Reducing pesticide use in agriculture is essential but involves shifting towards more complex agroecosystems. Plant canopies are expected to be more heterogeneous because a more abundant weed flora is likely to remain in low-herbicide fields, and because intercropping (i.e. mixing various crops species or varieties) is a promising option to reduce chemical inputs. Simulation models are useful to understand

The Kerguelen Islands are part of the French Southern Territories, located at the limit of the Indian and Southern oceans. They are highly impacted by climate change, and coastal marine areas are particularly at risk. Assessing the responses of species and populations to environmental change is challenging in such areas for which ecological modelling can constitute a helpful approach. In the present

Both climate change and land use regimes affect the viability of populations, but they are often studied separately. Moreover, population viability analyses (PVAs) often ignore the effects of large environmental gradients and use temporal resolutions that are too coarse to take into account that different stages of a population's life cycle may be affected differently by climate change. Here, we present

Honeybees play an important role in the production of many agricultural crops and in sustaining plant diversity in undisturbed ecosystems. The rapid decline of honeybee populations have sparked great concern worldwide. Field and theoretical studies have shown that the parasitic Varroa mite (Varroa destructor Anderson and Trueman) could be the main reason for colony losses. In order to understand how

Changing patterns of land use, temperature, and precipitation are expected to impact ecosystem services, including water quality and quantity, buffering of extreme events, soil quality, and biodiversity. Scenario analyses that link such impacts on ecosystem services to human well-being may be valuable in anticipating potential consequences of change that are meaningful to people living in a community

The effects of harvest and fluctuating environment on inter-dependent predators and prey are complex and not well-known. We define a stochastic model where the predators and prey dynamically interact. The novelty of the model holds on the fact that predators and prey dynamics are simultaneously affected by correlated environmental noises. Interacting predators and prey are harvested using a proportional

Understanding the effects of climate on biodiversity and its different levels of response to climatic variation is important for addressing conservation-based questions: the use of bioclimatic variables and species modelling tools is common in environmental, agricultural and biological sciences. Unfortunately, most of the ecological local studies are limited to the use of global data with coarse spatial

We have used the coverages of renewable emergy input developed from satellite derived data to determine the emergy supporting ecosystem productivity and biotic natural capital. In addition, the impact on global productivity and biotic natural capital that has resulted from human induced land cover change was evaluated. The actual evapotranpiration (AET), which is the portion of rain that is used by

Framing environmental issues in a sustainability context requires that we highlight the interdependencies between ecological, social and economic factors. Accordingly, the socio-ecological system (SES), which emphasizes the interplay between environmental and social dynamics, seems to be the appropriate framework for analysis. We applied this view to explore issues concerning the conservation of the

Quantifying soil structural and ecological heterogeneity is crucial for understanding their interactions and their relationships to the resilience and health of the wider ecosystem. However, a clear understanding of how structural heterogeneity affects soil biodiversity is still emerging. Previous work has primarily used expensive, often laboratory-based methods to quantify soil pore network structure

The oceanographic conditions in the Gulf of Ulloa (GU) region make a distinctive faunal assemblage, allowing the presence of species both ecologically and economically important. Constant interaction of emblematic species with the fishing activity has brought social and conservation problems due to the lack of ecological information and/or management tools. For the loggerhead turtle (Caretta caretta)

In the last few decades, microbial inoculants have been used as organic fertilizers worldwide. Among the most widely used commercial products are arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi, as these fungi can associate with a variety of crops. Despite the potential benefits for soil quality and crop yield associated with AM fungal colonization, experiments assessing the persistence of the fungi in the field

Embedding nature-based solutions (NBS) in cities is expected to bring quantifiable benefits, including resilience to flooding, drought, and heatwaves, and air quality improvement. Among NBS, green roofs have an important role in temperature regulation in buildings and in lowering the damaging effects of heatwaves on human health. In this paper a spatial microsimulation model is implemented to simulate

