Pecologix Political Ecology Blotter

Acoustic surveys of New Zealand deep-water seamounts often show fish aggregations up to 150 m high on the summit. Although bottom trawls on the seamount slopes catch predominantly orange roughy (Hoplostethus atlanticus), species composition in the midwater plumes is extremely uncertain. In June 2010, moored underwater video cameras were deployed on the summit of the [...]

Nitrate is naturally found within the environment as part of the nitrogen cycle. However, anthropogenic inputs have greatly increased nitrate loads within ground and surface waters. This has had a severe impact on aquatic ecosystems and has given rise to health considerations in humans and livestock. Therefore, the identification of nitrate sources is important in [...]

This study addresses a fish species discrimination method based on normalised elliptic Fourier descriptors applied to acoustic shadows derived by Dual-frequency Identification Sonar (DIDSON). Acoustic shadows of templates (20, 30, 40 and 50 cm) and live fish of four species [bream, Abramis brama (L.); barbel, Barbus barbus (L.); chub, Leuciscus cephalus (L.); and trout, Salmo [...]

Mega cities, the largest category of urban agglomerations, attract considerable attention because of their population size, economic, socio-cultural, environmental and political influence and geographical complexity. Until 1975 there were just three mega cities in the world: New York, Tokyo and Mexico City — today there are 27 cities having more than the defined 10 million inhabitants. [...]

Measles epidemics in West Africa cause a significant proportion of vaccine-preventable childhood mortality. Epidemics are strongly seasonal, but the drivers of these fluctuations are poorly understood, which limits the predictability of outbreaks and the dynamic response to immunization. We show that measles seasonality can be explained by spatiotemporal changes in population density, which we measure [...]

In situ data are widely used to provide a ground truth for the calibration and validation of satellite sea-surface temperature (SST) retrievals. They are also used to monitor long-term changes in the climate. For these applications, and others, it is necessary to understand the uncertainties in the data. Near-coincident SST observations from the Advanced Along-Track [...]

An ecologist has developed a new space-based system to track animals too small to be monitored globally with current instruments. Next month, he and his colleagues will begin testing whether a new animal tag can eventually communicate with the International Space Station. He has also been promised $2.3 million to start to set up an [...]