RESUMEN
Context: Both climatic extremes and land-use change constitute severe threats to biodiversity, but their interactive effects remain poorly understood. In forest ecosystems, the effects of climatic extremes can be exacerbated at forest edges. Objectives: We explored the hypothesis that an extreme summer drought reduced the richness and coverage of old-growth forest species, particularly in forest patches with high edge exposure. Methods: Using a high-resolution spatially explicit precipitation dataset, we could detect variability in drought intensity during the summer drought of 2018. We selected 60 old-growth boreal forest patches in central Sweden that differed in their level of drought intensity and amount of edge exposure. The year after the drought, we surveyed red-listed and old-growth forest indicator species of vascular plants, lichens and bryophytes. We assessed if species richness, composition, and coverage were related to drought intensity, edge exposure, and their interaction. Results: Species richness was negatively related to drought intensity in forest patches with a high edge exposure, but not in patches with less edge exposure. Patterns differed among organism groups and were strongest for cyanolichens, epiphytes associated with high-pH bark, and species occurring on convex substrates such as trees and logs. Conclusions: Our results show that the effects of an extreme climatic event on forest species can vary strongly across a landscape. Edge exposed old-growth forest patches are more at risk under extreme climatic events than those in continuous forests. This suggest that maintaining buffer zones around forest patches with high conservation values should be an important conservation measure. Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10980-022-01441-9.
RESUMEN
The aim was to develop a theoretical understanding of the decision-making process leading to appendectomy. A qualitative interview study was performed in the grounded theory tradition using the constant comparative method to analyze data. The study setting was one county hospital and two local hospitals in Sweden, where 11 surgeons and 15 surgical nurses were interviewed. A model was developed which suggests that surgeons' decision making regarding appendectomy is formed by the interplay between their medical assessment of the patient's condition and a set of contextual characteristics. The latter consist of three interacting factors: (1) organizational conditions, (2) the professional actors' individual characteristics and interaction, and (3) the personal characteristics of the patient and his or her family or relatives. In case the outcome of medical assessment is ambiguous, the risk evaluation and final decision will be influenced by an interaction of the contextual characteristics. It was concluded that, compared to existing, rational models of decision making, the model presented identified potentially important contextual characteristics and an outline on when they come into play.