Basic principles and ecological consequences of changing water regimes on nitrogen cycling in fluvial systems

Understanding the environmental consequences of changing water regimes is a daunting challenge for both resource managers and ecologists. Balancing human demands for fresh water with the needs of the environment for water in appropriate amounts and at the appropriate times are shaping the ways by which this natural resource will be used in the future. Based on past decisions that have rendered many freshwater resources unsuitable for use, we argue that river systems have a fundamental need for appropriate amounts and timing of water to maintain their biophysical integrity. Biophysical integrity is fundamental for the formulation of future sustainable management strategies. This article addresses three basic ecological principles driving the biogeochemical cycle of nitrogen in river systems. These are (1) how the mode of nitrogen delivery affects river ecosystem functioning, (2) how increasing contact between water and soil or sediment increases nitrogen retention and processing, and (3) the role of floods and droughts as important natural events that strongly influence pathways of nitrogen cycling in fluvial systems. New challenges related to the cumulative impact of water regime change, the scale of appraisal of these impacts, and the determination of the impacts due to natural and human changes are discussed. It is suggested that cost of long-term and long-distance cumulative impacts of hydrological changes should be evaluated against short-term economic benefits to determine the real environmental costs.     

Anthropogenic influences on a mediterranean Nature Reserve: modelling and forecasting

The lagoon of Biguglia (northeastern Corsica) is one of a number Nature Reserve. Anthropogenic activities are increasing over its watershed however. The present study aims to examine the state of health of the lagoon with the example of two pollutants (Cd and Cu). Water samples were collected in spring and summer 1997. The trace metal fluxes between the various compartments were measured. Transfer processes from the watershed to the lagoon were also examined. The temporal evolution of Cd and Cu content is assessed on the one hand by comparing the present data with former reference work (1992). On the other hand, a 5-box model is implemented in order to reduce the complex functioning of the lagoon to a system of differential equations. With the help of a numerical resolution method, the increase of metallic concentration levels is estimated since 1992. On the basis of 1997 data, two hypotheses are compared. The hypothesis that takes into account a growing increase of anthropogenic activities on the watershed gives, by extrapolation, results that are closer to field measurements. However, even with this hypothesis, the cadmium content in the lagoon is underestimated. This may signify that for this metal the evolution of the lagoon pollution is more important than a linear increase.     

Development of an exposure protocol for toxicity test (FEET) for a marine species: the European sea bass (Dicentrarchus labrax)

Environmental Science and Pollution Research - Regulatory assessment of the effects of chemicals requires the availability of validated tests representing different environments and organisms. In...     

Estimating an homogeneous series of a population abundance indicator despite changes in data collection procedure: A hierarchical Bayesian modelling approach

Abundance indicators are required both to assess and to manage wild populations. As new techniques are developed and teams in charge of gathering the data change, data collection procedures (DCPs) can evolve in space and time. How to estimate an homogeneous series of abundance indicator despite changes in DCP? To tackle this question a hierarchical Bayesian modelling (HBM) approach is proposed. It integrates multiple DCPs in order to derive a single abundance indicator that can be compared over space and time irrespective of the DCP used. Compared to single DCP models, it takes further advantage for abundance estimation of the joint treatment of a larger set of spatio-temporal units. After presenting the general formulation of our HBM approach, it is applied to the juvenile Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar L.) population of the River Nivelle (France). Posterior model checking, using χ² discrepancy measure, do not reveal any inadequacy between the model and the data. Despite a change in the DCP used (successive removals to catch-per-unit of effort), a unique abundance indicator for the 425 spatio-temporal units (site × year) sampled over twenty-four years (1985-2008) is estimated. The HBM approach allows the assessment of precision of the abundance estimates and shows variation between DCPs: a reduction in precision is observed during the most recent years (2005-2008) when only the catch-per-unit of effort DCP was used. The merits and generality of our HBM approach are discussed. We contend it extends previous single DCP models or inter-calibration of two DCPs, and it could be applied to a wide range of specific situations (taxon and DCPs).     

Dependability assessment of network-based safety-related system

Advances in electronic integration and radio communication have led to the emergence of a new kind of safety systems, i.e. Wireless Sensor Network (WSN). This network-based safety-related system is becoming more and more present in the domain of safety due to its easy deployment. It does not need a wire infrastructure and its range of applications is wide. Usually, such a system is composed of various nodes (sensors) collaborating to monitor a targeted phenomenon. In most cases, nodes are battery powered and this is the weakness of the system makes it necessary to design an energy saving policy. The present paper gives a dependability viewpoint of such a system. A modeling framework is suggested integrating the interdependency of the components. Stochastic Petri nets are used to implement this model and two heuristics to schedule component activity. The first is based on the proposed importance measures, the second on a multi-objective genetic algorithm. The aim is to conserve energy and so to extend WSN dependability.     

