Distribution patterns of macrobenthic species in relation to organic enrichment within aquaculture earthen ponds

The relationship between organic enrichment and macrobenthic colonization patterns was investigated during an 8-month period in Diplodus sargus (white seabream) production ponds. A stratified sampling design was applied and each pond was divided into three zones: water entrance (WE); central (C); and automatic feeder zones (AF). Generally, the number of species and Shannon–Wiener diversity increased from the WE to the AF zone. Abundance did not present a clear trend. The recently developed marine biotic index (AMBI) was applied and showed to be sufficiently robust to discriminate, within a relatively small area, differences in macrobenthic communities due to organic enrichment. Nevertheless, caution is advised when applying this index or others based on ecological group’s assignment, as the classification of a certain area may differ when allocating a certain species to an unsuitable group. This is particularly evident when common species are involved.     

中国北方几种主要森林群落表土花粉组合特征研究

中国北方68个不同森林群落表土花粉研究表明,东部森林区森林群落中乔木花粉百分比多数大于30%,草本花粉百分比小于50%;草原区河谷林和低山林带乔木花粉百分比低于30%,草本植物花粉高于50%。松、云冷杉林和桦木林花粉组合中的优势成分也是群落中的优势植物;落叶松林中蒿花粉含量最高,其次为松、落叶松;山杨林中松、桦是最主要花粉类型;栎、胡桃、鹅耳枥及青檀林中,除建群种外,松是最主要的乔木花粉类型,中华卷柏也较多;阔叶杂木林与油松阔叶混交林花粉组成相似,松、桦、中华卷柏是最主要的花粉类型。降趋对应分析、主坐标分析和聚类分析研究表明云冷杉、落叶松和桦林花粉组合及所代表的生境具有一定的相似性,为最耐寒喜湿类型;沙枣、榆树疏林和草原区人工杨树林花粉组合及所代表的生境为最喜干旱类型;山杨林较桦木林略喜暖干,栎林、鹅耳枥林和青檀林较山杨林更喜暖干,胡桃楸林为所有森林类型中最喜暖类型,但喜湿性低于桦木林高于栎林。森林区松蒿比(P/A)大于0.1,草原区松蒿比小于0.1。松林、油松阔叶混交林和阔叶杂木林以高松蒿比、高蕨类与草本比值(F/H)和低蒿藜比(A/C)为特征,云冷杉、落叶松和桦林以低松蒿比、低蕨类与草本比值和高蒿藜比为特征,栎、胡桃、鹅耳枥、杨、青檀等阔叶林以高松蒿比、高蒿藜比和低蕨类与草本比值,可与落叶阔叶杂木林、油松阔叶混交林、松林、桦林和针叶林区分开。但这些比值的可操作性,有待进一步研究。     

Where rights begin and end in Puerto Rico's gated communities

In 1992, Puerto Rico's governor and police superintendent incorporated the National Guard with local police in a militarized battle against crime. Mano dura contra el crimen (strong arm/iron fist against crime) policies led to the gating of 82 public housing communities in the island. Simultaneously, privileged private communities organized and petitioned municipalities to retrofit their neighbourhoods with gates in the name of safety. These enclosures followed the privatized management of all public housing communities in the island only a few years before. Based on ethnographic research, I examine the sociospatial outcomes of these policies, how they reframe community participation and deploy a discourse of self‐responsibility that distributes power unequally across private and public housing communities. While in the privileged communities these policies have cultivated community leaders and invigorated social life as residents take control over public space, the gates in the communities of the poor reflect a skeletal structure of democracy. Private management companies impose increasingly restrictive regulations in attempts to organize the community and the only recourse to participation is to engage in small acts of everyday resistance, from apathy to subversion. As part of larger neoliberal tendencies to retrench the ‘public’ in favour of the ‘private’, the mano dura policies curtail democracy as the voices of the poor are silenced and the scope of efficacy of the rich expands.     

