Suchergebnisse

International audience ; In the soil thematic strategy of the European Union Commission, a soil organic carbon content of 2% is indicated as a threshold below which a reduction in soil chemical, biological and physical fertility, and increase in erosion can be observed. Composting of organic matter 'exogenous' to soil (such as from municipalities, industries and agriculture sources) is recommended as an effective way to ensure the return of biomass to soil and the return of the soil organic matter losses. The composting of municipal solid wastes is seen as a strategy to divert organic waste materials from landfills. A municipal source-separated solid waste compost was used in a study carried out during 2003-2006 in Southern Italy. An annual tomato-snap bean-lettuce rotation was planted on a sandy loam soil with 26 g kg−1 organic carbon under greenhouse conditions. Different rates of compost (15-30-45 t ha−1 on a dry weight basis) and combinations of compost at a rate of 15 t ha−1 with reduced doses of mineral N fertilizer (1/2 or 1/4 of optimal supply) were compared with an untreated control and a N, P, K fertilized control. We found that: (1) increasing compost rates produced increasing positive soil organic carbon balances. The C conversion efficiency was 23 and 36% with 15 and 30 t ha−1, respectively, but declined to 28% with the highest rate of compost. Indeed, the higher the compost amounts applied, the higher the soil organic carbon losses. (2) Under tunnel-greenhouse conditions, all the fertilization strategies, except compost at a rate of 15 t ha−1, increased soil nitrate concentrations by up 100 to 400 mg kg−1 dry weight of soil, particularly in the spring-summer seasons. In the same period, nitrate contents in the untreated control reached 100 mg kg−1. (3) The average yield of marketable tomato for the four-year period was 114 t ha−1 and did not vary significantly among treatments. No differences in snap bean yields were detected among the fertilization treatments. In lettuce cultivation, however, 30 ...

Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas ; Agencia Nacional de Promoción Científica y Tecnológica ; Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas: CONICET-PIP 112-201501-0598 ; Agencia Nacional de Promoción Científica y Tecnológica: FONCyT-PICT 2015-2281 ; Psittaciformes (parrots, cockatoos) are among the most endangered birds, with 31% of Neotropical species under threat. The drivers of this situation appear to be manifold and mainly of anthropogenic origin. However, this assessment is based on the last extensive consultation about the conservation situation of parrots carried out in the 1990s. Given the rapid development of anthropogenic threats, updated data are needed to strategize conservation actions. Using a population approach, we addressed this need through a wide-ranging consultation involving biologists, wildlife managers, government agencies and non-governmental conservation organizations. We gathered up-to-date information on threats affecting 192 populations of 96 Neotropical parrot species across 21 countries. Moreover, we investigated associations among current threats and population trends. Many populations were affected by multiple threats. Agriculture, Capture for the Pet Trade, Logging, each of them affected > 55% of the populations, suggesting a higher degree of risk than previously thought. In contrast to previous studies at the species level, our study showed that the threat most closely associated with decreasing population trends is now Capture for the local Pet Trade. Other threats associated with decreasing populations include Small-holder Farming, Rural Population Pressure, Nest Destruction by Poachers, Agro-industry Grazing, Small-holder Grazing, and Capture for the international Pet Trade. Conservation actions have been implemented on < 20% of populations. Our results highlight the importance of a population-level approach in revealing the extent of threats to wild populations. It is critical to increase the scope of conservation actions to reduce the capture of wild parrots for pets.

