A) Genetics, behavior and ecology of a paper wasp invasion: Polistes dominulus in North America. http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.library.uvic.ca/stable/pdf/23736765.pdf
B) The paper is academic peer-reviewed research material.
C) The paper is academic peer-reviewed research material since there is a method section in which they collected 127 wasps. Also, the paper contains a results section discussing what they found in the field.
I have selected for this post a journal article from researchers at the Nereus Program, an interdisciplinary ocean research partnership based out of UBC:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308597X17301409
Rebecca G. Asch, William W.L. Cheung, Gabriel Reygondeau, Future marine ecosystem drivers, biodiversity, and fisheries maximum catch potential in Pacific Island countries and territories under climate change, In Marine Policy, 2017, ISSN 0308-597X, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpol.2017.08.015.
The authors of this paper all hold PhDs in ecology-related fields and are oceans researchers at major universities (in addition to the info in the article byline, their academic history is available here: http://www.nereusprogram.org/about/fellows/). The paper is chock-full of citations and has a bibliography. Therefore, I can safely conclude that this is an academic document.
This paper was published in Marine Policy. On inspection of the journal’s website, they employ double-blind peer review.
The authors include sections on their methods and results, which indicates that this is research-based. The entire paper went way over my head, and threw around words like “synthesize” and “overview”, so I may well be wrong.
The source of this blog post is the book Forest Ecology by J.P. Kimmins (2004). While I’m mulling over the possibilities of the field project for this course, which I am going to do in the green belt in my backyard, this book will be a valuable resource.
The author is certainly an expert in his field, having been a professor in forest ecology related positions since the late 60’s. He has also helped develop a number of forestry based ecosystem management models.
There is a reference section that is over 50 pages long, serving as a testament to extensive citation and exhaustive research. There is no Methods or Results section in the book which would seem to make it a review of existing data, knowledge, and theories. However, the subtitle of the book is “A Foundation for Sustainable Forest Management and Environmental Ethics in Forestry” so it is certainly meant to provide guidance for sustainable management practices.
I’m not certain if this is considered to be peer reviewed material. There are six different editors listed and Kimmins gives a shout out to a number of reviewers, mostly professors at other institutions. Whether or not they served in an official capacity or were just helping out a friend is unclear but it seems that this bounty of ecological wisdom is academic material that is not peer-reviewed.
Alanna
Reference
Kimmins, J. P. (2004). Forest ecology: a foundation for sustainable forest management and environmental ethics in forestry (3rd ed). Upper Saddle River, N.J: Prentice Hall.
In light of my first blog post, I have chosen a scientific source which discusses the characteristics of black-billed magpies nesting areas in urban regions. The source is an non-peer reviewed academic research paper. The article’s title is: ʺYear-round used large communal roosts of Black-billed Magpie Pica pica in an urban habitat. ˝
I classified this source as such because it is written by ornithology specialist Renzo Ientile from the Department of Biological science of the university of Catania in Italy. While the author has cited sufficient scientific sources in his work, it is not peer-reviewed. It is clearly a research paper as the methods, results and discussion sections are identified and well organized. To obtain the results described, the author and his associates have conducted 34 censuses in 5 different roosts located in urban areas over a period of one year. It enabled them to take into consideration factors such as climate/season changes and human interaction.
Here is the link to the full text;
http://www.ornitologiasiciliana.it/pdf/3.-Ientile.pdf
Ientile, Renzo. Year-round Used Large Communal Roosts of Black-billed Magpie Pica Pica in an Urban Habitat. Catania: CISO – Centro Italiano Studi Ornitologici, 2014.
Regards,
H, Zulfiqar
The paper written by Michael Notaro discusses how different ecosystems change in different locations and in changing temperatures. This paper can be used to support any of the questions I provided in blog 1 which makes this a good paper to reference for the question I will choose to conduct an experiment for. I found this paper on the Academic Search Complete database from the TRU library databases page. Within the acknowledgments on page 854 it states two anonymous reviewers looked over the paper making it peer-reviewed. This paper is an academic source because the author provides in-text citations and a reference list, also the author, Michael Notaro, holds a position at the centre for Climatic Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison when writing this paper. Lastly this is a review paper because even though there is a model and methods section the data used is collected from other experiments that are used as references to provide support for the paper. Therefore, there was no experiment conducted during the writing of this paper making it a review paper. When combining these all together this makes the paper an academic, peer-reviewed, review paper.
Michael N. 2008. Response of the mean global vegetation distribution to interannual climate variability. Climate Dynamics [accessed 2017 Nov. 4]; 30(7/8); 845-854. http://web.b.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.tru.ca/ehost/detail?vid=5&sid=1cfcd4de-ce32-4493-8b4b-3ba8a14fa96%40sessionmgr120&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGI2ZQ%3d%3d#AN=31694974&db=a9h DIO: 10.1007/s00382-007-0329-7
Post 2: Sources of Scientific Information
a) The source of ecological information chosen is a journal article:
Gonzlez, E., Sher, A.A., Tabacchi, E., Masip, A., and M. Poulin. 2015. Restoration of riparian vegetation: A global review of implementation and evaluation approaches in the international, peer-reviewed literature. Journal of Environmental Management 2015. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2015.04.033
b) This article an example of Academic Peer – Reviewed Review material.
c) This classification was made for the following reasons
1. The article was written by experts in the field as evidenced by their positions in academia.
2. It includes in-text citations
3. It contains a bibliography
4. Although it does not state that it was peer reviewed prior to publication:
a. As per our learning rescource article (Lepczyk 2011), journals use a peer review process managed by an Editor in Chief prior to acceptance for publication
b. Within the ‘search tool’ of the on-line library, there is an option to select from ONLY ‘scholarly (peer-reviewed) journals.
