TUD - Professur für Forstliche Biometrie und Forstliche Informatik - ABM-IBM Course

Course in Individual- and Agent-Based Modeling

Bad Schandau, 20.7.-2.8.2008

Objective

Individual/Agent-based modeling is a computational approach to analyzing complex systems in many disciplines, including ecology, geography, economics, and systems biology. The basic idea of agent-based models (ABMs) is to model the essential traits and behaviors of adaptive agents (plants, animals, humans, institutions) and investigate the individual- and system-level properties that emerge as the agents interact with each other and their environment. Individual behavior and system-level patterns are mutually dependent and ABMs are a powerful tool for understanding this relationship. The course will introduce the basic concepts and methods of agent-based modeling through lectures, exercises, and independent projects. The software platform „NetLogo“ will be used.

TUD - Professur für Forstliche Biometrie und Forstliche Informatik - ABM-IBM Course

'Linear features' hurt caribou, moose

 

Boreal forest researchers refer to both roads and hydro transmission lines as "linear features," but to some forest-dwellers they might simply be called bad news.

"The more of these you build, the more negative effects you'll get in the system," said Stan Boutin, a professor of biological sciences at the University of Alberta.

Boutin said in Alberta, whitetail deer and coyotes are using linear features to expand north into the boreal forest, where they never lived before.

The deer, especially, have a negative effect on moose and woodland caribou, because wolves are attracted to the high number of deer.

winnipegsun.com - Canada News - 'Linear features' hurt caribou, moose

Elephant biltong in Zimbabwe? - Article

 

The Parks and Wildlife Management Authority of Zimbabwe plans to produce biltong from elephant meat to sell in retail outlets throughout the country "as part of sustainable utilisation of the animals," the Herald online said.

Parks director-general Dr Morris Mtsambiwa said the project began last year after the Ministry of Environment and Tourism permitted the authority to experiment with the "resource".

"It is in our plans. We plan to start this year. We tried it last year and we found that we did not have the proper infrastructure for the purpose," he reportedly said.

The Times - Article

Innovative Model Connects Circuit Theory To Wildlife Corridors

 

Innovative Model Connects Circuit Theory To Wildlife Corridors

ScienceDaily (Dec. 30, 2007) — Scientists at Northern Arizona University and the National  Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis have developed a model that borrows from electronic circuit theory to predict gene flow across complex landscapes .  Their approach could help biologists design better wildlife corridors, which are crucial to protecting threatened plant and animal populations.

Innovative Model Connects Circuit Theory To Wildlife Corridors

Climate Change and Food Security Special Feature: Global fish production and climate change

 

Current global fisheries production of 160 million tons is rising as a result of increases in aquaculture production. A number of climate-related threats to both capture fisheries and aquaculture are identified, but we have low confidence in predictions of future fisheries production because of uncertainty over future global aquatic net primary production and the transfer of this production through the food chain to human consumption. Recent changes in the distribution and productivity of a number of fish species can be ascribed with high confidence to regional climate variability, such as the El Niño–Southern Oscillation. Future production may increase in some high-latitude regions because of warming and decreased ice cover, but the dynamics in low-latitude regions are governed by different processes, and production may decline as a result of reduced vertical mixing of the water column and, hence, reduced recycling of nutrients. There are strong interactions between the effects of fishing and the effects of climate because fishing reduces the age, size, and geographic diversity of populations and the biodiversity of marine ecosystems, making both more sensitive to additional stresses such as climate change. Inland fisheries are additionally threatened by changes in precipitation and water management. The frequency and intensity of extreme climate events is likely to have a major impact on future fisheries production in both inland and marine systems. Reducing fishing mortality in the majority of fisheries, which are currently fully exploited or overexploited, is the principal feasible means of reducing the impacts of climate change.

Climate Change and Food Security Special Feature: Global fish production and climate change -- Brander 104 (50): 19709 -- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences