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Article Reference Utilitarian framings of biodiversity shape environmental impact assessment in development cooperation
Biodiversity is under threat from anthropogenic pressures, in particular in biodiversity-rich developing countries. Development cooperation actors, who traditionally focus on the improvement of socio-economic conditions in the South, are increasingly acknowledging the linkages between poverty and biodiversity, e.g. by referring to the ecosystem services framework. However, there are many different framings which stress the need for biodiversity integration and which influence how biodiversity and development are and/or should be linked. Moreover, there is a gap between the lip service paid to biodiversity integration and the reality of development cooperation interventions. This study analyses how biodiversity framings are reflected in environmental impact assessment (EIA) practice, and how these framings influence EIA and decision-making. The findings, based on an in-depth qualitative analysis of World Bank EIAs undertaken in West Africa, indicate the incoherent quality but also the dominance of the‘utilitarian’ and‘corrective’ framings, which respectively stress human use of nature and mitigation of negative unintended development impacts. Identifying and highlighting these discursive trends leads to increased awareness of the importance of biodiversity among all development actors in North and South. However, some framings may lead to an overly narrow human-centred approach which downplays the intrinsic value of biodiversity. This study proposes recommendations for an improved integration of biodiversity in development cooperation, including the need for more systematic baseline studies in EIAs.
Located in Library / RBINS Staff Publications 2017
Article Reference Utility of Classical a-Taxonomy for Biodiversity of Aquatic Nematodes
Located in Library / RBINS Staff Publications
Article Reference Utility of GenBank and the Barcode of Life Data Systems (BOLD) for the identification of forensically important Diptera from Belgium and France
Located in Library / RBINS Staff Publications
Article Reference Validation of Landsat 8 high resolution Sea Surface Temperature using surfers
Nearshore coastal waters are highly dynamic in both space and time. They can be difficult to sample using conventional methods due to their shallow depth, tidal variability, and the presence of strong currents and breaking waves. High resolution satellite sensors can be used to provide synoptic views of Surface Temperature (ST), but the performance of such ST products in the nearshore zone is poorly understood. Close to the shoreline, the ST pixels can be influenced by mixed composition of water and land, as a result of the sensor’s spatial resolution. This can cause thermal adjacency effects due to the highly different diurnal temperature cycles of water bodies and land. Previously, temperature data collected during surfing sessions has been proposed for validation of moderate resolution (1 km pixel size) satellite ST products. In this paper we use surfing temperature data to validate three high resolution (100 m resampled to 30 m pixel size) ST products derived from the Thermal InfraRed Sensor (TIRS) on board Landsat 8 (L8). ST was derived from Collection 1 and 2 Level 1 data (C1L1 and C2L1) using the Thermal Atmospheric Correction Tool (TACT), and was obtained from the standard Collection 2 Level 2 product (USGS C2L2). This study represents one of the first evaluations of the new C2 products, both L1 and L2, released by USGS at the end of 2020. Using automated matchup and image quality control, 88 matchups between L8/TIRS and surfers were identified, distributed across the North-Western semihemisphere. The unbiased Root Mean Squared Difference (uRMSD) between satellite and in situ measurements was generally ¡ 2 K, with warm biases (Mean Average Difference, MAD) of 1.7 K (USGS C2L2), 1.3 K (TACT C1L1) and 0.8 K (TACT C2L1). Large interquartile ranges of ST in 5 × 5 satellite pixels around the matchup location were found for several images, especially for the summer matchups around the Californian coast. By filtering on target stability the number of matchups reduced to 31, which halved the uRMSD across the three methods (to around 1.1K), MAD were much lower, i.e. 1.1 K (USGS C2L2), 0.6 K (TACT C1L1), and 0.2 K (TACT C2L1). The larger biases of the C2L2 product compared to TACT C2L1 are caused as a result of: (1) a lower emissivity value for water targets used in USGS C2L2, and (2) differences in atmospheric parameter retrieval, mainly from differences in upwelling atmospheric radiance and lower atmospheric transmittance retrieved by USGS C2L2. Additionally, tiling artefacts are present in the C2L2 product, which originate from a coarser atmospheric correction process. Overall, the L8/TIRS derived ST product compares well with in situ measurements made while surfing, and we found the best performing ST product for nearshore coastal waters to be the Collection 2 Level 1 data processed with TACT.
Located in Library / RBINS Staff Publications 2022
Inproceedings Reference Validation of the DNA barcoding approach to survey ant communities in the Ecuadorian Andes
Located in Library / RBINS Staff Publications
Article Reference Valve chemistry of Limnocythere inopinata (Ostracoda) in a cold arid environment - implications for paleolimnological interpretation
Located in Library / RBINS Staff Publications
Article Reference Valve shape is not linked to genetic species in the Eucypris virens (Ostracoda, Crustacea) species complex
Located in Library / RBINS Staff Publications 2016
Article Reference Variability in ostracod communities (Crustacea, Ostracoda) in connected and isolated tropical floodplain lakes
Floodplains mostly consist of primary and secondary riverbeds, connecting channels and lakes that are either isolated from rivers and channels for most of the year, or lakes that are connected to rivers and channels for most (or all) of the year. We hypothesize that the differences in invertebrate communities, as calculated by beta-diversities, will be higher in isolated than in connected lakes. We use ostracod communities in the pleuston of the floating macrophyte Eichhornia crassipes in the Upper Paraná River floodplain to test this hypothesis. We have observed significant differences in species composition between the two types of lakes. However, although beta diversity values are indeed slightly higher in isolated than in connected lakes, these differences are not significant. This lack of clear effect of isolation on beta diversity could be owing to the fact that the period of isolation since the last homogenizing flood pulse had not been long enough, or because differences in degree of isolation become altogether insignificant in periods of low water flow.
Located in Library / RBINS Staff Publications 2017
Article Reference Variability of pterygoid teeth in three species of Podarcis lizards and the utility of palatal dentition in lizard systematics
Located in Associated publications / Belgian Journal of Zoology / Bibliographic References
Article Reference Variability of Suspended Particulate Matter in the Bohai Sea from the Geostationary Ocean Color Imager (GOCI)
This study assesses the performance of the Geostationary Ocean Imager (GOCI) for mapping of suspended particulate matter in the Bohai Sea, a turbid water region. GOCI imagery for remote sensing reflectance and Total Suspended Solids (TSS) is analysed in detail for two days in June 2011 (8 images per day). Both instantaneous and daily composite maps are considered and a comparison is made with corresponding reflectance and TSS products from MODIS-AQUA. Results show TSS distributions corresponding to previous studies of the region. The advantage of the higher acquisition frequency (8 images/day instead of 1) offered by GOCI is clearly demonstrated in the daily composite which is more complete during this period of scattered but moving clouds. Consideration of temporal variation over the day indicates low natural variability but some artificial variability from processing errors - this analysis provides a first indication of how the higher frequency of data from geostationary ocean colour could lead to improved data quality control via temporal coherency outlier detection. While there is room for improvement on the GOCI calibration, atmospheric correction and retrieval algorithms, the current study suggests that the GOCI data can already be used now to study qualitatively sediment dynamics except in the extremely turbid waters which are masked out of the current dataset. In a wider context, it is considered that the technical challenges of geostationary ocean colour have been met by the GOCI concept, and, notwithstanding potential improvements on the concept and data processing methods, it is recommended that this mission serve as a model for future geostationary ocean colour sensors over Europe/Africa and the Americas.
Located in Library / RBINS Staff Publications