Forests are expected to be strongly affected by modifications in climate and disturbance regimes, threatening their ability to sustain the provision of essential services. Promoting drought-tolerant species or functionally diverse stands have recently emerged as management options to cope with global change. Our study aimed at evaluating the impact of contrasting stand-level management scenarios on the resilience of temperate forests in eastern North America and central-western Europe using the individual process-based model HETEROFOR. We simulated the evolution of eight stands over 100 years under a future extreme climate according to four management scenarios (business as usual - BAU; climate change adaptation - CC; functional diversity approach - FD; no management - NM) while facing multiple disturbances, resulting in a total of 160 simulations. We found that FD demonstrated the greatest resilience regarding transpiration and tree biomass, followed by CC and then BAU, while these three scenarios were equivalent concerning the net primary production. These results were however dependent on forest type: increasing functional diversity was a powerful option to increase the resilience of coniferous plantations whereas no clear differences between BAU and adaptive management scenarios were detected in broadleaved and mixed stands. The FD promoted a higher level of tree species diversity than any other scenario, and all scenarios of management were similar regarding the amount of harvested wood. The NM always showed the lowest resilience, demonstrating that forest management could be an important tool to mitigate adverse effects of global change. Our study highlighted that tree-level process-based models are a relevant tool to identify suitable management options for adapting forests to global change provided that model limitations are considered, and that alternative management options, particularly those based on functional diversity, are promising and should be promoted from now on.

Nature-based climate solutions (NCS) are championed as a primary tool to mitigate climate change, especially in forested regions capable of storing and sequestering vast amounts of carbon. New England is one of the most heavily forested regions in the United States (>75% forested by land area), and forest carbon is a significant component of climate mitigation policies. Large infrequent disturbances, such as hurricanes, are a major source of uncertainty and risk for policies relying on forest carbon for climate mitigation, especially as climate change is projected to alter the intensity and extent of hurricanes. To date, most research into disturbance impacts on forest carbon stocks has focused on fire. Here, we show that a single hurricane in the region can down between 121 and 250 MMTCO2e or 4.6%-9.4% of the total aboveground forest carbon, much greater than the carbon sequestered annually by New England\'s forests (16 MMTCO2e year-1). However, emissions from hurricanes are not instantaneous; it takes approximately 19 years for downed carbon to become a net emission and 100 years for 90% of the downed carbon to be emitted. Reconstructing hurricanes with the HURRECON and EXPOS models across a range of historical and projected wind speeds, we find that an 8% and 16% increase in hurricane wind speeds leads to a 10.7- and 24.8-fold increase in the extent of high-severity damaged areas (widespread tree mortality). Increased wind speed also leads to unprecedented geographical shifts in damage, both inland and northward, into heavily forested regions traditionally less affected by hurricanes. Given that a single hurricane can emit the equivalent of 10+ years of carbon sequestered by forests in New England, the status of these forests as a durable carbon sink is uncertain. Understanding the risks to forest carbon stocks from disturbances is necessary for decision-makers relying on forests as a NCS.

Network-based systems are at the core of our everyday life. Whether it is electronic networking, electricity grids or transportation, users expect the networks to function properly and provide a feeling of safety and security. However, there may be disturbances. In this paper, we consider disturbances in the context of public transportation. The focus in this respect is on public transport planning and operations. To classify and cope with disturbances, one can find many ideas, including robustness, resilience, vulnerability, disruption mitigation or delay management. We survey related streams of literature and put them into perspective. As a major insight we show that different strands of literature exist that may benefit from becoming better connected and intertwined. Together with recent advances in information technology and solution methods, more integrated problem settings incorporating robustness and disturbances can play a major role in future planning and operations.

