Tag: ecology

Posted on

ARPHA Platform welcomes new journal launched by Pensoft: Individual-based Ecology

Scholarly publisher and technology provider Pensoft has launched Individual-based Ecology (IBE), a new peer-reviewed, diamond open-access journal established to promote an individual-based perspective in ecology.

IBE aims to bridge the gap between individual-level responses and broader ecological patterns. In the face of global challenges, the journal is looking to contribute to both a better understanding and new sets of predictions of how ecological systems will respond to anthropogenic change. It aims to support the development of appropriate mitigation and restoration measures by focusing on the entities that actually and directly respond to change, i.e. individual organisms.

The journal embraces basic and applied, theoretical and empirical research in terrestrial and aquatic ecology. It welcomes contributions that incorporate data or novel insights about individual organisms and their interactions that are relevant to explaining system-level dynamics. IBE will publish a wide range of articles, including empirical, experimental, and modeling studies, as well as reviews, perspectives, and methodological papers.

As a diamond open-access journal, IBE is currently free to publish and free to read, ensuring that all published research is freely accessible to the global community.

The journal will utilise Pensoft’s innovative ARPHA platform, known for its robust support of academic publishing and efficient dissemination of research. Thanks to its fast-track publishing solution, the new journal offers a seamless, end-to-end publishing experience, encompassing all stages between manuscript submission and article publication, indexation, dissemination and permanent archiving. The publishing services provided by ARPHA also include a variety of human-provided services and integrations with third-party providers, intended to maximise the reach and usability of scholarly knowledge published in IBE.

IBE will be led by four editors-in-chief: Prof. Dr. Volker Grimm and Prof. Dr. Karin Frank of Helmholtz Center for Environmental Research – UFZ, Prof. Dr. Mark E. Hauber of The City University of New York, and Prof. Dr. Florian Jeltsch of the University of Potsdam.

A banner of IBE presented at the German Ecological Society’s 53rd annual conference

„We are excited to launch Individual-based Ecology, a new, promising journal that will contribute to a better understanding of ecological systems and how we interact with them,” said Prof Lyubomir Penev, founder and CEO of ARPHA and Pensoft.

“The time has come to establish individual-based ecology as an important complement to all other branches of ecology, both because we need it to fully understand and predict the response of ecological systems to change, and because empirical and modelling approaches have reached a level where the collection and use of individual-based data has become possible,” says Prof Volker Grimm, one of the editors-in-chief.

“It is exciting to be able to launch a journal that embraces ecological principles at the level of individuals across any and all lineages of life on our planet”, notes Prof. Mark E. Hauber, also an editor-in-chief. 

“This new journal will promote nothing less than a paradigm shift in ecological thinking from averaging approaches to a science focused on the fundamental agents of change, i.e. individual organisms. Systematically recognising the importance of individual variation in ecological systems will transform our fundamental understanding of how biodiversity and its components emerge from individual responses and interactions, and how the emerging levels of organisation will respond to changing environments,” said Prof Florian Jeltsch from the editorial team.  

IBE joins a number of open-access ecology journals published by Pensoft.For more information on the journal’s focus and scope and guidelines to authors, visit IBE’s website and follow it on Facebook and X.

Posted on

First Journal Impact Factor for One Ecosystem

For the first time, the Journal Citation Reports™ – released by Clarivate in late June 2024 – features the open-access scientific journal One Ecosystem. The inaugural Journal Impact Factor for One Ecosystem stands at 1.8.

The 2024 report reflects how many times content published in a particular journal in 2021 and 2022 was cited in the last complete year: 2023. Then, this total count is divided by the number of “citable” (i.e. research and review) articles to estimate the JIF for 2023.

The news comes shortly after the journal specialised in ecology and sustainability data received a Scopus CiteScore of 4.6. In comparison to Clarivate and the Journal Impact Factor, Scopus uses data from its own database and calculates its CiteScore based on publications and citations from the last four complete years.

One Ecosystem was launched in 2016 by open-access scholarly publisher and technology provider Pensoft in collaboration with Editor-in-Chief Prof. Dr. Benjamin Burkhard (Head of the Physical Geography & Landscape Ecology section at Leibniz University Hannover, Germany), and Deputy Editors-in-Chief Prof. Dr. Davide Geneletti (Department of Civil, Environmental and Mechanical Engineering, University of Trento, Italy) and Dr. Joachim Maes, (Directorate-General for Regional and Urban Policy of the European Commission). Since the beginning it has been associated with and endorsed by the global Ecosystem Services Partnership.

