Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
- Publication
- Publication Type
Articles 1 - 3 of 3
Full-Text Articles in Life Sciences
Molecular Biodiversity Of Foraminifera, Rabindra Thakur
Molecular Biodiversity Of Foraminifera, Rabindra Thakur
Masters Theses
Foraminifera are a diverse clade of mostly shell-building single-celled organisms. Estimation of foraminiferal diversity is critical for understanding past and present climatic conditions, as they are highly sensitive to environmental perturbations. Biodiversity estimates of foraminifera began with the counting of test (i.e., shell) microfossils composed of calcium carbonate, as they are well preserved in sediment samples. However, this view has changed with molecular biodiversity estimates, which suggest that early-diverging single-chamber (i.e., "monothalamid") species that lack preservation ability are more diverse than anticipated. Although biodiversity estimates of foraminifera at the molecular level have changed our perceptions, they possess various challenges, especially …
Urban Biodiversity Experience And Exposure: Intervention And Inequality At The Local And Global Scale, Evan Kuras
Urban Biodiversity Experience And Exposure: Intervention And Inequality At The Local And Global Scale, Evan Kuras
Masters Theses
As cities expand globally, researchers must clarify how human activities and institutions shape biodiversity and conversely, how ecological processes shape human outcomes. Two features of contemporary cities motivate this thesis. First, urban residents, and especially children, are spending less time in nature and consequently, miss out on healthy and formative experiences with biodiversity. Second, residents with the least access to biodiversity tend to be those with the lowest socioeconomic status (SES). Together, these patterns convey a multi-layered environmental injustice: not only might urbanites become increasingly estranged from biodiversity, disinterested from its conservation, and disconnected from its benefits, but these outcomes …
Processing Conservation Indicators With Open Source Tools: Lessons Learned From The Digital Observatory For Protected Areas, Lucy Bastin, Andrea Mandrici, Luca Battistella, Grégoire Dubois
Processing Conservation Indicators With Open Source Tools: Lessons Learned From The Digital Observatory For Protected Areas, Lucy Bastin, Andrea Mandrici, Luca Battistella, Grégoire Dubois
Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial (FOSS4G) Conference Proceedings
The European Commission has a commitment to open data and the support of open source software and standards. We present lessons learnt while populating and supporting the web and map services that underly the Joint Research Centre's Digital Observatory for Protected Areas. Challenges include: large datasets with highly complex geometries; topological inconsistencies, compounded by reprojection for equal-area calculations; multiple different representations of the same geographical entities, for example coastlines; licensing requirement to continuously update indicators to respond to monthly changes in the authoritative data. In order to compute and publish an array of indicators, we used a range of open …