Scale dependence in habitat selection: the case of the endangered brown bear (Ursus arctos) in the Cantabrian Range (NW Spain)

Animals select habitat resources at multiple spatial scales. Thus, explicit attention to scale dependency in species–habitat relationships is critical to understand the habitat suitability patterns as perceived by organisms in complex landscapes. Identification of the scales at which particular environmental variables influence habitat selection may be as important as the selection of variables themselves. In this study, we combined bivariate scaling and Maximum entropy (Maxent) modeling to investigate multiscale habitat selection of endangered brown bear (Ursus arctos) populations in northwest Spain. Bivariate scaling showed that the strength of apparent habitat relationships was highly sensitive to the scale at which predictor variables are evaluated. Maxent models on the optimal scale for each variable suggested that landscape composition together with human disturbances was dominant drivers of bear habitat selection, while habitat configuration and edge effects were substantially less influential. We found that explicitly optimizing the scale of habitat suitability models considerably improved single-scale modeling in terms of model performance and spatial prediction. We found that patterns of brown bear habitat suitability represent the cumulative influence of habitat selection across a broad range of scales, from local resources within habitat patches to the landscape composition at broader spatial scales.     

Responses to two-way selection on growth in mass-spawned F1 progeny of Argopecten irradians concentricus (Say)

A bstract In the present study,the effect of one-generation divergent selection on the growth and survival of the bay scallop(Argopecten irradians concentricus)was examined to evaluate the effi cacy of a selection program currently being carried out in Beibu Bay in the South China Sea.A total of 146 adult scallops were randomly selected from the same cultured population of A.i.concentricus,and divided into two groups in shell length(anterior-posterior measurement): large(4.91–6.02 cm,n=74)and small(3.31–4.18 cm,n=72).At the same time,a control group was also randomly sampled(4.21–4.88 cm,n=80).Mass-spawned F 1 progenies from the three size groups were obtained and reared under identical conditions at all growth phases.The effects of two-way(or upward-downward)selection on fertilization rate,hatching rate,survival rate,daily growth in shell length and body weight were assessed in the three size groups.Results show that signifi cant differences(P0.01)were found in hatching rate,survival rate and daily growth of F 1 progenies,but not in fertilization rate(P0.05),among the three groups.The hatching rate,survival rate and daily growth of the progeny of large-sized parents were greater than those of the control group(P0.05),which in turn were larger than those of small-sized group(P0.05).Responses to selection by shell length and body weight were 0.32±0.04 cm and 2.18±0.05 g,respectively,for the upward selection,and-0.14±0.03 cm and-2.77±0.06 g,respectively,for the downward selection.The realized heritability estimates of shell length and body weight were 0.38±0.06 cm and 0.22±0.07 g for the upward selection,and 0.24±0.06 cm and 0.37±0.09 g for the downward selection,respectively.The change in growth by bidirectional selection suggests that high genetic variation may be present in the cultured bay scallop population in China.     

The impact of geomorphology of marsh creeks on fish assemblage in Changjiang River estuary

Tidal marshes are an important habitat and nursery area for fish. In the past few decades, rapid economic development in the coastal areas of China has led to the interruption and destruction of an increasing number of tidal marshes. The growing interest in tidal marsh restoration has increased the need to understand the relationship between geomorphological features and fish assemblages in the design of marsh restoration projects. We studied temporal variations in, and the effects of creek geomorphological features on, the estuarine tidal creek fish community. Using modified channel nets, we sampled fish monthly from March 2007 to February 2008 from seven tidal creeks along an intertidal channel system in Chongming Dongtan National Nature Reserve. Fourteen creek geomorphological variables were measured or derived to characterize intertidal creek geomorphological features. The Gobiidae, with 10 species, was the most species- rich family. The most abundant fish species were Liza affinis, Chelon haematocheilus, and Lateolabrax maculatus. The fish community was dominated by juvenile marine transients, which comprised about 80% of the total catch. The highest abundance offish occurred in June and July, and the highest biomass occurred in December. Canonical redundancy analyses demonstrated that depth, steepness, cross-sectional area, and volume significantly affected the fish species assemblage. L. affinis favored small creeks with high elevations. Synechogobius ommaturus, Acanthogobius luridus, and Carassius auratus preferred deep, steep creeks with a large cross-sectional area and volume. These findings indicate that the geomorphological features of tidal creeks should be considered in the conservation and sustainable management of fish species and in the restoration of salt marshes.     

菲律宾蛤仔不同品系斑马蛤的选择反应及现实遗传力

对菲律宾蛤仔中的斑马蛤、黑斑马、白斑马三品系进行混合选择,测量了各实验组的壳长,计算了不同品系斑马蛤的选择反应和现实遗传力。结果表明:3个品系的上选组壳长均大于对照组,说明单向上选是行之有效的遗传改良方法。在不同的生长发育阶段,斑马蛤品系的选择反应(R)和现实遗传力(2Rh)出现阶段性变化,从平均水平上看,R在幼虫期为0.688±0.184,稚贝期为0.605±0.214,养成期为0.670±0.120;2Rh在幼虫期为0.392±0.081,稚贝期为0.344±088,养成期为0.380±0.058。从一周年的生长情况来看,三个品系总的R为0.654±0.179,斑马蛤、黑斑马蛤和白斑马蛤品系的R分别为0.655±0.155、0.525±0.116、0.782±0.170;三个品系总的2Rh为0.373±0.070,斑马蛤、黑斑马蛤和白斑马蛤品系的2Rh分别为0.372±0.042、0.300±0.028、0.445±0.031。不同品系间R和2Rh次序为白斑马斑马蛤黑斑马,说明各斑马蛤品系的选择效果是不同的,品系间存在着一定程度的遗传差异。     

在红利支付情形下考虑负效用的消费投资问题

研究了经济代理人面临红利支付和劳动负效用情形下投资与退休选择问题,其中考虑了风险资产派发红利及 劳动会给经济代理人带来效用损失的情形.代理人享有退休选择权,退休决策使得代理人避免了劳动负效用,却必须要放弃工资收入.代理人效用来自消费,并且受劳动负效用的直接影响.利用动态规划的方法去解自由边值问题,得到了代理人临界财富水平和最优消费投资组合策略显示解.     