Lepczyk, C., and R. Donnelly. 2011. A beginner’s guide to reviewing manuscripts in ecology and conservation. Ideas in Ecology and Evolution 4:25-31.
From my first blog post, I decided to pursue the question on whether vegetation has any variation between the lower and higher elevations of the park. I went online to the TRU library database to find papers that show studies of vegetation differences between elevation. I found many that focused just on low or just on high elevation. Although it was done in parts of Asia, I found a interesting research paper that compares vegetation through many different elevation levels. “Elevation-Dependent Vegetation Greening of the Yarlung Zangbo River Basin in the Southern Tibetan Plateau, 1999–2013″ can be found here: http://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/7/12/15844/htm
This paper falls into the category of Academic peer-reviewed research material for many reasons. First off, it has been peer reviewed and we know that because it gives us the date is was received, accepted and published. We know it is research material (not just review material) because they discuss all of their methods and results as well in the paper.
Anna Zacaruk
September 30, 2017
I found a few interesting scientific papers on the subject of light competition in plants, with one of the most interesting being “The importance of light quality in crop-weed competition” by Lui JG et al. The paper discusses the notion that plant competition is thought to be driven by limiting resources such as light, which may disrupt physiological processes. The authors believe that changes in light resources may initiate a “shade avoidance response” in plants where they constrain their own development and reduce their own reproductive fitness in attempt to avoid growing in shaded areas and compete with other plants for light.
Another paper I found was called “Weed community characteristics and crop performance: a neighbourhood approach” by Pollnac FW et al. This paper discusses the possibility that the presence of weeds in crop fields causes crop yield reductions. The hypothesis tested was that increased weed species richness would decrease the effects of competition on spring wheat target plant performance. The authors ended up finding that species richness had no significant direct effect on spring wheat biomass, yield, or relative growth rate and that there were no significant neighbour species interaction terms. However, they did find that increasing weed species richness had a negative impact on the growth of individual weed species.
Both papers I’ve chosen are academic papers written by Lui JG et al., and Pollnac TW et al. respectively. The two papers are both apart of the “WEED RESEARCH” Journal, which is “An International Journal of Weed Biology Ecology and Vegetation Management.” Both reports contain in text citations, multiple tables, results sections, bibliography and authors. Each paper is based off of experiments and testing performed by the authors, and each has detailed results sections. Considering this is an internationally published academic journal, and both papers are Peer-Reviewed, I would consider these both Academic, Peer-Reviewed Research papers.
Liu, J.G., K.J. Mahoney, P.H. Sikkema, and C.J. Swanton. 2008. The importance of light quality in crop-weed competition. Weed Research 49: 217-224.
Pollnac, F.W., B.D. Maxwell, and F.D. Menalled. 2008. Weed community characteristics and crop performance: a neighbourhood approach. Weed Research 49: 242-250.
I have selected a chapter out of an online publication from the B.C. Ministry of Forests. Chapter 5: Coastal Douglas-fir zone provides detailed information about the classification, distribution and ecological characteristics of the Coastal Douglas fir zone. For anyone who is interested the link is as follows: https://www.for.gov.bc.ca/hfd/pubs/docs/srs/srs06.pdf
Based on the flow chart for discriminating among different sources of information this publication is academic, peer-reviewed review material. I arrived at this conclusion because F. Nuszdorfer, K. Klinka, and D. Demarchi are (were) the leading forest ecologists who researched and oversaw the biogeoclimatic ecosystem classification system for B.C. Within the acknowledgments section there are numerous authors and colleagues at the Ministry Forests and Ministry of Environment identified who reviewed individual chapters as well as the overall manuscript. As well, when I did a Google search of the publication with “times cited” over 5000 hits were displayed.
F.C. Nuszdorfer et al. Chapter 5: Coastal Douglas-fir Zone. Ecosystems of British Columbia. B.C. Ministry of Forests, 1991. www.for.bc.ca/hfd/pubs/ss/srs06.pdf. Web. 2 Oct. 2017.
A question that came from my first blog post, specifically regarding a wastewater tertiary plant which is about to be built just outside of a public park in my town, is to ask the logical question… what will be the cause & affect that the construction of this site will have on the surrounding ecosystems? I have opted to use this report published in 1986 through the USEPA (United States Enviromental Protection Agency) & NSCEP (National Service Centre for Environmental Protection). This article is titled “Environmental Impacts of Advanced Wastewater Treatment at Ely, Minnesota”.
The report contains in test citations & a bibliography (pg. 27). The report is an academic peer-reviewed report as it has been reviewed by multiple referees before being approved for publication. They have been cited as experts in their respective fields (pg 8).
The author provides multiple tables & results, as well as a final report, although it is not specifically listed in the index. Therefore, I would conclude that this is an Academic, Peer-Reviewed Research Material.
Source: USEPA, Office of Research & Development, Energy Consumption Of Advanced Wastewater Treatment At Ely Minnesota, Environmental Research Laboratory, Corvallis Oregon, January 1978.
