Biodiversity loss is one of the major environmental threats facing the planet. Incentive-based conservation is one means to reduce human pressure on wildlife by providing economic incentives for resource-dependent people to protect the environment. Marine wildlife tourism is one of the fastest growing tourism sectors globally and is viewed as an important incentive-based approach for achieving marine conservation goals. However, few studies have linked participation in the provisioning of marine wildlife tourism activities with positive social and ecological conservation outcomes. The goal of this dissertation is to provide greater understanding of the conservation value of marine wildlife tourism using whale shark tourism as a case study with a main focus on social conservation outcomes amongst tourism providers. Positive changes in perceptions, attitudes and values towards target species and their environments can be an important element of incentive-based conservation. The study has the following objectives: (1) to assess the status of the global whale shark tourism industry, including types (e.g., captive, non-captive), real and potential impacts, conservation value and management challenges and best practices; (2) to examine the ethics of provisioning whale sharks in Oslob, Philippines, the largest, non-captive viewing site in the world; (3) to determine if working in ecotourism changed the attitudes and behaviours of locals towards whale sharks and the ocean, and if tourism type affects those outcomes; (4) to assess the marine wildlife value orientations of locals working in whale shark tourism to achieve greater understanding of the factors influencing their conservation attitudes and behaviours; (5) to explore the potential long-term impacts of poorly conceived incentive-based conservation projects on social and ecological conservation outcomes; and (6) to re-examine and update the conceptual and theoretical background for wildlife tourism in light of the findings of this study. Methods include a comprehensive literature review, tourist surveys, social media content analysis, and interviews with locals working in whale shark tourism at four sites in the Philippines. Results suggest that marine wildlife tourism can play an important role in changing locals’ attitudes and behaviours towards the focal species and habitat; however, smaller-scale, more established sites had greater conservation value than the mass tourism or failed sites suggesting that small-scale, community-based ecotourism is the best approach to meeting conservation goals of marine wildlife tourism. Yet, few tourism sites meet these standards. Global standards are needed to ensure whale shark tourism activities meet desired conservation goals. Such standards should include management requirements (e.g., licensing, mandatory education program) and interaction guidelines (e.g. minimum viewing distances, limits on the number of swimmers/boats, etc.). The findings also emphasise that economics should not be the only or primary metric used to measure conservation success; rather, the focus should be on assessing a more comprehensive range of social and ecological conservation outcomes of these activities. / Graduate / 2020-04-16

近年來，電信業已由寡占走向了完全競爭市場，伴隨著消費者意識的抬頭，有限的市場大餅，更侷限了用戶數的大躍進，因此各家電信營運商無不卯足全力，專注在提供吸引消費者的產品、資費方案、以及ARPU（Average-Revenue-Per-User）的提昇…等議題上。企業要如何面對競爭慘烈的市場？如何保持內部流程的彈性去因應變化？基於上述事項，如何運用資訊科技來達到企業的目標就更加重要了，而EAI 的功能，提供了企業對應用系統的整合，維持流程的彈性應用，更進而協助企業降低整合風險、節省資訊軟體的開發與維護成本、強化供應商的合作關係，進而產生對企業的效益。 本研究使用個案研討的方式，選定幾項關鍵流程進行深度分析，針對電信業在營運系統上整合的議題作探討，並說明企業整合應用軟體導入所帶來的效益。對於電信產業而言，客戶關係管理系統、帳務系統、開通系統、加值服務應用平台系統…等是整合的開端，亦是重點之所在。經由EAI軟體的導入，提供營運應用系統之間資訊的同步，也相對的提供決策人員反應快速的資訊。 電信業者在系統建置中，如何有效運用企業整合軟體之特性來整合各異質性平台應用系統，以達到資訊的整合，並藉由資訊的及時傳遞提供各不同應用系統使用者一致的資訊，進而提高資訊的可用度及客服人員及門市人員對客戶的服務，增加企業的競爭力。 / Telco has already been moving toward perfect competitive market since last decade. Meanwhile, along with the ideology of consumers that dominates the trend and momentum of open market. It also blocked the growth rate of subscribers in domestic market. Under such circumstance, all Operators are fully concentrating on value-added product, tariff, rate plan…and so on, to attract consumers so that Operators are able to increase the ARPU (Average-Revenue-per-User). How to face the severe competitive market? How to maintain the flexibility of internal process to adopt the drastic changing market？ Based upon above mentioned issues, it is very important to use information technology to approach this target. Nevertheless, the functionality of EAI (Enterprise Application Integration) offers an all-in-one solution and integration to application system. Still, it also maintains the flexibility of process flow. Further more, it reduces the risk of enterprise integration and saves cost in terms of implementation and maintenance. On the other hands, EAI is not only to enhance the relationship of suppliers but also generate the synergy of enterprise. The purpose of this theme is to deeply analyze the critical process inside company. Besides, it also points out that how to use EAI in Telco field for the purpose of gaining benefit to Operator. Telco’s IT system includes CRM (Customer relationship management), Billing system, Provision, and the platform of value-added service and application. After installing EAI, it is able to offer the synchronization among all application system and capable to expedite the response time of decision makers. In addition, it is very important to use EAI to integrate the different application platform. After that, EAI is able to consolidation all necessary information and deliver all users with same information just in time. Customer Service Division and Chain Store could transfer this power to secure better services to consumers then enlarge the competition of enterprise.

