Does sand content in spawning substrate result in early larval emergence? Evidence from a lithophilic cyprinid fish

The spawning success of lithophilic salmonids is strongly influenced by the fine sediment content (“fines”) of spawning substrates, yet knowledge on the impacts of fines on the spawning of non‐salmonid lithophiles remains limited, despite their ecological and socio‐economic importance in European rivers. Consequently, the aim here was to use an ex‐situ experiment to investigate the impact of sand content on egg survival and timing of larval emergence of the surface‐spawning cyprinid European barbel Barbus barbus. Thirty incubator boxes within a recirculating system were filled with one of five experimental sediment mixtures (0%–40% sand by mass) that each contained 300 fertilised eggs at a depth of 50 mm. Emerged, free‐swimming larvae were captured and counted daily to assess grain‐size effects on larval survival and emergence. Specifically, total proportion of emerged larvae, cumulative daily proportion of emerged larvae and time required to reach 50% emergence were measured during the study. Whilst the proportion of sand in the sediments did not have a significant impact on egg‐to‐emergence survival (mean survival per treatment 75%–79%), it significantly affected the timing of larval emergence to the water column; early emergence was detected in treatments with elevated sand content (on average, 50% emergence after 12–13 days versus 19 days in the control). Similar to findings from salmonid studies, these results suggest high sand content in spawning gravels can influence timing of larval emergence and potentially cyprinid lithophilic fish survival.     

Functional porous carbons from waste cotton fabrics for dyeing wastewater purification

A new functional porous carbons (PC-WF) is prepared by activation-pyrolysis method use waste cotton fabrics (WF) as an abundant, cheap and available precursor for removal of Brilliant Crocein (BC-GR) and Cationic Red 2GL (CR-GL) from aqueous phase. The PC-WF was characterized by BET, FTIR, SEM, and XRD techniques, the surface area, total pore volume, average pore diameter was found as 1463.5 m² g^-1, 0.783 cm³ g^-1 and 2.14 nm, respectively. The influences on BC-GR and CR-GL adsorption of various experimental factors such as initial concentration and temperature were investigated. Adsorption kinetics was found to be best represented by the pseudo-second order model. The adsorption capacity was 319.8 mg g^-1 for BC-GR and 842.5 mg g^-1 for CR-GL at 30 °C, respectively. The results indicate that for waste cotton fabrics in particular, the practical application of this process to the production of porous carbon would be possible.     

Incubation success and habitat selection of shore‐spawning kokanee Oncorhynchus nerka: effects of water‐level regulation and habitat characteristics

Changes to water‐level regimes have been known to restructure fish assemblages and interfere with the population dynamics of both littoral and pelagic species. The effect of altered water‐level regimes on shore‐spawning kokanee Oncorhynchus nerka incubation success was evaluated using a comprehensive in situ study in Lake Pend Oreille, ID, USA. Survival was not related to substrate size composition or depth, indicating that shore‐spawning kokanee do not currently receive a substrate‐mediated survival benefit from higher winter water levels. Substrate composition also did not differ among isobaths in the nearshore area. On average, the odds of an egg surviving to the preemergent stage were more than three times greater for sites in downwelling areas than those lacking downwelling. This study revealed that shoreline spawning habitat is not as limited as previously thought. Downwelling areas appear to contribute substantially to shore‐spawning kokanee recruitment. This research illustrates the value of rigorous in situ studies both for testing potential mechanisms underlying population trends and providing insight into spawning habitat selection.     

Characterizing long-term forest disturbance history and its drivers in the Ning-Zhen Mountains,Jiangsu Province of eastern China using yearly Landsat observations (1987–2011)

Forest losses or gains have long been recognized as critical processes modulating the carbon flux between the biosphere and the atmosphere. Timely, accurate and spatially explicit information on forest disturbance and recovery history is required for assessing the effectiveness of existing forest management. The major objectives of our research focused on testing the mapping efficacy of the vegetation change tracker (VCT) model over a forested area in China. We used a new version of VCT algorithm built upon the Landsat time series stacks (LTSS). The LTSS consisted of yearly image acquisitions to map forest disturbance history from 1987 to 2011 over the Ning-Zhen Mountains, Jiangsu Province of east China. The LTSS consisted of TM and ETM+ scenes with different projections due to distinct data sources (Beijing remote sensing ground station and the USGS EROS Center). The validation results of the disturbance year maps showed that most spatial agreement measures ranged from 70 to 86 %, comparable with the VCT accuracies reported for many places in USA. Very low accuracies were identified in 1995 (38.3 %) and 1992 (56.2 %) in the current analysis. These resulted from the insensitivity of the VCT algorithm to detect low intensity disturbances and also from the mis-registration errors of the image pairs. Major forest disturbance types existing in our study area were identified as agricultural expansion (39.8 %), urbanization (24.9 %), forest management practice (19.3 %), and mining (12.8 %). In general, there was a gradual decreasing trend in forest cover throughout this region, caused principally by China’s economic, demographic, environmental and political policies and decisions, as well as some weather events. While VCT has largely been used to assess long term changes and trends in the USA, it has great potential for assessing landscape level change elsewhere throughout the world.