1,720,956 research outputs found
Are Partial Nutrient Balances Suitable to Evaluate Nutrient Sustainability of Land use Systems? Results from a Case Study in Central Sulawesi, Indonesia
No full textIs soil degradation unrelated to deforestation? Examining soil parameters of land use systems in upland Central Sulawesi, Indonesia
Full text linkIt is generally assumed that declining soil fertility during cultivation forces farmers to clear forest.We wanted to test this for a rainforest margin area in Central Sulawesi, Indonesia.We compared soil characteristics in different landuse systems and after different length of cultivation. 66 sites with four major land-use systems (maize, agroforestry, forest fallow and natural forest) were sampled. Soils were generally fertile, with high base cation saturation, high cation exchange capacity, moderate pH-values and moderate to high stocks of total nitrogen. Organicmatter stocks were highest in natural forest, intermediate in forest fallow and lowest in maize and agroforestry sites. In maize fields soil organic matter decreased during continuous cultivation, whereas in agroforestry it was stable or had the tendency to increase in time. The effective cation exchange capacity (ECEC) was highest in natural forest and lowest in maize fields. Base cations saturation of ECEC did not change significantly during cultivation both maize and agroforestry, whereas the contribution of K cations decreased in maize and showed no changes in agroforestry sites. Our results indicate that maize cultivation tends to reduce soil fertility but agroforestry systems are able to stop this decline of soil fertility or even improve it. As most areas in this rain forest margin are converted into agroforestry systems it is unlikely that soil degradation causes deforestation in this case. On the contrary, the relatively high soil fertility may actually attract new immigrants who contribute to deforestation and start agriculture as smallholders
Soil Nitrogen Cycling following Montane Forest Conversion in Central Sulawesi, Indonesia
No full textThe lower montane forest zone of Indonesia is undergoing rapid conversion of indigenous forests to agriculture. In this tropical region, however, the effects of forest conversion on soil N processes have not been investigated. Corn (Zea mays L.) and cacao (Theobroma cacao L.)–coffee (Coffea canephora Pierre ex Froehner) agroforestry are the main land use types in cleared lower montane forests in Central Sulawesi, Indonesia. Our main objective was to compare the soil N dynamics under agroforest systems and corn cultivation with indigenous forest. We measured the gross rates of N transformation processes using 15N pool dilution. The agroforest systems and indigenous forests had higher gross N mineralization rates and faster turnover rates of NH4 + and microbial N pools than the long-term cultivated corn sites. Faster soil N turnover rates in agroforest systems suggest a more dynamic soil N cycling. Leguminous shade trees, which are important components of these agroforest systems, may have influenced the fast microbial N cycling through release of N-rich root exudates and plant residues. Our results show that compared with corn, agroforestry is a better option in terms of sustainability in the N-supplying capacity of the soil. In addition, we measured higher 15NH4 + recoveries than 15NO3 − recoveries after 15 min of 15N addition in all our sites. Our measured rates of gross nitrification were very low to negligible, due to rapid disappearance of added 15NO3 − Such fast reaction of NO3 − warrants further investigation, especially in tropical areas where 15N studies are very few
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
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