Taxonomic sufficiency for soft-bottom sublittoral mollusks assemblages in a tropical estuary, Guanabara Bay, Southeast Brazil

Guanabara Bay (GB) is considered to be one of the most polluted environments of the southern Brazilian coastline. This typical estuarine system is impacted by the heavy discharge of both industrial and domestic waste from the Rio de Janeiro metropolitan area. The mollusc community structure and distribution was investigated between 2000 and 2001, using a three month sampling design of 38 stations, according to austral seasons. Species abundance was aggregated into progressively higher taxa matrices (genus, family, order) and were analysed using multivariate techniques. Mollusc distribution in GB varied significantly in space and time and was probably ruled by the organic enrichment effects of hypoxia and altered redox conditions coupled with prevailing patterns of circulation. Within the sectors of GB an increasing gradient in mollusc diversity and occurrence was observed, ranging from the azoic and impoverished stations in the inner sector to a well-structured community in terms of species composition and abundance inhabiting the outer sector. The non-metric multidimensional scaling (nMDS) and cluster analysis showed similar results when species were aggregated into genera and families, while greater difference occurred at coarser taxonomic identification (order). The literature about taxonomic sufficiency has demonstrated that faunal patterns at different taxonomic levels tend to become similar with increased pollution. In Guanabara Bay, an analysis carried out solely at family level is perfectly adequate to describe the ecophysiological stress. Further aggregation to order level changed the perceived patterns of differences. However, a different taxonomic resolution can be chosen depending on the type of ecological patterns investigated.     

Stramonita haemastoma as a bioindicator for organotin contamination in coastal environments

Stramonita haemastoma was investigated as a suitable bioindicator of TBT and TPhT contamination in the tropical Atlantic Ocean by: 1. Imposex induction in healthy females after inoculation with TBT and TPhT in the laboratory; and 2. Determining incidence of imposex in S. haemastoma collected from areas with various levels of tributyltin (TBT) and triphenyltin (TPhT) and determining the concentrations of these chemical in its tissues and that of its prey, the mussell Perna pernas. Imposex intensities and organotin concentrations in tissues showed good correlation, indicating S. haemastoma as a reliable bioindicator of TBT and TPhT contamination in coastal waters. Body burden threshold of TBT and TPhT for imposex induction was estimated to be 10-20 ng g(-1).     

Evaluating the fitness for use of spatial data sets to promote quality in ecological assessment and monitoring

This article proposes and illustrates a practical methodological framework to evaluate the fitness for use of spatial data sets for environmental and ecological applications, focusing on user requirements for specified application contexts. The methodology is based on the use of metadata to analyze similarity between the data characteristics and the user’s needs or expectations for several quality indicators. Additionally, the concept of ‘critical factors’ is introduced in this framework, allowing users to define which quality indicators have greater importance given their own requirements or expectations and the specified application contexts. The proposed methodology further allows integrating and interconnecting the spatial data quality (SDQ) evaluation methodology with metadata geoportals in WebGIS platforms, facilitating its operation by users from non-spatial disciplines and with often limited expertise on this subject. Examples of the evaluation of fitness for use for specific application contexts within the project BIO_SOS (‘Biodiversity Multi-SOurce Monitoring System: From Space To Species’ FP7 project) are presented. By providing a prompt and straightforward evaluation tool, the proposed methodology can encourage the implementation of SDQ evaluation routines in ecological assessment and monitoring programs, promoting a more adequate use of geospatial data and ultimately contributing to well-supported policy and management decisions.     

Land use dynamics in Brazilian La Plata Basin and anthropogenic climate change

The La Plata Basin (LPB) is one of the most important regions for agriculture and livestock production in South America, playing a central role in the world food production and food security. Within its borders is also located the whole Brazilian Pantanal region. Identifying the most important land use sectors in LPB as well as the changes observed in the past years is fundamental to recognize which areas of the basin might be more vulnerable to climate change in order to design adaptation strategies. A general characterization of land use and livestock production of Brazilian LPB was done by using the System of Automatic Retrieving (SIDRA) of Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) platform as the major source of data. It was observed expressive increases in land areas used for temporary crops, such as soybean, sugarcane, and maize, as well as increases in poultry and swine production. These important changes in agricultural land use and livestock production are currently associated to non-climatic drivers, but this dynamic might be strongly affected by the consequences of climate change and variability, with negative socio-economic impacts for the whole region.     

Construction of Structural Geological Model Using Monte Carlo Simulation

Geotechnical and Geological Engineering - To optimize the prediction of structural geological conditions in the underground as of data collected at the surface, due to the usual great uncertainties...     

On the angular distribution of IceCube high‐energy events

The detection of high‐energy astro‐physical neutrinos of extraterrestrial origin by the IceCube neutrino observatory in Antarctica has opened a unique window to the cosmos that may help to probe both the distant Universe and our cosmic backyard. The arrival directions of these high‐energy events have been interpreted as uniformly distributed on the celestial sphere. Here, we revisit the topic of the putative isotropic angular distribution of these events applying Monte Carlo techniques to investigate a possible anisotropy. A modest evidence for anisotropy is found. An excess of events appears projected towards a section of the Local Void, where the density of galaxies with radial velocities below 3000 km s^–1 is rather low, suggesting that this particular group of somewhat clustered sources are located either very close to the Milky Way or perhaps beyond 40 Mpc. The results of further analyses of the subsample of southern hemisphere events favour an origin at cosmological distances with the arrival directions of the events organized in a fractal‐like structure. Although a small fraction of closer sources is possible, remote hierarchical structures appear to be the main source of these very energetic neutrinos. Some of the events may have their origin at the IBEX ribbon. (© 2015 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

Dynamics of very rich open clusters

The oldest open clusters in our Galaxy set the lower limit to the age of the Galactic Disk (9–10 Gyr). Although they appear to be very rich now, it is clear that their primordial populations were much larger. Often considered as transitional objects, these populous open clusters show structural differences with respect to globular clusters so their dynamics and characteristic evolutionary time scales can also be different. On the other hand, their large membership lead to different dynamical evolution as compared with average open clusters. In this paper, the differential features of the evolution of rich open clusters are studied using N-body simulations, including several of the largest (10⁴ stars) published direct collisional N-body calculations so far, which were performed on a CRAY YMP. The disruption rate of rich open clusters is analysed in detail and the effect of the initial spatial distribution of the stars in the cluster on its dynamics is studied. The results show that cluster life-time depends on this initial distribution, decreasing when it is more concentrated. The effect of stellar evolution on the dynamical evolution of rich clusters is an important subject that also has been considered here. We demonstrate that the cluster's life-expectancy against evaporation increases because of mass loss by evolving high-mass stars. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Analysis of two active prominences

We discuss the observations of two eruptive prominences, and the formation of condensations during the phenomena. The density and intensity variations of the condensations are analyzed spectroscopically in one of the events. Some hypothesis about the magnetic field configuration have been used in order to explain the observational data.