Aquaculture of bivalve shellfish and seaweed represents a global opportunity to simultaneously advance coastal ecosystem recovery and provide substantive benefits to humanity. To identify marine ...ecoregions with the greatest potential for development of shellfish and seaweed aquaculture to meet this opportunity, we conducted a global spatial analysis using key environmental (e.g., nutrient pollution status), socioeconomic (e.g., governance quality), and human health factors (e.g., wastewater treatment prevalence). We identify a substantial opportunity for strategic sector development, with the highest opportunity marine ecoregions for shellfish aquaculture centered on Oceania, North America, and portions of Asia, and the highest opportunity for seaweed aquaculture distributed throughout Europe, Asia, Oceania, and North and South America. This study provides insights into specific areas where governments, international development organizations, and investors should prioritize new efforts to drive changes in public policy, capacity-building, and business planning to realize the ecosystem and societal benefits of shellfish and seaweed aquaculture.
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The aquarium trade and other wildlife consumers are at a crossroads forced by threats from global climate change and other anthropogenic stressors that have weakened coastal ecosystems. While the ...wildlife trade may put additional stress on coral reefs, it brings income into impoverished parts of the world and may stimulate interest in marine conservation. To better understand the influence of the trade, we must first be able to quantify coral reef fauna moving through it. Herein, we discuss the lack of a data system for monitoring the wildlife aquarium trade and analyze problems that arise when trying to monitor the trade using a system not specifically designed for this purpose. To do this, we examined an entire year of import records of marine tropical fish entering the United States in detail, and discuss the relationship between trade volume, biodiversity and introduction of non-native marine fishes. Our analyses showed that biodiversity levels are higher than previous estimates. Additionally, more than half of government importation forms have numerical or other reporting discrepancies resulting in the overestimation of trade volumes by 27%. While some commonly imported species have been introduced into the coastal waters of the USA (as expected), we also found that some uncommon species in the trade have also been introduced. This is the first study of aquarium trade imports to compare commercial invoices to government forms and provides a means to, routinely and in real time, examine the biodiversity of the trade in coral reef wildlife species.
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Feedbacks between flooding and plant growth that help to stabilize marshes against rising sea level are being investigated in estuaries at Plum Island, Massachusetts, and North Inlet, South Carolina. ...Net annual primary production of the marsh grassSpartina alterniflorahas been quite variable through the years, and correlates positively with sea level during the growing season at both sites. The elevation of the marsh surface relative to mean high water determines the duration of flooding, or hydroperiod, that in turn affects plant growth. The effect of flooding was tested experimentally using an in situ bioassay to simulate growth at different relative elevations. At North Inlet, we found a parabolic response to relative elevation, with clear evidence of minimum and maximum vertical limits and an optimal elevation for growth. The Plum Island bioassay provided evidence of the super-optimal side of the growth curve. In both marshes, the responses ofS. alterniflorato rising sea level, at their current elevations, are consistent with the bioassay results. This growth curve is important because it defines suboptimal elevations that are unstable for marshes and super-optimal elevations that are stable. Instability results when an increase in sea level decreases primary production, leading to declines in mineral sedimentation and sediment organic matter accretion. Conversely, stability results when rising sea level stimulates primary production, leading to increased sedimentation and organic matter accretion. There also has been interannual variability in the maximum standing biomass (a proxy for productivity) of another marsh grass,Spartina patens, but no significant correlation has been found with sea level, possibly due to methodological limitations. Finally, bothSpartinaspecies responded positively to nitrogen and have remained highly productive for 13 years of fertilization at Plum Island and 30 years at North Inlet.
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Community tutelary shrines in Taiwan have been identified as excellent resources for grassroots-level heritage. As community ritual assemblages, they are able to encode data about a settlement’s ...social, political and economic history in their material composition, aesthetic choices, artefacts, displays and orientations. This data paper previews a first edition dataset related to 752 such shrines found throughout the greater Taipei area in northern Taiwan. It explores the basis for such a dataset, how it can be used and what has been produced. This dataset is available on the depositar research data repository, operated out of the Institute of Information Sciences at Academia Sinica in Taipei and is publicly available for download.
Helicobacter pylori(H. pylori) is an extremely common, yet underappreciated, pathogen that is able to alter host physiology and subvert the host immune response, allowing it to persist for the life ...of the host. H. pylori is the primary cause of peptic ulcers and gastric cancer. In the United States, the annual cost associated with peptic ulcer disease is estimated to be $6 billion and gastric cancer kills over 700000 people per year globally. The prevalence of H. pylori infection remains high(> 50%) in much of the world, although the infection rates are dropping in some developed nations. The drop in H. pylori prevalence could be a double-edged sword, reducing the incidence of gastric diseases while increasing the risk of allergies and esophageal diseases. The list of diseases potentially caused by H. pylori continues to grow; however, mechanistic explanations of how H. pylori could contribute to extragastric diseases lag far behind clinical studies. A number of host factors and H. pylori virulence factors act in concert to determine which individuals are at the highest risk of disease. These include bacterial cytotoxins and polymorphisms in host genes responsible for directing the immune response. This review discusses the latest advances in H. pylori pathogenesis, diagnosis, and treatment. Up-todate information on correlations between H. pylori and extragastric diseases is also provided.
