1,720,956 research outputs found
Different climate conditions drive variations in gross primary productivity and woody biomass accumulation in a temperate and a boreal conifer forest in Canada
Understanding the complex relationships between climate, forest carbon (C) uptake and biomass growth has
become a research priority, crucial for assessing the climate change impacts on forest C sequestration. Such
associations are expected to vary across biomes, due to different climate constraints on tree physiology. However,
our understanding of the seasonal dynamics of long-term C sequestration and how climate influences them
in different forest biomes is still limited.
We investigated a boreal Pinus banksiana forest (Old Jack Pine, OJP) and a temperate Pinus strobus plantation
(Turkey Point, TP39) in Canada. We aimed to assess the link between C uptake and above-ground woody biomass
growth, and the effects of climate inter-annual variability on them. We used daily records of climate and gross
primary productivity (GPP, period 1999–2019 at OJP and 2003–2018 at TP39), and investigated xylem biomass
proxies at cell (cell wall area) and tree-ring level (ring wall area) from 1970 to 2019 at OJP, and from 1970 to
2018 at TP39.
In both forests, the direct link between C sink and C source was revealed by the common inter-annual variability
of GPP and xylem biomass. GPP and xylem biomass were mostly influenced by spring and late summer
temperature at OJP. However, at both sites, summer drought negatively influenced GPP, and biomass growth
especially in recent decades. Analysis of dry and cold years evidenced short-term negative effects of low temperature
on GPP and xylem biomass in OJP, and of drought in TP39.
Long-term intra-annual analyses are crucial to assess the variable effects of climate on forest C cycle. Warm
spring and autumn can benefit both GPP and biomass growth, but even in the boreal forest, summer drought has negative impacts. Increasing dry spells, especially in the temperate site, could reduce future forest capacity to uptake C and fix it in wood biomass
Contrasting patterns of water use efficiency and annual radial growth among European beech forests along the Italian peninsula
Tree mortality and forest dieback episodes are increasing due to drought and heat stress. Nevertheless, a comprehensive understanding of mechanisms enabling trees to withstand and survive droughts remains lacking. Our study investigated basal area increment (BAI), and δ13C-derived intrinsic water-use-efficiency (iWUE), to elucidate beech resilience across four healthy stands in Italy with varying climates and soil water availability. Additionally, fist-order autocorrelation (AR1) analysis was performed to detect early warning signals for potential tree dieback risks during extreme drought events. Results reveal a negative link between BAI and vapour pressure deficit (VPD), especially in southern latitudes. After the 2003 drought, BAI decreased at the northern site, with an increase in δ13C and iWUE, indicating conservative water-use. Conversely, the southern sites showed increased BAI and iWUE, likely influenced by rising CO2 and improved water availability. In contrast, the central site sustained higher transpiration rates due to higher soil water holding capacity (SWHC). Despite varied responses, most sites exhibited reduced resilience to future extreme events, indicated by increased AR1. Temperature significantly affected beech iWUE and BAI in northern Italy, while VPD strongly influenced the southern latitudes. The observed increase in BAI and iWUE in southern regions might be attributed to an acclimation response
drought‐induced dieback
In 2010–2018, Northern Patagonia featured the longest severe drought of the last millennium. This extreme dry spell triggered widespread growth decline and forest dieback. Nonetheless, the roles played by the two major mechanisms driving dieback, hydraulic failure and carbon starvation, are still not clear and understudied in this seasonally dry region. Here, for the 1800–2017 period, we apply a retrospective analysis of radial growth, wood anatomical traits (lumen area, cell-wall thickness) and δ13C and δ18O stable isotopes to assess dieback causes of the iconic conifer Araucaria araucana. We selected three stands where declining (defoliated) and nondeclining (not defoliated) trees coexisted along a precipitation gradient from the warm-dry Coastal Range to the cool-wet Andes. At all sites declining trees showed lower radial growth and lower theoretical hydraulic conductivity, suggesting a long-lasting process of hydraulic deterioration in their water transport system compared to nondeclining, coexisting trees. Wood anatomical traits evidenced that this divergence between declining and nondeclining trees started at least seven decades before canopy dieback. In the drier stands, declining trees showed higher water-use efficiency (WUE) throughout the whole period, which we attributed to early stomatal closure, suggesting a greater carbon starvation risk consistent with thinner cell walls. In the wettest stand, we found the opposite pattern. Here, a reduction in WUE coupled with thicker cell walls suggested increased carbon assimilation rates and exposure to drought-induced hydraulic failure. The δ18O values indicated different strategies of gas exchange between sites, which are likely a consequence of microsite conditions and water sources. Multiproxy, retrospective quantifications of xylem anatomical traits and tree-ring isotopes provide a robust tool to identify and forecast, which stands or trees will show dieback or, on the contrary, which will likely withstand and be more resilient to future hotter droughts
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
The 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
“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
We 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
We 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
We 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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