Aerobic methanotrophs are a specialized microbial group, catalyzing the oxidation of methane. Disturbance-induced loss of methanotroph diversity/abundance, thus results in the loss of this biological methane sink. Here, we synthesized and conceptualized the resilience of the methanotrophs to sporadic, recurring, and compounded disturbances in soils. The methanotrophs showed remarkable resilience to sporadic disturbances, recovering in activity and population size. However, activity was severely compromised when disturbance persisted or reoccurred at increasing frequency, and was significantly impaired following change in land use. Next, we consolidated the impact of agricultural practices after land conversion on the soil methane sink. The effects of key interventions (tillage, organic matter input, and cover cropping) where much knowledge has been gathered were considered. Pairwise comparisons of these interventions to nontreated agricultural soils indicate that the agriculture-induced impact on the methane sink depends on the cropping system, which can be associated to the physiology of the methanotrophs. The impact of agriculture is more evident in upland soils, where the methanotrophs play a more prominent role than the methanogens in modulating overall methane flux. Although resilient to sporadic disturbances, the methanotrophs are vulnerable to compounded disturbances induced by anthropogenic activities, significantly affecting the methane sink function.

Sleep disturbances are core symptoms of psychiatric disorders. Although various sleep measures have been developed to assess sleep patterns and quality of sleep, the concordance of these measures in patients with psychiatric disorders remains relatively elusive.
This study aims to examine the degree of agreement among 3 sleep recording methods and the consistency between subjective and objective sleep measures, with a specific focus on recently developed devices in a population of individuals with psychiatric disorders.
We analyzed 62 participants for this cross-sectional study, all having data for polysomnography (PSG), Zmachine, Fitbit, and sleep logs. Participants completed questionnaires on their symptoms and estimated sleep duration the morning after the overnight sleep assessment. The interclass correlation coefficients (ICCs) were calculated to evaluate the consistency between sleep parameters obtained from each instrument. Additionally, Bland-Altman plots were used to visually show differences and limits of agreement for sleep parameters measured by PSG, Zmachine, Fitbit, and sleep logs.
The findings indicated a moderate agreement between PSG and Zmachine data for total sleep time (ICC=0.46; P<.001), wake after sleep onset (ICC=0.39; P=.002), and sleep efficiency (ICC=0.40; P=.006). In contrast, Fitbit demonstrated notable disagreement with PSG (total sleep time: ICC=0.08; wake after sleep onset: ICC=0.18; sleep efficiency: ICC=0.10) and exhibited particularly large discrepancies from the sleep logs (total sleep time: ICC=-0.01; wake after sleep onset: ICC=0.05; sleep efficiency: ICC=-0.02). Furthermore, subjective and objective concordance among PSG, Zmachine, and sleep logs appeared to be influenced by the severity of the depressive symptoms and obstructive sleep apnea, while these associations were not observed between the Fitbit and other sleep instruments.
Our study results suggest that Fitbit accuracy is reduced in the presence of comorbid clinical symptoms. Although user-friendly, Fitbit has limitations that should be considered when assessing sleep in patients with psychiatric disorders.

Mangrove leaves have unique features that enable them to cope with shifting environmental conditions while preserving their general functionality and efficiency. We examined the morphological characteristics and chlorophyll content (spectroscopically) of 600 mature Avicennia germinans leaves selected from 30 trees located in one degraded, one restored, and one natural mangrove ecosystem along Guyana\'s coastline. Systematic sampling was carried out using the closest individual sampling method in the wet and dry seasons. We hypothesized that both habitat type and seasonality influence the leaf traits and chlorophyll content of A. germinans. Our findings showed that A. germinans leaves are mesophyllous, and traits such as leaf perimeter, area, length, width, dry mass, wet mass, turgid mass, leaf-specific area, and relative water content showed fluctuations in ecosystems (one-way ANOVA, p < .05) as well as seasonally (paired t-test, p < .05). Substantial, positive correlations (p < .05, R > .75) were also established for over 10 leaf parameters in both seasons while PCA and multiple regression analyses further confirmed the strong relationships between leaf morphological features and their respective locations. Changes in chlorophyll concentration were most noticeable in the degraded ecosystem while variations in leaf traits were more pronounced in the restored mangrove area. This may be due to the various disturbances found in each ecosystem coupled with fluctuations in the seasons. Our results demonstrate that mangroves, to some extent, alter their plant structures to cope with environmental stressors present in the various ecosystems they thrive in to maintain their survival.

