Publications
NIBIOs employees contribute to several hundred scientific articles and research reports every year. You can browse or search in our collection which contains references and links to these publications as well as other research and dissemination activities. The collection is continously updated with new and historical material.
2018
Authors
Björn RingselleAbstract
No abstract has been registered
Abstract
Horizontal Visibility Graphs (HVGs) are a recently developed method to construct networks based on time series. Values (the nodes of the network) of the time series are linked to each other if there is no value higher between them. The network properties reflect the nonlinear dynamics of the time series. For some classes of stochastic processes and for periodic time series, analytic results can be obtained for the degree distribution, the local clustering coefficient distribution, the mean path length, and others. HVGs have the potential to discern between deterministic-chaotic and correlated-stochastic time series. We investigate a set of around 150 river runoff time series at daily resolution from Brazil with an average length of 65 years. Most of the rivers are exploited for power generation and thus represent heavily managed basins. We investigate both long-term trends and human influence (e.g. the effect of dam construction) in the runoff regimes (disregarding direct upstream operations). HVGs are used to determine the degree and distance distributions. Statistical and information-theoretic properties of these distributions are calculated: robust estimators of skewness and kurtosis, the maximum degree occurring in the time series, the Shannon entropy, permutation complexity and Fisher Information. For the latter, we also compare the information measures obtained from the degree distributions to those using the original time series directly, to investigate the impact of graph construction on the dynamical properties as reflected in these measures. We also show that a specific pretreatment of the time series conventional in hydrology, the elimination of seasonality by a separate z-transformation for each calendar day, changes long-term correlations and the overall dynamics substantially and towards more random behaviour. Moreover, hydrological time series are typically limited in length and may contain ties, and we present empirical consequences and extensive simulations to investigate these issues from a HVG methodological perspective. Focus is on one hand on universal properties of the HVG, common to all runoff series, and on site-specific aspects on the other.
Abstract
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Authors
Jens Peter Skovsgaard Jacob Johan Mohr Markmann Giulia Attocchi Bruce TalbotAbstract
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Authors
Eveliina Kallioniemi Knut HovstadAbstract
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Abstract
Different seed lots of Pinus spp. cultivated within South Africa were screened for the presence or absence of seed-borne fungi according to modified ISTA (International Seed Testing Association) prescribed protocols. Numerous (454 isolates) fungi were successfully isolated, purified and stored using agar slants and cryopreservation. Sydowia polyspora was isolated from six different seed lots from three Pinus species (P. greggii (South), P. elliottii and P. taeda) and was morphologically and molecularly identified. Koch’s postulates was fulfilled by inoculating one year old seedlings (wounded and unwounded) with a spore suspension (107 ml-1) obtained from 30 day old pure cultures grown on PDA. Inoculated and uninoculated control seedlings were incubated in a greenhouse at 220C until symptom development. Sydowia polyspora was re-isolated from symptomatic needles with both wounded and unwounded needles showing characteristic symptoms. No symptoms were apparent on the control seedlings. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report of the fungus being isolated and recorded within the country. Further investigations will look at the prevalence, pathogenicity and characterization of the fungus within South Africa.