Papers by Nefta-Eleftheria Votsi
Urban Biodiversity Index for Trees: A Climate Adaptation Measure for Cities Based on Tree Inventories
Environments, Jul 8, 2024
Δίκτυο περιοχών υψηλής ακουστικής αξίας και βιοποικιλότητας
Diversity
Invasive alien plants have severe impacts on biodiversity and ecosystem services worldwide. To as... more Invasive alien plants have severe impacts on biodiversity and ecosystem services worldwide. To assess the invasion of Solanum elaeagnifolium Cav. (a major alien invasive plant; Solanaceae) in Greek protected areas (PAs), we conducted an extensive drive-by survey across the country crossing half of the Greek Natura 2000 sites. The occurrence data were then linked in GIS with (i) the boundaries of the Natura 2000 sites, (ii) the mapped habitat types in the invaded sites, and (iii) the Corine land cover, from which we calculated the ecosystem services. The results showed that approximately 24% of the investigated PAs were invaded by S.elaeagnifolium to varying degrees of extension and density of the populations. A variety of 29 different habitat types of Annex I of the Directive 92/43/EEC (including a priority habitat and seven habitat types of national importance) were found to be invaded (one in four habitat types present in Greece). In the invaded Natura 2000 sites, we recorded huma...
Pathways to protect marine biodiversity: Could Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) be benefited by landscape ecology?
Marine Pollution Bulletin
The marine environment faces multiple threats, many of which are still undiscovered. Anthropogeni... more The marine environment faces multiple threats, many of which are still undiscovered. Anthropogenic noise is considered a representative indicator of the human footprint. The aim of this short communication is to protect marine biodiversity by exploiting basic principles of Landscape and Soundscape Ecology and borrowing methods and tools to identify and map the human induced noise of the marine environment and thus create, based on this information layer, a connectivity pathway among all Marine Protected Areas (MPAs). Today it is of vital importance to take urgent action towards protecting the marine environment. Could we be inspired by effective and practical solutions of biodiversity conservation, already successfully implemented in the terrestrial environment, taking into account the special and diverse characteristics of the marine environment to protect marine biodiversity?
Network of high acoustic and biodiversity value areas
This doctorate thesis attempts to develop an integrated network of protected areas characterized ... more This doctorate thesis attempts to develop an integrated network of protected areas characterized by Biodiversity and high Acoustic value. Taking into account the innovative, interdisciplinary and combining dimensions of such a network, an introduction to the basic principles and concepts of Landscape Ecology, Biodiversity Conservation and Acoustic Ecology was considered necessary. The basic objectives of the current study are the national scale assessment of Quiet Areas according to a distance-based criteria model, which led to the identification of the first component of the integrated network of protected areas. Quiet Areas comprise 47.93% of Greece’ total area, while the fact that the higher values of Quiet Areas’ clustering coincide with areas of high Biodiversity value highlight the importance of their protection.Next, after overlaying Natura 2000 sites on Quiet Areas, it was feasible to develop the integrated network of Biodiversity and high Acoustic value, taking also into co...
Green urban areas as ecological indicators: combining in situ data and satellite products
European Planning Studies
We investigated whether green urban areas (GUA) improve the urban environment. Field measurements... more We investigated whether green urban areas (GUA) improve the urban environment. Field measurements were conducted to record noise and light pollution as well as other environmental characteristics in four GUA in Athens. The biodiversity status of the examined areas was derived from the existing data. Not all GUA represent ecological refuges, mostly depending on their configuration. Special attention should be drawn to planning and designing GUA so that human pressures could not penetrate. Soundscape assessment combined with artificial lighting, environmental and biodiversity status investigation of a site clarifies the edge effect of ecosystems leading to an alternative, integrated, multidimensional management approach.
