Pecten jacobaeus is an exploitable bivalve, whose populations have greatly declined in the main Mediterranean fisheries since the mid ‘80s. A substantial population of the species was studied in the marine Lake Vouliagmeni (Korinthiakos gulf, Greece). The population density and the spatial distribution of P. jacobaeus were estimated in the lake with line transect sampling by SCUBA diving, a met...

Biosphere Reserves attempt to align existing biodiversity conservation with sustainable resource use, specifically for improving socio-economic circumstances of resident communities. Typically, the Biosphere Reserve model is applied to an established landscape mosaic of existing land uses; these are often socio-ecological systems where strict environmental protection and community livelihoods a...

BACKGROUND Although efforts have been made to articulate rural-urban health inequalities in recent years, results have been inconsistent due to different geographical scales used in these studies. Small-area level investigations of health inequalities will likely show more detailed pictures of health inequalities among diverse rural communities, but they are difficult to conduct, particularly i...

An outbreak of hantavirus pulmonary syndrome occurred in the Sobradinho Indian settlement of the Kayabí ethnic group in northern Mato Grosso during December 2009-January 2010. We conducted a retrospective study to clarify the outbreak's epidemiologic and clinical characteristics. Results suggest a relationship between the outbreak and deforestation and farming expansion in indigenous areas.

Increasing settlement and post-settlement survival during the critical transition from planktonic larvae to benthic juveniles will increase efficiency for sea urchin aquaculture. This study investigated the effects of temperature and settlement cues on the settlement and post-settlement survival of the sea urchin Tripneustes gratilla during this phase. The current commercial methodology, which ...

Recent studies in Amazonia historical ecology have revealed substantial diversity and dynamic change in coupled natural human systems. In the southern Amazon, several headwater basins show evidence of substantial pre-Columbian landscape modification, particularly in areas historically dominated by speakers of the Arawak language family. The headwater basin of the Xingu River, the easternmost of...

Gridded population distribution data are finding increasing use in a wide range of fields, including resource allocation, disease burden estimation and climate change impact assessment. Land cover information can be used in combination with detailed settlement extents to redistribute aggregated census counts to improve the accuracy of national-scale gridded population data. In East Africa, such...

Understanding the spatial point pattern of human settlements and their geographical associations are important for understanding the drivers of land use and land cover change and the relationship between environmental and ecological processes on one hand and cultures and lifestyles on the other. In this study, a Geographic Information System (GIS) approach, Ripley's K function and Monte Carlo s...