Integration of natural hazards, risk and climate change into spatial planning practices

Most countries of Europe, as well as many countries in other parts of the world, are experiencing an increased impact of natural hazards. It is often speculated, but not yet proven, that climate change might influence the frequency and magnitude of certain hydro-meteorological natural hazards. What has certainly been observed is a sharp increase in financial losses caused by natural hazards worldwide. Eventhough Europe appears to be a space that is not affected by natural hazards to such catastrophic extents as other parts of the world are, the damages experienced here are certainly increasing too. Natural hazards, climate change and, in particular, risks have therefore recently been put high on the political agenda of the EU. In the search for appropriate instruments for mitigating impacts of natural hazards and climate change, as well as risks, the integration of these factors into spatial planning practices is constantly receiving higher attention. The focus of most approaches lies on single hazards and climate change mitigation strategies. The current paradigm shift of climate change mitigation to adaptation is used as a basis to draw conclusions and recommendations on what concepts could be further incorporated into spatial planning practices. Especially multi-hazard approaches are discussed as an important approach that should be developed further. One focal point is the definition and applicability of the terms natural hazard, vulnerability and risk in spatial planning practices. Especially vulnerability and risk concepts are so many-fold and complicated that their application in spatial planning has to be analysed most carefully. The PhD thesis is based on six published articles that describe the results of European research projects, which have elaborated strategies and tools for integrated communication and assessment practices on natural hazards and climate change impacts. The papers describe approaches on local, regional and European level, both from theoretical and practical perspectives. Based on these, passed, current and future potential spatial planning applications are reviewed and discussed. In conclusion it is recommended to shift from single hazard assessments to multi-hazard approaches, integrating potential climate change impacts. Vulnerability concepts should play a stronger role than present, and adaptation to natural hazards and climate change should be more emphasized in relation to mitigation. It is outlined that the integration of risk concepts in planning is rather complicated and would need very careful assessment to ensure applicability. Future spatial planning practices should also consider to be more interdisciplinary, i.e. to integrate as many stakeholders and experts as possible to ensure the sustainability of investments.

Biological control of bellyache bush (Jatropha gossypiifolia) in Australia: South America as a possible source of natural enemies

Bellyache bush (Jatropha gossypiifolia, Euphorbiaceae), a deciduous shrub introduced as an ornamental from tropical America, is a major and expanding weed of rangelands and riparian zones in northern Australia. Biological control is the most economically viable and long-term management solution for this weed. Surveys for potential biological control agents for J gossypiifolia in Mexico,Central America and the Caribbean resulted in release of the seed-feeding jewel bug Agonosoma trilineatum (Hemiptera: Scutelleridae), which failed to establish, and prioritisation of a leaf-rust Phakopsora arthuriana (Puccineales: Phakopsoraceae) for host-specificity testing, which is ongoing. With poor prospects for new agents from Mexico and Central America and the Caribbean, the search for candidate agents on J gossypiifolia shifted to localities south of the equator. Surveys were conducted on the purple-leaf form of J gossypiifolia, Jatropha excisa, Jatropha clavuligera and Jatropha curcas in Peru, Bolivia and Paraguay in 2012 and 2013. A total of 11 insect species, one mite species and the leaf-rust (P. arthuriana) were observed. These include a yet to be described leafmining moth (Stomphastis sp.) (Lepidoptera: Gracillaridae), a shoot and leaf-galling midge Prodiplosis longifila, and leaf-feeding midge Prodiplosis sp. near longifila (both Diptera:Cecidomyiidae) and an unidentified leaf-feeding moth larva (Lepidoptera: Notodontidae). The leafminer is widespread and damaging and has a field host range restricted to the genus Jatropha in Peru and Bolivia, holds the greatest promise as a biological control agent in Australia. Phakopsora arthuriana was recorded for the first time ever from Bolivia and Peru. Further exploration will be conducted in Peru and Bolivia during the wet season to confirm the field host range of collected agents,and to look for more new agents. Promising agents with field host-range restricted to Jatropha spp. will be imported into a quarantine facility in Australia for host-specificity testing.