Living it up: Super-rich enclave and transnational elite urbanism in Singapore

Notwithstanding the burgeoning scholarship on enclave urbanism, urban gating has often been pigeonholed as an intra-urban development that is somewhat ‘epiphenomenal’ to wider global processes. Overlooked in the literature is how gated communities as globally-oriented spaces are intertwined with the transnational lifeworlds of its elite inhabitants. As key sites where transnational super-rich elites organize their consumption and reproduce their purportedly global lifestyle, gated communities are now emerging as a new ‘meta-geographical form’ that circulates in and around rapidly globalizing cities. Drawing on the case study of Sentosa Cove, an exclusive waterfront gated community in Singapore catering to ‘high net-worth’ residents, this paper critically examines how elite localities and transnationalism are being socially and spatially reproduced in the city-state. To this end, the paper makes a distinct contribution by bringing to bear critical transnationalism perspectives in the understanding of urban gating and the privileged geographies of the global super-rich.     

Microbial community distribution in sediments from the Mount Elbert Gas Hydrate Stratigraphic Test Well, Alaska North Slope

We studied the microbial communities collected from hydrate-bearing sediments on the North Slope of Alaska to determine how abiotic variables (e.g., grain size, hydrate presence, formation fluid gases) may correspond to the type and distribution of microbes in the sediments. The cores were acquired from sub-permafrost, Eocene (46-55 million year old) sediments in the BPXA-DOE-USGS Mount Elbert Gas Hydrate Stratigraphic Test Well within which hydrates are believed to have formed 1.5 mya. Forty samples, eight of which originally contained hydrates, were acquired from depths of ca. 606-666 m below land surface. Five drilling fluid samples acquired from the same depth range were included in the analysis as a control for possible contamination by drilling fluid microbes during the drilling and handling of cores. DNA was extracted from 15 samples (typically <1 ng DNA/g sediment was recovered) and then amplified using polymerase chain reaction with primers specific for bacterial and archaeal 16S rDNA genes, which indicates the likelihood that microbes were present in all analyzed samples. Only bacterial DNA amplicons were detected. Terminal-restriction fragment length polymorphism (T-RFLP) was used to measure bacterial diversity in the respective samples. Non-metric multidimensional scaling (NMS) was used to determine the abiotic variables that may have influenced bacterial diversity. NMS analysis revealed that the microbial taxa present in the sediment were distinct from the taxa present in the drilling fluids suggesting that the sediments were not contaminated by the drilling fluids. Multi-response permutation procedures (MRPP) found no significant difference between three sample groups identified a priori as being from within a hydrate zone, outside of hydrate zone, or on the edge of a hydrate/non-hydrate zone according to downhole nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy logs. However, among the several other abiotic parameters that were evaluated mud gas methane concentration and variables related to hydrate presence (e.g., chloride concentration, salinity, and resistivity) appeared to define the arrangement of microbial community signatures in plots resulting from NMS analysis. Communities from hydrate and non-hydrate layers each contained unique taxa as determined by the T-RFLP assay.     

Mangrove litter fall: Extrapolation from traps to a large tropical macrotidal harbour

Mangrove litter is a major source of organic matter for detrital food chains in many tropical coastal ecosystems, but scant attention has been paid to the substantial challenges in sampling and extrapolation of rates of litter fall. The challenges arise due to within-stand heterogeneity including incomplete canopy cover, and canopy that is below the high tide mark. We sampled litter monthly for three years at 35 sites across eight mapped communities in the macrotidal Darwin Harbour, northern Australia. Totals were adjusted for mean community canopy cover and the occurrence of canopy below the high tide mark. The mangroves of Darwin Harbour generate an estimated average of 5.0 t ha⁻¹ yr⁻¹ of litter. This amount would have been overestimated by 32% had we not corrected for limited canopy cover and underestimated by 11% had we not corrected for foliage that is below the high tide mark. Had we made neither correction, we would have overestimated litter fall by 17%. Among communities, rates varied 2.6-fold per unit area of canopy, and 3.9-fold among unit area of community. Seaward fringe mangroves were the most productive per unit of canopy area but the canopy was relatively open; Tidal creek forest was the most productive per unit area of community. Litter fall varied 1.1-fold among years and 2.0-fold among months though communities exhibited a range of seasonalities. Our study may be the most extensively stratified and sampled evaluation of mangrove litter fall in a tropical estuary. We believe our study is also the first such assessment to explicitly deal with canopy discontinuities and demonstrates that failure to do so can result in considerable overestimation of mangrove productivity.     