Amongst the unique features of the journal are the collaborative writing and review environment integrated within the manuscript submission workflow to allow for heavily automated structured data import; semantically enriched publications; and field-specific article formats, such as Ecosystem Service Mapping; Ecosystem Service Models; Ecosystem Accounting Table; Monitoring Schema.

“Since day one, One Ecosystem has been widely praised in the community for its novel and data-driven approach to ecology and sustainability science, coupled with a straight-forward and low-cost open-access scholarly publishing strategy for any researcher in the world. Now, the recognition by Web of Science and Scopus provides the journal with further proof of its top quality and research integrity that – I expect – will attract even more researchers in the field to submit their work to the journal”  

says Editor-in-Chief Benjamin Burkhard.

Content published in One Ecosystem can be found in over 60 leading academic indexing databases, including Scopus, Research Gate, DOAJ, Cabell’s Directory, CABI, ERIH PLUS, CNKI, Unpaywall and OpenAIRE. It is also archived in CLOCKSS, Zenodo, Portico and Zendy.

***

Visit the One Ecosystem journal website at: https://oneecosystem.pensoft.net.

You can also follow One Ecosystem on X (formerly Twitter) and Facebook.

One Ecosystem selected for inclusion in the Web of Science
Posted on

The journal Biosystematics and Ecology moves to ARPHA Platform

The Austrian Academy of Sciences’ journal Biosystematics and Ecology now boasts an improved publishing infrastructure after moving to the technologically advanced ARPHA Platform and signing with publisher and technology provider Pensoft. The publisher, well-established in the domain of biodiversity-themed journals, is eager to welcome this latest addition to its growing open-access portfolio.

Biosystematics and Ecology is a continuation and replaces the established print-only Biosystematics and Ecology Series of the Austrian Academy of Sciences’s Commission for Interdisciplinary Ecological Studies. It publishes research focused on biodiversity in Central Europe and around the world, a domain of rapidly growing importance as а global biodiversity crisis is looming. A great advantage of Biosystematics and Ecology, in contrast to its predecessor, is the ability to simply update existing checklists and therefore to account for new scientific findings about taxonomic groups or regions. 

The peer-reviewed outlet includes contributions on a wide range of ecology and biosystematics topics, aiming to provide biodiversity data, such as catalogi, checklists and interdisciplinary research to the scientific community, while offering the maximum in accessibility, usability, and transparency. The journal is currently indexed in Crossref and archived in CLOCKSS, Portico and Zenodo.

Having already acquired its own glossy and user-friendly website provided by ARPHA, the journal also takes advantage of the platform’s signature fast-track publishing system, which offers an end-to-end publishing solution from submission to publication, distribution and archiving. The platform offers a synergic online space for authoring, reviewing, editing, production and archiving, ensuring a seamlessly integrated workflow at every step of the publishing process.

Thanks to the financial support of the Academy, Biosystematics and Ecology will publish under Diamond Open Access, which means that it is free to read and publish. Opting for ARPHA’s white-label publishing solution, the journal is published under the Academy’s branding and imprint, while benefiting from all signature high-tech features by ARPHA.

Biosystematics and Ecology also makes use of ARPHA Preprints, another platform developed by Pensoft, where authors can post a preprint in a matter of seconds upon submitting a manuscript to the journal. Once the associated manuscript gets published, the preprint is conveniently linked to the formal paper, displaying its citation details.

ARPHA’s easy-to-use, open-access publishing platform offers high-end functionalities such as diverse paper formats (PDF, machine-readable JATS XML, and semantically enriched HTML), automated data export to aggregators, web-service integrations with major global indexing databases, advanced semantics publishing, and automated email notifications and reminders. Features like these make it easy for both humans and machines all over the world to discover, access, cite, and reuse published research.

Posted on

Streamlined import of omics metadata from the European Nucleotide Archive (ENA) into an OMICS Data Paper manuscript

By Mariya Dimitrova, Raïssa Meyer, Pier Luigi Buttigieg, Lyubomir Penev

Data papers are scientific papers which describe a dataset rather than present and discuss research results. The concept was introduced to the biodiversity community by Chavan and Penev in 2011 as the result of a joint project of GBIF and Pensoft.

Since then, Pensoft has implemented the data paper in several of its journals (Fig. 1). The recognition gained through data papers is an important incentive for researchers and data managers to author better quality metadata and to make it Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Re-usable (FAIR). High quality and FAIRness of (meta)data are promoted through providing peer review, data audit, permanent scientific record and citation credit as for any other scholarly publication. One can read more on the different types of data papers and how they help to achieve these goals in the Strategies and guidelines for scholarly publishing of biodiversity data  (https://doi.org/10.3897/rio.3.e12431). 

Fig. 1 Number of data papers published in Pensoft’s journals since 2011.