Natural frequencies of polar orthotropic annular plates

The classical Rayleigh-Ritz method with simple polynomials as admissible functions has been used for obtaining natural frequencies of transversely vibrating polar orthotropic annular plates. The method in conjunction with transformations introduced in the analysis has been found to be quite effective, particularly for large hole sizes. Estimates of natural frequencies corresponding to modes with one as well as two nodal diameters are obtained for the nine combinations of clamped, simply supported and free edge conditions and for various values of rigidity ratio and hole sizes. Based on the variation of eigenvalue parameter with rigidity ratio, the frequencies of these modes as well as those of axisymmetric modes have been expressed by means of simple formulae in terms of rigidity ratio and the frequencies of corresponding modes in the isotropic case. These formulae have been used in determining the fundamental frequencies of orthotropic plates.

Status of soil nematode communities during natural regeneration of a subtropical forest in southwestern China

Forest recovery has been extensively evaluated using plant communities but fewer studies have been conducted on soil fauna. This study reports the status of soil nematode communities during natural re-establishment after deforestation in a subtropical forest in southwestern China. Soil nematode communities of two secondary succession stages, shrub-grassland and secondary forest, were compared with those of virgin forest. Shrub-grassland had higher herbivore relative abundance but lower fungivore and bacterivore relative abundance than forests. Between secondary and virgin forest, the latter had higher abundance of bacterivores. Shrub-grassland had lower nematode diversity, generic richness, maturity index and trophic diversity index than virgin forest, whereas there were no differences in these indices between secondary forest and virgin forest. The small differences in nematode community structures between secondary forest and virgin forest suggest that soil nematode communities recovered to a level close to that of the undisturbed forest after up to 50 years of natural succession.

Natural frequencies of circumferentially truncated sector plates with simply supported straight edges

The classical Rayleigh-Ritz method in conjunction with suitable co-ordinate transformations is found to be effective for accurate estimation of natural frequencies of circumferentially truncated circular sector plates with simply supported straight edges. Numerical results are obtained for all the nine combinations of clamped, simply supported and free boundary conditions at the circular edges and presented in the form of graphs. The analysis confirms an earlier observation that the plate behaves like a long rectangular strip as the width of the plate in the radial direction becomes small.

Transfer of Dietary Plant Natural Flavor Compounds From Essential Oils to Maternal Fluids in Pigs

Fetal flavor conditioning during the perinatal stage could be essential at the time of the weaning to reduce the stress and improve the feed intake in pigs. The transfer of flavor compounds from maternal diet to amniotic fluid and milk has been shown in behavioral experiments, but not through analytical procedures such as gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC–MS). The aim of the experiment was to trace the principal essential oils compounds supplied in the diet in maternal fluids. Twenty Large White sows around their 104th gestational day were allocated to individual farrowing crates. Two groups of 10 sows were fed either a standard gestation diet or the same diet supplemented with a mix of 8 essential oils at a rate of 1kg/ton during the last 10 days of gestation. At approximately the 113th gestational day, animals were individually treated with 10mg of Lutalyse IM was to induce farrowing. Fresh amniotic fluid was collected during the farrowing in 100-mL glass bottles and immediately stored at −20 °C freezer. During the second lactation day, 10–20 IU of Oxytocin IM was administered to each sow to facilitate collection of milk samples in 20-mL glass bottles. The samples were stored at −20 °C until analyzed by GC–MS. The presence of significant amounts of principal components of all the essential oils except one were found in the milk and amniotic fluid samples of the treated sows relative to the control sows. Our data prove the transfer of selected dietary flavors to maternal fluids and sets the scenario for further trials to manipulate postweaning behavior in piglets.

