Assessment of the impact of oil and gas industry emissions on the European Starling (Sturnus vulgaris)
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The size of the environmental footprint of the oil and gas industry in western Canada is enormous, yet the potential impact of the industry and related chemical emissions on local environments remains largely unknown.Therefore, when a study was initiated to investigate the health, productivity, and immune competence of domestic livestock chronically exposed to emissions from oil and gas batteries and associated field facilities in the western provinces of Canada, a parallel study of a representative wildlife species was conducted to gain further insight into the potential impact of the industry on environmental health.To this end, wild European Starlings (Sturnus vulgaris) were attracted to nesting locations surrounding oil and gas emission sites and suitable reference sites through strategic placement of nest boxes in the breeding seasons of 2001 and 2002.Spanning these two field seasons, reproductive performance (clutch size, egg weight and volume, and hatchability), nestling condition and survival were examined in 120 nests over a large geographical area in central Alberta.In addition, hepatic ethoxyresorufin-odeethylase (EROD) activity (a measure of cytochrome P450IA1 biotransformation activity) and concentrations of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (P AH) metabolites in bile were measured as biomarkers of exposure to certain contaminants, including P AHs, present in oil and gas emissions.Hatchability and fledging success of the starlings were not significantly associated with S0 2 , H 2 S, and benzene concentrations, and proximity to oil and gas well sites.In contrast, ambient weather conditions, particularly total precipitation and average temperature during the period of interest, were significantly associated with these outcomes.Nestling size, when measured as tarsal length, was significantly decreased with exposure to increasing benzene concentration.However this effect was not seen on nestling development, measured using the length of the 1oth primary feather.None of nestling weight, egg weight or egg volume was associated with any measurement of contaminant exposure.Although no association was found between EROD activity or biliary PAH metabolite concentrations in starling nestlings and the exposure variables measured, nest occupancy rate (an effect of nest location on the outcome variable), and minimum temperature during the period from nest initiation to fledging of the brood acted as predictors ofEROD activity, while total precipitation was Judit Smits for their encouragement and guidance in the preparation of this thesis.Their countless hours spent with me in the field refining our methods, and pouring over drafts of this document are much appreciated.Also to Cheryl Waldner, without whose help, I would still be hopelessly mired in a jungle of data, with no way out!The vast expertise in the area of avian biology needed for this project was taught to be me by a single person; Gary Bortolotti taught me the beauty of ornithology and also encouraged me when I was most in need of it.Finally, I would like to thank Barry Blakley for his guidance and wisdom each step of the way along this journey, whose thorough direction made the road very clear and easy to follow.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".