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General Relationships (general + relationships)
Selected AbstractsEcological responses to altered flow regimes: a literature review to inform the science and management of environmental flowsFRESHWATER BIOLOGY, Issue 1 2010N. LEROY POFF Summary 1.,In an effort to develop quantitative relationships between various kinds of flow alteration and ecological responses, we reviewed 165 papers published over the last four decades, with a focus on more recent papers. Our aim was to determine if general relationships could be drawn from disparate case studies in the literature that might inform environmental flows science and management. 2.,For all 165 papers we characterised flow alteration in terms of magnitude, frequency, duration, timing and rate of change as reported by the individual studies. Ecological responses were characterised according to taxonomic identity (macroinvertebrates, fish, riparian vegetation) and type of response (abundance, diversity, demographic parameters). A ,qualitative' or narrative summary of the reported results strongly corroborated previous, less comprehensive, reviews by documenting strong and variable ecological responses to all types of flow alteration. Of the 165 papers, 152 (92%) reported decreased values for recorded ecological metrics in response to a variety of types of flow alteration, whereas 21 papers (13%) reported increased values. 3.,Fifty-five papers had information suitable for quantitative analysis of ecological response to flow alteration. Seventy per cent of these papers reported on alteration in flow magnitude, yielding a total of 65 data points suitable for analysis. The quantitative analysis provided some insight into the relative sensitivities of different ecological groups to alteration in flow magnitudes, but robust statistical relationships were not supported. Macroinvertebrates showed mixed responses to changes in flow magnitude, with abundance and diversity both increasing and decreasing in response to elevated flows and to reduced flows. Fish abundance, diversity and demographic rates consistently declined in response to both elevated and reduced flow magnitude. Riparian vegetation metrics both increased and decreased in response to reduced peak flows, with increases reflecting mostly enhanced non-woody vegetative cover or encroachment into the stream channel. 4.,Our analyses do not support the use of the existing global literature to develop general, transferable quantitative relationships between flow alteration and ecological response; however, they do support the inference that flow alteration is associated with ecological change and that the risk of ecological change increases with increasing magnitude of flow alteration. 5.,New sampling programs and analyses that target sites across well-defined gradients of flow alteration are needed to quantify ecological response and develop robust and general flow alteration,ecological response relationships. Similarly, the collection of pre- and post-alteration data for new water development programs would significantly add to our basic understanding of ecological responses to flow alteration. [source] Analysis of plant species diversity with respect to island characteristics on the Channel Islands, CaliforniaJOURNAL OF BIOGEOGRAPHY, Issue 3 2000Aaron Moody Abstract Aim Species richness of native, endemic, and exotic plant groups is examined relative to island area, disturbance history, geological history, and other physical characteristics. Of particular interest are the biogeographic factors that underlie (a) differences in species-area and species-isolation relationships between plant groups; and (b) adherence or departure of individual islands and/or plant groups from expected patterns. Location The eight Channel Islands lie along the continental margin between the U.S./Mexico border and Point Conception, CA. They range in size from 2.6 to 249 km2, and are located from 20 to 100 km off the coast. The islands are known for their high degree of plant endemism, and they have undergone a long history of human occupation by indigenous peoples, followed by over a century of intensive grazing and other biotic disturbances. Methods The study is based on linear regression and residual analysis. Cases where individual islands and/or specific plant groups do not adhere to patterns expected under species-area and species-isolation paradigms, are evaluated with respect to other island characteristics that are not captured by considering only island size and isolation. Results All three plant groups exhibit strong, positive relationships between species richness and island size. For native species, the variance that remains after consideration of island size is largely explained by island isolation. For exotic species, residuals from the species-area relationship are unrelated to isolation. For endemic species, residuals from the species-area relationship are negatively related to isolation. Several islands are outliers for endemic and exotic species, for which richness values are not explained by either island area or isolation. Main,conclusions Species-area and species-isolation relationships for native, endemic, and exotic plant groups differ in accordance with hypothesized differences in the biogeographic factors that govern species diversity for these three groups. Most notably, endemic richness increases with isolation, suggesting the influence of this variable on processes of speciation and relictualism. These general relationships