The data paper concept was initially based on the standard metadata descriptions, using the  Ecological Metadata Language (EML). Apart from distinguishing a specialised place for dataset descriptions by creating a data paper article type, Pensoft has developed multiple workflows for streamlined import of metadata from various repositories and their conversion into data paper a manuscripts in Pensoft’s ARPHA Writing Tool (AWT). You can read more about the EML workflow in this blogpost.

Similarly, we decided to create a specialised data paper article type for the omics community within Pensoft’s Biodiversity Data Journal to reflect the specific nature of omics data. We established a manuscript template to help standardise the description of such datasets and their most important features. This initiative was supported in part by the IGNITE project.

How can authors publish omics data papers?

There are two ways to do publish omics data papers – (1) to write a data paper manuscript following the respective template in the ARPHA Writing Tool (AWT) or (2) to convert metadata describing a project or study deposited in EMBL-EBI’s European Nucleotide Archive (ENA) into a manuscript within the AWT.

The first method is straightforward but the second one deserves more attention. We focused on metadata published in ENA, which is part of the International Nucleotide Sequence Database Collaboration (INSDC) and synchronises its records with these of the other two members (DDBJ and NCBI). ENA is linked to the ArrayExpress and BioSamples databases, which describe sequencing experiments and samples, and follow the community-accepted metadata standards MINSEQE and MIxS. To auto populate a manuscript with a click of a button, authors can provide the accession number of the relevant ENA Study of Project and our workflow will automatically retrieve all metadata from ENA, as well as any available ArrayExpress or BioSamples records linked to it (Fig. 2). After that, authors can edit any of the article sections in the manuscript by filling in the relevant template fields or creating new sections, adding text, figures, citations and so on.

An important component of the OMICS data paper manuscript is a supplementary table containing MIxS-compliant metadata imported from BioSamples. When available, BioSamples metadata is automatically converted to a long table format and attached to the manuscript. The authors are not permitted to edit or delete it inside the ARPHA Writing Tool. Instead, if desired, they should correct the associated records in the sourced BioSamples database. We have implemented a feature allowing the automatic re-import of corrected BioSamples records inside the supplementary table. In this way, we ensure data integrity and provide a reliable and trusted source for accessing these metadata. 

Fig. 2 Automated generation of omics data paper manuscripts through import and conversion of metadata associated with the Project ID or Study ID at ENA

Here is a step-by-step guide for conversion of ENA metadata into a data paper manuscript:

  1. The author has published a dataset to any of the INSDC databases. They copy its ENA Study or Project accession number.
  2. The author goes to the Biodiversity Data Journal (BDJ) webpage, clicks the “Start a manuscript” buttоn and selects OMICS Data Paper template in the ARPHA Writing Tool (AWT). Alternatively, the author can also start from the AWT website,  click “Create a manuscript”, and select “OMICS Data Paper” as the article type, the Biodiversity Data Journal will be automatically marked by the system. The author clicks the “Import a manuscript” button at the bottom of the webpage.
  3. The author pastes the ENA Study or Project accession number inside the relevant text box (“Import an European Nucleotide Archive (ENA) Study ID or Project ID”) and clicks “Import”.
  4. The Project or Study metadata is converted into an OMICS data paper manuscript along with the metadata from ArrayExpress and BioSamples if available. The author can start making changes to the manuscript,  invite co-authors and then submit it for technical evaluation, peer review and publication. 

For a detailed description of authoring an OMICS data paper, please refer to the Author Guidelines: https://bdj.pensoft.net/about#OmicsDataPapers

Our innovative workflow makes authoring omics data papers much easier and saves authors time and efforts when inserting metadata into the manuscript. It takes advantage of existing links between data repositories to unify biodiversity and omics knowledge into a single narrative. This workflow demonstrates the importance of standardisation and interoperability to integrate data and metadata from different scientific fields. 

We have established a special collection for OMICS data papers in the Biodiversity Data Journal. Authors are invited to describe their omics datasets by using the novel streamlined workflow for creating a manuscript at a click of a button from metadata deposited in ENA or by following the template to create their manuscript via the non-automated route.

To stimulate omics data paper publishing, the first 10 papers will be published free of charge. Upon submission of an omics data paper manuscript, do not forget to assign it to the collection Next-generation publishing of omics data.

Posted on

New OA Journal of European Landscapes by Amsterdam University Press launched on ARPHA

By crossing traditional disciplinary and regional borders, this innovative peer-reviewed journal will document landscape studies and project results while inspiring international collaboration

Journal of European Landscape (JEL), an openly accessible, peer-reviewed academic outlet, was launched by Amsterdam University Press (AUP) with the aim to bridge the gap between heritage and future-proof landscapes, between local and international perspectives, between what is and what is only in the eye of the beholder. By publishing scientific papers, descriptions of running or finished projects, interviews and book reviews, the novel journal is to document and safely store otherwise fragile research outputs, while also promoting landscape discourse across geographies.