Natural host range, thrips and seed transmission of distinct Tobacco streak virus strains in Queensland, Australia

Diseases caused by Tobacco streak virus (TSV) have resulted in significant crop losses in sunflower and mung bean crops in Australia. Two genetically distinct strains from central Queensland, TSV-parthenium and TSV-crownbeard, have been previously described. They share only 81% total-genome nucleotide sequence identity and have distinct major alternative hosts, Parthenium hysterophorus (parthenium) and Verbesina encelioides (crownbeard). We developed and used strain-specific multiplex Polymerase chain reactions (PCRs) for the three RNA segments of TSV-parthenium and TSV-crownbeard to accurately characterise the strains naturally infecting 41 hosts species. Hosts included species from 11 plant families, including 12 species endemic to Australia. Results from field surveys and inoculation tests indicate that parthenium is a poor host of TSV-crownbeard. By contrast, crownbeard was both a natural host of, and experimentally infected by TSV-parthenium but this infection combination resulted in non-viable seed. These differences appear to be an effective biological barrier that largely restricts these two TSV strains to their respective major alternative hosts. TSV-crownbeard was seed transmitted from naturally infected crownbeard at a rate of between 5% and 50% and was closely associated with the geographical distribution of crownbeard in central Queensland. TSV-parthenium and TSV-crownbeard were also seed transmitted in experimentally infected ageratum (Ageratum houstonianum) at rates of up to 40% and 27%, respectively. The related subgroup 1 ilarvirus, Ageratum latent virus, was also seed transmitted at a rate of 18% in ageratum which is its major alternative host. Thrips species Frankliniella schultzei and Microcephalothrips abdominalis were commonly found in flowers of TSV-affected crops and nearby weed hosts. Both species readily transmitted TSV-parthenium and TSV-crownbeard. The results are discussed in terms of how two genetically and biologically distinct TSV strains have similar life cycle strategies in the same environment.

A note on sampling chironomids for RNA-based studies of natural populations that retains critical morphological vouchers

The rapid uptake of transcriptomic approaches in freshwater ecology has seen a wealth of data produced concerning the ways in which organisms interact with their environment on a molecular level. Typically, such studies focus either at the community level and so don’t require species identifications, or on laboratory strains of known species identity or natural populations of large, easily identifiable taxa. For chironomids, impediments still exist for applying these technologies to natural populations because they are small-bodied and often require time-consuming secondary sorting of stream material and morphological voucher preparation to confirm species diagnosis. These procedures limit the ability to maintain RNA quantity and quality in such organisms because RNA degrades rapidly and gene expression can be altered rapidly in organisms; thereby limiting the inclusion of such taxa in transcriptomic studies. Here, we demonstrate that these limitations can be overcome and outline an optimised protocol for collecting, sorting and preserving chironomid larvae that enables retention of both morphological vouchers and RNA for subsequent transcriptomics purposes. By ensuring that sorting and voucher preparation are completed within <4 hours after collection and that samples are kept cold at all times, we successfully retained both RNA and morphological vouchers from all specimens. Although not prescriptive in specific methodology, we anticipate that this paper will assist in promoting transcriptomic investigations of the sublethal impact on chironomid gene expression of changes to aquatic environments.