A Vegetation-Based Method for Ecological Diagnosis of Riverine Wetlands

/ The management of riverine wetlands, recognized as a major component of biodiversity in fluvial hydrosystems, is problematic. Preservation or restoration of such ecosystems requires a method to assess the major ecological processes operating in the wetlands, the sustainability of the aquatic stage, and the restoration potential of each riverine wetland. We propose a method of diagnosis based on aquatic macrophytes and helophytes. Plant communities are used because they are easy to survey and provide information about (1) the origin of a water supply (i.e., groundwater, seepage, or surface river water) and its nutrient content, (2) effects of flood disturbances, and (3) terrestrialization processes. The novelty of the method is that, in contrast to available typologies, it is based on the interference of gradients resulting from several processes, which makes it possible to predict wetland sustainability and restoration potential. These predictions result from knowledge of the processes involved in terrestrialization, i.e., the influence of flood disturbances, occurrence of groundwater supplies, trophic degree, and water permanency of the habitat during a yearly cycle. The method is demonstrated on five different river systems.     

Toxic dinoflagellates (Alexandrium fundyense and A. catenella) have minimal apparent effects on oyster hemocytes

The possible effect of Alexandrium spp. containing paralytic shellfish poisoning (PSP) toxins on the hemocytes of oysters was tested experimentally. In one trial, eastern oysters, Crassostrea virginica Gmelin, were exposed to bloom concentrations of the sympatric dinoflagellate, Alexandrium fundyense Balech, alone and in a mixture with a non-toxic diatom, Thalassiosira weissflogii (Grun) Fryxell et Hasle. Subsequently, another experiment exposed Pacific oysters, Crassostrea gigas Thunberg, to a mixed suspension of the sympatric, toxic species Alexandrium catenella (Whedon et Kofoid) Balech, with T. weissflogii. Measurements of numbers of oyster hemocytes, percentages of different cell types, and functions (phagocytosis, reactive oxygen species (ROS) production, and mortality) were made using flow-cytometry. During and after exposure, almost no significant effects of Alexandrium spp. upon hemocyte numbers, morphology, or functions were detected, despite observations of adductor-muscle paralysis in C. virginica and measured toxin accumulation in C. gigas. The only significant correlation found was between toxin accumulation at one temperature and higher numbers of circulating live and dead hemocytes in C. gigas. The PSP toxins are known to interfere specifically with sodium-channel function; therefore, the finding that the toxins had no effect on measured hemocyte functions suggests that sodium-channel physiology is not important in these hemocyte functions. Finally, because oysters were exposed to the living algae, not purified toxins, there was no evidence of bioactive compounds other than PSP toxins affecting hemocytes in the two species of Alexandrium studied.     

The derivation of species response curves with Gaussian logistic regression is sensitive to sampling intensity and curve characteristics

We investigated quantitatively the sensitivity of plant species response curves to sampling characteristics (number of plots, occurrence and frequency of species), along a simulated pH gradient. We defined 54 theoretical unimodal response curves, issued from combinations of six values for optimum (opt = 3, 4, …, 8), three values for tolerance (tol = 0.5, 1.0, and 1.5, sensu ter Braak and Looman [ter Braak, C.J.F., Looman, C.W.N., 1986. Weighted averaging, logistic regression and the Gaussian response model. Vegetatio 65, 3–11]), and three values for maximum probability of presence (p_max = 0.05, 0.20, and 0.50). For each of these 54 theoretical response curves, we built artificial binary data sets (presence/absence) to test the influence of species occurrence, frequency, or number of available plots. With real data extracted from EcoPlant, a phytoecological database for French forests [Gégout, J.-C., Coudun, Ch., Bailly, G., Jabiol, B., 2005. EcoPlant: a forest sites database linking floristic data with soil characteristics and climatic conditions. J. Veg. Sci. 16, 257–260], we compared the ecological response of 50 plant species to soil pH, based first on a small data set (100 randomly sampled plots), and then based on the whole data set available (3810 plots).     

Disentangling the effects of local and regional factors on the thermal tolerance of freshwater crustaceans

In the global warming context, we compared the thermal tolerance of several populations of the crustacean Gammarus pulex (Amphipoda: Gammaridae) along a latitudinal thermal gradient in the Rh?ne Valley. To disentangle the effect of regional (North vs. South) and local (site-specific) factors, the ecophysiological responses of populations were investigated at two levels of biological organisation: whole organism level considering body size [critical thermal maximum (CTmax), mean speed of locomotion (MS), time mobile (TM)] and organelle function level [mitochondrial respiratory control ratios (RCRs)]. CTmax and RCRs, but not MS and TM, revealed a significantly higher thermal tolerance in southern populations compared to northern ones. Nevertheless, temperatures ≥ 30°C were deleterious for all populations, suggesting that populations located in the warmer limit of the species distribution will be more threatened by climate change as they live closer to their upper thermal limits. The strong differences observed between populations indicate that the species-level thermal tolerance used in predictive models may not be informative enough to study the impact of global warming on species distributions. This work also reveals that an appropriate choice of indicators is essential to study the consequences of global warming since the response of organisms at the whole body level can be influenced by local conditions.