The inaugural issue of the journal is now out, featuring an opening editorial, two project descriptions (CHeriScape Project and PERICLES), three book reviews (Biography of an Industrial Landscape: Carlsberg’s Urban Spaces Retold, Waddenland Outstanding. History, landscape and cultural heritage of the Wadden Sea Region and Estate landscapes in northern Europe), a research paper comparing similar Iron Age settlements in England, France and Spain and an interview with geographer Dr Kenneth Olwig, whose best known work is devoted to the concept of landscape from a philological perspective and studied using historical sources and etymological methods.

Having become the second AUP’s journal to move to the scholarly publishing platform ARPHA after the Dutch journal of Accountancy & Business Economics (Maandblad voor Accountancy en Bedrijfseconomie), JEL does not only benefit from a brand new glossy and user-friendly appearance, but also from ARPHA’s signature fast-track, end-to-end publishing system to the benefit of its users: authors, reviewers and editors alike. Thereby, each submitted manuscript is carried through the review, editing, publication, dissemination and archiving stages without ever leaving ARPHA’s collaboration-centred online environment. The articles are available in PDF, machine-readable JATS XML formats, and semantically enriched HTML for better reader experience, so that they are easy to discover, access, cite and reuse.

Irene van Rossum, Senior Commissioning editor at Amsterdam University Press, says:

“We are excited by the launch of Journal of European Landscapes on the ARPHA platform. AUP believes that the platform is the ideal venue for open access journals, giving them all the features and services needed for authors and editors alike. It is a great pleasure to work with the very professional people at Pensoft in setting all this up.”

Given the complexity of landscape as a concept that brings together the physical, cultural and scenic identity of a geographical space for purposes as varied as planning and environmental management to Art, it becomes clear why until recently it has only been a concern on a local, regional or, at most, national level. However, as a result of the common issues shared within the European Union (EU) and the fact that the Old Continent has effectively ‘exported’ landscape to many other parts of the world, it becomes apparent that research results from localised studies and projects can prove of huge benefit to multiple other localities, regions and nations.

Furthermore, the same goes for knowledge obtained through work in diverse academic disciplines, including archaeology, anthropology, art history, geography, earth sciences, economics, tourism studies and sociology.

Linde Egberts, Editor-in-Chief, comments:

“We have seen a growing interest in contextualising heritage and history of local, regional and national landscape over the years. But we felt there was no platform to share the outcomes of comparative and cross-boundary landscape research. By launching this journal, we are doing just that: contributing to the understanding of the relationships between different landscapes and the way they are managed and interpreted.”

Hans Renes, Editor-in-Chief, adds:

“We are very excited about this new journal that certainly fills a gap in the study of landscapes. In our vision, landscape studies are still too much taking place within national boundaries. The new open access journal will be instrumental in making the field more international. We are grateful that AUP and Pensoft are guiding us in this fascinating journey.”

A platform like JEL is to also be especially helpful for EU projects and consortia, which despite being largely focused on novelty and sustainability, often fail to preserve the results of their work once the initiative is formally concluded, the funding is over and the project’s website is no longer maintained.

As a result, JEL aims to offer a first-of-its-kind platform, where researchers from across geographies and scientific fields will be able to publish their work and make it available to others to reuse and build-on in their own turn. By simultaneously prompting the better understanding of landscape in its historical, conceptual and practical dimensions and paving the way to forward-thinking advancements, perspectives and findings published in JEL will be well-positioned to address impending matters of concern, including the challenges of rewilding, energy transition and making landscapes ‘climate-proof’.

###

About Amsterdam University Press (AUP):

Amsterdam University Press (AUP) is a leading publisher of academic books in English, journals and textbooks in the Humanities and Social Sciences. AUP contracts over one hundred and fifty titles a year specialising in the fields of History, Asian Studies, Film, Media and Communication, Social and Political Sciences, and Linguistics, with an additional active and best-selling list of non-fiction trade publications in Dutch. AUP connects authors with readers through an international network of distributors and partners, and offers sales and marketing with dedicated representatives in key markets across the world. Working on cutting-edge research, AUP authors are from a global academic network, distinguishing an open, creative, and internationally orientated attitude in acquisitions, sales and marketing. Visit http://www.aup.nl for more information.