Learning Nonlinear Visual Processing from Natural Images

The paradigm of computational vision hypothesizes that any visual function -- such as the recognition of your grandparent -- can be replicated by computational processing of the visual input. What are these computations that the brain performs? What should or could they be? Working on the latter question, this dissertation takes the statistical approach, where the suitable computations are attempted to be learned from the natural visual data itself. In particular, we empirically study the computational processing that emerges from the statistical properties of the visual world and the constraints and objectives specified for the learning process. This thesis consists of an introduction and 7 peer-reviewed publications, where the purpose of the introduction is to illustrate the area of study to a reader who is not familiar with computational vision research. In the scope of the introduction, we will briefly overview the primary challenges to visual processing, as well as recall some of the current opinions on visual processing in the early visual systems of animals. Next, we describe the methodology we have used in our research, and discuss the presented results. We have included some additional remarks, speculations and conclusions to this discussion that were not featured in the original publications. We present the following results in the publications of this thesis. First, we empirically demonstrate that luminance and contrast are strongly dependent in natural images, contradicting previous theories suggesting that luminance and contrast were processed separately in natural systems due to their independence in the visual data. Second, we show that simple cell -like receptive fields of the primary visual cortex can be learned in the nonlinear contrast domain by maximization of independence. Further, we provide first-time reports of the emergence of conjunctive (corner-detecting) and subtractive (opponent orientation) processing due to nonlinear projection pursuit with simple objective functions related to sparseness and response energy optimization. Then, we show that attempting to extract independent components of nonlinear histogram statistics of a biologically plausible representation leads to projection directions that appear to differentiate between visual contexts. Such processing might be applicable for priming, \ie the selection and tuning of later visual processing. We continue by showing that a different kind of thresholded low-frequency priming can be learned and used to make object detection faster with little loss in accuracy. Finally, we show that in a computational object detection setting, nonlinearly gain-controlled visual features of medium complexity can be acquired sequentially as images are encountered and discarded. We present two online algorithms to perform this feature selection, and propose the idea that for artificial systems, some processing mechanisms could be selectable from the environment without optimizing the mechanisms themselves. In summary, this thesis explores learning visual processing on several levels. The learning can be understood as interplay of input data, model structures, learning objectives, and estimation algorithms. The presented work adds to the growing body of evidence showing that statistical methods can be used to acquire intuitively meaningful visual processing mechanisms. The work also presents some predictions and ideas regarding biological visual processing.

Impact of the invasive rust Puccinia psidii (myrtle rust) on native Myrtaceae in natural ecosystems in Australia

The invasive rust Puccinia psidii (myrtle rust) was detected in Australia in 2010 and is now established along the east coast from southern New South Wales to far north Queensland. Prior to reaching Australia, severe damage from P. psidii was mainly restricted to exotic eucalypt plantations in South America, guava plantations in Brazil, allspice plantations in Jamaica, and exotic Myrtaceous tree species in the USA; the only previous record of widespread damage in native environments is of endangered Eugenia koolauensis in Hawai’i. Using two rainforest tree species as indicators of the impact of P. psidii, we report for the first time severe damage to endemic Myrtaceae in native forests in Australia, after only 4 years’ exposure to P. psidii. A 3-year disease exclusion trial in a natural stand of Rhodamnia rubescens unequivocally showed that repeated, severe infection leads to gradual crown loss and ultimately tree mortality; trees were killed in less than 4 years. Significant (p < 0.001) correlations were found between both incidence (r = 0.36) and severity (r = 0.38) of P. psidii and subsequent crown loss (crown transparency). This provided supporting evidence to conclude a causal association between P. psidii and crown loss and tree mortality in our field assessments of R. rubescens and Rhodomyrtus psidioides across their native range. Assessments revealed high levels of damage by P. psidii to immature leaves, shoots and tree crowns—averaging 76 % (R. rubescens) and 95 % (R. psidioides) crown transparency—as well as tree mortality. For R. psidioides, we saw exceptionally high levels of tree mortality, with over half the trees surveyed dead and 40 % of stands with greater than 50 % tree mortality, including two stands where all trees were dead. Tree mortality was less prevalent for R. rubescens, with only 12 % of trees surveyed dead and two sites with greater than 50 % mortality. Any alternative causal agents for this tree mortality have been discounted. The ecological implications of this are unclear, but our work clearly illustrates the potential for P. psidii to negatively affect Australia’s biodiversity.

The biology and natural history of Tripogon loliiformis (Poaceae, Chloridoideae), an Australian resurrection grass

Tripogon loliiformis is a desiccation-tolerant grass that occurs throughout mainland Australia. There has been recent interest in this species as a model system for understanding desiccation tolerance in a native grass at the structural, molecular and physiological levels. However, not much is known about the biology and natural history of this species, despite its widespread geographic distribution and remarkable capability of withstanding prolonged drying. We provide an overview of the genus by consolidating information from a wide variety of sources. We report a variety of new and interesting observations on the general biology, ecology and desiccation response of T. loliiformis and conclude by highlighting areas for future research.

