Publications
NIBIOs employees contribute to several hundred scientific articles and research reports every year. You can browse or search in our collection which contains references and links to these publications as well as other research and dissemination activities. The collection is continously updated with new and historical material.
2022
Abstract
Democratizing learning is essential for environmental sustainability. Less privileged areas are crucial in this regard. Informal education has great such potential, but often fails to reach the less privileged, and to document learning. With the objective to identify and counter these issues, we here report on EDU-ARCTIC, an informal open schooling course in environmental science, aimed at European teachers with teenage pupils. Of the 1,181 teachers who enrolled, 73% were females and 43% were from less privileged nations (according to UN Human Development Index). This is a higher share of less privileged (females) than is the case for the general population of Europe. Teachers from less privileged nations also participated in more project activities than did those from more privileged nations, apart from in urban areas. For the project period, the teachers reported a significant increase in all the three categories of aspired learning outcomes for their pupils. We conclude that courses like ours can increase teenagers’ literacy and engagement in science and environmental issues, not the least in less privileged areas. Deliberate efforts are required to reach these target groups, who may be less inclined to join on their own.
Abstract
Aim Grasslands of varying land-use intensity and history were studied to describe and test species richness and compositional patterns and their relationships with the physical environment, land cover of the surrounding landscape, patch geometry, and grazing. Location The mainland of Norway. Methods We utilized data from the Norwegian Monitoring Programme for Agricultural Landscapes, which recorded vascular plants from 569 plots, placed within 97 monitoring squares systematically distributed throughout agricultural land on the Norwegian mainland. We identified four grassland types: (i) moderately fertilized, moist meadows; (ii) overgrown agricultural land; (iii) cultivated pastures and disturbed ground; and (iv) natural/unfertilized and outfield pastures. Results Soil moisture and grazing measures were found to be important in explaining species compositional variation in all grassland types. Richness patterns were best explained by complex and differing combinations of environmental indicators. Nevertheless, negative (nitrogen and light level) or unimodal (pH) responses were similar across grassland types. Vegetation plots adjacent to areas historically and/or currently dominated by mires, forests, or pastures, as well as abandoned and overgrown grasslands, had a slightly higher species richness. Larger grasslands surrounding the vegetation plots had slightly less species than smaller grasslands. Conclusions This study demonstrates that data from a national monitoring programme on agricultural grasslands can be used for plant ecological research. The results indicate that climate-change-related shifts along moisture and nutrient gradients (increases) may alter both species composition and species richness in the studied grasslands. It is likely that large and contiguous managed (grass)land might affect areas perceived as remnants, probably caused by the transformation to homogeneous (agri)cultural landscapes reducing edge zones, which in turn may threaten the species pool and richness. The importance of land use and land-cover composition should be considered when planning management actions in extensively used high-latitude grasslands.
2021
Abstract
Simple Summary Chronic Wasting Disease is a deadly infectious disease affecting cervids that was discovered in Norway in 2016. CWD can transmit through environmental reservoirs and aggregation and spatial clustering of animals may affect transmission. Deer usually forage on scattered forage, but anthropogenic food sources are often concentrated in space, leading to spatial aggregation. We determined what caused red deer to revisit the same locations in the environment, and the extent to which this was caused by anthropogenic food sources. We document that the most visited sites were indeed anthropogenic, which opens potential avenues to disease mitigation. Abstract Herbivores like cervids usually graze on widely scattered forage, but anthropogenic food sources may cause spatial revisitation and aggregation, posing a risk for transmission of infectious diseases. In 2016, chronic wasting disease (CWD) was first detected in Norway. A legal regulation to ban supplemental feeding of cervids and to fence stored hay bales was implemented to lower aggregation of cervids. Knowledge of further patterns and causes of spatial revisitation can inform disease management. We used a recently developed revisitation analysis on GPS-positions from 13 red deer (Cervus elaphus) to identify the pattern of spatial clustering, and we visited 185 spatial clusters during winter to identify the causes of clustering. Anthropogenic food sources were found in 11.9% of spatial clusters, which represented 31.0% of the clusters in agricultural fields. Dumping of silage and hay bales were the main anthropogenic food sources (apart from agricultural fields), and unfenced hay bales were available despite the regulation. The probability of the clusters being in agricultural fields was high during winter. It may be necessary to find other ways of disposing of silage and enforcing the requirement of fencing around hay bales to ensure compliance, in particular during winters with deep snow.
