Receiving coastal waters and estuaries are among the most nutrient-enriched environments on earth, and one of the symptoms of the resulting eutrophication is the proliferation of opportunistic, fast-growing marine seaweeds. Here, we used a widespread macroalga often involved in blooms, Ulva spp., to investigate how supply of nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P), the two main potential growth-limiting nutrients, influence macroalgal growth in temperate and tropical coastal waters ranging from low- to high-nutrient supplies. We carried out N and P enrichment field experiments on Ulva spp. in seven coastal systems, with one of these systems represented by three different subestuaries, for a total of nine sites. We showed that rate of growth of Ulva spp. was directly correlated to annual dissolved inorganic nitrogen (DIN) concentrations, where growth increased with increasing DIN concentration. Internal N pools of macroalgal fronds were also linked to increased DIN supply, and algal growth rates were tightly coupled to these internal N pools. The increases in DIN appeared to be related to greater inputs of wastewater to these coastal waters as indicated by high δ15N signatures of the algae as DIN increased. N and P enrichment experiments showed that rate of macroalgal growth was controlled by supply of DIN where ambient DIN concentrations were low, and by P where DIN concentrations were higher, regardless of latitude or geographic setting. These results suggest that understanding the basis for macroalgal blooms, and management of these harmful phenomena, will require information as to nutrient sources, and actions to reduce supply of N and P in coastal waters concerned.
Recreational fisheries in Brazil have increased in importance and attracted many foreign recreational fishers. The objectives of this article were to summarise the available data on Brazilian recreational fisheries, to discuss some of their features and to analyse how they are performing in different regions compared with international trends. A review of published and unpublished sources together with data from recreational fishing licences was used. The participation rate was low (0.9%). Overall, there was a high diversity of fish species, with the following species/group of species repeatedly reported: Menticirrhus spp., Centropomus spp., Cynoscion spp., and Micropogonias furnieri (marine/estuarine water), and Cichla spp., Hoplias malabaricus, and Piaractus mesopotamicus, together with the introduced Oreochromis niloticus and Coptodon rendalli (fresh water). The north‐eastern region differs from the other regions: fishing occurs mostly in marine waters and fishers acquire mainly shore‐based licences, have minimum fishing expenditures and rarely release fishes. There is no estimate of the total harvest or economic value. Conflicts include catch‐and‐release‐oriented freshwater and marine recreational fishers vs consumption‐oriented coastal fishers, tournament participants vs non‐participants, commercial fishers and other leisure activities, pollution, ports, species introductions and translocations, protected areas, and federal and state laws. Cases of smooth shifts from artisanal to recreational fishing were detected, possibly associated with changes in the societal relationship with natural resources.
Invasion by alien species is a worldwide phenomenon with negative consequences at both natural and production areas. Acacia longifolia is an invasive shrub/small tree well known for its negative ecological impacts in several places around the world. The recent introduction of a biocontrol agent (Trichilogaster acaciaelongifoliae), an Australian bud-galling wasp which decreases flowering of A. longifolia, in Portugal, demands the development of a cost-efficient method to monitor its establishment. We tested how unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) can be used to map A. longifolia flowering. Our core assumption is as the population of the biocontrol agent increases, its impacts on the reduction of A. longifolia flowering will be increasingly visible. Additionally, we tested if there is a simple linear correlation between the number of flowers of A. longifolia counted in field and the area covered by flowers in the UAV imagery. UAV imagery was acquired over seven coastal areas including frontal dunes, interior sand dunes and pine forests considering two phenological stages: peak and off-peak flowering season. The number of flowers of A. longifolia was counted, in a minimum of 60 1 m2 quadrats per study area. For each study area, flower presence/absence maps were obtained using supervised Random Forest. The correlation between the number of flowers and the area covered by flowering plants could then be tested. The flowering of A. longifolia was mapped using UAV mounted with RGB and CIR Cannon IXUS/ELPH cameras (Overall Accuracy > 0.96; Cohen’s Kappa > 0.85) varying according to habitat type and flowering season. The correlation between the number of flowers counted and the area covered by flowering was weak (r2 between 0.0134 and 0.156). This is probably explained, at least partially, by the high variability of A. longifolia in what regards flowering morphology and distribution. The very high accuracy of our approach to map A. longifolia flowering proved to be cost efficient and replicable, showing great potential for detecting the future decrease in flowering promoted by the biocontrol agent. The attempt to provide a low-cost method to estimate A. longifolia flower productivity using UAV failed, but it provided valuable insights on the future steps.
For the separation of the signals for multiple users in the vector broadcast channel (BC), channel state information (CSI) is necessary at the transmitter. Since the transmitter has no access to this information in many cases, the CSI must be fed back from the receivers to the transmitter. Before the feedback, the receivers estimate the CSI and apply a rank reduction possible due to the channel correlations. We propose a joint optimization of the estimation, the rank reduction, and the codebook used for the feedback. Interestingly, the estimator and the rank reduction resulting from this monolithic formulation are independent of the used codebook which can be computed with the generalized Lloyd algorithm. Applying the proposed feedback design to a system with multi-user precoding based on CSI feedback shows the clear superiority of the optimized codebook compared to previous designs.
We consider the robust precoder design for Multi-User Multiple Input Single Output (MU-MISO) systems, where the Channel State Information (CSI) is fed back from the single antenna receivers to the centralized transmitter equipped with multiple antennas. We propose to compress the feedback data by projecting the channel estimates onto a vector basis, known at the receivers and the transmitter, and quantizing the resulting coefficients. The channel estimator and the basis for the rank reduction are jointly optimized by minimizing the Mean Square Error (MSE).Expressions for the conditional mean and the conditional covariance of the channel are derived which are necessary for the robust precoder design. These expressions take into account the following sources of error: channel estimation, truncation for rank reduction, quantization, and feedback channel delay. Three well-known precoder types, namely Linear Precoding (LP), Vector Precoding (VP), and Tomlinson-Harashima Precoding (THP), are designed based on the expectation of the MSE conditioned on the fed-back CSI. Our results show that robust precoding based on fedback CSI clearly outperforms conventional precoding designs which do not take into account the errors in the CSI.Additionally, we observe that a robust design is especially crucial for systems employing non-linear precoding with scarce feedback rate. Index TermsFeedback channel, Bayesian approach, imperfect CSI, robust precoding. I. INTRODUCTIONWe consider a MU-MISO system, i.e. a multiple antennas transmitter and several single-antenna receivers, since the centralized access point in a cellular system admits more complexity and cost than the mobiles. A MU-MISO system is a prominent example of a vector broadcast channel [1]. Recently, it has been shown that the Dirty Paper
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