Online communities are new social structures dependent on modern information technology, and they face equally modern challenges. Although satisfied members regularly consume content, it is ...considerably harder to coax them to contribute new content and help recruit others because they face unprecedented social comparison and criticism. We propose that engagement—a concept only abstractly alluded to in information systems research—is the key to active participation in these unique sociotechnical environments. We constructed and tested a framework that demonstrates what engagement is, where it comes from, and how it powerfully explains both knowledge contribution and word of mouth. Our results show that members primarily contribute to and revisit an online community from a sense of engagement. Nonetheless, word of mouth is partly influenced by prior satisfaction. Therefore, engagement and satisfaction appear to be parallel mediating forces at work in online communities. Both mediators arise from a sense of communal identity and knowledge self-efficacy, but engagement also emerges from validation of self-identity. Nevertheless, we also found signs that the contributions of the most knowledgeable users are not purely from engagement, but also from a competing sense of self-efficacy. Our findings significantly contribute to the area of information systems by highlighting that engagement is a concrete phenomenon on its own, and it can be directly modeled and must be carefully managed.
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Feeding ecology of the lionfish (Pterois volitans), an invasive species in the Western North Atlantic, was examined by collecting stomach content data from fishes taken throughout the Bahamian ...archipelago. Three relative metrics of prey quantity, including percent number, percent frequency, and percent volume, were used to compare three indices of dietary importance. Lionfish largely prey upon teleosts (78% volume) and crustaceans (14% volume). Twenty-one families and 41 species of teleosts were represented in the diet of lionfish; the top 10 families of dietary importance were Gobiidae, Labridae, Grammatidae, Apogonidae, Pomacentridae, Serranidae, Blenniidae, Atherinidae, Mullidae, and Monacanthidae. The proportional importance of crustaceans in the diet was inversely related to size with the largest lionfish preying almost exclusively on teleosts. Lionfish were found to be diurnal feeders with the highest predation occurring in the morning (08:00-11:00).
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EMUNI, FIS, FZAB, GEOZS, GIS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, MFDPS, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, SBMB, SBNM, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK, VKSCE, ZAGLJ
This review evaluates the importance of plants and associated biological processes in determining the vulnerability of coastal wetlands to sea-level rise. Coastal wetlands occur across a broad ...sedimentary continuum from minerogenic to biogenic, providing an opportunity to examine the relative importance of biological processes in wetland resilience to sea-level rise. We explore how plants influence sediment accretion, elevation capital (vertical position in the tidal frame), and compaction or erosion of deposited material. We focus on salt marsh and mangrove wetlands, which occupy a similar physiographic niche and display similar physical and biological controls on resilience to sea-level rise. In both habitats, plants stabilize emergent mudflats and help sustain the wetland position in the tidal frame relative to ocean height through both surface and subsurface process controls on soil elevation. Plants influence soil elevations by modifying (1) mineral sediment deposition and retention, (2) organic matter contributions to soil volume, and (3) resistance to compaction and erosion. Recognition of the importance of plants in coastal wetland resilience to sea-level rise is key to accurate predictions about the future fate of salt marshes and mangrove forests and for development of effective management and restoration plans.
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EMUNI, FIS, FZAB, GEOZS, GIS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, MFDPS, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, SBMB, SBNM, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK, VKSCE, ZAGLJ
A forecast of nuisance flooding of Charleston peninsula is presented, based on an analysis of tide records from Charleston Harbor, SC. The forecast was based on past trends in local sea level and ...tidal harmonics, including the 18.6-yr lunar nodal and annual cycles. The data document an exponential rise in mean sea level. Extrapolating to year 2060 shows that the sea-level trend already is equivalent to the RCP4.5 scenario and on track to exceed NOAA's intermediate low sea-level rise scenario of 0.5 m this century. If the trend continues, MSL will have risen by 0.22 m in 50 yr at an annual rate of 0.5 cm/yr in 2069. Simulations to 2064-2068, based on an empirical relationship between the annual number of flood events, defined as a water level exceeding 1.17 m NAVD (North American Vertical Datum of 1988), and the annual sum of monthly mean high water (r.sup.2 = 0.84), predict annual flood events will rise to the 60 to 75 range. Application of the hourly tidal harmonics to the long-term sea-level trend provided estimates of total land area flooded and duration of flooding. Flood duration is expected to rise to 6.5% by 2046-2050 and 8.2% of time by 2064-2068. The area exposed to flooding will be 4.23 km.sup.2 in 2046-2050 and 4.46 km.sup.2 in 2064-2068, corresponding to about 20-21% of peninsular area on what was formerly marshland and creeks, filled in earlier centuries. Finally, the estimated cost of defending the city and a proposal for a climate tax are discussed.
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