Bioclimates of Italy
TL;DR: In this article, the authors defined two major updates to the WBCS map of Italy: improvements to the surface spatial accuracy for the climate, especially for precipitation; and detailed mapping of the Submediterraneity Index and its levels, which mainly characterize the ecotone area between the Mediterranean and the Temperate macrobioclimates.
Abstract: The Worldwide Bioclimatic Classification System according to Rivas-Martinez (WBCS) is a bioclimatic classification that is widely used in vegetation science, geobotany, and landscape ecology. To date, only one complete WBCS map has been produced for Italy at the national scale. Here, we define two major updates to the WBCS map of Italy: improvements to the surface spatial accuracy for the climate, especially for precipitation; and detailed mapping of the Submediterraneity Index and its levels, which mainly characterize the ecotone area between the Mediterranean and the Temperate macrobioclimates. Finally, all WBCS units (i.e. macrobioclimates, bioclimatic variants, bioclimates, continentality types, bioclimatic belts) and the Submediterraneity Index are mapped on a scale of 1:2,500,000. These maps and the bioclimatic indices and monthly climatic surfaces are available here as raster data-sets (resolution, 900 m) and are useful for accurate bioclimatic diagnosis for the entire Italian territory. Th...
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TL;DR: In this paper, the feasibility of monitoring habitat quality for bird communities in Central Italy using the InVEST Habitat Quality model was assessed using outputs from species distribution models (SDMs) and expert-based models to explore their viability to support conservation planning.
55 citations
TL;DR: Support that free-ranging pigs can act as a bridge to transmit ASFV between wild boar and registered domestic pigs is supported, supporting the importance of the analysis of interspecific interactions in shared infectious diseases, especially for guiding disease management.
Abstract: African swine fever virus (ASFV) is spreading throughout Eurasia and there is no vaccine nor treatment available, so the control is based on the implementation of strict sanitary measures. These measures include depopulation of infected and in-contact animals and export restrictions, which can lead to important economic losses, making currently African swine fever (ASF) the greatest threat to the global swine industry. ASF has been endemic on the island of Sardinia since 1978, the longest persistence of anywhere in Eurasia. In Sardinia, eradication programs have failed, in large part due to the lack of farm professionalism, the high density of wild boar and the presence of non-registered domestic pigs (free-ranging pigs). In order to clarify how the virus is transmitted from domestic to wild swine, we examined the interaction between free-ranging pigs and wild boar in an ASF-endemic area of Sardinia. To this end, a field study was carried out on direct and indirect interactions, using monitoring by camera trapping in different areas and risk points. Critical time windows (CTWs) for the virus to survive in the environment (long window) and remain infectious (short window) were estimated, and based on these, the number of indirect interactions were determined. Free-ranging pigs indirectly interacted often with wild boar (long window = 6.47 interactions/day, short window = 1.31 interactions/day) and these interactions (long window) were mainly at water sources. They also directly interacted 0.37 times per day, especially between 14:00 and 21:00 h, which is much higher than for other interspecific interactions observed in Mediterranean scenarios. The highly frequent interactions at this interspecific interface may help explain the more than four-decade-long endemicity of ASF on the island. Supporting that free-ranging pigs can act as a bridge to transmit ASFV between wild boar and registered domestic pigs. This study contributes broadly to improving the knowledge on the estimation of frequencies of direct and indirect interactions between wild and free-ranging domestic swine. As well as supporting the importance of the analysis of interspecific interactions in shared infectious diseases, especially for guiding disease management. Finally, this work illustrates the power of the camera-trapping method for analyzing interspecific interfaces.
32 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the relationship between forest gain (the percentage of landscape covered by forests) and changes in spatial pattern (patch density, edge density, and mean patch area) is explored.