Roadless Areas for brown bear conservation in Europe
www.mdpi.com/journal/ijerph Article Auditory Recognition of Familiar and Unfamiliar Subjects with Wind Turbine Noise
Abstract: Considering the wide growth of the wind turbine market over the last decade as well as ... more Abstract: Considering the wide growth of the wind turbine market over the last decade as well as their increasing power size, more and more potential conflicts have arisen in society due to the noise radiated by these plants. Our goal was to determine whether the annoyance caused by wind farms is related to aspects other than noise. To accomplish this, an auditory experiment on the recognition of wind turbine noise was conducted to people with long experience of wind turbine noise exposure and to people with no previous experience to this type of noise source. Our findings demonstrated that the trend of the auditory recognition is the same for the two examined groups, as far as the increase of the distance and the decrease of the values of sound equivalent levels and loudness are concerned. Significant differences between the two groups were observed as the distance increases. People with wind turbine noise
89 Publications 1,663 Citations See Profile
Road effects on habitat richness of the Greek Natura 2000 network 53 Road effects on habitat rich... more Road effects on habitat richness of the Greek Natura 2000 network 53 Road effects on habitat richness of the
Road density in Greek Natura 2000 network
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 2021
There is plenty of proof that environmental noise is a major pollutant in the urban environment. ... more There is plenty of proof that environmental noise is a major pollutant in the urban environment. Several approaches were successfully applied for its calculation, visualization, prediction and mitigation. The goal of all strategy plans regards its reduction and the creation of quietness. This study aims to revisit the concept of quietness in the urban environment and attempts to portray a new understanding of the specific phenomena. “Quietness” as a term retains an ambiguity, and so far, it can be described as the lack of something, meaning the lack of noise that is portrayed by means of intensity. Several studies describe quietness as the combination of perceptual soundscape elements and contextual factors that can be quantified, combined, weighed and used as indicators of healthy soundscapes. In this research, the focus is on setting aside all indicators, either measuring the intensity or contextual ones and use solely quantifiable metrics regarding the acoustic environment, thus ...
A systematic approach to map and assess the "maintenance of nursery populations and habitats" eco... more A systematic approach to map and assess the "maintenance of nursery populations and habitats" ecosystem service (ES) (hereinafter called "habitat maintenance") has not yet emerged. In this article, we present an ecosystem service framework implementation at landscape level, by proposing an approach for calculating and combining a series of indicators with spatial modelling techniques. Necessary conceptual elements for this approach are: a) ecosystem condition, b) supply and demand of the targeted ecosystem service and c) spatial relationships between the Service Providing Units (SPU) and the Service Connecting Units (SCU). Ecosystem condition is quantified and mapped based on two indicators, the Biodiversity State and the Anthropogenic Impact. Quantification and mapping of supply and demand are based on the hypothesis that high supply can be activated in strictly protected areas and that a demand is localised in the Natura 2000 sites (N2K), considering them as the Service Benefit Areas (SBA). Wetlands are assessed as SCU between the SBA and the landscape areas where the habitat maintenance ES is ‡ ‡ ‡ ‡ ‡ §
Sound Studies, 2019
This paper shows that contemporary sound in urban areas consists of a fragile equilibrium of soni... more This paper shows that contemporary sound in urban areas consists of a fragile equilibrium of sonic territories with high heterogeneity. Sound scenes in urban environments are studied using ecological sound tools, including soundscape ecology and acoustic ecology. This study proposes an interdisciplinary framework that combines quantitative and qualitative sonic and architectural data to analyse, describe and design sonic space. Five territories with distinctive sonic identities in the historic centre of Thessaloniki in Greece were selected and compared with their architectural characteristics. Though these characteristics of Thessaloniki are similar to other cities of Greece, the continuing transformation of urban sonic identities lends importance to this research. The analysis revealed unique information about the identity and urbanity of the territories, challenging the established noisesilence dichotomy and opening up new perspectives on an integrated sustainable urban design.
