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ForestGEO is a network of scientists and long-term forest dynamics plots (FDPs) spanning the Earth's major forest types. ForestGEO's mission is to advance understanding of the diversity and dynamics of forests and to strengthen global capacity for forest science research. ForestGEO is unique among forest plot networks in its large-scale plot dimensions, censusing of all stems ≥1 cm in diameter, inclusion of tropical, temperate and boreal forests, and investigation of additional biotic (e.g., arthropods) and abiotic (e.g., soils) drivers, which together provide a holistic view of forest functioning. The 71 FDPs in 27 countries include approximately 7.33 million living trees and about 12,000 species, representing 20% of the world's known tree diversity. With >1300 published papers, ForestGEO researchers have made significant contributions in two fundamental areas: species coexistence and diversity, and ecosystem functioning. Specifically, defining the major biotic and abiotic controls on the distribution and coexistence of species and functional types and on variation in species' demography has led to improved understanding of how the multiple dimensions of forest diversity are structured across space and time and how this diversity relates to the processes controlling the role of forests in the Earth system. Nevertheless, knowledge gaps remain that impede our ability to predict how forest diversity and function will respond to climate change and other stressors. Meeting these global research challenges requires major advances in standardizing taxonomy of tropical species, resolving the main drivers of forest dynamics, and integrating plotbased ground and remote sensing observations to scale up estimates of forest diversity and function, coupled with improved predictive models. However, they cannot be met without greater financial commitment to sustain the long-term research of ForestGEO and other forest plot networks, greatly expanded scientific capacity across the world's forested nations, and increased collaboration and integration among research networks and disciplines addressing forest science.

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Abstract:The melt flow, level fluctuation, temperature field, and solidification behavior coupled with electromagnetic stirring (EMS) effects in the continuous casting mold region of U71Mn steel bloom were numerically analyzed by commercial computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software named ANSYS FLUENT. The effects of submerged entry nozzle (SEN) structures and the installation methods for optimized four-port SEN on the flow pattern, level fluctuation, heat transfer and initial solidification behavior in a bloom mold loaded with EMS were investigated. The aim is to propose a better SEN condition for the big bloom casting of high railway steel. The water simulation experiments were conducted to show the flow characteristics under different SEN conditions and verify the numerical model of flow pattern. The experimental and numerical simulation results showed that the optimized four-port SEN with diagonal installation cannot only improve the flow pattern of the molten steel by alleviating the level fluctuation and reducing the impact pressure to the wall. It is also beneficial for temperature variation at both bloom surface and corner, as well as the local solidified shell thinning phenomena due to the elimination of impingement effect.

The bacterial, acidobacterial, and fungal communities in wetlands can undergo perturbations by various human activities, such as disturbances caused by cultivation and during the process of system restoration. In this study, we investigated the relationships between the composition of the soil bacterial, acidobacterial, and fungal communities and the transformation of wetlands by human activities in the Sanjiang Plain. Soil microbial communities were assessed in wetland soils collected from pristine marsh, neighboring cropland (wetland turned into arable land), and land that had been reforested with Larix gmelinii. The alpha-diversities of bacteria, Acidobacteria, and fungi were affected by land-use change and were highest in the arable land and lowest in the wetland soils. The soil microbial community structures were also altered with changing land-use. Canonical correlation analyses showed that beta-diversity was significantly affected by soil pH, available phosphorus, soil nitrogen, and total organic carbon. Overall, our results showed that the agricultural cultivation of wetlands changes the available soil carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus pools, thereby influencing the bacterial, acidobacterial, and fungal diversity and community structure. Once the soil microbial community has been altered by human activity, it might be difficult to restore it to its original state. These findings highlight the importance of effectively maintaining the diversity of soil bacterial, Acidobacterial, and fungal communities despite land use change in order to sustain a microbial community diversity and ecosystem function.

Large-area and uniform quasi-aligned titanium oxide (TiO2) nanowire arrays have been produced in situ on a titanium (Ti) foil by a simple high-temperature oxidation process with acetone as the oxidant. The products are characterized by X-ray diffraction, electron microscopy, energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, and Raman spectroscopy. The TiO2 nanowires have a rutile single-crystalline structure. The typical diameters range from 20 to 50 nm and lengths are up to a few micrometers. Since the Ti foil serves as both the source of Ti and substrate, direct synthesis and assembly of TiO2 nanowire arrays on a conductive Ti substrate is accomplished in a single step. Consequently, good intrinsic adhesion and electrical contact are achieved naturally between the nanowires and metal substrate. Such TiO2 nanowire arrays exhibit good field emission properties with a low turn-on field of 4.1 V/microm boding well for applications in vacuum microelectronics.