Metapopulation Extinction Risk under Spatially Autocorrelated Disturbance

Abstract:  Recent extinction models generally show that spatial aggregation of habitat reduces overall extinction risk because sites emptied by local extinction are more rapidly recolonized. We extended such an investigation to include spatial structure in the disturbance regime. A spatially explicit metapopulation model was developed with a wide range of dispersal distances. The degree of aggregation of both habitat and disturbance pattern could be varied from a random distribution, through the intermediate case of a fractal distribution, all the way to complete aggregation (single block). Increasing spatial aggregation of disturbance generally increased extinction risk. The relative risk faced by populations in different landscapes varied greatly, depending on the disturbance regime. With random disturbance, the spatial aggregation of habitat reduced extinction risk, as in earlier studies. Where disturbance was spatially autocorrelated, however, this advantage was eliminated or reversed because populations in aggregated habitats are at risk of mass extinction from coarse-scale disturbance events. The effects of spatial patterns on extinction risk tended to be reduced by long-distance dispersal. Given the high levels of spatial correlation in natural and anthropogenic disturbance processes, population vulnerability may be greatly underestimated both by classical (nonspatial) models and by those that consider spatial structure in habitat alone.     

工业企业噪声环境影响评价中的布点与预测时段的选择

在工业企业噪声环境影响评价中，由于测点与测量时段选择的不妥，导致测量及预测值“以偏代全”的结果；本文提出了测点合理布设与测量，预测时段科学选择的原则，以使测量与预测结果能较好地符合项目建成前、后噪声环境实际状况。     

涕灭威对地下水污染敏感区的预测与区划试点

本文根据涕灭威在室内模拟试验与田间试验的结果，详细剖析了影响涕灭威农药在土壤中残留和移动的各种因子，建立了涕灭威农药对地下水污染的敏感性模型，并就涕灭威农药在江苏使用后对地下水可能造成污染的情况进行了预测与区划试点，结果与用美国环保局提供的ＰＲＺＭ模型计算结果和田间实测结果基本一致，本模型可用于预测涕灭威农药在其它地区使用后对地下水可能造成污染的情况。     

Experimental verification for real-time environmental emergency response system: WSPEEDI by European tracer experiment

Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute has developed an emergency response system WSPEEDI to forecast long-range atmospheric dispersions of radionuclides discharged into the atmosphere. The latest version of WSPEEDI consists of an atmospheric dynamic model MM5 for calculating meteorological fields and a particle random-walk model for atmospheric dispersion. The performance of WSPEEDI was evaluated by data obtained from a field tracer experiment over Europe (ETEX) in this paper. The model validation was done with respect to the following points: (1) the dependence of model accuracy on the temporal and spatial resolutions of the meteorological fields and (2) the superiority of an atmospheric dynamic model over a mass-consistent wind model. Regarding (1), it was shown that the calculation accuracy of the new version with high temporal resolution was improved, especially at the edge of the plume. Moreover, although the increase in horizontal spatial resolution of the old version had no substantial effect on the model performance, increase in horizontal resolution of the new version contributed to the significant improvement of the calculation accuracy. These results showed that the dynamically calculated meteorological field with the spatial resolution of the meso-β–γ scale greatly improved calculation accuracy.     

Trends in summer sulphate in Europe

A trend analysis of the sulphate concentration in Europe in the summer half-year was performed. Data from various measuring networks were analysed, but only stations with quality assured sampling methods and a record of more than 10 years were included in the study. 1978 served as the reference year for the trend, because in that year most stations started operation. The relatively dense network in Belgium provided the most valuable data, as evidenced by the fact that two sites at a distance of only 10 km apart correlated better than 95% over a month. The two sites also show a correlation of better than 90% over a season with two other stations at distances of 45 and 95 km. The relative decrease in summer-sulphate at the four stations in Belgium, as analysed by linear regression, was 3.3% per year which corresponds to an absolute decrease of 0.42 μgm⁻³ per year. In the Netherlands the average yearly decrease in summer-sulphate at two stations was 3.5% (−0.34 μgm⁻³). In other countries stations were further apart or only a single site wits in use, which limits the representativeness of the data. In northwestern Germany, a region with several monitoring stations, a yearly averaged decrease of 3.0% occurred. The lower absolute decrease (0.25 μgm⁻³) per year compared to that in the two neighbouring countries reflects the lower summer-time sulphate concentrations. In the remainder of Germany the average decrease was 1.6%. In South-Scandinavia the yearly relative decrease at two sites was 2.6% (0.13 μgm⁻³ absolute). There was no significant trend in the U.K. Al the Polish station the levels increased, it decreased at the Hungarian and Austrian station and remained constant at the Czechoslovakian site. Reasons for omission of the data from France from the trend analysis are discussed.     