Residential Patterns in the Pre‐Automotive American City

The classic geographic distinction between situation and site factors suggests that the former will have declined and the latter increased since the late 19th century in their importance as determinants of American urban residential patterns. We test the prediction by examining the relation of socioeconomic status to horizontal and vertical distance from the city center in the largest American cities in 1880. A comparison of the results with the patterns prevalent in the twentieth century largely, though not entirely, supports the prediction, as do changes in the status of main streets and harbor islands.     

A forestry GIS-based study on evaluating the potential of imaging spectroscopy in mapping forest land fertility

Fertility, or the availability of nutrients and water, controls forest productivity. It affects its carbon sequestration, and thus the forest's effect on climate, as well as its commercial value. Although the availability of nutrients cannot be measured directly using remote sensing methods, fertility alters several vegetation traits detectable from the reflectance spectra of the forest stand, including its pigment content and water stress. However, forest reflectance is also influenced by other factors, such as species composition and stand age. Here, we present a case study demonstrating how data obtained using imaging spectroscopy is correlated with site fertility. The study was carried out in Hyytiälä, Finland, in the southern boreal forest zone. We used a database of state-owned forest stands including basic forestry variables and a site fertility index. To test the suitability of imaging spectroscopy with different spatial and spectral resolutions for site fertility mapping, we performed two airborne acquisitions using different sensor configurations. First, the sensor was flown at a high altitude with high spectral resolution resulting in a pixel size in the order of a tree crown. Next, the same area was flown to provide reflectance data with sub-meter spatial resolution. However, to maintain usable signal-to-noise ratios, several spectral channels inside the sensor were combined, thus reducing spectral resolution. We correlated a number of narrowband vegetation indices (describing canopy biochemical composition, structure, and photosynthetic activity) on site fertility. Overall, site fertility had a significant influence on the vegetation indices but the strength of the correlation depended on dominant species. We found that high spatial resolution data calculated from the spectra of sunlit parts of tree crowns had the strongest correlation with site fertility.     

UL-Isomap based nonlinear dimensionality reduction for hyperspectral imagery classification

The paper proposes an upgraded landmark-Isometric mapping (UL-Isomap) method to solve the two problems of landmark selection and computational complexity in dimensionality reduction using landmark Isometric mapping (LIsomap) for hyperspectral imagery (HSI) classification. First, the vector quantization method is introduced to select proper landmarks for HSI data. The approach considers the variations in local density of pixels in the spectral space. It locates the unique landmarks representing the geometric structures of HSI data. Then, random projections are used to reduce the bands of HSI data. After that, the new method incorporates the Recursive Lanczos Bisection (RLB) algorithm to construct the fast approximate k-nearest neighbor graph. The RLB algorithm accompanied with random projections improves the speed of neighbor searching in UL-Isomap. After constructing the geodesic distance graph between landmarks and all pixels, the method uses a fast randomized low-rank approximate method to speed up the eigenvalue decomposition of the inner-product matrix in multidimensional scaling. Manifold coordinates of landmarks are then computed. Manifold coordinates of non-landmarks are computed through the pseudo inverse transformation of landmark coordinates. Five experiments on two different HSI datasets are run to test the new UL-Isomap method. Experimental results show that UL-Isomap surpasses LIsomap, both in the overall classification accuracy (OCA) and in computational speed, with a speed over 5 times faster. Moreover, the UL-Isomap method, when compared against the Isometric mapping (Isomap) method, obtains only slightly lower OCAs.     

A multi-band approach to unsupervised scale parameter selection for multi-scale image segmentation

Image segmentation is one of key steps in object based image analysis of very high resolution images. Selecting the appropriate scale parameter becomes a particularly important task in image segmentation. In this study, an unsupervised multi-band approach is proposed for scale parameter selection in the multi-scale image segmentation process, which uses spectral angle to measure the spectral homogeneity of segments. With the increasing scale parameter, spectral homogeneity of segments decreases until they match the objects in the real world. The index of spectral homogeneity is thus used to determine multiple appropriate scale parameters. The performance of the proposed method is compared to a single-band based method through qualitative visual interpretation and quantitative discrepancy measures. Both methods are applied for segmenting two images: a QuickBird scene of an urban area within Beijing, China and a Woldview-2 scene of a suburban area in Kashiwa, Japan. The proposed multi-band based segmentation scale parameter selection method outperforms the single-band based method with the better recognition for diverse land cover objects in different urban landscapes.     

基于空间分析方法的商业选址研究——以珠海市香洲区为例

选址的正确与否对商业活动的成功起着举足轻重的作用,传统的商业选址方法多以数学模型或经验法则为主,而近年来随着城镇化进程的急速发展,利用传统数理方法进行商业选址不能满足商业选址的迫切需求.本文利用GIS中的空间分析方法,以珠海中心市区香洲区为研究对象,对影响珠海市商业选址的主要因素进行空间分析,为商业选址决策提供快速有效的可视化定量分析方法.