The Characterization of Riparian Vegetation in Agriculture Drains Impacted by Phragmites australis and Drain Management: A Southwestern Ontario, Canada Case Study
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Agricultural drainage systems are important components of regional ecosystems and play key roles in ecosystem functioning. Biodiversity is a service provided by drains which is not fully understood in agriculturally dominated areas and is disrupted consistently by drain management, specifically in drains invaded by Phragmites australis. The objective of this thesis was to characterize the contribution of regional vegetational biodiversity provided by drainage systems, across sites representing a gradient of management frequencies. Drains were separated into management categories: Low (managed +5 years ago), Medium (managed every 3-5 years), or High (managed yearly). Plant abundance was measured and biodiversity indices (Species Richness, Simpson’s, and Shannon-Wiener) were compared across the management gradient. In total, 133 distinct plant species were reported across spring and late-summer growing season surveys. Plant identifications were confirmed by local experts using a structured expert elicitation protocol. A number of environmental variables were visualized using non-metric multi-dimensional scaling (NMDS), principal component analysis (PCA), and redundancy analysis (RDA). Community composition differed across management categories, with sites under high levels of management dominated by graminoid (grasses) species. Community composition varied significantly across management categories. Biodiversity indices differed significantly across management categories, with low management sites having higher levels of biodiversity. Environmental variables did not have a strong correlation with community composition, however RDA analyses found management intensity to be the only significant variable relating to community composition. This thesis provides the first known baseline of vegetational community composition for agricultural drains across Windsor Essex. Vegetational biodiversity was dampened by regular drain management and this insight will be useful in exploring the multifunctional roles of drains in supporting biodiversity and ecosystem functions locally and regionally.
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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 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.004 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 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".