Modelling forest regeneration strategies through the development of a spatio-temporal growth interaction model

Forest regeneration methods are an important factor in the generation of future forest spatial patterns. However, the difficulty of obtaining experimental data to study such interfering operations, mainly due the long life-span of tree species, has limited the analysis of these key silvicultural tools. Stochastic simulation of such real forest scenarios (i.e. simulated forest) is, therefore, a practical alternative to analyse such prescribed treatments. Here we adapt the Renshaw and Särkkä model to study forest regeneration strategies following the previous work of Renshaw et al. (Stoch Environ Res Risk Assess, 2008). We show that the highly flexible Renshaw and Särkkä algorithm to generate marked point configurations evolving through continuous time is easily adapted to enable the simulation and the comparative study of different forest regeneration methods. In particular, we consider two important regeneration strategies, namely, the shelterwood and the single-tree selection methods due to their forest importance. The results obtained strongly suggested that combining the birth-growth–spatial interaction model with a spatially explicit regeneration algorithm results in a flexible and realistic mechanism to mimic real forest dynamics.     

Modeling the effect of wetting on the mechanical behavior of crushable granular materials

It is well known that the compressibility of crushable granular materials increases with the moisture content,due to the decrease of particle strength in a humid environment.An existing approach to take into account the effect of grain breakage in constitutive modeling consists in linking the evolution of the grain size distribution to the plastic work.But how the material humidity can affect this relationship is not clear,and experimental evidence is quite scarce.Based on compression tests on dry and saturated crushable sand recently reported by the present authors,a new non-linear relationship is proposed between the amount of particle breakage and the plastic work.The expression contains two parameters:(1)a material constant dependent on the grain characteristics and(2)a constant depending on the wetting condition(in this study,dry or saturated).A key finding is that the relationship does not depend on the stress path and,for a given wetting condition,only one set of parameters is necessary to reproduce the results of isotropic,oedometric,and triaxial compression tests.The relationship has been introduced into an elastoplastic constitutive model based on the critical state concept with a double yield surface for plastic sliding and compression.The breakage ratio is introduced into the expression of the elastic stiffness,the critical state line and the hardening compression pressure.Incremental stress-strain computations with the model allow the plastic work to be calculated and,therefore,the evolution of particle crushing can be predicted through the proposed non-linear relationship and reintroduced into the constitutive equations.Accurate predictions of the experimental results in terms of both stress-strain relationships and breakage ratio were obtained.     

Morphological evolution of a macrotidal back-barrier environment: The Amazon Coast

Coastal barriers provide sheltered, low-energy settings for fine-grained sediment deposition and retention, although the process of back-barrier infilling and how tidal-channel connectivity impacts this process is not well-understood. Understanding how back-barrier environments infill and evolve is necessary to predict how they will respond to future changes in sea-level and sediment supply. With this motivation, in situ observations and sedimentary signatures from an Amazonian tidal-channel system are interpreted to create a conceptual model of morphological evolution in a macrotidal back-barrier environment that is rich in fine-grained sediment, vegetated by mangroves and incised by tidal channels with multiple outlets. Results indicate that within a high-connectivity back-barrier channel, tidal processes dominate sedimentation and morphological development. Sediment cores (<60 cm) exhibited millimetre-scale tidalites composed of sand and mud. High-connectivity channels allow tidal propagation from multiple inlets, and in this case, the converging flood waves promote delivery of sediment fluxing through the system to the mangrove flats in the convergence zone. Sediment preferentially deposits in regions with adequate accommodation space and dense vegetation, and in these zones, sediment grain size is slightly finer than that transiting through the system. The greatest sediment-accumulation rates (3 to 4 cm yr⁻¹), calculated from steady-state ²¹⁰Pb profiles, were found in the convergence zone near the mangrove-channel edge. As tidal flats aggrade vertically and prograde into the channels, accommodation space diminishes. In effect, the channel’s narrowest stretch is expected to migrate along the path of net-sediment flux towards regions with more accommodation space until it reaches the tidal-convergence zone. The location of recent preferential infilling is evidenced by relatively rapid sediment-accumulation rates, finer sediment and significant clustering of small secondary tidal channels. These findings shed light on how sediment transported through vegetated back-barrier environments is ultimately preserved and how evidence preserved in surface morphology and the geological record can be interpreted.     

Comparative biomonitors of coastal trace metal contamination in tropical South America (N. Brazil)

Samples of 5 bivalve molluscs (Crassostrea rhizophorae, Mytella charruana, Anomalocardia brasiliana, Anadara ovalis, Phacoides pectinata), 2 barnacles (Fistulobalanus citerosum, Balanus amphitrite) and leaves of the mangrove tree Rhizophora mangle were collected from up to 11 sites in two estuaries in Natal, Brazil--the comparatively contaminated Potengi estuary and the comparatively uncontaminated Curimataú estuary. Specimens were analysed for the trace metals Zn, Cu, Cd, Fe, Mn and Ni, and a comparative assessment made of the power of the different species as trace metal biomonitors. Four of the 5 bivalves (not P. pectinata) take up metals from solution and suspended material (food source), while P. pectinata as a lucinid with symbiotic chemosynthetic bacteria takes up metals from dissolved sources only. The organisms with the strongest net accumulation of particular metals showed the greatest discrimination between trace metal bioavailabilities between sites. Barnacles (F. citerosum) showed the best discrimination, but oysters (C. rhizophorae) are particularly recommended as biomonitors given their strong accumulation patterns for many trace metals, their large size and their local abundance.     

Zone of main contribution to the measured signal for a circular current loop source and receiver on the surface of a conductive half‐space

The electric and magnetic fields generated by an individual horizontal current ring induced inside a homogeneous conductive half‐space, originating from an external large circular loop source of current in the presence of a flat half‐space, are deduced. A check of self‐consistency for these expressions led to the known general functions for these fields due to the same external source in the presence of that medium. The current rings’ mutual coupling related to the magnetic field's radial component is thoroughly analysed and its specific members are presented. The existence of a relatively small zone inside the half‐space responsible for the main contribution for the signal measured at the observation point, with the source and receiver on the ground surface, is made evident. For increasing values of frequency, at a given transmitter‐receiver (T–R) configuration, this zone shrinks and its central point moves away from a maximum depth of about 30% and horizontal distance of nearly 85%, of the T–R separation, to a point very close to the receiver position. The coordinates of the central point of this zone of main contribution are provided as approximated functions in terms of the induction number .     

Uncertainty analysis along the ecological quality status of water bodies: the response of the Posidonia oceanica multivariate index (POMI) in three Mediterranean regions

Uncertainty analyses allow the identification and quantification of the factors that contribute to the potential misclassification of the ecological status of water bodies, helping to improve the sampling design used in monitoring. Here we used a Posidonia oceanica multivariate index (POMI) bio-monitoring dataset covering a total of 81 sites distributed throughout 28 water bodies from the coast of Catalonia, Balearic Islands and Croatia to determine the levels of uncertainty associated with each region and how they change according to the quality status of water bodies. Overall, variability among sites (meadows) within water bodies was the factor that generated the greatest risk of misclassification among the three regions, within which the Balearic Islands had the lowest uncertainty, followed by Croatia and Catalonia. When water bodies classified in good/high quality were separated from those in moderate/poor status classes, we found that the latter displayed higher levels of uncertainty than the former.