Abstract
No abstract has been registered
Abstract
Organisms use circadian rhythms to anticipate and exploit daily environmental oscillations. While circadian rhythms are of clear importance for inhabitants of tropic and temperate latitudes, its role for permanent residents of the polar regions is less well understood. The high Arctic Svalbard ptarmigan shows behavioral rhythmicity in presence of light-dark cycles but is arrhythmic during the polar day and polar night. This has been suggested to be an adaptation to the unique light environment of the Arctic. In this study, we examined regulatory aspects of the circadian control system in the Svalbard ptarmigan by recording core body temperature (Tb) alongside locomotor activity in captive birds under different photoperiods. We show that Tb and activity are rhythmic with a 24-h period under short (SP; L:D 6:18) and long photoperiod (LP; L:D 16:8). Under constant light and constant darkness, rhythmicity in Tb attenuates and activity shows signs of ultradian rhythmicity. Birds under SP also showed a rise in Tb preceding the light-on signal and any rise in activity, which proves that the light-on signal can be anticipated, most likely by a circadian system.
Abstract
The high Arctic archipelago of Svalbard (74°–81° north) experiences extended periods of uninterrupted daylight in summer and uninterrupted night in winter, apparently relaxing the major driver for the evolution of circadian rhythmicity. Svalbard ptarmigan (Lagopus muta hyperborea) is the only year-round resident terrestrial bird species endemic to the high Arctic and is remarkably adapted to the extreme annual variation in environmental conditions. Here, we demonstrate that, although circadian control of behavior disappears rapidly upon transfer to constant light conditions, consistent with the loss of daily activity patterns observed during the polar summer and polar night, Svalbard ptarmigans nonetheless employ a circadian-based mechanism for photoperiodic timekeeping. First, we show the persistence of rhythmic clock gene expression under constant light within the mediobasal hypothalamus and pars tuberalis, the key tissues in the seasonal neuroendocrine cascade. We then employ a “sliding skeleton photoperiod” protocol, revealing that the driving force behind seasonal biology of the Svalbard ptarmigan is rhythmic sensitivity to light, a feature that depends on a functioning circadian rhythm. Hence, the unusual selective pressures of life in the high Arctic have favored decoupling of the circadian clock from organization of daily activity patterns, while preserving its importance for seasonal synchronization.
Authors
Michal Hájek Borja Jiménez-Alfaro Ondřej Hájek Lisa Brancaleoni Marco Cantonati Michele Carbognani Anita Dedić Daniel Dítě Renato Gerdol Petra Hájková Veronika Horsáková Florian Jansen Jasmina Kamberović Jutta Kapfer Tiina Hilkka Maria Kolari Mariusz Lamentowicz Predrag Lazarević Ermin Mašić Jesper Erenskjold Moeslund Aaron Pérez-Haase Tomáš Peterka Alessandro Petraglia Eulàlia Pladevall-Izard Zuzana Plesková Stefano Segadelli Yuliya Semeniuk Patrícia Singh Anna Šímová Eva Šmerdová Teemu Tahvanainen Marcello Tomaselli Yuliya Vystavna Claudia Biţă-Nicolae Michal HorsákAbstract
Water resources and associated ecosystems are becoming highly endangered due to ongoing global environmental changes. Spatial ecological modelling is a promising toolbox for understanding the past, present and future distribution and diversity patterns in groundwater-dependent ecosystems, such as fens, springs, streams, reed beds or wet grasslands. Still, the lack of detailed water chemistry maps prevents the use of reasonable models to be applied on continental and global scales. Being major determinants of biological composition and diversity of groundwater-dependent ecosystems, groundwater pH and calcium are of utmost importance. Here we developed an up-to-date European map of groundwater pH and Ca, based on 7577 measurements of near-surface groundwater pH and calcium distributed across Europe. In comparison to the existing European groundwater maps, we included several times more sites, especially in the regions rich in spring and fen habitats, and filled the apparent gaps in eastern and southeastern Europe. We used random forest models and regression kriging to create continuous maps of water pH and calcium at the continental scale, which is freely available also as a raster map (Hájek et al., 2020b; https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4139912). Lithology had a higher importance than climate for both pH and calcium. The previously recognised latitudinal and altitudinal gradients were rediscovered with much refined regional patterns, as associated with bedrock variation. For ecological models of distribution and diversity of many terrestrial ecosystems, our new map based on field groundwater measurements is more suitable than maps of soil pH, which mirror not only bedrock chemistry but also vegetation-dependent soil processes.
