Assessing climate-relevant vulnerability of the Indian Himalayan Region (IHR): a district-level analysis

Natural Hazards - Indian Himalayan Region (IHR) is highly vulnerable to climate change and its variability. The present study employs an indicator-based approach to assess...     

Time series analyses of hydrological parameter variations and their correlations at a coastal area in Busan,South Korea

Monitoring and time-series analysis of the hydrological parameters electrical conductivity (EC), water pressure, precipitation and tide were carried out, to understand the characteristics of the parameter variations and their correlations at a coastal area in Busan, South Korea. The monitoring data were collected at a sharp interface between freshwater and saline water at the depth of 25 m below ground. Two well-logging profiles showed that seawater intrusion has largely expanded (progressed inland), and has greatly affected the groundwater quality in a coastal aquifer of tuffaceous sedimentary rock over a 9-year period. According to the time series analyses, the periodograms of the hydrological parameters present very similar trends to the power spectral densities (PSD) of the hydrological parameters. Autocorrelation functions (ACF) and partial autocorrelation functions (PACF) of the hydrological parameters were produced to evaluate their self-correlations. The ACFs of all hydrologic parameters showed very good correlation over the entire time lag, but the PACF revealed that the correlations were good only at time lag 1. Crosscorrelation functions (CCF) were used to evaluate the correlations between the hydrological parameters and the characteristics of seawater intrusion in the coastal aquifer system. The CCFs showed that EC had a close relationship with water pressure and precipitation rather than tide. The CCFs of water pressure with tide and precipitation were in inverse proportion, and the CCF of water pressure with precipitation was larger than that with tide.     

Experimental study of the interspecific competition between two sibling marine herbivorous rotifers in relation to food availability and initial population density

Our laboratory study concerns the competitive interaction between two marine rotifer species Brachionus plicatilis and Brachionus rotundiformis at five algal (Nannochloropsis salina) concentrations (0.4×10⁶ to 32.4×10⁶ cells/ml) and at four initial inoculation densities (numerically, 100% B. plicatilis; 75% B. plicatilis and 25% B. rotundiformis, 50% each of the two species; 25% B. plicatilis and 75% B. rotundiformis and 100% B. rotundiformis. The initial biomass varied as 0.33 and 0.22 μg/ml for B. plicatilis and B. rotundiformis respectively. Experiments were performed at (25±1)℃. Population densities were enumerated and the medium was changed daily up to 8 d in the experiment. At the lowest food level tested, B. rotundiformis formed superior competitor than B. plicatilis, regardless of starting inoculation density. Generally when the food concentrations increased, B. plicatilis showed a greater increase in biomass than B. rotundiformis. B. rotundiformis formed the largest in population growth, regardless of increasing food concentrations. When grown alone, B. plicatilis reached peak abundances of (1.311 5±0.028) and (137.5±0.014) μg/ml at low and high food densities respectively. The corresponding values of B. rotundiformis were 0.724 5±0.016 and 18.15±0.021. The adverse effects of B. rotundiformis on the peak abundances of B. plicatilis were observed at the lowest food level and higher initial density. The rate of population growth in controls varied from (0.792±0.162) to (1.482±0.132) μm/d for B. plicatilis and (0.445±0.041) to (0.856±0.012) μm/d for B. rotundiformis, depending on food level. When both species were introduced together, low food levels favoured higher abundance of B. rotundiformis than B. plicatilis, suggesting that increased population density of the smaller B. rotundiformis was more successfull than larger B. plicatilis in brackish waters. Our work reveals that available food (type and quantity) along with starting inoculation density had significant effect on the interspecific competition between marine sibling rotifer species in zooplankton community structure.