Abstract: Reforestation after land abandonment across Mediterranean mountains, together with the related landscape pattern dynamics and its possible impacts on the natural flora and fauna are issues that need further research efforts. This research, based on multi-temporal land cover maps derived from remotely sensed data (1987, 2003, 2016) of the Central Apennines, sets out to (i) quantify land cover changes and (ii) explore forest re-growth accounting for the interdependencies between forest gain and spatial configuration through trajectory analyses. Landscape change was assessed by transition matrix. Forest composition and configuration over time were analyzed by trajectory analysis based on random sampling techniques. This approach, implemented here for the first time for analyzing forest re-growth, allows us to explore the relationship between forest gain (the percentage of landscape covered by forests) and changes in spatial pattern (patch density, edge density, and mean patch area). An increase in forest cover over the past 30 years underlined the intense process of natural re-colonization, which started after World War II, at the expense of the typical heterogeneity of Mediterranean cultural landscapes. The change in the spatial pattern of forested areas highlighted a significant transformation which is related to two processes: the centrifugal development of existing patches and the establishment of new nuclei. The trajectory analysis highlighted non-linear relationships between forest gain and spatial pattern, offering the basis envisage of their effects on biodiversity. Conservation-oriented management of Mediterranean mountain forests must acknowledge both the role of natural succession in generating complex mosaics and the importance of maintaining forest patches of different dimensions and configuration.
30 citations
TL;DR: A map of the eco-climatic regions of Italy adopting a data-driven spatial clustering approach using recent and detailed spatial data on climatic and environmental factors to define pixel-based areas that are conducive environment for VBD spread, indicating where surveillance and prevention measures could be prioritized in Italy.
Abstract: Ecoregionalization is the process by which a territory is classified in similar areas according to specific environmental and climatic factors. The climate and the environment strongly influence the presence and distribution of vectors responsible for significant human and animal diseases worldwide. In this paper, we developed a map of the eco-climatic regions of Italy adopting a data-driven spatial clustering approach using recent and detailed spatial data on climatic and environmental factors. We selected seven variables, relevant for a broad set of human and animal vector-borne diseases (VBDs): standard deviation of altitude, mean daytime land surface temperature, mean amplitude and peak timing of the annual cycle of land surface temperature, mean and amplitude of the annual cycle of greenness value, and daily mean amount of rainfall. Principal Component Analysis followed by multivariate geographic clustering using the k-medoids technique were used to group the pixels with similar characteristics into different ecoregions, and at different spatial resolutions (250 m, 1 km and 2 km). We showed that the spatial structure of ecoregions is generally maintained at different spatial resolutions and we compared the resulting ecoregion maps with two datasets related to Bluetongue vectors and West Nile Disease (WND) outbreaks in Italy. The known characteristics of Culicoides imicola habitat were well captured by 2/22 specific ecoregions (at 250 m resolution). Culicoides obsoletus/scoticus occupy all sampled ecoregions, according to its known widespread distribution across the peninsula. WND outbreak locations strongly cluster in 4/22 ecoregions, dominated by human influenced landscape, with intense cultivations and complex irrigation network. This approach could be a supportive tool in case of VBDs, defining pixel-based areas that are conducive environment for VBD spread, indicating where surveillance and prevention measures could be prioritized in Italy. Also, ecoregions suitable to specific VBDs vectors could inform entomological surveillance strategies.
27 citations
References
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Journal Article•
TL;DR: Copyright (©) 1999–2012 R Foundation for Statistical Computing; permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this manual provided the copyright notice and permission notice are preserved on all copies.
Abstract: Copyright (©) 1999–2012 R Foundation for Statistical Computing. Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this manual provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved on all copies. Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions of this manual under the conditions for verbatim copying, provided that the entire resulting derived work is distributed under the terms of a permission notice identical to this one. Permission is granted to copy and distribute translations of this manual into another language, under the above conditions for modified versions, except that this permission notice may be stated in a translation approved by the R Core Team.
272,030 citations
"Bioclimates of Italy" refers methods in this paper
...Software All of the geostatistical operations (i.e. regression kriging, variogram selection, cross-validation) were performed in R (R Core Team, 2012) using ‘Gstat’ (Pebesma, 2004) and ‘Automap’ (Hiemstra, Pebesma, Twenhöfel, & Heuvelink, 2009) R packages....