persist despite a long and varied history of human activity on the islands. Analysis of residuals suggests that deviations from expected patterns correspond to island-specific biogeographic factors. It is hypothesized that primary among these factors are land-use history, island environmental characteristics, and community-type richness. [source] Estimating the germination dynamics of Plasmopara viticola oospores using hydro-thermal timePLANT PATHOLOGY, Issue 2 2008V. Rossi The effects of environmental conditions on the variability in germination dynamics of Plasmopara viticola oospores were studied from 1999 to 2003. The germination course was determined indirectly as the relative infection incidence (RII) occurring on grape leaf discs kept in contact with oospores sampled from a vineyard between March and July. The time elapsed between 1 January and the infection occurrence was expressed as physiological time, using four methods: (i) sums of daily temperatures > 8°C; (ii) hourly temperatures > 10°C; (iii) sums of hourly rates from a temperature-dependent function; or (iv) sums of these rates in hours with a rain or vapour pressure deficit , 4·5 hPa (hydro-thermal time, HT). An equation of Gompertz in the form RII = exp[,a · exp(,b · HT)] produced an accurate fit for both separate years (R2 = 0·97 to 0·99) and pooled data (R2 = 0·89), as well as a good accuracy in cross-estimating new data (r between observed and cross-estimated data were between 0·93 and 0·99, P < 0·0001). It also accounted for a great part of the variability in oospore germination between years and both between and within sampling periods. Therefore, the equation of Gompertz (with a = 15·9 ± 2·63 and b = 0·653 ± 0·034) calculated over hydro-thermal time, a physiological time accounting for the effects of both temperature and moisture, produced a consistent modelling of the general relationships between the germination dynamics of a population of P. viticola oospores and weather conditions. It represents the relative density of the seasonal oospores that should have produced sporangia when they have experienced favourable conditions for germination. [source] Hydrodynamic Cell Model: General Formulation and Comparative Analysis of Different ApproachesTHE CANADIAN JOURNAL OF CHEMICAL ENGINEERING, Issue 5 2007Emiliy K. Zholkovskiy Abstract This paper is concerned with the Cell Model method of addressing hydrodynamic flow through system of solid particles. The starting point of the analysis is the general problem formulation intended for describing a pressure driven flow through a diaphragm which can be considered as a set of representative cells having arbitrary shape and containing any number of particles. Using the general problem formulation, the hydrodynamic field inside an individual representative cell is interrelated with the applied pressure difference and the external flow velocity. To this end, four relationships containing integrals over the outer boundary of a representative cell are derived in the paper. Assuming that the representative cell is a sphere containing a single particle in the centre, the derived general relationships are transformed into outer cell boundary conditions employed in the literature by different authors. The general number of the obtained outer boundary conditions is more than the required number. Accordingly, by choosing different sets of the outer boundary conditions, different models are considered and compared with each other and with the results obtained by others for regular particle arrays. The common and different features of the hydrodynamic and electrodynamic versions of the Cell Model approaches are analyzed. Finally, it is discussed which version of the cell model gives the best approximation while describing pressure and electrically driven flows through a diaphragm and sedimentation of particles. On s'intéresse dans cet article à la méthode du Modèle de Cellules pour traiter l'écoulement à travers un système de particules solides. Le point de départ de l'analyse consiste à formuler le problème général dans le but de décrire un écoulement sous pression dans un diaphragme qui peut être considéré comme un ensemble de cellules représentatives de forme arbitraire et contenant un nombre quelconque de particules. À l'aide de cette formulation générale du problème, l'hydrodynamique dans une cellule représentative donnée est reliée à la différence de pression appliquée et à la vitesse d'écoulement externe. À cette fin, quatre relations contenant des intégrales sur la frontière d'une cellule représentative sont établies dans cette étude. Si l'on suppose que la cellule représentative est une sphère contenant une particule unique en son centre, les relations générales calculées peuvent être transformées en conditions à la frontière des cellules semblables à celles employées dans la littérature scientifique par différents auteurs. Le nombre général de conditions limites obtenues dépasse le nombre requis. Par conséquent, en choisissant différents ensembles de conditions limites, différents modèles sont considérés et comparés entre eux ainsi qu'avec les résultats obtenus pour des arrangements réguliers de particules. Les caractéristiques des versions hydrodynamiques et électrodynamiques des approches du Modèle de Cellules sont analysées. Finalement, on examine quelle version de modèle de cellule donne la meilleure approximation des écoulements sous pression et des écoulements électrodynamiques à travers un diaphragme et pour la sédimentation des particules. [source] | ||||||||||