Publications related to Restoration of Threatened Arable Weed Communities in Abandoned Mountainous Crop Fields

From roots to canopy: Unraveling the influence of species diversity on tree water relations under warmer and drier climates

The worsening of drought events with rising air temperature alters tree water relations causing severe hydraulic impairments and widespread forest mortality. Mixing tree species with contrasting hydraulic traits could reduce forest vulnerability to extreme ...

EPFL2024

Soft robotics for farm to fork: applications in agriculture & farming

Josephine Anna Eleanor Hughes, Kai Christian Junge

Agricultural tasks and environments range from harsh field conditions with semi-structured produce or animals, through to post-processing tasks in food-processing environments. From farm to fork, the development and application of soft robotics offers a pl ...

Iop Publishing Ltd2024

Tree diversity reduces variability in sapling survival under drought

Charlotte Grossiord, Xiaojuan Liu, Jingjing Liang

Enhancing tree diversity may be important to fostering resilience to drought-related climate extremes. So far, little attention has been given to whether tree diversity can increase the survival of trees and reduce its variability in young forest plantatio ...

Wiley2024

Geospatial Tools and Remote Sensing Strategies for Timely Humanitarian Response: A Case Study on Drought Monitoring in Eswatini

Jérôme Chenal

This article explores the escalating impact of natural disasters, particularly droughts, in the Southern African Development Community (SADC), with a specific focus on Eswatini. Over the last century, approximately 63 million people in SADC countries have ...

MDPI2024

Invasive palms have more efficient and prolonged CO2 assimilation compared to native sub-Mediterranean vegetation

Marco Conedera, Thibaut Michel Georges Juillard, Charlotte Grossiord, Christoph Bachofen, Janisse Deluigi

In sub-Mediterranean ecosystems, shade-tolerant broadleaf evergreens, especially the invasive Trachycarpus fortunei, are spreading uncontrollably in the forest understorey, impeding the regeneration of the native deciduous woody vegetation. Most invasive s ...

Elsevier2024

Organ-specific biotransformation in salmonids: Insight into intrinsic enzyme activity and biotransformation of three micropollutants

Kristin Schirmer, Juliane Hollender

Aquatic ecosystems continue to be threatened by chemical pollution. To what extent organisms are able to cope with chemical exposure depends on their ability to display mechanisms of defense across different organs. Among these mechanisms, biotransformatio ...

Elsevier2024

Social media and deep learning reveal specific cultural preferences for biodiversity

Devis Tuia

Social media has created new opportunities to map cultural ecosystem services (CES) related to biodiversity at large scales. However, using these novel data to understand people's preferences in relation to these CES remains a challenge. To address this, w ...

2023

Fish Diversity in Relation to Littoral Habitats in Three Basins of Lake Kivu (East Africa)

Alfred Johny Wüest

In total, 28 of the 29 fish species reported from the Lake Kivu basin occur in the littoral zone of the lake, but information about their structure, occurrence, and the habitats affecting their distribution is largely lacking. The lake's inshore area is po ...

MDPI2023

Stay close, but not too close: aerial image analysis reveals patterns of social distancing in seal colonies

Devis Tuia, Benjamin Alexander Kellenberger

Many species aggregate in dense colonies. Species-specific spatial patterns provide clues about how colonies are shaped by various (a)biotic factors, including predation, temperature regulation or disease transmission. Using aerial imagery, we examined the ...

2023

Using continuous electrical conductivity measurements to derive major solute concentrations in karst systems

Paolo Benettin

Hydrochemical data of karst springs provide valuable insights into the internal hydrodynamical functioning of karst systems and support model structure identification. However, the collection of high-frequency time series of major solute species is limited ...

WILEY2023

Sulfurospirillum diekertiae sp. nov., a tetrachloroethene-respiring bacterium isolated from contaminated soil

Christof Holliger, Julien Maillard, Junxiong Wang

Two anaerobic, tetrachloroethene- (PCE-) respiring bacterial isolates, designated strain ACSDCE T and strain ACSTCE, were characterized using a polyphasic approach. Cells were Gram-stain-negative, motile, non-spore-forming and shared a vibrioid- to spirill ...

2023

Different responses of mice and rats hippocampus CA1 pyramidal neurons to in vitro and in vivo-like inputs

Maurizio Ferdinando Pezzoli, Ying Shi, Armando Romani, Michele Migliore, Rosanna Migliore

The fundamental role of any neuron within a network is to transform complex spatiotemporal synaptic input patterns into individual output spikes. These spikes, in turn, act as inputs for other neurons in the network. Neurons must execute this function acro ...

2023

Chronic warming and dry soils limit carbon uptake and growth despite a longer growing season in beech and oak

Yann Vitasse, Charlotte Grossiord, Margaux Clara Lou Didion-Gency

Progressively warmer and drier climatic conditions impact tree phenology and carbon cycling with large consequences for forest carbon balance. However, it remains unclear how individual impacts of warming and drier soils differ from their combined effects ...

Oxford Univ Press Inc2023

A landmark environmental law looks ahead

Devis Tuia

In late December 1973, the United States enacted what some would come to call “the pitbull of environmental laws.” In the 50 years since, the formidable regulatory teeth of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) have been credited with considerable successes, ob ...

American Association for the Advancement of Science2023

Using machine learning to generate an open-access cropland map from satellite images time series in the Indian Himalayan region

Danya Li

Crop maps are crucial for agricultural monitoring and food management and can additionally support domain-specific applications, such as setting cold supply chain infrastructure in developing countries. Machine learning (ML) models, combined with freely-av ...

Elsevier2023

Automation in steep terrain agriculture: an optimal controller to prevent tipping and slipping of tethered robots on slopes

Josephine Anna Eleanor Hughes, Max Mirko Polzin

Autonomous robots have the potential to fundamentally transform conventional farming methods, e.g. by enabling economically viable farming of sloped arable land. However, navigation on slopes in harsh conditions is challenging for robots as they must be pr ...

TAYLOR & FRANCIS LTD2023

Evaluation of genetic demultiplexing of single-cell sequencing data from model species

Clement Helsens

Single-cell sequencing (sc-seq) provides a species agnostic tool to study cellular processes. However, these technologies are expensive and require sufficient cell quantities and biological replicates to avoid artifactual results. An option to address thes ...

LIFE SCIENCE ALLIANCE LLC2023

A benchmark dataset for machine learning in ecotoxicology

Kristin Schirmer, Fernando Perez Cruz, Marco Baity-Jesi

The use of machine learning for predicting ecotoxicological outcomes is promising, but underutilized. The curation of data with informative features requires both expertise in machine learning as well as a strong biological and ecotoxicological background, ...

Nature Portfolio2023

Mean Field Type Control With Species Dependent Dynamics via Structured Tensor Optimization

Axel Ringh, Yiqiang Chen, Isabel Haasler

In this letter we consider mean field type control problems with multiple species that have different dynamics. We formulate the discretized problem using a new type of entropy-regularized multimarginal optimal transport problems where the cost is a decomp ...

2023

Fungal Planet description sheets: 1478-1549

Michele Saba, Sanjeev Kumar, Guilhem Maurice Louis Banc-Prandi

Novel species of fungi described in this study include those from various countries as follows: Australia, Aschersonia mackerrasiae on whitefly, Cladosporium corticola on bark of Melaleuca quinquenervia, Penicillium nudgee from soil under Melaleuca quinque ...

Leiden2023