仪化涤纶厂乙醛废气质量浓度的分布规律

通过对仪化涤纶厂乙醛废气污染源的调查及监测，分析了其源强、生产车间及厂区内外的分布规律，并进一步作了该厂乙醛废气对环境影响的预测评价。结果表明，周边地区乙醛废气的质量浓度分布均达到《工业企业设汁卫生标准》的要求。     

Space-time modeling for the Missouri Turkey Hunting Survey

The Missouri Turkey Hunting Survey (MTHS) is a postseason mail survey conducted by the Missouri Department of Conservation. The 1996 MTHS provides information concerning the number of turkeys harvested by hunters on each day and the total number of trips made to the counties by these hunters on each day of the hunting season. The success rates are then found from this information. Small sample sizes produce large standard errors for the estimates at the county level. We use a Bayesian hierarchical generalized linear model to estimate daily hunting success rates at the county level. The model includes an autoregressive process for the days of the hunting season and spatially correlated random geographic effects. The computations are performed using Gibbs sampling and adaptive rejection sampling techniques. Results show that there are significant spatial corelations between counties and correlations between days of the hunting season. The estimates are close to the frequency estimates at the state level and much more stable at the county level.     

Diversity pattern and spatial scale: a study of a tropical rain forest of Malaysia

Scale is emerging as one of the critical problems in ecology because our perception of most ecological variables and processes depends upon the scale at which the variables are measured. A conclusion obtained at one scale may not be valid at another scale without sufficient knowledge of the scaling effect, which is also a source of misinterpretation for many ecological problems, such as the design of reserves in conservation biology.This paper attempts to study empirically how scaling may affect the spatial patterns of diversity (tree density, richness and Shannon diversity) that we may perceive in tropical forests, using as a test-case a 50 ha forest plot in Malaysia. The effect of scale on measurements of diversity patterns, the occurrence of rare species, the fractal dimension of diversity patterns, the spatial structure and the nearest-neighbour autocorrelation of diversity are addressed. The response of a variable to scale depends on the way it is measured and the way it is distributed in space.We conclude that, in general, the effect of scaling on measures of biological diversity is non-linear; heterogeneity increases with the size of the sampling units, and fine-scale information is lost at a broad scale. Our results should lead to a better understanding of how ecological variables and processes change over scale.     

Wet and dry epoch durations of spatially averaged rain rate,their probability distributions and scaling properties

This article is concerned with the notion of duration of wet and dry epochs in stochastic processes of spatially averaged (instantaneous) rain rate over a given region. Gamma, Lognormal, and Inverse Gaussian parametric families of probability distributions have been considered as candidate models for the distribution of such durations. Goodness of these model's fit to data of dry and wet epoch durations obtained from real time series of spatially averaged rain rate, has been tested with Pearson's -test. The parameters of each of these models have been estimated by maximum likelihood and method of moments, based on TOGA-COARE measurements of tropical rainfall. The hypotheses of independence and identical distribution (i.i.d.) among durations of dry or wet epochs have also been tested using a certain version of the Wald-Wolfowitz test. Finally, the effect of spatial scale on the moments of dry and wet epoch durations has also been investigated, pointing to self-similarity of the underlying random structures over space. The main result of this study is that among the three candidate models, Inverse Gaussian is the one conforming most adequately with all the classical testing criteria implemented here, and also with the newly established scaling behavior of both dry and wet epoch duration processes over space. This is a remarkable finding, considering that the Inverse Gaussian family has recently been also justified from a theoretical viewpoint as a reasonable model for the probability distributions of dry and wet epoch durations.     

天津市郊农田土壤中有机氯农药残留的局地分异

在天津3处典型污灌与非污灌农田各采集了10个表土样品，测定了其中α-HCH，β-HCH，γ-HCH，δ－HCH、p,p'-DDE,p,p'-DDD,p,p'-DDT和p'-DDT等8种有机氯农药含量，籍以研究该地区有机氯农药在地块中的局部分异。结果表明，所研究地块中两类化合物含量均表现出显著的非均一特征。其中污灌土地中的（DDT）以及污灌农田中的HCH含量都具有与灌溉方向密切相关的空间分布特征。这样的规律性空间变异导致他们的空间波动幅度高于其他地块。鉴于上述趋势性和非趋势性空间分异，在开展相关时人有必要在目标地块中采集重复样或混合样。