Search

Dietary studies provide key insights into threats and changes within ecosystems and subsequent impacts on focal species. Diet is particularly challenging to study within marine environments and therefore is often poorly understood. Here, we examined the diet of stranded and bycaught loggerhead (Caretta caretta) and green turtles (Chelonia mydas) in North Cyprus (35.33° N, 33.47° E) between 2011 and 2019. A total of 129 taxa were recorded in the diet of loggerhead turtles (n = 45), which were predominantly carnivorous (on average 72.1% of dietary biomass), foraging on a large variety of invertebrates, macroalgae, seagrasses and bony fish in low frequencies. Despite this opportunistic foraging strategy, one species was particularly dominant, the sponge Chondrosia reniformis (21.5%). Consumption of this sponge decreased with increasing turtle size. A greater degree of herbivory was found in green turtles (n = 40) which predominantly consumed seagrasses and macroalgae (88.8%) with a total of 101 taxa recorded. The most dominant species was a Lessepsian invasive seagrass, Halophila stipulacea (31.1%). This is the highest percentage recorded for this species in green turtle diet in the Mediterranean thus far. With increasing turtle size, the percentage of seagrass consumed increased with a concomitant decrease in macroalgae. Seagrass was consumed year-round. Omnivory occurred in all green turtle size classes but reduced in larger turtles (> 75 cm CCL) suggesting a slow ontogenetic dietary shift. Macroplastic ingestion was more common in green (31.6% of individuals) than loggerhead turtles (5.7%). This study provides the most complete dietary list for marine turtles in the eastern Mediterranean.

Crystals of the layered chalcogenide semiconductor gallium selenide (GaSe) were studied with fluorescence lifetime imaging microscopy in the frequency domain, the excitation source being a cw frequency-doubled Nd:YAG laser modulated between 25 and 50 MHz. The non-zero photoluminescence (PL) lifetime leads to a change of the relative modulation amplitude (m) and a phase lag (phi) of the luminescence with respect to the excitation. The data were analyzed with the polar-plot (or phasor) approach by plotting m sin phi versus m cos phi. Data points of different spots on the sample show strong inhomogeneities and form looping structures in the polar plot. Moreover, they extend distinctly outside the characteristic semi-circle. The latter point is due to the nearly quadratic variation of the PL signal with excitation intensity, whereas the looping structures indicate the presence of energy transfer processes between (at least) two different emitting states. The analysis of the data shows that the same exciton state(s) are involved in both absorption and PL emission of GaSe. (C) 2014 AIP Publishing LLC.

Since the emergence of laser and henceforth laser remote sensing in the 1960's, lidar (light detecting and ranging) technology has became a significant tool for the detection of various phenomena like wind direction and intensity, atmospheric temperature, urban and rural topography, forest fires, ocean planktonic development, and detection of various constituants such as tropospheric aerosols, stratospheric ozone, trace chemicals and etc. In 2009, a homemade multiwavelength Raman aerosol lidar (named MRC K09) was designed, developed and installed in the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TUBITAK) Marmara Research Center (MRC), and since 21 February 2011, it has been accepted to EARLINET (European Aerosol Research Lidar Network). Since 2009, aerosol spatio-temporal distribution and microphysical properties have been investigated in the extremely industrialized vicinity [1,2]. MRC K09 lidar uses a Quantel Brilliant B Nd:YAG laser (1064 nm) with the second and third optical harmonics at 532 and 355 nm, and a homemade Newtonian 40 cm aperture 120 cm focal length telescope. It has 7 channel spectrum analyzer detecting: parallel and perpendicular polarizations at 355 nm, elastic signals at 532 and 1064 nm, Raman signal of molecular nitrogen at 387 nm and Raman signal of water vapor at 408 nm (excited with 355 laser line), and Raman signal for molecular nitrogen at 608 nm (excited with 532 nm laser line). In Spring 2010, preliminary applications for the determination of forest tree species and of forest health in the Black Sea Area using an aeroborne lidar in collaboration with Bartin University, Bartin, Turkey have been made. In early 2011, a fluorescence module utilizing a Princeton Instruments PI-MAX3 1024x256 resolution CCD camera with a Princeton Instruments Acton SP 2500 0.500 m Imaging Triple Grating Monochromator/Spectograph was connected to the MRC K09 lidar system, and the first remote measurements of chlorophyll from different types of trees were made. Figure 1 demonstrates the results of these measurements, which must be considered as preliminary and in the future, the measurements can be carried out by the lidar mounted on an aircraft to cover large spatial areas. One of the most important reasons for biodiversity loss, habitat loss and fragmentation can be monitored in large areas by aeroborne lidars and therefore the extent of the situation can be accessed precisely, faster and more efficiently. This paper aims to give a brief overview to show the possibility of detecting the detailed situations of the habitats on terrain surfaces using lidar technology by summarizing the successful examples which have been realized thus far in different types of ecosystems like savannas, forest and grasslands.

Aerosols affect the radiation budget of the Earth by scattering and absorbing the incoming solar radiation, and by acting as cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) to form clouds and/or change their properties. Because of their high spatio-temporal variability and remote nature, investigations of aerosols physical properties have been rather limited until the last few decades. Lately, multiwavelength Raman lidars became an important tool for the measurements of aerosol physical parameters. Such lidars allow to get three aerosol backscattering and two extinction coefficients (so called 3β+2α) and from these optical data the particle microphysical parameters such as number, surface area and volume concentrations, effective radius, particle size distribution, particle and volume polarizations and complex refractive index can be retrieved through inversion with regularization, principle component analysis and linear estimation techniques. During 2009-2011, using a homemade multiwavelength Raman lidar with a Quantel BrilliantB Nd:YAG laser generating also the 2nd and the 3rd optical harmonics, the spatial and temporal distribution of aerosols and their microphysical properties have been measured and evaluated in various seasons, meteorological conditions and with different horizontal measurement angles. Reliability of our results have been confirmed with the synergistic measurements done with lidars located in Greece, the EUFAR aircraft (European Facility for Airborne Research, FAAM-Bae146 aircraft), ACEMED campaign (Evaluation of CALIPSO’s (Cloud-aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observation) aerosol classificatiomn scheme over Eastern Mediterranean) and GOSAT (Global Greenhouse Gas Observation by Satellite project). In early 2012, the addition of the scanning module mounted on the top of the telescope, allowed to obtain information about the aerosol distribution within fixed and regular time intervals in a given time frame and from various measurement angles, and thus it made possible to cover a large spatial area and to evaluate the changes in the aerosol microphysical properties in space and time. It uses Newport ESP301 Motion Controller allowing to make measurements in 340° azimuthal and ± 15° vertical scanning angles by a 300 x 600 mm plane mirror. In this paper, the description of the new multiwavelength aerosol lidar scanning system installed in the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TUBITAK) Marmara Research Center (MRC), KA09 Laser and Lidar Laboratory is explained, and the first results obtained from the data acquired during Spring and Summer 2012 are presented by integrating the results with a geographical map of Gebze Area.