Authors
Iwona Dembicz Jürgen Dengler Manuel J. Steinbauer Thomas J. Matthews Sándor Bartha Sabina Burrascano Alessandro Chiarucci Goffredo Filibeck François Gillet Monika Janišová Salza Palpurina David Storch Werner Ulrich Svetlana Aćić Steffen Boch Juan Antonio Campos Laura Cancellieri Marta Carboni Giampiero Ciaschetti Timo Conradi Pieter De Frenne Jiri Dolezal Christian Dolnik Franz Essl Edy Fantinato Itziar García-Mijangos Gian Pietro Giusso del Galdo John Arvid Grytnes Riccardo Guarino Behlul Güler Jutta Kapfer Ewelina Klichowska Łukasz Kozub Anna Kuzemko Swantje Löbel Michael Manthey Corrado Marcenó Anne Mimet Alireza Naqinezhad Jalil Noroozi Arkadiusz Nowak Harald Pauli Robert K. Peet Vincent Pellissier Remigiusz Pielech Massimo Terzi Emin Uğurlu Orsolya Valko Iuliia Vasheniak Kiril Vassilev Denys Vynokurov Hannah J. White Wolfgang Willner Manuela Winkler Sebastian Wolfrum Jinghui Zhang Idoia BiurrunAbstract
Questions Which environmental factors influence fine-grain beta diversity of vegetation and do they vary among taxonomic groups? Location Palaearctic biogeographic realm. Methods We extracted 4,654 nested-plot series with at least four different grain sizes between 0.0001 m² and 1,024 m² from the GrassPlot database, covering a wide range of different grassland and other open habitat types. We derived extensive environmental and structural information for these series. For each series and four taxonomic groups (vascular plants, bryophytes, lichens, all), we calculated the slope parameter (z-value) of the power law species–area relationship (SAR), as a beta diversity measure. We tested whether z-values differed among taxonomic groups and with respect to biogeographic gradients (latitude, elevation, macroclimate), ecological (site) characteristics (several stress–productivity, disturbance and heterogeneity measures, including land use) and alpha diversity (c-value of the power law SAR). Results Mean z-values were highest for lichens, intermediate for vascular plants and lowest for bryophytes. Bivariate regressions of z-values against environmental variables had rather low predictive power (mean R² = 0.07 for vascular plants, less for other taxa). For vascular plants, the strongest predictors of z-values were herb layer cover (negative), elevation (positive), rock and stone cover (positive) and the c-value (U-shaped). All tested metrics related to land use (fertilization, livestock grazing, mowing, burning, decrease in naturalness) led to a decrease in z-values. Other predictors had little or no impact on z-values. The patterns for bryophytes, lichens and all taxa combined were similar but weaker than those for vascular plants. Conclusions We conclude that productivity has negative and heterogeneity positive effects on z-values, while the effect of disturbance varies depending on type and intensity. These patterns and the differences among taxonomic groups can be explained via the effects of these drivers on the mean occupancy of species, which is mathematically linked to beta diversity.
Authors
Francesco Maria Sabatini Jonathan Lenoir Tarek Hattab Elise Aimee Arnst Milan Chytrý Jürgen Dengler Patrice De Ruffray Stephan M. Hennekens Ute Jandt Florian Jansen Borja Jiménez-Alfaro Jens Kattge Aurora Levesley Valério D. Pillar Oliver Purschke Brody Sandel Fahmida Sultana Tsipe Aavik Svetlana Aćić Alicia T.R. Acosta Emiliano Agrillo Miguel Álvarez Iva Apostolova Mohammed A. S. Arfin Khan Luzmila Arroyo Fabio Attorre Isabelle Aubin Arindam Banerjee Marijn Bauters Yves Bergeron Erwin Bergmeier Idoia Biurrun Anne D. Björkman Gianmaria Bonari Viktoria Bondareva Jörg Brunet Andraž Čarni Laura Casella Luis Cayuela Tomas Cerny Victor Chepinoga János Csiky Renata Ćušterevska Els De Bie André Luis De Gasper Michele De Sanctis Panayotis Dimopoulos Jiri Dolezal Tetiana Dziuba Mohamed Abd El-Rouf Mousa El-Sheikh Brian Enquist Jörg Ewald Farideh Fazayeli Richard Field Manfred Finckh Sophie Gachet Antonio Galán-De-Mera Emmanuel Garbolino Hamid Gholizadeh Melisa Giorgis Valentin Golub Inger Greve Alsos John Arvid Grytnes Gregory Richard Guerin Alvaro G. Gutiérrez Sylvia Haider Mohamed Z. Hatim Bruno Herault Guillermo Hinojos Mendoza Norbert Holzel Jürgen Homeier Zygmunt Kącki Jutta Kapfer Dirk Nikolaus Karger Ali Kavgaci Elizabeth Kearsley Helge BruelheideAbstract
Motivation Assessing biodiversity status and trends in plant communities is critical for understanding, quantifying and predicting the effects of global change on ecosystems. Vegetation plots record the occurrence or abundance of all plant species co-occurring within delimited local areas. This allows species absences to be inferred, information seldom provided by existing global plant datasets. Although many vegetation plots have been recorded, most are not available to the global research community. A recent initiative, called ‘sPlot’, compiled the first global vegetation plot database, and continues to grow and curate it. The sPlot database, however, is extremely unbalanced spatially and environmentally, and is not open-access. Here, we address both these issues by (a) resampling the vegetation plots using several environmental variables as sampling strata and (b) securing permission from data holders of 105 local-to-regional datasets to openly release data. We thus present sPlotOpen, the largest open-access dataset of vegetation plots ever released. sPlotOpen can be used to explore global diversity at the plant community level, as ground truth data in remote sensing applications, or as a baseline for biodiversity monitoring. Main types of variable contained Vegetation plots (n = 95,104) recording cover or abundance of naturally co-occurring vascular plant species within delimited areas. sPlotOpen contains three partially overlapping resampled datasets (c. 50,000 plots each), to be used as replicates in global analyses. Besides geographical location, date, plot size, biome, elevation, slope, aspect, vegetation type, naturalness, coverage of various vegetation layers, and source dataset, plot-level data also include community-weighted means and variances of 18 plant functional traits from the TRY Plant Trait Database. Spatial location and grain Global, 0.01–40,000 m². Time period and grain 1888–2015, recording dates. Major taxa and level of measurement 42,677 vascular plant taxa, plot-level records. Software format Three main matrices (.csv), relationally linked.