Integral controllers are commonly employed in astronomical adaptive optics. This work presents a novel tuning procedure for integral controllers in adaptive optics systems which relies on information about the measured disturbances. This tuning procedure consists of two main steps. First, it models and identifies measured disturbances as continuous-time-damped oscillators using Whittles´s likelihood and the wavefront sensor output signal. Second, it determines the integral controller gain of the adaptive optics system by minimizing the output variance. The effectiveness of this proposed method is evaluated through theoretical examples and numerical simulations conducted using the Object-Oriented Matlab Adaptive Optics toolbox. The simulation results demonstrate that this approach accurately estimates the disturbance model and can reduce the output variance. Our proposal results in improved performance and better astronomical images even in challenging atmospheric conditions. These findings significantly contribute to adaptive optics system operations in astronomical observatories and establish our procedure as a promising tool for fine-tuning integral controllers in astronomical adaptive optics systems.

Food webs are complex ecological networks that reveal species interactions and energy flow in ecosystems. Prevailing ecological knowledge on forested streams suggests that their food webs are based on allochthonous carbon, driven by a constant supply of organic matter from adjacent vegetation and limited primary production due to low light conditions. Extreme climatic disturbances can disrupt these natural ecosystem dynamics by altering resource availability, which leads to changes in food web structure and functioning. Here, we quantify the response of stream food webs to two major hurricanes (Irma and María, Category 5 and 4, respectively) that struck Puerto Rico in September 2017. Within two tropical forested streams (first and second order), we collected ecosystem and food web data 6 months prior to the hurricanes and 2, 9, and 18 months afterward. We assessed the structural (e.g., canopy) and hydrological (e.g., discharge) characteristics of the ecosystem and monitored changes in basal resources (i.e., algae, biofilm, and leaf litter), consumers (e.g., aquatic invertebrates, riparian consumers), and applied Layman\'s community-wide metrics using the isotopic composition of 13 C and 15 N. Continuous stream discharge measurements indicated that the hurricanes did not cause an extreme hydrological event. However, the sixfold increase in canopy openness and associated changes in litter input appeared to trigger an increase in primary production. These food webs were primarily based on terrestrially derived carbon before the hurricanes, but most taxa (including Atya and Xiphocaris shrimp, the consumers with highest biomass) shifted their food source to autochthonous carbon within 2 months of the hurricanes. We also found evidence that the hurricanes dramatically altered the structure of the food web, resulting in shorter (i.e., smaller food-chain length), narrower (i.e., lower diversity of carbon sources) food webs, as well as increased trophic species packing. This study demonstrates how hurricane disturbance can alter stream food webs, changing the trophic base from allochthonous to autochthonous resources via changes in the physical environment (i.e., canopy defoliation). As hurricanes become more frequent and severe due to climate change, our findings greatly contribute to our understanding of the mechanisms that maintain forested stream trophic interactions amidst global change.

