Currently campo rupestre (CR) is a name accepted and used internationally by botanists, zoologists, and other naturalists, usually applied to a very specific ecosystem, despite the lack of a consensual published circumscription. We present a tentative geographic circumscription of the term, combining data on climate, geology, geomorphology, soil, flora, fauna and vegetation. The circumscription...

The present study investigates the culture of development in Hawrami proverbs. Analysis of development-related variables is the basis of sociology. As collective phenomena, proverbs are part of the oral culture of a society and their investigation can sociologically explain cultural and social foundations of the society. This research attempts to specify 6 development-related parameters in Hawr...

Most research on boundaries between vegetation types emphasizes the contrasts and similarities between conditions on either side of a boundary, but does not compare boundary to non-boundary vegetation. That is, most previous studies lack suitable controls, and may therefore overlook underlying aspects of landscape variability at a regional scale and underestimate the effects that the vegetation...

Aim Climate change threatens to shift vegetation, disrupting ecosystems and damaging human well-being. Field observations in boreal, temperate and tropical ecosystems have detected biome changes in the 20th century, yet a lack of spatial data on vulnerability hinders organizations that manage natural resources from identifying priority areas for adaptation measures. We explore potential methods...

Fit testing of tight-fitting respiratory protective facepieces has been in use for some years, but there are still widespread misconceptions and misunderstandings about what a fit test pass actually signifies. Various aspects frequently generate research papers, and there are three relevant ones in this issue (Han and Lee, 2005; Kuo et al., 2005; Vaughan and RajanSithamparanadarajah, 2005). In ...

Because of two 3σ anomalies, the Standard Model (SM) fit of the precision electroweak data has a poor confidence level, CL = 0.02. Since both anomalies involve challenging systematic issues, it might appear that the SM could still be valid if the anomalies resulted from underestimated systematic error. Indeed the CL of the global fit could then increase to 0.71, but that fit predicts a small Hi...

A chemical factory, using a production technology of acetaldehyde with mercury catalysis, was located southeast of Qingzhen City in Guizhou Province, China. Previous research showed heavy mercury pollution through an extensive downstream area. A current investigation of the mercury distribution in ambient air, soils, and plants suggests that mobile mercury species in soils created elevated merc...

We tested the hypothesis of a negative relationship between vegetation characteristics and ant species richness in a Brazilian open vegetation habitat, called candeial. We set up arboreal pitfalls to sample arboreal ants and measured the following environmental variables, which were used as surrogate of environmental heterogeneity: tree richness, tree density, tree height, circumference at the ...

Savanna ecosystems are geographically extensive and both ecologically and economically important; they therefore require monitoring over large spatial extents. There are, in particular, large areas within southern Africa savanna ecosystems that lack consistent geospatial data on vegetation morphological properties, which is a prerequisite for biodiversity conservation and sustainable management...

Traditional techniques to map vegetation communities are by aerial photography interpretation and intensive field sampling. Semi-automated methods, including pixel and object-based image classification, demonstrate potential to accurately map vegetation communities, however, there is a lack of comparative research. This study is a component of a broader research project that compares several te...