Planck Collaboration. ; The characterization of the Galactic foregrounds has been shown to be the main obstacle in thechallenging quest to detect primordial B-modes in the polarized microwave sky. We make use of the Planck-HFI 2015 data release at high frequencies to place new constraints on the properties of the polarized thermal dust emission at high Galactic latitudes. Here, we specifically study the spatial variability of the dust polarized spectral energy distribution (SED), and its potential impact on the determination of the tensor-to-scalar ratio, r. We use the correlation ratio of the angular power spectra between the 217 and 353 GHz channels as a tracer of these potential variations, computed on different high Galactic latitude regions, ranging from 80% to 20% of the sky. The new insight from Planck data is a departure of the correlation ratio from unity that cannot be attributed to a spurious decorrelation due to the cosmic microwave background, instrumental noise, or instrumental systematics. The effect is marginally detected on each region, but the statistical combination of all the regions gives more than 99% confidence for this variation in polarized dust properties. In addition, we show that the decorrelation increases when there is a decrease in the mean column density of the region of the sky being considered, and we propose a simple power-law empirical model for this dependence, which matches what is seen in the Planck data. We explore the effect that this measured decorrelation has on simulations of the BICEP2-Keck Array/Planck analysis and show that the 2015 constraints from these data still allow a decorrelation between the dust at 150 and 353 GHz that is compatible with our measured value. Finally, using simplified models, we show that either spatial variation of the dust SED or of the dust polarization angle are able to produce decorrelations between 217 and 353 GHz data similar to the values we observe in the data. ; The Planck Collaboration acknowledges the support of: ESA; CNES, and CNRS/INSU-IN2P3-INP (France); ASI, CNR, and INAF (Italy); NASA and DoE (USA); STFC and UKSA (UK); CSIC, MINECO, J.A., and RES (Spain); Tekes, AoF, and CSC (Finland); DLR and MPG (Germany); CSA (Canada); DTU Space (Denmark); SER/SSO (Switzerland); RCN (Norway); SFI (Ireland); FCT/MCTES (Portugal); ERC and PRACE (EU). The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) / ERC grant agreement No. 267934. ; Peer Reviewed

ESA ; CNES (France) ; CNRS/INSU-IN2P3-INP (France) ; ASI (Italy) ; CNR (Italy) ; INAF (Italy) ; NASA (USA) ; DoE (USA) ; STFC (UK) ; UKSA (UK) ; CSIC (Spain) ; MINECO (Spain) ; JA (Spain) ; RES (Spain) ; Tekes (Finland) ; AoF (Finland) ; CSC (Finland) ; DLR (Germany) ; MPG (Germany) ; CSA (Canada) ; DTU Space (Denmark) ; SER/SSO (Switzerland) ; RCN (Norway) ; SFI (Ireland) ; FCT/MCTES (Portugal) ; ERC (EU) ; PRACE (EU) ; UK BIS NEI grants ; Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy ; Canada Foundation for Innovation under Compute Canada ; Government of Ontario ; University of Toronto ; Science and Technology Facilities Council ; Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy: DE-AC02-05CH11231 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/L000768/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/L000652/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/J005673/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/M00418X/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/L000393/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/M007065/1 ; Science and Technology Facilities Council: ST/K00333X/1 ; The Planck full mission cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature and E-mode polarization maps are analysed to obtain constraints on primordial non-Gaussianity (NG). Using three classes of optimal bispectrum estimators - separable template-fitting (KSW), binned, and modal we obtain consistent values for the primordial local, equilateral, and orthogonal bispectrum amplitudes, quoting as our final result from temperature alone f(NL)(local) = 2.5 +/- 5.7, f(NL)(equil) = 16 +/- 70, and f(NL)(ortho) = 34 +/- 33 (68% CL, statistical). Combining temperature and polarization data we obtain f(NL)(local) = 0.8 +/- 5.0, f(NL)(equil) = 4 +/- 43, and f(NL)(ortho) = 26 +/- 21 (68% CL, statistical). The results are based on comprehensive cross-validation of these estimators on Gaussian and non-Gaussian simulations, are stable across component separation techniques, pass an extensive suite of tests, and are consistent with estimators based on measuring the Minkowski functionals of the CMB. The effect of time-domain de-glitching systematics on the bispectrum is negligible. In spite of these test outcomes we conservatively label the results including polarization data as preliminary, owing to a known mismatch of the noise model in simulations and the data. Beyond estimates of individual shape amplitudes, we present model-independent, three-dimensional reconstructions of the Planck CMB bispectrum and derive constraints on early universe scenarios that generate primordial NG, including general single-field models of inflation, axion inflation, initial state modifications, models producing parity-violating tensor bispectra, and directionally dependent vector models. We present a wide survey of scale-dependent feature and resonance models, accounting for the look elsewhere effect in estimating the statistical significance of features. We also look for isocurvature NG, and find no signal, but we obtain constraints that improve significantly with the inclusion of polarization. The primordial trispectrum amplitude in the local model is constrained to be g(NL)(local) = (9.0 +/- 7.7) x 10(4) (68% CL statistical), and we perform an analysis of trispectrum shapes beyond the local case. The global picture that emerges is one of consistency with the premises of the Lambda CDM cosmology, namely that the structure we observe today was sourced by adiabatic, passive, Gaussian, and primordial seed perturbations.