The Kittlitz's murrelet (Brachyramphus brevirostris) is a rare member of the seabird family Alcidae that breeds in coastal areas of Alaska and Beringian Russia. The species belongs to the genus Brachyramphus, an unusual seabird taxon in which all three extant species nest non-colonially, situating their nests up to 75 km inland from coastal marine waters. This nesting strategy is different from that of most seabird species, which tend to nest colonially on remote islands or sea cliffs, where terrestrial predators are generally absent or cannot easily access nests. Within the genus Brachyramphus, Kittlitz's murrelet is notable because a majority of the global population appears to nest on the surface of the ground in rocky alpine habitat near inland or tidewater glaciers, foraging in adjacent marine waters influenced by glacial outflows. The unusual nesting habits of Kittlitz's murrelet have made the study of its nesting ecology difficult, and gaps therefore exist in our understanding of the species' breeding biology. Kittlitz's murrelet populations have declined substantially in core areas of its range, causing the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service to designate the species as a candidate for protection under the Endangered Species Act. A better understanding of Kittlitz's murrelet nesting ecology is crucial for determining potential causes of these declines and for future management of the species. To this end, I studied Kittlitz's murrelet breeding ecology and nest site selection during 2008-2011 on Kodiak Island, Alaska, in an unglaciated area that was recently found to have large numbers of accessible nests. I and my colleagues found 53 active Kittlitz's murrelet nests in inland scree-dominated habitats and placed remote, motion-sensing cameras at 33 nests. Adults exchanged incubation duties at the nest every 24 or 48 h, almost exclusively during early morning twilight. Following hatching of eggs, parents provisioned their single nestling with an average of 3.9 to 4.8 fish per day, depending on the year. Parental visits to the nest during chick-rearing occurred primarily after sunrise in the early to mid-morning hours, and during evening twilight. Fish were delivered singly to the chick, and Pacific sand lance (Ammodytes hexapterus), a high-lipid forage fish, accounted for about 92% of all identifiable chick meal deliveries. Chick growth rates were high relative to confamilial species, consistent with the high quality of chick diets; the logistic growth rate constant (K) was 0.291, greater than that for any other semi-precocial alcid. Chicks fledged an average of 24.8 d after hatching and asymptotic chick body mass averaged about 135.5 g, approximately 58% of adult body mass. Age at fledging, asymptotic chick body mass (% adult mass), and the number of meal deliveries required to fledge a chick were all lower than or as low as any other species of semi-precocial alcid. The average estimated nest survival rate during 2008-2011 was 0.093 (95% CI = 0.01–0.30), which is extremely low compared to other species in the family Alcidae, and is almost certainly insufficient to sustain a stable population. The primary causes of nest failure were depredation (47% of total nest fates), mostly by red foxes (Vulpes vulpes), and unexplained nestling mortality on the nest (21% of nest fates). Saxitoxin and/or pathogenic endoparasite burdens were observed in five of six necropsied chick carcasses, suggesting possible causes for chick mortality not directly attributable to predation. Habitat characteristics of Kittlitz's murrelet nest sites differed significantly from unused sites at several scales. At a small scale (within 5 m of the nest), nest sites had a lower percent coverage of vegetation and higher percent coverage of intermediate-sized rocks (5–30 cm diameter), compared to randomly selected unused