Across the tropics, millions of rural families rely on non-timber forest products for protein, subsistence, and other financial or cultural uses. Often, communities exploit biotically dispersed trees and their mammalian or avian seed disperser. Empirical findings have indicated that many plant and animal resources are overexploited, presenting challenges for biodiversity conservation and sustainable

One of the crucial choices when modelling species distributions using pseudo-absences and background approaches is the delineation of the background area to fit the model. We hypothesise that there is a minimum background area around the geographical centre of the species distribution that characterises well enough the range of environmental conditions needed by the species to survive. Thus, fitting

Most evolutionary biologists consider selfishness an intrinsic feature of our genes and as the best choice in social situations. During the last years, prolific research has been conducted on the mechanisms that can allow cooperation to emerge “in a world of defectors” to become an evolutionarily stable strategy. A big debate started with the proposal by W.D. Hamilton of “kin selection” in terms of

This paper models the population dynamics and competition of two sympatric species of lizards Liolaemus cyanogaster and Liolaemus tenuis under the following scenarios: (a) population dynamics of each species, (b) competition to thermoregulate, and (c) competition for the substrate. The hypothesis was that a variant of the Lotka–Volterra model is able to explain patterns related to population dynamics

Permanent grasslands host a high plant diversity, which sustains many ecosystem services. Thus, understanding how composition of the plant community responds to different management practices under given soil and climatic conditions is crucial for making best use of grasslands. modeling approaches may be used to explain the manifold interactions involved to sustain this diversity. We developed the

Tourism plays an increasingly critical role in national and urban economies. While tourist spending particularly benefits urban economies, the growth of urban tourism has gradually intensified cities’ reliance on external resources and significantly influenced resource-supplying areas. This study adopts the concept of urban land teleconnections (ULTs) to discuss how the cultural ecosystem services

This study investigated the coordination between maritime economies and marine carrying capacity, a prerequisite for high-quality sustainable development, in 17 cities of the Bohai Rim in China. Metric systems were constructed to evaluate the capacity and efficiency of the coordinated development of the maritime economy and the marine carrying capacity of these cities. Spatiotemporal weighting matrices

Resilience planning requires an understanding of the potential impact of accelerated sea level rise on the narrow coastal habitats between the sea and the built environment in urban estuaries. Preliminary work suggests that facilitating expansion of coastal upland vegetation (grasslands and maritime shrubland/successional maritime forest) may improve resilience. We created a GIS model for Jamaica Bay

Ecological risk assessments play an important role in environmental management and decision-making. Although empirical measurements of the effects of habitat changes and chemical exposure are often made at molecular and individual levels, environmental decision-making often requires the quantification of management-relevant, population-level outcomes. In this study, we generalized a modeling framework

Enhancing consideration of the ecosystem services concept within decision-making calls for integration of local knowledge and data within assessments to capture context-specific spatial and thematic detail. This paper demonstrates how local knowledge and (biophysical, sociocultural, economic) data can be integrated within ecosystem service assessments by use of well-established spatial quantification

A comprehensive understanding of the spatial carbon metabolism distribution is essential for future mitigation policies from a land-based perspective. This study develops a methodological framework for carbon metabolism measurement and future simulation. An assessment of carbon sequestration and emission is conducted based on land use components within the biosphere. Carbon scenarios in accordance

Existing studies disjointly addressed the environmental convergence and environmental Kuznets curve hypotheses, though these research lines are theoretically interconnected. This paper proposes a unified empirical methodology to simultaneously investigate both hypotheses, relying on a semiparametric dynamic panel data model that accounts for regressor endogeneity. The approach, when applied to CO2

This conceptual article continues a discussion into the nature of complexity in ecosystems and environmental change through the improved conceptual model (ICM). The ICM developed is useful for reducing the “usability” gap (i.e. between what scientists consider useful information and what users consider usable in decision-making) by improving understanding and representation of complexity in ecosystems

Integrated Multi-Trophic Aquaculture (IMTA) systems have been designed to optimize nutrient and energy use, to decrease waste, and to diversify fish-farm production. Recently, the development of detritivorous aquaculture has been encouraged, as detrivores can consume organic particulate matter, reducing benthic eutrophication and the environmental footprint of aquaculture. To this end, the polychaete

