Trophic interactions, ecosystem structure and function in the southern Yellow Sea

The southem Yellow Sea is an important fishing ground, providing abundant fishery resources. However, overfishing and climate change have caused a decline in the resource and damaged the ecosystem. We developed an ecosystem model to analyze the trophic interactions and ecosystem structure and function to guide sustainable development of the ecosystem. Atrophic mass-balance model of the southern Yellow Sea during 2000-2001 was constructed using Ecopath with Ecosim software. We defined 22 important functional groups and studied their diet composition. The trophic levels of fish, shrimp, crabs, and cephalopods were between 2.78 and 4.39, and the mean trophic level of the fisheries was 3.24. The trophic flows within the food web occurred primarily in the lower trophic levels. The mean trophic transfer efficiency was 8.1%, of which 7.1% was from primary producers and 9.3% was from detritus within the ecosystem. The transfer efficiency between trophic levels II to III to IV to V to 〉V was 5.0%, 5.7%, 18.5%, and 19.7%-20.4%, respectively. Of the total flow, phytoplankton contributed 61% and detritus contributed 39%. Fishing is defined as a top predator within the ecosystem, and has a negative impact on most commercial species. Moreover, the ecosystem had a high gross efficiency of the fishery and a high value of primary production required to sustain the fishery. Together, our data suggest there is high fishing pressure in the southern Yellow Sea. Based on analysis of Odum＇s ecological parameters, this ecosystem was at an immature stage. Our results provide some insights into the structure and development of this ecosystem.

Digital Identification of Ecosystem Structure in the FIrtIna Valley of the Kakar Mountains in the Rize City of Turkey

Identifying the structure of protected mountain ecosystems is an important task for understanding conservation sustainability. The study area, the Firtina Valley, located in the Rize City on the Eastern Blacksea Coast, is one of the biological hotspots and a National Park of Turkey. In order to identify the structure of mountain ecosystems, we generated a GIS database for the main environmental parameters of the study area, including elevation,slope and aspect layers for topographic structure, 10year mean values of Normalized Difference Vegetation Index(NDVI), data for vegetation structure, annual mean temperature and precipitation layers for climatic structure, main soil groups for soil structure and stream flow accumulation, stream flow length and stream order layers for hydrological structure.To identify the complex relations among environmental factors in the study area a data reduction method is applied with Principal Component Analysis(PCA). PCA is performed using data of 16 layers from Geographical Information Systems(GIS). PCA analysis reduced 16 dimensions into 5 dimensions containing 75% of the variation in all data. It is also revealed that the topographic structure, mainly altitude, dominates the ecosystems of the Firtina Valley, but it should be considered that the interactions of environmental factors in an ecosystem dynamics are very complex. The ecosystem structure is determined by the environmental factors direct or indirect effects on energy regulation of an ecosystem. Therefore the relationship between topographic elements and other abiotic-biotic elements in the Firtina Valley are important for environmental assessment and sustainability of a protected area, and these effects are explained in this study.

Earth Ecosystem Theory: Ⅲ Structure and Interface

By applying the segmentation and composition principles of ecosystem,the structure and interface of earth ecosystem are fully elaborated,and corresponding model diagrams are established to display its composition and interconversion. The research finds that earth ecosystem includes three sub-ecosystems： terrestrial ecosystem,marine ecosystem and atmospheric ecosystem. The impact sequence of sub-ecosystems on earth ecosystem is atmospheric ecosystem 〉 marine ecosystem 〉 terrestrial ecosystem. Based on the segmentation and composition principles of ecosystem and the application of earth ecosystem structure and interface,we give new explanations to Taoism and Taiji with the eight diagrams,which contributes to theoretical research of natural science.

Evaluation of restoration success in arid rangelands of Iran based on the variation of ecosystem services

The plantation of non-native species is one of the most expensive ecological restoration measures in arid and semi-arid areas,while its impacts on local communities are largely ignored.This study assessed the rate of change and the dynamic degree of the economic values of ecosystem services related to local conservation(water yield,stocking rate and aesthetic value)and preserving the future(carbon sequestration,soil protection,soil stability and habitat provision)to determine the restoration success of the plantation of non-native species Haloxylon ammodendron(C.A.Mey.)Bunge ex Fenzl(15-and 30-year-old)in parts of arid rangelands of Bardsir region,Kerman Province,Iran.We investigated the impacts of the two plantations on the seven ecosystem services and ecosystem structures(horizontal and vertical structures,vegetation composition and species diversity)based on field sampling and measurements at four sampling sites(i.e.,control,degraded,and 15-and 30-year-old plantation sites)in spring and summer of 2022.The restoration success of the plantation of non-native species was then examined by assessing the rate of change and the dynamic degree of the total economic value of all ecosystem services as well as the rate of change and the dynamic degree of the economic values of ecosystem services for the two groups(local conservation and preserving the future).Although the plantation of non-native species H.ammodendron enormously improved the vertical and horizontal structures of ecosystems,it failed to increase species diversity and richness fully.Further,despite the plantation of non-native species H.ammodendron had significantly increased the economic values of all ecosystem services,it was only quite successful in restoring carbon sequestration.Path analysis showed that plantation age had a significant impact on restoration success directly and indirectly(through changing ecosystem structures and services).The dynamic degree of the economic values of ecosystem services related to local conservation and preserving the future at the 15-and 30-year-old plantation sites indicated that the two plantations successfully restored the ecosystem services related to preserving the future.The presented method can help managers select the best restoration practices and predict their ecological-social success,especially for the plantation of high-risk non-native species in arid and semi-arid areas.