sites. Nest sites were also located on steeper, more north-facing slopes compared to randomly selected sites. Nest sites also had a lower percent coverage of vegetation than randomly-selected sites at larger scales (within 25 m and 50 m of the nest site). Nest sites were located significantly farther from the edge of densely-vegetated habitats than random sites. There was no evidence that nest sites were different from randomly-selected sites in terms of elevation, proximity to ridgelines, or proximity to the open ocean, although a low degree of variation within the study area for these habitat characteristics may have precluded detection of potential differences. Nest survival rates did not co-vary with slope, percent vegetation coverage, distance from vegetated edges, or percent cover of intermediate-sized rocks; however, this result may be an artifact of a limited sample size. The results of this thesis will provide managers with a better understanding of the factors that may limit Kittlitz's murrelet nesting success, such as nest predation and forage fish availability, as well as factors that may influence the quality and distribution of Kittlitz’s murrelet nesting habitat in the future, given on-going and progressive climate change. / Graduation date: 2013

The Hadza, residing near Lake Eyasi in northern Tanzania, represent one of the last remaining hunter-gatherer populations. Inhabiting the same area as our hominin ancestors and exploiting very similar resources, the Hadza maintain a foraging lifestyle characterised by a sexual division of labour. Studies of their foraging and food sharing habits serve as the foundation to numerous hypotheses of human behaviour and evolution. Data from the Hadza have featured heavily in debates on the sexual division of labour. These debates focus predominantly on men’s foraging, including how and why men provision. Women’s provisioning, on the other hand, is seldom explicitly examined and is often presumed to be constrained by reproduction. This thesis contributes to debates on the sexual division of labour by investigating how a woman’s reproductive status affects her foraging behaviours. Observational data on women’s foraging are investigated from 263 person/day follows (1,307 hours total) across 10 camps between 2004 and 2006. These data present the first quantitative documentation of forager women’s eating and sharing outside of camp. Interview data on women’s reproductive timeline are also analysed from in-depth interviews with 58 women from 9 camps in 2015. Spanning from menarche to menopause, these data offer the first quantitative and qualitative documentation of forager women’s menstruation. The results demonstrate that Hadza women eat and share over 800 kilocalories outside of camp per person/day. They regularly give and receive food, including gifts of honey from men. Breastfeeding women are more likely to give gifts and give more gifts than non-breastfeeding women. When they bring nurslings with them outside of camp, they forage less kilocalories per hour. Post-menopausal women eat less relative to what they forage, are less likely to receive gifts, rest less and forage more than pre-menopausal women. Although Hadza women describe their foraging workload as most difficult during late pregnancy, no significant differences in eating, sharing, resting or foraging are observed for pregnant women. Menstrual data from the Hadza reveal that menstruation is not only culturally relevant to the sexual division of labour, but it is also biologically relevant to current understandings of fertility. The majority (60%) of Hadza women report not doing their normal work during menstruation. They also report menstruation-related taboos for berry picking. The thesis presents an in-depth review of women’s menstruation, from the duration of menses to the menstrual cleaning process.