Producing nature and enacting difference in ecosystem-based fisheries management: An example from the Northeastern US

The science and management of marine resources is increasingly grappling with the use of ecosystem-based fisheries management. Though ecosystem-based fisheries management seeks to unite biological and sociocultural concerns into a holistic framework, people are often seen simply as external drivers of change. The technical questions that are often posed, such as the delineation of boundaries or the strategies of governance, are however more broadly questions concerning the social production of nature. This paper explores these issues by analyzing both the spatial fishing practices of different fishermen and the results of a series of workshops held in New England to solicit opinions about ecosystem-based fisheries management. The paper emphasizes teasing apart the human dimensions of fishing embedded in predominant notions such as fishing effort through more explicit consideration of spatially based resource dependencies and mutual constitution of society-nature.     

Effects of Elevated Atmospheric CO(2) on Rhizosphere Soil Microbial Communities in a Mojave Desert Ecosystem

The effects of elevated atmospheric carbon dioxide [CO₂] on microbial communities in arid rhizosphere soils beneath Larrea tridentata were examined. Roots of Larrea were harvested from plots fumigated with elevated or ambient levels of [CO₂] using Free-Air CO₂ Enrichment (FACE) technology. Twelve bacterial and fungal rRNA gene libraries were constructed, sequenced and categorized into operational taxonomical units (OTUs). There was a significant decrease in OTUs within the Firmicutes (bacteria) in elevated [CO₂], and increase in Basiomycota (fungi) in rhizosphere soils of plots exposed to ambient [CO₂]. Phylogenetic analyses indicated that OTUs belonged to a wide range of bacterial and fungal taxa. To further study changes in bacterial communities, Quantitative Polymerase Chain Reaction (QPCR) was used to quantify populations of bacteria in rhizosphere soil. The concentration of total bacteria 16S rDNA was similar in conditions of enriched and ambient [CO₂]. However, QPCR of Gram-positive microorganisms showed a 43% decrease in the population in elevated [CO₂]. The decrease in representation of Gram positives and the similar values for total bacterial DNA suggest that the representation of other bacterial taxa was promoted by elevated [CO₂]. These results indicate that elevated [CO₂] changes structure and representation of microorganisms associated with roots of desert plants.     

住宅郊区化背景下门禁社区与周边邻里关系——以广州丽江花园为例

作为"破碎城市"的典型表征,西方学者对门禁社区持负面态度,然而门禁社区在不同区域的出现受制于当地的社会文化要素,并可能对当地产生不同的影响.本文试图探讨在中国特殊的社会文化背景下,门禁社区与周边社会经济地位较低邻里的联系和社会关系,并通过分析门禁社区居民的活动范围和围墙内外居民彼此间的态度和社会交往来探讨门禁社区的影响...     

Community perceptions of REDD+: a case study from Papua New Guinea

REDD projects have received considerable attention for their potential to mitigate the effects of climatic change. However, the existing literature has been slow to assess the impacts of proposed REDD projects on the livelihoods of forest communities in the developing world, or the implications of these local realities for the success of REDD+ initiatives in general. This study presents ethnographic research conducted with communities within the April-Salomei pilot REDD+ Project in Papua New Guinea (PNG). Several cases of institutional biases and uneven power relationships have been exploited by local elites to prevent landowners from making free and informed choices about their involvement in the project, although landowners and local communities are well positioned to capture forthcoming project benefits. By underestimating the scale and impact of traditional shifting cultivation practices, the credibility of the REDD+ project design and the value of any future carbon credits are critically undermined. Based on the actual practices found in PNG, the authors' radical proposal is to call for a halt on REDD development in PNG while institutional enabling conditions are improved, comprehensive landowner consultations conducted, and detailed mapping and genealogical surveys of landowners completed. Without these developments, future REDD+ projects in PNG are unlikely to benefit either the global climate or local development.