Posted on

Book on plants in the Murmansk region (Russia) scores 4/19 correct insect identifications

A recently published book on some aspects of the ecology of woody introducents in the Murmansk oblast of Russia provides the information on 19 species of plant-damaging insects out of which only 4 species are identified correctly. Dr Mikhail V. Kozlov from the University of Turku provides correct identifications for the insects, illustrated in the book, in his paper, published in the open-access journal Arctic Environmental Research in order to prevent the spread of erroneous information across future publications and databases.

Insect fauna of the Murmansk region is relatively well-studied and that’s why any new faunistic records from this region immediately attract the attention of entomologists. Those findings are especially exciting when they extend the distribution range of certain species by 1,000 to 2,000 km towards the North Pole.

The published misidentifications of insect species can lead to a cascading effect of mistakes, because entomologists commonly use faunistic data published by colleagues decades and even centuries ago. That’s why it is very important to keep a track of such cases and provide correct identifications if possible, remarks the author.

“In particular, three moth species (Archips crataegana, A. podanaand Erannis defoliaria) reported in this book to occur around Kirovsk have not yet been found either in the Murmansk oblast or in the more southern Karelia. In neighbouring Finland, the northernmost records of these species are from locations some 1,000 km to the south of Kirovsk”,

Dr Kozlov shares his concerns.

The most striking examples of misidentification in the book are at the order level: a syrphid fly (Diptera) identified as a leafcutter bee (Hymenoptera), and a sawfly (Hymenoptera) identified as a psyllid (Hemiptera).


Leaf beetle Chrysomela lapponica, erroneously mentioned in the criticized book as a pest of bird cherry, shadbush and chokeberry, feeds in the Murmansk oblast only on willows.
Credit: Vitali Zverev
License: CC-BY 4.0

In conclusion, Dr Kozlov’s revision found that 15 out of the 19 species illustrated were incorrectly identified. Thus, the leaf damage associated with certain insect species, considered in the book, also becomes very questionable.

“The misidentification of pest species can easily result in incorrect pest management and face unnecessary costs, while publication of incorrect data distorts our knowledge of the distribution and biology of insects. Therefore, insect identification for scientific, educational or pest management purposes should always be performed by professionals or by volunteers and students who have specific training for this
purpose”,

concludes Dr Mikhail V. Kozlov.

***

Original source:
Kozlov MV (2019) Insects identified by unqualified scientists: multiple “new” records from the Murmansk oblast of Russia are dismissed as false. Arctic Environmental Research 19(4): 153-158. https://doi.org/10.3897/issn2541-8416.2019.19.4.153 

Posted on

Nuclear reactors with a newly proposed barrier could’ve withstood Chernobyl and Fukushima

In the aftermath of the notorious accidents in the history of nuclear energy at Three Mile Island (1979), Chernobyl (1986) and Fukushima (2011), where all three have turned into devastating disasters due to meltdown in the core of a reactor, leading in turn to the release of radiation into the environment, many countries around the world have already pledged to a nuclear power phase-out.

However, while actions towards the closure of all nuclear power plants in only a few decades’ time are already well underway, the alternative energy sources currently in operation have some major drawbacks: they rely mainly on non-renewable resources, produce significantly less energy compared with nuclear power plants and, most importantly, are considered to be amongst the main contributors of carbon emissions and, thereby, the climate crisis which humanity is now set to battle.

Nevertheless, a future powered by nuclear energy might be neither a lost cause, nor a game of “Russian roulette”, according to the research team of Francesco D’Auria (University of Pisa, Italy), Nenad Debrecin (University of Zagreb, Croatia) and Horst Glaeser (Global Research for Safety, Germany). In a recent paper, published in the open-access peer-reviewed journal Nuclear Energy and Technology and the result of 30-40 years of collaboration, they propose a new safety barrier to be implemented in large Light Water Reactors around the world. Coming at a fraction of the cost of the already obsolete one that it is about to replace, this barrier is expected to reduce the probability of core melt to that of a large meteorite hitting the site.

With their new technological solution, these scientists aim to bring together research findings from the last few decades, mostly in relation to accident analysis capabilities and nuclear fuel material performance, as well as the concepts of the very pioneers who developed the nuclear technology in the past century. The proposal is based on studies and discussions from the 11th Scientific and Technical Conference “Safety Assurance of NPP with VVER” (Russia, May 2019) and the International Conference on Nuclear Power Plants, Structures, Risk & Decommissioning, NUPP2019 (United Kingdom, June 2019). As a result, they hope to regain public confidence in nuclear power – an efficient and sustainable source of renewable energy, as well as bridging the gaping chasm between what we have learnt over the years about nuclear energy and technology and what is being implemented in practice.