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TL;DR: In this paper, the authors developed interpolated climate surfaces for global land areas (excluding Antarctica) at a spatial resolution of 30 arc s (often referred to as 1-km spatial resolution).
Abstract: We developed interpolated climate surfaces for global land areas (excluding Antarctica) at a spatial resolution of 30 arc s (often referred to as 1-km spatial resolution). The climate elements considered were monthly precipitation and mean, minimum, and maximum temperature. Input data were gathered from a variety of sources and, where possible, were restricted to records from the 1950–2000 period. We used the thin-plate smoothing spline algorithm implemented in the ANUSPLIN package for interpolation, using latitude, longitude, and elevation as independent variables. We quantified uncertainty arising from the input data and the interpolation by mapping weather station density, elevation bias in the weather stations, and elevation variation within grid cells and through data partitioning and cross validation. Elevation bias tended to be negative (stations lower than expected) at high latitudes but positive in the tropics. Uncertainty is highest in mountainous and in poorly sampled areas. Data partitioning showed high uncertainty of the surfaces on isolated islands, e.g. in the Pacific. Aggregating the elevation and climate data to 10 arc min resolution showed an enormous variation within grid cells, illustrating the value of high-resolution surfaces. A comparison with an existing data set at 10 arc min resolution showed overall agreement, but with significant variation in some regions. A comparison with two high-resolution data sets for the United States also identified areas with large local differences, particularly in mountainous areas. Compared to previous global climatologies, ours has the following advantages: the data are at a higher spatial resolution (400 times greater or more); more weather station records were used; improved elevation data were used; and more information about spatial patterns of uncertainty in the data is available. Owing to the overall low density of available climate stations, our surfaces do not capture of all variation that may occur at a resolution of 1 km, particularly of precipitation in mountainous areas. In future work, such variation might be captured through knowledgebased methods and inclusion of additional co-variates, particularly layers obtained through remote sensing. Copyright 2005 Royal Meteorological Society.
17,977 citations
TL;DR: The Kw provides for the incorpation of ratio-scaled degrees of disagreement (or agreement) to each of the cells of the k * k table of joi.
Abstract: A previously described coefficient of agreement for nominal scales, kappa, treats all disagreements equally. A generalization to weighted kappa (Kw) is presented. The Kw provides for the incorpation of ratio-scaled degrees of disagreement (or agreement) to each of the cells of the k * k table of joi
7,604 citations
"Bioclimates of Italy" refers methods in this paper
...To determine the validity of these maps also at a regional scale for the Ombrotypes and Thermotypes according to the weighed Cohen’s K statistic (Cohen, 1968), we assessed the degree of agreement between the high-resolution maps constructed for the Sardinia region (Canu et al., 2015) (see…...
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TL;DR: The gstat S package is introduced, an extension package for the S environments (R, S-Plus) that provides multivariable geostatistical modelling, prediction and simulation, as well as several visualisation functions.
2,455 citations
"Bioclimates of Italy" refers methods in this paper
...Software All of the geostatistical operations (i.e. regression kriging, variogram selection, cross-validation) were performed in R (R Core Team, 2012) using ‘Gstat’ (Pebesma, 2004) and ‘Automap’ (Hiemstra, Pebesma, Twenhöfel, & Heuvelink, 2009) R packages....
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...Geostatistical mapping of precipitation and temperature To obtain climatic surfaces that were suitable for improving of the spatial accuracy of the WBCS map of Italy, we considered that it was adequate to calibrate and correct (via regression kriging; Hengl, 2007; Pebesma, 2004) the WorldClim surfaces with a dense data-set of local meteorological observations (Figure 1), and then not necessary to create climatic surfaces ex novo; this resulted in the search for the best spatial interpolation technique with the best set of auxiliary...
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...regression kriging, variogram selection, cross-validation) were performed in R (R Core Team, 2012) using ‘Gstat’ (Pebesma, 2004) and ‘Automap’ (Hiemstra, Pebesma, Twenhöfel, & Heuvelink, 2009) R packages....
