Estimating missing sapwood rings in three European gymnosperm species by the heartwood age rule

Precise dating of the year of felling is one intended outcome of dendrochronology. However, occasionally some or all sapwood rings might be missing, either due to deterioration or because they were carved off, or for some other reason. Consequently, while heartwood is preserved, sapwood might be fully or partially missing. In such cases, the year of felling must be estimated by adding a suitable number of sapwood rings. A heartwood age rule (HAR) has been advocated for Scots pine and adapted to European larch and Cembra pine, implying a linear relationship between sapwood ring count and the square root of heartwood ring count, largely irrespective of position in the stem. The same rule applied to all observations of a species, irrespective of silviculture, location or fertility of the growth site. Scots pine had twice or thrice as many sapwood rings as Cembra pine, which had 10% more rings than larch. The magnitude of model residuals was proportional to estimated sapwood ring count. Relative residuals were roughly normally distributed. To be applicable in Bayesian modelling in dendrochronology analyses, detailed information on model errors has been provided.     

The influence of changes to river hydrology on freshwater fish in regulated rivers of the Murray–Darling basin

Freshwater fish are often used as an indicator of the response of the ecosystem to the restoration of river flows or the provision of environmental flows. The ability to model the biological response of fish depends on the capacity to establish clear relationships between changes in river hydrology and the fish assemblages in a river. The fish assemblage structure and the abundances of individual fish species were examined in relation to a hydrological index that described hydrological change in six regulated rivers in the Murray–Darling Basin. The hydrological index explained only a small amount of variation in fish assemblage structure. In addition, the abundances of individual fish species were only weakly correlated with the index of flow deviation. It is suggested that these results make the modelling of responses of fish assemblages to environmental water allocations unfeasible at a large scale and that future studies should concentrate on potentially more simple responses, such as the relationships of fish spawning and recruitment to specific aspects of river hydrology.     

A GIS-based empirical model for vegetation prediction in Lefka Ori, Crete

The aim of the study was to establish and verify a predictive vegetation model for plant community distribution in the alti-Mediterranean zone of the Lefka Ori massif, western Crete. Based on previous work three variables were identified as significant determinants of plant community distribution, namely altitude, slope angle and geomorphic landform. The response of four community types against these variables was tested using classification trees analysis in order to model community type occurrence. V-fold cross-validation plots were used to determine the length of the best fitting tree. The final 9node tree selected, classified correctly 92.5% of the samples. The results were used to provide decision rules for the construction of a spatial model for each community type. The model was implemented within a Geographical Information System (GIS) to predict the distribution of each community type in the study site. The evaluation of the model in the field using an error matrix gave an overall accuracy of 71%. The user’s accuracy was higher for the Crepis–Cirsium (100%) and Telephium–Herniaria community type (66.7%) and relatively lower for the Peucedanum–Alyssum and Dianthus–Lomelosia community types (63.2% and 62.5%, respectively). Misclassification and field validation points to the need for improved geomorphological mapping and suggests the presence of transitional communities between existing community types.     

物种总数的一类Bayes区间估计的改进

通常所使用的由传统方法得到的物种总数的一类Bayes置信区间不是最短的,就此意义而言也不是最优的。本文得到改进后的Bayes区间估计,并在各种有代表性的自由度情形下通过对比指出它相对于传统的Bayes区间估计的优越性所在,由分析可见,改进后的区间估计更能满足生产实践的需要,得到的物种总数的区间估计更为精确。     

Are responses of herbivores to environmental variability spatially consistent in alpine ecosystems?

Animal responses to global climate variation might be spatially inconsistent. This may arise from spatial variation in factors limiting populations' growth or from differences in the links between global climate patterns and ecologically relevant local climate variation. For example, the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) has a spatially consistent relation to temperature, but inconsistent spatial relation to snow depth in Scandinavia. Furthermore, there are multiple mechanistic ways by which climate may limit animal populations, involving both direct effects through thermoregulation and indirect pathways through trophic interactions. It is conceptually appealing to directly model the predicted mechanistic links. This includes the use of climate variables mimicking such interactions, for example, to use growing degree days (GDD) as a proxy for plant growth rather than average monthly temperature. Using a unique database of autumn body mass of 83331 domestic lambs from the period 1992–2007 in four alpine ranges in Norway, we demonstrate the utility of hierarchical, mechanistic path models fitted using a Bayesian approach to analyse explicitly predicted relationships among environmental variables and between lamb body mass and the environmental variables. We found large spatial variation in strength of responses of autumn lamb body mass to the NAO, to a proxy for plant growth in spring (the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index, NDVI) and effects even differed in direction to local summer climate. Average local temperature outperformed GDD as a predictor of the NDVI, whereas the NAO index in two areas outperformed local weather variables as a predictor of lamb body mass, despite the weaker mechanistic link. Our study highlights that spatial variation in strength of herbivore responses may arise from several processes. Furthermore, mechanistically more appealing measures do not always increase predictive power due to scale of measurement and since global measures may provide more relevant “weather packages” for larger scales.     

多水平贝叶斯模型预测森林土壤全氮

多水平贝叶斯方法阐明了预测中观测值、模型和参数的不确定性,被越来越多的生态学家所使用.应用多水平贝叶斯方法建立了北京八达岭地区森林土壤全氮模型,分析了模型参数及其不确定性,并对该区不同土壤层(A、B、C)全氮含量进行了预测.得到如下结论:(1)该区森林土壤全氮多水平贝叶斯模型为yi～N(β0j[i],k[j]+β1j[i],k[j]xi,σ2y).(2)对模型参数和其曲线不确定性分析表明,该模型能够很好的预测该区土壤全氮含量.(3)模型预测表明:土壤A层,随着海拔的增加,全氮含量递增.土壤B层,随着海拔的升高,植被类型0、1、2、3土壤全氮含量递增,而植被类型4土壤全氮含量出现递减现象.土壤C层,随着海拔的增加,植被类型0土壤全氮含量递增,而植被类型1、2、3、4土壤全氮含量均表现为递减.各植被类型土壤全氮含量都随着土层的深度而减少.     

Bayesian Approach to Proportional Odds Models for Survival Analysis

In this paper Bayesian approach is adopted to develop inferences about parameters in proportional odds models. Bayesian posterior intervals for coefficients in proportional odds models are derived by using approximation given in Pregibon (1981). The results are illustrated by using the lung cancer survival data reported by Prentice (1973).