Agricultural land expansion and intensification, driven by human consumption of agricultural goods, are among the major threats to environmental degradation and biodiversity conservation. Land degradation can ultimately hamper agricultural production through a decrease in ecosystem services. Thus, designing viable land use policies is a key sustainability challenge. We develop a model describing the

Recently, growing interest in the Circular Economy (CE) concept can be observed among scholars and practitioners globally. One CE goal is to increase resource efficiency by converting more waste into resources. The introduction of such changes in the long-term perspective will have an impact on regionals economies. But the exact consequences of these changes are largely unknown and require a specific

The growth of yellowfin tuna has been the subject of considerable research efforts since the early 1960s. Most studies support a complex two-stanza growth pattern with a sharp acceleration departing from the von Bertalanffy growth curve used for most fish populations. This growth pattern has been assumed to result from a combination of physiological, ecological and behavioral factors but the role and

The study of production–living–ecological space (PLES) is essential for the sustainable use of land resources and regional socioeconomic development, and several studies have adopted PLES-based evaluation indices. However, few studies have investigated the effects of governmental regulation and human activity on the optimal allocation of land for different uses. Crucially, the non-optimal use of land

Hydrology is a critical driver controlling mangrove wetlands structural and functional attributes at different spatial and temporal scales. Yet, human activities have negatively affected hydrology, causing mangrove diebacks and coverage loss worldwide. In fact, the assessment of mangrove water budgets, impacted by natural and human disturbances, is limited due to a lack of long-term data and information

The need to follow structured populations, as opposed to unstructured ones, is well-recognized. The most detailed category of population models are the individual-based population models (IBMs), also called agent-based population models (ABMs). Their analysis is generally by simulation in time followed by statistical analysis of the numerical results. A less detailed method is the physiologically structured

Parental management of early offspring development is a complex but essential contribution to reproductive success for oviparous species. Mothers faced with incubating eggs in a variable environment maximize reproductive success by adaptively adjusting offspring number in a clutch and incubation schedules to facilitate egg development while meeting their own energetic demands. However, the optimal

In this letter we present comments on the article “A global-scale ecological niche model to predict SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus” by Coro published in 2020.

Marine organisms are currently experiencing an unprecedented rate of climatic warming, which affects their biogeography and threatens marine ecosystem integrity. To understand how benthic species will respond to ongoing seawater warming, we assessed the relative importance of processes acting at different scales using an individual-based modelling approach. Our model integrates: (1) at the individual

The effects of a single trait on more than one ecological function is called ecological pleiotropy. Traits that exhibit ecological pleiotropy are relevant to eco-evolutionary dynamics because the structure of interaction between the trait and its ecological functions alters how eco-evolutionary feedback loops emerge. Density-dependent selection (DDS) assumes that a single trait affects both density-independent

Biological rotation length is a key parameter of even-aged forest management. Future climate change is expected to affect forest growth and thus modify biological rotation age, but knowledge about the effect of climate change on the rotation for both timber production and carbon storage remains limited from process-based growth model. The biological rotation age (BRA) of Larix olgensis plantations

Climate is a major factor determining the distribution of plant species. Correlative models are frequently used to model the relationships between species distributions and climatic drivers but, increasingly, their use for prediction in novel scenarios such as climate change is being questioned. Mechanistic models, where processes limiting plant distribution are explicitly included, are regarded as

Cyanobacteria blooms, especially those involving Microcystis, are an increasing problem worldwide. Complex pathways between temperature and nutrient loads are thought to be the major drivers leading to Microcystis dominance in freshwater systems. In this paper, Microcystis dominance in a Mediterranean hypereutrophic reservoir is studied over a period of three years. A Structural Equation Model (SEM)

Modeling energy content and gain of individuals is of increasing importance in ecosystem modeling, especially in aquaculture and fisheries. Traditional models for estimating the content and gain are either imprecise or expensive, in part because of intensive data requirements. Here we show how routine biometric data (length and wet weight or condition index) can be used to estimate total energy content