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...…of the spatial accuracy of the WBCS map of Italy, we considered that it was adequate to calibrate and correct (via regression kriging; Hengl, 2007; Pebesma, 2004) the WorldClim surfaces with a dense data-set of local meteorological observations (Figure 1), and then not necessary to create…...
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Stellenbosch University1, University of Western Australia2, University of Kiel3, University of Geneva4, Free University of Berlin5, University of Nova Gorica6, Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts7, Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts8, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic9, University of Vienna10, University of Bayreuth11, Complutense University of Madrid12, Masaryk University13, Sapienza University of Rome14, University of Zielona Góra15, University of Münster16, University of Göttingen17, Russian Academy of Sciences18, Slovak Academy of Sciences19, Wageningen University and Research Centre20, Radboud University Nijmegen21, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine22, University of Lisbon23, University of Vechta24, University of California, Davis25, University of Patras26
TL;DR: This paper features the first comprehensive and critical account of European syntaxa and synthesizes more than 100 yr of classification effort by European phytosociologists.
Abstract: Aims: Vegetation classification consistent with the
Braun-Blanquet approach is widely used in Europe for applied
vegetation science, conservation planning and land management.
During the long history of syntaxonomy, many concepts and names
of vegetation units have been proposed, but there has been no
single classification system integrating these units. Here we
(1) present a comprehensive, hierarchical, syntaxonomic system
of alliances, orders and classes of Braun-Blanquet syntaxonomy
for vascular plant, bryophyte and lichen, and algal communities
of Europe; (2) briefly characterize in ecological and
geographic terms accepted syntaxonomic concepts; (3) link
available synonyms to these accepted concepts; and (4) provide
a list of diagnostic species for all classes. LocationEuropean
mainland, Greenland, Arctic archipelagos (including Iceland,
Svalbard, Novaya Zemlya), Canary Islands, Madeira, Azores,
Caucasus, Cyprus. Methods: We evaluated approximately 10000
bibliographic sources to create a comprehensive list of
previously proposed syntaxonomic units. These units were
evaluated by experts for their floristic and ecological
distinctness, clarity of geographic distribution and compliance
with the nomenclature code. Accepted units were compiled into
three systems of classes, orders and alliances
(EuroVegChecklist, EVC) for communities dominated by vascular
plants (EVC1), bryophytes and lichens (EVC2) and algae (EVC3).
Results: EVC1 includes 109 classes, 300 orders and 1108
alliances; EVC2 includes 27 classes, 53 orders and 137
alliances, and EVC3 includes 13 classes, 24 orders and 53
alliances. In total 13448 taxa were assigned as indicator
species to classes of EVC1, 2087 to classes of EVC2 and 368 to
classes of EVC3. Accepted syntaxonomic concepts are summarized
in a series of appendices, and detailed information on each is
accessible through the software tool EuroVegBrowser.
Conclusions: This paper features the first comprehensive and
critical account of European syntaxa and synthesizes more than
100 yr of classification effort by European phytosociologists.
It aims to document and stabilize the concepts and nomenclature
of syntaxa for practical uses, such as calibration of habitat
classification used by the European Union, standardization of
terminology for environmental assessment, management and
conservation of nature areas, landscape planning and education.
The presented classification systems provide a baseline for
future development and revision of European syntaxonomy.
817 citations
"Bioclimates of Italy" refers background in this paper
...Indeed, there are many Submediterranean syntaxa that have been described as part of the Italian Vegetation Prodrome (Biondi, Allegrezza, 2014 et al., 2014; Biondi, Blasi et al., 2014; Biondi, Casavecchia, Pesaresi, Gangale, & Uzunov, 2014) and have been adopted at the continental level in the European Vegetation Prodrome (Mucina et al., 2016)....
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...…that have been described as part of the Italian Vegetation Prodrome (Biondi, Allegrezza, 2014 et al., 2014; Biondi, Blasi et al., 2014; Biondi, Casavecchia, Pesaresi, Gangale, & Uzunov, 2014) and have been adopted at the continental level in the European Vegetation Prodrome (Mucina et al., 2016)....
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