The upper respiratory tract is a natural reservoir of haemolytic Mannheimia species associated with ovine mastitis

Lamb suckling has been suggested to be an important way of infecting a ewe's udder with different bacteria, including Mannheimia haemolytica. To test the potential role of lambs in transferring Mannheimia species to the ewe’s udder, the restriction endonuclease cleavage patterns of isolates obtained from nasopharyngeal swabs were compared with those obtained from cases of mastitis. Sterile cotton swabs were used to collect nasopharyngeal samples from 50 ewes and 36 lambs from three flocks. M. haemolytica and Mannheimia glucosida as well as haemolytic Mannheimia ruminalis-like organisms were detected in the upper respiratory tract of lambs and ewes. Comparison of the restriction endonuclease cleavage patterns of the isolates suggested that the M. haemolytica isolates obtained from different milk samples from ewes with mastitis were more clonal than those obtained from the nasal swabs. However, some nasal isolates within both Mannheimia species had restriction endonuclease cleavage patterns identical to those obtained from milk samples from ewes with mastitis, indicating that lambs may have a role in transferring these organisms to the udder. More clonality was observed between the M. glucosida isolates than between M. haemolytica isolates.

Natural Hendra Virus Infection in Flying-Foxes - Tissue Tropism and Risk Factors

Hendra virus (HeV) is a lethal zoonotic agent that emerged in 1994 in Australia. Pteropid bats (flying-foxes) are the natural reservoir. To date, HeV has spilled over from flying-foxes to horses on 51 known occasions, and from infected horses to close-contact humans on seven occasions. We undertook screening of archived bat tissues for HeV by reverse transcription quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR). Tissues were tested from 310 bats including 295 Pteropodiformes and 15 Vespertilioniformes. HeV was detected in 20 individual flying-foxes (6.4%) from various tissues including spleen, kidney, liver, lung, placenta and blood components. Detection was significantly higher in Pteropus Alecto and Pconspicillatus, identifying species as a risk factor for infection. Further, our findings indicate that HeV has a predilection for the spleen, suggesting this organ plays an important role in HeV infection. The lack of detections in the foetal tissues of HeV-positive females suggests that vertical transmission is not a regular mode of transmission in naturally infected flying-foxes, and that placental and foetal tissues are not a major source of infection for horses. A better understanding of HeV tissue tropism will strengthen management of the risk of spillover from flying-foxes to horses and ultimately humans.

Maximum likelihood estimation of natural mortality and quantification of temperature effects on catchability of brown tiger prawn (Penaeus esculentus) in Moreton Bay (Australia) using logbook data

It is common to model the dynamics of fisheries using natural and fishing mortality rates estimated independently using two separate analyses. Fishing mortality is routinely estimated from widely available logbook data, whereas natural mortality estimations have often required more specific, less frequently available, data. However, in the case of the fishery for brown tiger prawn (Penaeus esculentus) in Moreton Bay, both fishing and natural mortality rates have been estimated from logbook data. The present work extended the fishing mortality model to incorporate an eco-physiological response of tiger prawn to temperature, and allowed recruitment timing to vary from year to year. These ecological characteristics of the dynamics of this fishery were ignored in the separate model that estimated natural mortality. Therefore, we propose to estimate both natural and fishing mortality rates within a single model using a consistent set of hypotheses. This approach was applied to Moreton Bay brown tiger prawn data collected between 1990 and 2010. Natural mortality was estimated by maximum likelihood to be equal to 0.032 ± 0.002 week−1, approximately 30% lower than the fixed value used in previous models of this fishery (0.045 week−1).

Estimation of higher natural frequencies of polar orthotropic annular plates

A method based on an assumption that the radial bending moment is zero at a nodal circle is shown to yield accurate estimates of natural frequencies corresponding to higher modes of transversely vibrating polar orthotropic annular plates for various combinations of clamped, simply supported and free edge conditions. This method is found to be convenient for the determination of locations of nodal circles as well. Numerical investigations revealed that for small holes, nodal circles tend to move towards the outer edge with increasing number of nodal diameters. For large holes, it has been shown that the plate behaves like a long rectangular strip.