Amongst the up-to-date research findings and knowledge to be implemented in the novel technological solution are the recently discovered nuclear fuel structural weakness, as well as a more elaborate Extended Safety Margin Detection (E-SMD), which allows for an emergency shutdown of a reactor, following even low and very low probability events. It also provides advance information to the operators about the actions needed to prevent or mitigate possible damage. The recruitment of an Emergency Rescue Team (ERT) is also proposed to consist of a group of highly trained and specialised rescuers who will be in possession of suitable machinery and equipment, as well as access to each nuclear reactor installed within an assigned geographic region and who will be able to reach any of the sites within an hour or execute a remote shutdown of the reactor.

In their study, the researchers go on to explain how and why exactly these features would have prevented core melt and the eventual nuclear disasters at each of the three notorious nuclear power stations.

In the case of the Three Mile Island accident: the most devastating accident in US commercial nuclear power plant history, considered to be the result of a rather typical combined failure, an alarm from E-SMD detectors would have triggered the emergency shutdown of the unit well before the event.

In December 2017, the ‘Chernobyl liquidators’ monument by Andrei Kovalchuk was ceremonially unveiled on Poklonnaya Hill in Moscow’s Victory Park to pay tribute to the people who took part in the clean-up operations after the explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant on April 26, 1986.
Photo by Country of Rosatom.

In Chernobyl, where critical human errors are found to have led to the accident, an intervention from the ERT: a remotely controlled shutdown and perhaps the deployment of the military would have prevented the consequent catastrophe.

Extended core damage at the Fukushima Units 1 to 3 would have also been prevented thanks to the combination of emergency alerts and prompt action by the ERT.

The researchers also note that, in spite of the notoriety of the three nuclear disasters, there have been about 500 safely operated nuclear power plant units since the demonstration of the capability to control the fission reaction in 1942 and the connection of nuclear fission driven electricity generator to the electrical grid in 1954. On top of that, there have been a few thousand accident-free reactors used for purposes different from electricity production, including research, production and marine propulsion.

“The industry and/or the Government of responsible Countries where applicable, become the main players for the possible implementation of the ideas in this paper. A strategy is needed in this connection: academia and research institutes willing to be engaged into practical applications of the nuclear technology should become actors,” the scientists write in conclusion.


## #

Original source:

D’Auria F, Debrecin N, Glaeser H (2019) The technological challenge for current generation nuclear reactors. Nuclear Energy and Technology 5(3): 183-199. https://doi.org/10.3897/nucet.5.38117

Posted on

Field research in Turkmenistan’s highest mountain reveals high biological diversity

New open-access book presents a comprehensive report on the remarkable ecosystems of the Koytendag nature reserve

Location of Koytendag
Image by Atamyrat Veyisov

Situated in the extreme south-east of Turkmenistan: on the border with Uzbekistan and close to the border with Afghanistan, Koytendag presents one of the most distinct landscapes in Central Asia. Reaching elevations of up to 3,137 m, this is also the highest mountain in Turkmenistan.

Koytendag State Nature Reserve and its three Wildlife Sanctuaries: Hojapil, Garlyk and Hojaburjybelent, were established between 1986 and 1990 to protect and preserve the mountain ecosystem of the Koytendag region and maintain the ecological balance between the environment and increasing economic activities.

Since 2013, a series of scientific expeditions and assessments were coordinated and funded by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) to pave the way for the protection and preservation of the unique landscape and rare wildlife the site is recognised for.

As a result, the efforts of the conducted field studies of multidisciplinary international research teams are brought together in a comprehensive report, which is now openly available as an Advanced Book from the scientific publisher and technology provider Pensoft, edited by Geoff Welch (RSPB) and Prof. Pavel Stoev (National National Museum of Natural History of Bulgaria and Pensoft). Soon, the book will also be available in Russian.

The book is split into eight sections focused on different areas within the study of biodiversity: Flora, Surface dwelling invertebrates, Cave fauna, Fish, Amphibians, Reptiles, Birds and Mammals. An additional chapter is dedicated to the hydrogeology of the site because of its key role in supporting both the cave fauna and the local communities.

Entrance to the newly discovered record-breaking underground lake at the Koytendag State Nature Reserve
Photo by Mikhail Pereladov

In the summary of the report, the authors make a list of the most significant findings made during the research. These include the discovery of a cave hosting the largest underground lake in the whole North Eurasia (4,400 m2) and a total of 48 species of higher plants that can only be found in Koytendag. In terms of Koytendag’s surface-dwelling fauna, the report lists a number of species new to science: a scorpion (most likely yet unnamed species currently recognised as a species complex) and a spider. Meanwhile, a total of seven previously unknown species were found underground, including the very first exclusively subterranean animal found in the country: the insect-like ‘marvellous’ dipluran named Turkmenocampa mirabilis, and a strongly adapted to the underground waters of a desert sinkhole Gammarus troglomorphus. Additionally, the annual monitoring, conducted since 1995 by the reserve staff, report an encouraging increase in the populations of the rare markhors and mouflons. An intact predator-prey community was also identified as a result of observations of numerous Eurasian lynxes and grey wolves, as well as prey species.