According to the sixth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), global climate change is now unequivocal. Tunisia, like many other countries, has been affected by climate changes, including rising temperatures, intense heatwaves, and altered precipitation regimes. Tunisia\'s mean annual temperatures has risen about +1.4 °C in the twentieth century, with the most rapid warming taking place since the 1970s. Drought represents a primary contributing factor to tree decline and dieback. Long-term drought can result in reduced growth and health of trees, thereby increasing their susceptibility to insect pests and pathogens. Reported increases in tree mortality point toward accelerating global forest vulnerability under hotter temperatures and longer, more intense droughts. In order to assess the effect of these climate changes on the current state of forest ecosystems in Tunisia and their evolution, an investigative study was required. Here, we review the current state of knowledge on the effects of climate change on sclerophyllous and semi-deciduous forest ecosystems in Tunisia. Natural disturbance during recent years, as well as the adaptability and resilience of some forest species to climate change, were surveyed. The Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) is a multi-scalar drought index based on climate data that has been used to analyse drought variability. The SPEI time scale analysis showed a negative trend over the 1955-2021 period in Tunisian forest regions. In 2021, Tunisia lost 280 km2 of tree cover to fires, which is equivalent to 26% of the total lost area between 2008 and 2021. Changing climate conditions have also affected phenological parameters, with an advance in the start of the green season (SOS) of 9.4 days, a delay at the end of the green season (EOS) of 5 days, with a consequent extended duration of the green season (LOS) by an average of 14.2 days. All of these alarming findings invite us to seek adaptation strategies for forest ecosystems. Adapting forests to climate change is therefore a challenge for scientists as well as policymakers and managers.

Aim: Off-reserve conservation is a major contributor to China biodiversity conservation efforts, biodiversity conservation being achieved within afforestation and low-intensity agriculture in fragmented landscapes. Functional trait is more strongly related to ecological processes than taxonomic diversity and reflects ecosystem functioning and species responses to environmental changes. In this study, we selected five habitats that differ in degree of disturbance to explore the effects of land use on ant community compositions, traits distributions and functional diversity change. We assessed how habitat disturbance affects the ant community compositions and traits distributions and asked if ant functional diversity respond to disturbance at the local scale? Location: Lüchun County, Yunnan Province, southwest China. Methods: Pitfall traps were used to survey ant communities. Additionally, we measured four ant morphological traits (eyes diameter, distance between eyes, femur length of the hind-leg and Weber\'s length) to assess the functional traits distributions and functional diversity. Shade plot of ant relative abundance was used to explore species distribution amongst different habitats. Kernel density plot was used to explore ant traits distribution patterns amongst different habitats. Non-metric multi-dimensional scaling ordination, based on ant Weber\'s length, was used to explore the ant traits compositions amongst different habitats. The fourth corner model was used to evaluate the association between ant traits and environmental variables. The FRic, RaoQ and FEve indices were selected as three complementary measures of the multivariate functional traits space and functional redundancy of different habitats. Results: We collected 14258 ants, representing 89 species, 40 genera and seven subfamilies. Aphaenogasterschurri and Tetramoriumciliatum were the common species of secondary forest; P.sagei, P.pieli, Cardiocondylawroughtonii, Recurvidrisnuwa, Tapinnomamelanocephalum, Monomoriumpharaonis and M.orientale were the common species in plantations; and Iridomyrmexanceps and Cardiocondylanuda were the common species in managed farms. Ants had medium eye diameters, narrow distances between eyes, medium leg lengths and smaller body sizes in greatly-disturbed habitats; and ants had an increasing eye diameter and narrowing of the space between eyes, while the leg length and Weber\'s length became shorter in moderately-disturbed habitats. Ant trait composition, based on Weber\'s length, showed significantly differences amongst five habitats. The fourth corner analysis indicated that ant species traits were significantly correlated with environmental variables. The functional diversity of secondary forest, lac plantation and lac plantation-corn agroforest were higher than those in dryland farm and rice paddy. Functional diversities were significantly negatively correlated with bare ground cover and significantly positively correlated with leaf-litter cover, leaf-litter thickness and plant cover. Main conclusion: Our results indicated that ant traits distribution patterns were affected by land-use changes, followed by anthropogenic disturbance pressures at the local scale. Ant traits compositions in greatly-disturbed habitats also differed from the habitats with less disturbance. It is unfavourable for the survival of the large body-size ants in more open habitats with more anthropogenic disturbance. Compared with secondary forest, dryland farm and rice paddies were less resistant and more vulnerable and lac plantations had approximately functional diversity of ant communities, suggesting that lac plantations might be resistant as secondary forest to species loss.