Effectiveness of hierarchical Bayesian models for citizen science data with missing values: A case study on the factors influencing beach litter in Shimane Prefecture, Japan.

Citizen science can play an important role in addressing the issue of marine debris. However, citizen science data are often composed of inconsistent methods compared to data collected by experts. In this study, we applied beach cleanup data, collected in different survey years at different survey sites, to a hierarchical Bayesian model to elucidate the factors affecting the distribution of beach litter.

Positive and negative effects of land abandonment on butterfly communities revealed by a hierarchical sampling design across climatic regions.

Land abandonment may decrease biodiversity but also provides an opportunity for rewilding. It is therefore necessary to identify areas that may benefit from traditional land management practices and those that may benefit from a lack of human intervention. In this study, we conducted comparative field surveys of butterfly occurrence in abandoned and inhabited settlements in 18 regions of diverse climatic zones in Japan to test the hypotheses that species-specific responses to land abandonment correlate with climatic niches and habitat preferences.

Estimation of tsunami debris on seafloors towards future disaster preparedness: Unveiling spatial varying effects of combined land use and oceanographic factors.

A large amount of tsunami debris from the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011 was sunk on the seafloor and threatened the marine ecosystem and local communities' economy, especially in fisheries. However, few studies estimated spatial accumulations of tsunami benthic debris, comparing to their flows on the ocean surface. Here, a spatially varying coefficient model was used to estimate tsunami debris accumulation considering the spatial structure of the data off the Tohoku region.

Human interest meets biodiversity hotspots: A new systematic approach for urban ecosystem conservation.

Creating a win-win relationship between biodiversity and human well-being is one of the major current challenges for environmental policy. One way to approach this challenge is to identify sites with both high biodiversity and high human interest in urban areas. Here, we propose a new systematic approach to identify such sites by using land prices and biodiversity indexes for butterflies and birds from a nationwide perspective.