental spill in three distinct areas of the Paranaguá Estuarine Complex (Southern Brazil). No significant differences were observed in nematode total density, number of taxa and the overall assemblage structure between the control and impact treatments from before to after the experimental spill. This reinforces the idea that, despite being good indicators of environmental stress, free-living marine nematodes are able to tolerate low concentrations of hydrocarbons and to survive in moderately contaminated areas. We also show that robust experimental designs are useful to avoid confounding expected natural variability with the effects of a mild impact.  相似文献   

Spatio-temporal stochastic modelling (METMAVI)     

Raquel Menezes  A. Manuela Gonçalves 《Stochastic Environmental Research and Risk Assessment (SERRA)》2014,28(5):1167-1169

Editorial letter for the Special Issue dedicated to the VI International Workshop on Spatio-temporal Modelling (METMAVI), which took place in Guimarães, Portugal, from 12 to 14 September 2012. This SI summarizes the main contributions made at METMAVI, related to spatio-temporal methodology illustrated with environmental applications.  相似文献   

The impact of coastal urbanization on the structure of phytobenthic communities in southern Brazil     

Martins CD  Arantes N  Faveri C  Batista MB  Oliveira EC  Pagliosa PR  Fonseca AL  Nunes JM  Chow F  Pereira SB  Horta PA 《Marine pollution bulletin》2012,64(4):772-778

The anthropogenic pressures on coastal areas represent important factors affecting local, regional, and even global patterns of distribution and abundance of benthic organisms. This report undertakes a comparative analysis of the community structure of rocky shore intertidal phytobenthos in both pristine like environments (PLE) and urbanized environments (UBE) in southern Brazil, characterizing variations on different spatial scales. Multivariate analysis of variance indicated that the PLE is characterized by a larger number of taxa and an increased occurrence of Rhodophyta species in relation to UBE. In contrast, UBE were dominated by opportunistic algae, such as Cladophora and Ulva spp. Significance tests further indicated higher species richness and Shannon-Wiener diversity on the PLE in relation to UBE. Here we provide data showing the magnitude of seaweed biodiversity loss and discuss direct and indirect consequences of unplanned urbanization on these communities.  相似文献   

Contribution of CO2 and H2S emitted to the atmosphere by plume and diffuse degassing from volcanoes: the Etna volcano case study   总被引：1，自引：0，他引：1  

Pedro A. Hernández  Gladys Melián  Salvatore Giammanco  Francesco Sortino  José Barrancos  Nemesio M. Pérez  Eleazar Padrón  Manuela López  Amy Donovan  Toshiya Mori  Kenji Notsu 《Surveys in Geophysics》2015,36(3):327-349

  相似文献   

Hydraulic failure of diaphragm walls: a possible methodology for safety improvement     

Vincenzo Pane  Diego Bellavita  Manuela Cecconi  Alessia Vecchietti 《Geotechnical and Geological Engineering》2017,35(2):765-780

The paper presents a methodology aimed at reducing—or even avoiding—the risk of heave and uplift failures of reinforced concrete diaphragm walls. The method is based on the simple concept of increasing the drainage capacity of the embedded portion of the retaining walls. The behaviour of a strutted excavation in a cohesionless soil below groundwater is examined by means of two distinct series of numerical analyses, respectively focused on the hydraulic and mechanical behaviour of the retaining system. It is shown that, for some frequent cases, such methodology is capable to improve the safety of the retaining system with respect to both hydraulic and geotechnical limit states.  相似文献   

Dimensionality reduction in drought modelling     

João Filipe Santos  Maria Manuela Portela  Inmaculada Pulido‐Calvo 《水文研究》2013,27(10):1399-1410

For monitoring hydrological events characterized by high spatial and temporal variability, the number and location of recording stations must be carefully selected to ensure that the necessary information is collected. Depending on the characteristics of each natural process, certain stations may be spurious or redundant, whereas others may provide most of the relevant data. With the objective of reducing the costs of the monitoring system and, at the same time, improving its operational effectiveness, three procedures were applied to identify the minimum network of rain gauge stations able to capture the characteristics of droughts in mainland Portugal. Drought severity is characterized by the standardized precipitation index applied to the timescales of 1, 3, 6 and 12 consecutive months. The three techniques used to reduce the dimensionality of the network of rain gauges were as follows: (i) artificial neural networks with sensitivity analysis, (ii) application of the mutual information criterion and (iii) K‐means cluster analysis using Euclidean distances. The results demonstrated that the best dimensionality reduction method was case dependent in the three regions of Portugal (northern, central and southern) previously identified by cluster analysis. All the reduction techniques lead to the selection of a subset of rain gauges capable of reproducing the original temporal patterns of drought. For specific severe drought events in Portugal in the past, the comparison between drought spatial patterns obtained with the original stations and the selected subset indicated that the subset produced statistically satisfactory results (correlation coefficients higher than 0.6 and efficiency coefficients higher than 0.5). Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.  相似文献   

