Invasive termites are destructive insect pests that cause billions of dollars in property damage every year. Termite species can be transported overseas by maritime vessels. However, only if the climatic conditions are suitable will the introduced species flourish. Models predicting the areas of infestation following initial introduction of an invasive species could help regulatory agencies develop successful early detection, quarantine, or eradication efforts. At present, no model has been developed to estimate the geographic spread of a termite infestation from a set of surveyed locations. In the current study, we used actual field data as a starting point, and relevant information on termite species to develop a spatially-explicit stochastic individual-based simulation to predict areas potentially infested by an invasive termite, Nasutitermes corniger (Motschulsky), in Dania Beach, FL. The Monte Carlo technique is used to assess outcome uncertainty. A set of model realizations describing potential areas of infestation were considered in a sensitivity analysis, which showed that the model results had greatest sensitivity to number of alates released from nest, alate survival, maximum pheromone attraction distance between heterosexual pairs, and mean flight distance. Results showed that the areas predicted as infested in all simulation runs of a baseline model cover the spatial extent of all locations recently discovered. The model presented in this study could be applied to any invasive termite species after proper calibration of parameters. The simulation herein can be used by regulatory authorities to define most probable quarantine and survey zones.
Abstract:The type of data an individual contributor adds to OpenStreetMap (OSM) varies by region. The local knowledge of a data contributor allows for the collection and editing of detailed features such as small trails, park benches or fire hydrants, as well as adding attribute information that can only be accessed locally. As opposed to this, satellite imagery that is provided as background images in OSM data editors, such as ID, Potlatch or JOSM, facilitates the contribution of less detailed data through on-screen digitizing, oftentimes for areas the contributor is less familiar with. Knowing whether an area is part of a contributor's home region or not can therefore be a useful predictor of OSM data quality for a geographic region. This research explores the editing history of nodes and ways for 13 highly active OSM members within a two-tiered clustering process to delineate an individual mapper's home region from remotely mapped areas. The findings are evaluated against those found with a previously introduced method which determines a contributor's home region solely based on spatial clustering of created nodes. The comparison shows that both methods are able to delineate similar home regions for the 13 contributors with some differences.
ABSTRACT. Telecoupling is a novel interdisciplinary umbrella concept that enables natural and social scientists to understand and generate information for managing how humans and nature can sustainably coexist worldwide. The telecoupling framework gains its distinction by enabling researchers to dive deeply into systemic complexities, even if systems are far away from each other. It is also ambitious in its aim to meet challenges unencumbered by disciplines. To understand the forces affecting sustainability across local to global scales, it is essential to build a comprehensive set of spatially explicit tools for describing and quantifying multiple reciprocal socioeconomic and environmental interactions over distances. We introduce the Telecoupling Toolbox, the first set of tools developed to map and identify the five major interrelated components of the telecoupling framework: systems, flows, agents, causes, and effects. The modular design of the toolbox allows the integration of existing tools and software to assess synergies and trade-offs associated with policies and other local to global interventions. We show applications of the toolbox by using two representative telecoupling case studies that address a variety of socioeconomic and environmental issues. The results suggest that the toolbox can systematically map and quantify multiple telecouplings under various contexts while providing users with an easy-to-use interface. It is our hope that the innovative, free, and open-source toolbox can provide a useful platform to address globally important issues, such as land use and land cover change, species invasion, migration, flows of ecosystem services, and trade of goods and products.
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