Authors
Lawrence E. Stevens Anwar A. Aly Sarah M. Arpin Iva Apostolova Gail M. Ashley Paulo Quadri Barba Jose Barqúin Aude Beauger Lachen Benaabidate Sami Ullah Bhat Lhoussaine Bouchaou Marco Cantonati Teresa M. Carroll Russell Death Kathleen A. Dwire Miguel Fernandes Felippe Roderick J. Fensham Alan E. Fryar Roger Pascual i Garsaball Vojsava Gjoni Douglas, S. Glazier Nico Goldscheider Joseph T. Gurrieri Ragnhildur Gudmundsdottir Atzalan Rodriguez Guzman Michal Hájek Kristian Hassel Tamara Heartsill-Scalley Jaume Solé i Herce Dirk Hinterlang Joseph H. Holway Jari Ilmonen Jeffrey Jenness Jutta Kapfer Ioannis Karaouzas Robert L. Knight Agnes-Katharina Kreiling Christian Herrera Lameli Jeri D. Ledbetter Nataly Levine Melinda D. Lyons Robert E. Mace Angeliki Mentzafou Pierre Marle NIls Moosdorf Monica K. Norton Allan Pentecost Guillermo Garcia Pérez Bianca Perla Kamilla Skaalsveen Olivier VoldoireAbstract
Springs are ecosystems influenced by the exposure of groundwater at the Earth's surface. Springs are abundant and have played important, highly interactive ecological, cultural, and socio-economic roles in arid, mesic, and subaqueous environments throughout human evolution and history. However, springs also are widely regarded as being highly threatened by human impacts. Cantonati et al. (2020a) recommended increased global awareness of springs, including basic mapping, inventory and assessment of the distribution and ecological integrity of springs. We conducted a preliminary global analysis on the ecological integrity of springs by reviewing information on the distribution, ecohydrogeology, associated species, kinds and intensity of human uses, and level of ecological impairment of spring ecosystems. We reviewed information on an estimated 250,000 spring ecosystems among 78 countries across much of the world. Available literature on spring ecological integrity is sparse, widely scattered, and spatially erratic, with major gaps in knowledge. We report large differences in the quality and extent of information among countries and continents, with only moderate data availability even among developed countries, and limited information across most of the developing world. Among countries with available data, ecological impairment of springs is everywhere rampant, sometimes exceeding 90% in developed regions. Impairment among Holarctic nations is generally negatively related to distance from human development, elevation, and latitude, but such patterns are less evident in Africa, Australia, and South America. Declining trends in ecosystem condition, compounding threat factors, and spring-dependent population declines, extirpation, and extinctions of plants, invertebrates, fish, and herpetofauna are widely reported. Overall, available information indicates a global crisis in spring ecosystem integrity, with levels of ecosystem impairment ranging from Vulnerable to fully Collapsed. The threats to aquifers and the ecological integrity of springs vary spatially. Many springs are impaired by local impacts due to flow diversion, geomorphic alteration, land use practices, recreation impacts, and the introduction of non-native species. These threats can be reduced through education, rehabilitation of geomorphology and habitat quality, and species reintroductions if the supporting aquifer remains relatively intact. However, springs also are widely threatened by regional to global factors, including groundwater extraction and pollution, as well as climate change. Such coarse-scale, pre-emergence impacts negatively affect the sustainability of spring ecosystems and the aquifers that support them. Improving understanding and stewardship of springs will require much additional systematic inventory and assessment, improved information management, and reconsideration of basic conservation concepts (e.g., habitat connectivity), as well as cultural and socio-economic valuation. Substantial societal recognition, discussion, and policy reform are needed within and among nations to better protect and sustainably rehabilitate springs, their supporting aquifers, and the spring-dependent human and biotic populations that depend upon them.