Entrance of the cave Kaptarhana, (Lebap Province, Eastern Turkmenistan), where scientists discovered the first ever exclusively subterranean dweller for the country in 2017 (find more here).
Photo by Aleksandr Degtyarev

Stephanie Ward, RSPB Central Asia Partner Development Officer, says:

“RSPB has been working in Turkmenistan under a Memorandum of Understanding with the Government since 2004. In that time we have had the privilege of working with a team of talented and dedicated national experts across the diverse and inspiring nature of this fascinating country. Our work in Koytendag has captured the attention and interest of many international scientists who hope that their contemporary biodiversity research will help to deepen the understanding and therefore ensure protection of the unique wonders of this mountain ecosystem. As a potential UNESCO World Heritage Site, we will continue to collaborate with the Turkmen people on the research and promotion of Koytendag State Nature Reserve.

Book editor and member of the research team Prof. Pavel Stoev adds:

“Koytendag Mountain is among the least explored and, simultaneously, one of the most biologically diverse regions in Central Asia. The rapid assessments of its flora and fauna revealed a high number of highly specialised species, all of which have undergone a long evolution to adapt to the harsh environments of the mountain. The establishment of Koytendag State Nature Reserve and the associated wildlife sanctuaries is a step in the right direction for the protection of this unique biota.”

The report, published in an openly accessible Advanced Book format, is available from
https://doi.org/10.3897/ab.e37858.

###

Original source:

Welch G, Stoev P (2019) A report of RSPB-supported scientific research at Koytendag State Nature Reserve, East Turkmenistan. Advanced Books. https://doi.org/10.3897/ab.e37858

Additional information:

This work was carried out under the Memorandum of Understanding between the Ministry of Agriculture and Environment Protection of Turkmenistan and the RSPB, within the Project on “Improvement of the status of birds and other biodiversity in Turkmenistan”.

About Koytendag State Nature Reserve:

Koytendag State Nature Reserve was established in 1986 to protect and preserve the mountain ecosystem of the Koytendag region and maintain the ecological balance between the environment and the increasing anthropogenic activities. Of particular importance was the protection of rare species, such as the markhor; important habitats, including pistachio and juniper forests; and the impressive dinosaur trackways at Hojapil.

Advanced Books publishing by Pensoft:

Launched by Pensoft and powered by the scholarly publishing platform ARPHA, the Advanced Books approach aims to issue new books or re-issue books previously only available in print or PDF. In the Advanced Books format, the publications are semantically enhanced and available in HTML and XML as well, in order to accelerate open access, data publication, mining, sharing and reuse. The Advanced books builds on the novel approaches developed by the Pensoft’s journals.

Posted on

CO2 emissions in Russia go up in line with economic growth up until a certain point

This is the first detailed study to test whether the environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis holds true for the Russian Federation

Pollution in Russia increases along with economic growth, but only until it reaches a certain threshold, from where it starts to decrease, demonstrates a recent study conducted by Prof. Natalya Ketenci, Yeditepe University, Turkey.

The validity of the phenomenon, recognized as the environmental Kuznets curve, demonstrates a promising progress for the environmental policies and practices in the Russian Federation. Published in the open-access Russian Journal of Economics, the study also seeks to identify the relationships and causality between pollution, quantified by carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, and the main factors which affect them.

To do so, the author employs annual data on energy consumption, real income, international trade, level of education and level of urbanization for the period 1991-2016, available from the World Bank’s World Development Indicators database. As a result, the research paper provides recommendations to policy makers in Russia responsible for the environmental quality on national level.

According to the data, Russia remains the fourth largest contributor in terms of CO2 emissions in the world after China, the USA and India in terms of total kilotons, but is ahead of the US when Gross domestic product (GDP) is taken into account. While the US contributes with 0.33 kg of CO2 emissions per 2010 dollars of GDP, Russia accounts for 0.99 kg. Furthermore, despite the global tendency of decreasing annual amounts of CO2 emissions, Russia continues to increase its own.

Interestingly, while Russia has increased its overall CO2 emissions by 14% since 1998 (8% since 2009), its quantity turns out to have actually declined by 45.6% (7.3% since 2009) when the GDP is considered. In agreement with the environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis, this is due to the gradual deployment of more environmentally-friendly equipment in a growing economy.