Carbon sink response of terrestrial vegetation ecosystems in the Yangtze River Delta and its driving mechanism

The carbon cycle of terrestrial ecosystems is influenced by global climate change and human activities.Using remote sensing data and land cover products,the spatio-temporal variation characteristics and trends of NEP in the Yangtze River Delta from 2000 to 2020 were analyzed based on the soil respiration model.The driving influences of ecosystem structure evolution,temperature,rainfall,and human activities on NEP were studied.The results show that the NEP shows an overall distribution pattern of high in the southeast and low in the northwest.The area of carbon sinks is larger than that of the carbon sources.NEP spatial heterogeneity is significant.NEP change trend is basically unchanged or significantly better.The future change trend in most areas will be continuous decrease.Compared with temperature,NEP are more sensitive to precipitation.The positive influence of human activities on NEP is mainly observed in north-central Anhui and northern Jiangsu coastal areas,while the negative influence is mainly found in highly urbanized areas.In the process of ecosystem structure,the contribution of unchanged areas to NEP change is greater than that of changed areas.

The Ecosystem Service Function of Shandong Xiajin Yellow River Ancient Mulberry Trees System and Its Effect on Regional Ecosystem

The Shandong Xiajin Yellow River Ancient Mulberry Trees System is a model of desertification control in the floor area in the Luxibei Plain,and of sustainable development.The current study about ancient mulberry trees in Xiajin county is mainly qualitative representation,lack of quantitative research.In addition,the relevant important ecological functional assessment should not only confine to quantitative assessment which illustrate the current condition,but also analyze the eco-service changes,derived from ecosystem structure develop,from the time dimension.Based on quantitative eco-service assessment of the ancient mulberry tree group,this paper intend to conduct a comprehensive analysis of ecological functions of ancient mulberry group focuses on the perspective of system structure and function evolution.Quantitative evaluation results show that the system has significant eco-efficiency in water conservation,reducing sediment loss,adjust atmosphere,etc.On timescale,thanks to mulberry cultivation,ecosystem structure and services have also undergone a corresponding change.In ecosystem structure：Planting pioneer trees such as mulberries and other species which can tolerate hostile site conditions,improves the micro-environment.This makes it possible for other crops to grow.The mixed forests and the combination of forestry and agriculture protect biodiversity.What＇s more,they make the structure of the ecosystems more robust,giving full play to their functions.In terms of ecosystem services：ecosystem services of Xiajin Yellow River Ancient Mulberry Trees have shown diversified development.And its main function has transferred from supply products to leisure and entertainment functions.

Scaling Notebooks as Re-configurable Cloud Workflows

Literate computing environments,such as the Jupyter(i.e.,Jupyter Notebooks,JupyterLab,and JupyterHub),have been widely used in scientific studies;they allow users to interactively develop scientific code,test algorithms,and describe the scientific narratives of the experiments in an integrated document.To scale up scientific analyses,many implemented Jupyter environment architectures encapsulate the whole Jupyter notebooks as reproducible units and autoscale them on dedicated remote infrastructures(e.g.,highperformance computing and cloud computing environments).The existing solutions are stl limited in many ways,e.g.,1)the workflow(or pipeline)is implicit in a notebook,and some steps can be generically used by different code and executed in parallel,but because of the tight cell structure,all steps in the Jupyter notebook have to be executed sequentially and lack of the flexibility of reusing the core code fragments,and 2)there are performance bottlenecks that need to improve the parallelism and scalability when handling extensive input data and complex computation.In this work,we focus on how to manage the workflow in a notebook seamlessly.We 1)encapsulate the reusable cells as RESTful services and containerize them as portal components,2)provide a composition tool for describing workflow logic of those reusable components,and 3)automate the execution on remote cloud infrastructure.Empirically,we validate the solution's usability via a use case from the Ecology and Earth Science domain,illustrating the processing of massive Light Detection and Ranging(LiDAR)data.The demonstration and analysis show that our method is feasible,but that it needs further improvement,especially on integrating distributed workflow scheduling,automatic deployment,and execution to develop as a mature approach.