Combination of different space-geodetic observations for regional ionosphere modeling   总被引：2，自引：1，他引：1  

Denise Dettmering  Michael Schmidt  Robert Heinkelmann  Manuela Seitz 《Journal of Geodesy》2011,85(12):989-998

Most of the space-geodetic observation techniques can be used for modeling the distribution of free electrons in the Earth’s ionosphere. By combining different techniques one can take advantage of their different spatial and temporal distributions as well as their different observation characteristics and sensitivities concerning ionospheric parameter estimation. The present publication introduces a procedure for multi-dimensional ionospheric modeling. The model consists of a given reference part and an unknown correction part expanded in terms of B-spline functions. This approach is used to compute regional models of Vertical Total Electron Content (VTEC) based on the International Reference Ionosphere (IRI 2007) and GPS observations from terrestrial Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) reference stations, radio occultation data from Low Earth Orbiters (LEOs), dual-frequency radar altimetry measurements, and data obtained by Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI). The approach overcomes deficiencies in the climatological IRI model and reaches the same level of accuracy than GNSS-based VTEC maps from IGS. In areas without GNSS observations (e.g., over the oceans) radio occultations and altimetry provide valuable measurements and further improve the VTEC maps. Moreover, the approach supplies information on the offsets between different observation techniques as well as on their different sensitivity for ionosphere modeling. Altogether, the present procedure helps to derive improved ionospheric corrections (e.g., for one-frequency radar altimeters) and at the same time it improves our knowledge on the Earth’s ionosphere.  相似文献   

Clustering and forecasting of dissolved oxygen concentration on a river basin   总被引：1，自引：1，他引：0  

Marco Costa  A. Manuela Gon?alves 《Stochastic Environmental Research and Risk Assessment (SERRA)》2011,25(2):151-163

The aim of this contribution is to combine statistical methodologies to geographically classify homogeneous groups of water quality monitoring sites based on similarities in the temporal dynamics of the dissolved oxygen (DO) concentration, in order to obtain accurate forecasts of this quality variable. Our methodology intends to classify the water quality monitoring sites into spatial homogeneous groups, based on the DO concentration, which has been selected and considered relevant to characterize the water quality. We apply clustering techniques based on Kullback Information, measures that are obtained in the state space modelling process. For each homogeneous group of water quality monitoring sites we model the DO concentration using linear and state space models, which incorporate tendency and seasonality components in different ways. Both approaches are compared by the mean squared error (MSE) of forecasts.  相似文献   

Marine-derived filamentous fungi and their potential application for polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon bioremediation     

Passarini MR  Rodrigues MV  da Silva M  Sette LD 《Marine pollution bulletin》2011,62(2):364-370

Eight marine-derived fungi that were previously selected for their abilities to decolorize RBBR dye were subjected to pyrene and benzo[a]pyrene degradation. The fungus Aspergillus sclerotiorum CBMAI 849 showed the best performance with regard to pyrene (99.7%) and benzo[a]pyrene (76.6%) depletion after 8 and 16 days, respectively. Substantial amounts of benzo[a]pyrene (>50.0%) depletion were also achieved by Mucor racemosus CBMAI 847. Therefore, these two fungal strains were subjected to metabolism evaluation using the HPLC-DAD-MS technique. The results showed that A. sclerotiorum CBMAI 849 and M. racemosus CBMAI 847 were able to metabolize pyrene to the corresponding pyrenylsulfate and were able to metabolize benzo[a]pyrene to benzo[a]pyrenylsulfate, suggesting that the mechanism of hydroxylation is mediated by a cytochrome P-450 monooxygenase, followed by conjugation with sulfate ions. Because these fungi were adapted to the marine environment, the strains that were used in the present study are considered to be attractive targets for the bioremediation of saline environments, such as ocean and marine sediments that are contaminated by PAHs.  相似文献   

Testing the Usability of OpenStreetMap's iD Tool     

Jan Behrens  Corné P. J. M. van Elzakker  Manuela Schmidt 《The Cartographic journal》2013,50(2):177-184

The objective of this study is to investigate the usability of the iD editor of OpenStreetMap (OSM). To this end a usability test with 18 participants has been conducted. The participants were given mapping tasks to complete using iD and observed with the thinking aloud method as well as screen recording and mouse/keyboard logging. Additionally, the test persons were interviewed after each test. The data gathered were analysed with regard to key usability criteria such as learnability, efficiency, error tolerance, and subjective user satisfaction. The outcome of this study is the identification of usability issues from which possible improvements of the tool have been derived. The study shows that iD is an overall usable tool for novice users, but still shows opportunities for improvement especially in terms of learnability and error handling.  相似文献