Applied Acoustics, 2017
The delineation of Quiet Areas (QAs) forms nowadays a national obligation of EU countries. Nevert... more The delineation of Quiet Areas (QAs) forms nowadays a national obligation of EU countries. Nevertheless the variable applications of QAs among Member-States have highlighted the need for an international common approach for the preservation of Quietness. The objective of this paper is to identify and thus protect QAs of EU. Our methodological design consisted of the implementation of a coarse scale distance-based methodology regarding the identification of QAs among different countries, environmental and altitudinal zones with a view to investigating the spatial pattern of QAs as well as their spatial relation to other protected areas. QAs cover 56.09% of EU territory with most of the sites comprising an area larger than 100 km 2 indicating that Quietness provides a valuable ecosystem service for human well-being. Central Europe demonstrates lower percentages of Quietness whereas Mediterranean and Scandinavian areas contain higher percentages of Quietness. Also our findings regarding the spatial overlap of QAs with Natura 2000 network suggest that QAs actually indicate sites of environmental quality, and could thus be incorporated into environmental policy initiatives.
One Ecosystem, 2017
The implementation of the Ecosystem Service (ES) concept into practice might be a challenging tas... more The implementation of the Ecosystem Service (ES) concept into practice might be a challenging task as it has to take into account previous "traditional" policies and approaches that have evaluated nature and biodiversity differently. Among them the Habitat (92/43/EC) and Bird Directives (79/409/EC), the Water Framework Directive (2000/60/EC), and the Noise Directive (2002/49/EC) have led to the evaluation/designation of areas in Europe with different criteria. In this study our goal was to understand how the ES capacity of an area is related to its designation and if areas with multiple designations have higher capacity in providing ES. We selected four catchments in Greece with a great variety of characteristics covering over 25% of the national territory. Inside the catchments we assessed the ES capacity (following the methodology of Burkhard et al. 2009) of areas designated as Natura 2000 sites, Quiet areas and Wetlands or Water bodies and found those areas that have multiple designations. Data were analyzed by GLM to reveal differences regarding the ES capacity among the different types of areas. We also investigated by PCA synergies and trade-offs among different kinds of ES and tested for correlations among landscape properties, such as elevation, aspect and slope and the ES potential.
Environmental Pollution, 2017
Quietness exists in places without human induced noise sources and could offer multiple benefits ... more Quietness exists in places without human induced noise sources and could offer multiple benefits to citizens. Unlit areas are sites free of human intense interference at night time. The aim of this research is to develop an integrated environmental index of noise and light pollution. In order to achieve this goal the spatial pattern of quietness and darkness of Europe was identified, as well as their overlap. The environmental index revealed that the spatial patterns of Quiet and Unlit Areas differ to a great extent highlighting the importance of preserving quietness as well as darkness in EU. The spatial overlap of these two environmental characteristics covers 32.06% of EU surface area, which could be considered a feasible threshold for protection. This diurnal and nocturnal metric of environmental quality accompanied with all direct and indirect benefits to human well-being could indicate a target for environmental protection in the EU policy and practices.
Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, 2017
Protected Areas (PAs) are a main conservation tool to halt biodiversity loss. However, their perf... more Protected Areas (PAs) are a main conservation tool to halt biodiversity loss. However, their performance has been often questioned and the need to improve their effectiveness is now more apparent than ever. Here, we propose Roadless Areas as a conservation target to increase the cover and effectiveness of PAs. Roadless Areas represent natural and semi-natural areas of high conservation value that have no or little traffic and provide multiple ecosystem services. Here, we develop a methodological framework to identify Roadless Areas in Europe and assess their spatial properties and conservation status. We examine how the European Union's conservation network, Natura 2000, would expand if Roadless Areas that are already partially included in Natura 2000 terrestrial sites or are adjacent to them would be added to the existing conservation network. We find that European lands are highly fragmented. Roadless Areas are unevenly distributed, and cover more than 30% of the European Union territory, with large Roadless Areas (≥100 km 2 ) occupying about 18% of that surface. At the national level, there is a large variation in the percentage of overlap between Natura 2000 sites and Roadless Areas, with the Natura 2000 network currently encompassing between 19 and 89% of the Roadless Areas surface, depending on the member state. Our results demonstrate that Roadless Areas adjacent to Natura 2000 sites cover >65% of the total Natura 2000 surface. As Roadless Areas have limited human access, we suggest integrating Roadless Areas into biodiversity conservation networks as a timely solution to minimize conflicts over expanding PAs in the European Union and to achieve the goals of the European Union's 2020 Biodiversity Strategy.