When studying the key factors for pollution, Prof. Natalya Ketenci concludes that energy consumption, real income, education and urbanization levels are all significant determinants, and open trade has no impact.

In conclusion, the researcher suggests that policy-makers in Russia need to continue with the implementation of policies meant to sustain economic development, thereby favoring cleaner technologies.

Efforts in raising environmental awareness among the population is also a priority. Interestingly, while education in Russia is linked to better access to advanced, yet energy-intensive technology, it is through education that people can be motivated to improve environmental quality and thus persuaded into practices such as recycling and giving up on non-renewable products.

Quite an ambiguous effect on environmental pollution is found in the case of urbanization as well. While generally linked to increased CO2 emissions as a result of greater and denser population, improved recycling organization and hygiene provisions in urban areas work in favor of environmental quality. Therefore, the author recommends that the focus for urban areas needs to be placed on maintaining current policies and decreasing energy intensity, while in rural areas, it is important to implement new efficient environmental policies.

###

Original source:

Ketenci N (2018) The environmental Kuznets curve in the case of Russia. Russian Journal of Economics 4(3): 249-265. https://doi.org/10.3897/j.ruje.4.28482

###

Russian Journal of Economics is one of the journals hosted on ARPHA through the platform’s white-label publishing solution.

Posted on

Russia’s NaRFU moves its Arctic Environmental Research journal to new-age ARPHA Platform

In its latest issue, the Northern (Arctic) Federal University’s open-access journal demonstrates a brand new look and a range of high-tech innovations

Formerly known as Bulletin of the Pomor University and Bulletin of the Northern (Arctic) Federal University, the open-access peer-reviewed journal published by Russia’s Northern (Arctic) Federal University (NArFU) recently changed its name to Arctic Environmental Research (AER) to accentuate its international relevance. Now, it also accommodates a whole set of novelties and innovations as a result of its move to the journal platform ARPHA.

Its first issue in collaboration with the revolutionary publishing solution, developed by scholarly publisher and technology provider Pensoft, is already live on the journal’s new website.

Launched in 2012, AER continues to provide a scholarly venue for publication of research findings related to the Arctic and adjacent areas, in order to draw attention to the most relevant, promising and interesting findings from the region, and facilitate exchange of scientific information on an international level.

Traditionally, the journal covers a wide range of disciplines, including geology, geodesy and cartography, geoinformatics, geoecology, engineering geology, permafrost and soil science, prospecting and exploration of solid minerals, oil and gas fields, biogeography, botany, microbiology, zoology, genetics, ecology, hydrobiology, parasitology, mycology, soil science, biological resources. Its focus is placed on original research based on field or laboratory experiments and mathematical modeling of processes taking place in high latitudes.

Thanks to its collaboration with ARPHA platform, the journal has already implemented a long list of high-tech perks in addition to its brand new sleek and modern look and feel.

To the benefit of authors, reviewers, editors and readers alike, the fast-track and convenient publishing workflow provided by ARPHA takes care for each manuscript all the way from submission and reviewing to dissemination and archiving without ever leaving the platform’s singular collaboration-friendly online environment.

Once published, all articles in AER are to be available in three formats (PDF, XML, HTML), enriched with a whole set of semantic enhancements, so that the articles are easy to discover, access and harvest by both humans and machines.

Amongst the high-tech widgets at disposal to anyone who accesses an article in the revamped journal are the article-level metrics available thanks to the partnership between ARPHA and the revolutionary discovery and analytics tools Dimensions and Altmetric. By searching through millions of research articles, grant applications, clinical trials, as well as policy documents, news stories, blogs and social media posts, they allow for each article’s references and citations in both the academic and the public sphere to be monitored in real time.

“I am truly delighted to welcome Arctic Environmental Research to ARPHA’s family,” says ARPHA’s and Pensoft’s founder and CEO Prof. Lyubomir Penev. “Being proven pioneers on the scholarly publishing scene in addition to our strong presence in environmental science, at ARPHA we believe that our white-label publishing solution makes a perfect match for forward-thinking institutions such as the NArFU and AER.

“We are starting our cooperation with the scholarly publisher and technology provider Pensoft and moving to the journal ARPHA platform,” says NArFU’s Vice rector for scientific work and AER’s Deputy Editor-in-Chief Dr. Boris Filippov. “We believe that it will help us fulfil the aims of AER, i.e. draw the scientists’ attention to the most relevant, interesting, and promising areas of research in the Arctic and adjacent territories, as well as promote information exchange in the international scientific arena.”

AER is the fourth Russian journal to find its new publishing home with ARPHA Platform after Comparative Cytogenetics, Research results in Pharmacology and Russian Journal of Economics. Several new titles are expected to join them later this year.