Phytoplankton primary production (PP) in turbid estuaries is often limited by light-availability. Two important factors altering light-climate are solar irradiance at the water surface and exponential light-extinction coefficient within the water column. Additionally, the depth of the water body changes the light-climate and corresponding PP by altering the ratio of the euphotic and mixing depth in

It remains a mystery why microbial community succession can violate the competitive exclusion principle to form high species diversity in nutrient-deficient environments (NDE) with low-dose ionizing radiation (LDIR). In this research, artificial microbial communities containing three common strains downloaded from China Tiangong-1 space station were cultivated in NDE with and without LDIR, respectively

With successful mitigation of eutrophication and the reductions in nutrient concentrations and productivity of coastal waters, the targets set in nature protection legislation in the EU and the United States may no longer be achievable in regions where key ecological functions are coupled to benthic productivity. Yet, due to both the patchiness of invertebrate distribution and the fragmented and non-integrated

We describe a dynamic energy budget (DEB) model for tadpoles over the course of metamorphosis. The model accounts for details in the tadpoles feeding behavior, as feeding and indirectly respiration are reduced in the late developmental stages preceding metamorphosis to an immature froglet. We propose two versions of our DEB model, one where the energy reserves of the organism are accounted for explicitly

Among the models used to describe insect pest populations, the Distributed Delay Model has been applied in several case studies in recent years. Its success is due mainly to its simplicity, and its versatility to be easily included in software to calculate numerical solutions. In its original formulation, the Distributed Delay Model provides, as a solution, the distribution of the insects’ maturation

Managing the spread of parasite populations is a ubiquitous challenge for managers of natural and farmed systems. A specific current example are “sea lice”, parasitic marine organisms that live on both wild and farmed Salmon sp., posing a persistent challenge to aquaculture operations in high latitude countries. Lice reproduce with pelagic larvae that spread in the water column, meaning that fish farm

Evidence is accumulating to show that changes in host diversity can affect disease risk, yet the relationship between them is still disputed. Understanding what factors influence this relationship will help to reconcile this debate. In this paper, through spatially-explicit simulations, we investigated the effects of host spatial distribution patterns, the scale of host interactions (i.e. local vs

It is critical to have long-term carbon dioxide (CO2) flux observations in forest ecosystems to understand how changing climate can affect forest carbon (C) stocks and CO2 exchange between forests and the atmosphere. In this study, fifteen years (2002–2016) of continuous eddy-covariance flux and climate measurements in an intermediate-aged Douglas-fir stand on the east coast of Vancouver Island, Canada

Natural resource management has long recognised that the multi-objective nature of management is important, but has struggled to operationalise this into quantitative, measurable objectives for functional use in management. Operationalising broader ecological and social objectives has been particularly problematic. In fisheries management, the focus has mainly been on target species sustainability

Despite their critical role as the main energy pathway between phytoplankton and fish, the functional complexity of zooplankton is typically poorly resolved in marine ecosystem models. Trait-based approaches—where zooplankton are represented with functional traits such as body size—could help improve the resolution of zooplankton in marine ecosystem models and their role in trophic transfer and carbon

The study of carbon sequestration capacity under intensive management (IM)1 measures (such as cutting, thinning, plowing, and fertilization) has become a major issue of carbon budgets in the context of global climate change. Bamboo forest, also known as “the second largest forest in the world,” plays an important role in the carbon cycle. Due to its high economic value, IM practices have been widely

Livestock production is one of the main contributors to global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The tools provided by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to estimate GHG emissions (Tier 1 and Tier 2) cannot be used as a tool for advising farmers or national policy on how to minimize GHG emissions because these estimates are not explicitly related to any metabolic properties. For that, we need

Understanding the mechanisms driving community dynamics helps us to make reliable predictions about communities’ response to environmental change. Studying desert plant communities is particularly challenging because of strong intra- and interannual fluctuations in precipitation. Models rise to this challenge by providing an arena for systematic evaluation of the parameter space in virtual experiments