Automatic soundscape quality estimation using audio analysis
Proceedings of the 8th ACM International Conference on PErvasive Technologies Related to Assistive Environments, 2015
The huge growth of population size along with all the accompanying impacts, like traffic flow, co... more The huge growth of population size along with all the accompanying impacts, like traffic flow, commercial and industrial activities have led to a respective increase of noise pollution in the urban environments. In most cases, noise pollution in big cities is characterized by low-frequency and continuous background sounds. This ever-growing environmental problem engages health risks and major complaints of annoyance on behalf of millions of citizens. Therefore, sustainable urban planning needs to seriously take into consideration the task of mitigating environmental noise. In addition, the quality of the acoustic environment plays an important role in urban as well as in rural and natural spaces, since it has been proven to affect biodiversity. In this paper, we demonstrate how efficiently assessing soundscape quality can be applied to real recordings from various sites. The evaluation of the qualitative attributes of the soundscape is carried out combining space-sound-human presence. The mapping of the extracted feature statistics to the perceived soundscape quality level is achieved through a Support Vector Machine Regression model. Extensive experiments have been carried out on a real-world dataset and the resulting performance evaluation proves that the proposed architecture can be applied to assess the soundscape quality of both natural and urban spaces.
International journal of environmental research and public health, Jan 17, 2015
Considering the wide growth of the wind turbine market over the last decade as well as their incr... more Considering the wide growth of the wind turbine market over the last decade as well as their increasing power size, more and more potential conflicts have arisen in society due to the noise radiated by these plants. Our goal was to determine whether the annoyance caused by wind farms is related to aspects other than noise. To accomplish this, an auditory experiment on the recognition of wind turbine noise was conducted to people with long experience of wind turbine noise exposure and to people with no previous experience to this type of noise source. Our findings demonstrated that the trend of the auditory recognition is the same for the two examined groups, as far as the increase of the distance and the decrease of the values of sound equivalent levels and loudness are concerned. Significant differences between the two groups were observed as the distance increases. People with wind turbine noise experience showed a higher tendency to report false alarms than people without experie...
Evaluating the Effectiveness of Natura 2000 Network for Wolf Conservation: A Case-Study in Greece
Environmental Management, 2015
The wolf (Canis lupus) is used as a case study to rate Natura 2000 sites in Greece based on prefe... more The wolf (Canis lupus) is used as a case study to rate Natura 2000 sites in Greece based on preferred wolf habitat characteristics and test whether the network is suitable for their conservation. Road density, agricultural area, site area, connectivity, food availability (i.e., presence of natural prey), and elevation in 237 sites are combined in a logistic regression model. The occurrence of the wolf's natural prey was the most prevalent factor determining wolf presence, followed by agricultural cover. Considering the current status of these features at N2K site level, most sites currently hosting wolves (85.7 %) have good or excellent prospects for the long-term presence of the wolf. On the contrary, 11 sites which now have wolves are predicted to be ineffective in keeping them in the future due to the absence of wild ungulates and their high agricultural coverage. Four sites with no wolf presence currently have excellent prospects to host wolves in the future. Roadless sites are a priority for protection and retaining their current condition is strongly suggested. The proposed approach aims to detect gaps in protection for the wolf and identify priority sites in need of mitigation actions. It can also assist the assessment of conservation policies in Greece and elsewhere toward accomplishing set goals in protected areas. By focusing on wolf protection, we hope to increase agencies' attention to deal with conservation effectiveness, especially in cases like Greece, where a number of sites are insufficiently known and protected and management measures are not properly implemented.
Uploads
Papers by Nefta-Eleftheria Votsi