A preliminary study on the effects of line and selective thinning on bird communities in Hokkaido, northern Japan

In Japan, selective thinning is a common thinning method, though line thinning receives much attention because of its economic merits. In this study, we examined effects of the two thinning methods on bird communities in Todo fir （Abies sachalinensis） plantations in Hok- kaido, Japan. We surveyed bird species in forests under four different management types - unthinned, selectively thinned, line-thinned planta- tion, and naturally regenerated forest （here after referred to as natural forest） stands - using a line-transect method. We also investigated vege- tation structure （canopy tree and understory） of these stands. Bird species richness did not differ between natural forests and plantations, while bird total abundance was greater in plantations than in natural forests. Bird species richness and total abundance were comparable among the three management types for plantations. Abundances of 10 bird species were different among the four management types, and five species were more abundant in line-thinned plantations. However, two species were more abundant in selectively thinned stands than in line-thinned stands, and they frequently appeared in natural forests. There were no distinct differ- ences in vegetation structure among the management types for planta- tions. Our results suggest that line thinning could be beneficial for some bird species in plantations.

IGIgram:An Improved Gini Index-Based Envelope Analysis for Rolling Bearing Fault Diagnosis

The transient impulse features caused by rolling bearing faults are often present in the resonance frequency band which is closely related to the dynamic characteristics of the machine structure.Informative frequency band identification is a crucial prerequisite for envelope analysis and thereby accurate fault diagnosis of rolling bearings.In this paper,based on the ratio of quasi-arithmetic means and Gini index,improved Gini indices(IGIs)are proposed to quantify the transient impulse features of a signal,and their effectiveness and advantages in sparse quantification are confirmed by simulation analysis and comparisons with traditional sparsity measures.Furthermore,an IGI-based envelope analysis method named IGIgram is developed for fault diagnosis of rolling bearings.In the new method,an IGI-based indicator is constructed to evaluate the impulsiveness and cyclostationarity of the narrow-band filtered signal simultaneously,and then a frequency band with abundant fault information is adaptively determined for extracting bearing fault features.The performance of the IGIgram method is verified on the simulation signal and railway bearing experimental signals and compared with typical sparsity measures-based envelope analysis methods and log-cycligram.The results demonstrate that the proposed IGIs are efficient in quantifying bearing fault-induced transient features and the IGIgram method with appropriate power exponent can effectively achieve the diagnostics of different axle-box bearing faults.