FundaÃÃo Cearense de Apoio ao Desenvolvimento Cientifico e TecnolÃgico / O escalonamento de recursos à um processo chave para a plataforma de ComputaÃÃo em Nuvem, que geralmente utiliza mÃquinas virtuais (MVs) como unidades de escalonamento. O uso de tÃcnicas de virtualizaÃÃo fornece grande flexibilidade com a habilidade de instanciar vÃrias MVs em uma mesma mÃquina fÃsica (MF), modificar a capacidade das MVs e migrÃ-las entre as MFs. As tÃcnicas de consolidaÃÃo e alocaÃÃo dinÃmica de MVs tÃm tratado o impacto da sua utilizaÃÃo como uma medida independente de localizaÃÃo. à geralmente aceito que o desempenho de uma MV serà o mesmo, independentemente da MF em que ela à alocada. Esta à uma suposiÃÃo razoÃvel para um ambiente homogÃneo, onde as MFs sÃo idÃnticas e as MVs estÃo executando o mesmo sistema operacional e aplicativos. No entanto, em um ambiente de ComputaÃÃo em Nuvem, espera-se compartilhar um conjunto composto por recursos heterogÃneos, onde as MFs podem variar em termos de capacidades de seus recursos e afinidades de dados. O objetivo principal deste trabalho à apresentar uma arquitetura que possibilite a padronizaÃÃo da representaÃÃo do poder de processamento das MFs e MVs, em funÃÃo de Unidades de Processamento (UPs), apoiando-se na limitaÃÃo do uso da CPU para prover isolamento de desempenho e manter a capacidade de processamento das MVs independente da MF subjacente. Este trabalho busca suprir a necessidade de uma soluÃÃo que considere a heterogeneidade das MFs presentes na infraestrutura da Nuvem e apresenta polÃticas de escalonamento baseadas na utilizaÃÃo das UPs. A arquitetura proposta, chamada FairCPU, foi implementada para trabalhar com os hipervisores KVM e Xen, e foi incorporada a uma nuvem privada, construÃda com o middleware OpenNebula, onde diversos experimentos foram realizados para avaliar a soluÃÃo proposta. Os resultados comprovam a eficiÃncia da arquitetura FairCPU em utilizar as UPs para reduzir a variabilidade no desempenho das MVs, bem como para prover uma nova maneira de representar e gerenciar o poder de processamento das MVs e MFs da infraestrutura. / Resource scheduling is a key process for cloud computing platform, which generally uses virtual machines (VMs) as scheduling units. The use of virtualization techniques provides great flexibility with the ability to instantiate multiple VMs on one physical machine (PM), migrate them between the PMs and dynamically scale VMâs resources. The techniques of consolidation and dynamic allocation of VMs have addressed the impact of its use as an independent measure of location. It is generally accepted that the performance of a VM will be the same regardless of which PM it is allocated. This assumption is reasonable for a homogeneous environment where the PMs are identical and the VMs are running the same operating system and applications. Nevertheless, in a cloud computing environment, we expect that a set of heterogeneous resources will be shared, where PMs will face changes both in terms of their resource capacities and as also in data affinities. The main objective of this work is to propose an architecture to standardize the representation of the processing power by using processing units (PUs). Adding to that, the limitation of CPU usage is used to provide performance isolation and maintain the VMâs processing power at the same level regardless the underlying PM. The proposed solution considers the PMs heterogeneity present in the cloud infrastructure and provides scheduling policies based on PUs. The proposed architecture is called FairCPU and was implemented to work with KVM and Xen hypervisors. As study case, it was incorporated into a private cloud, built with the middleware OpenNebula, where several experiments were conducted. The results prove the efficiency of FairCPU architecture to use PUs to reduce VMsâ performance variability, as well as to provide a new way to represent and manage the processing power of the infrastructureâs physical and virtual machines.

An adequate supply of the right kinds of foods is critical to an army's success on the march and on the battlefield. Good food supplies and a dire lack of provisions have profound effects on the regulation, confidence, esprit de corps, and physical state of an army. The American War of Independence (1775-1783) provides a challenging case study of this principle. The relationship between food and troop morale has been previously discussed as just one of many factors that contributed to the success of the Continental Army, but has not been fully explored as a single issue in its own right. I argue that despite the failures of three provisioning system adopted by the Continental Congress - the Commissariat, the state system of specific supplies, and the contract system - the army did keep up its morale and achieve the victory that resulted in independence from Great Britain. The evidence reveals that despite the poor provisioning, the American army was fed in the field for eight years thanks largely to its ability to forage for its food. This foraging system, if it can be called a system, was adequate to sustain morale and perseverance.

L'informatique en nuage (Cloud Computing) a émergé comme un nouveau paradigme pour offrir des ressources informatiques à la demande et pour externaliser des infrastructures logicielles et matérielles. Le Cloud Computing est rapidement et fondamentalement en train de révolutionner la façon dont les services informatiques sont mis à disposition et gérés. Ces services peuvent être demandés à partir d’un ou plusieurs fournisseurs de Cloud d’où le besoin de la mise en réseau entre les composants des services informatiques distribués dans des emplacements géographiquement répartis. Les utilisateurs du Cloud veulent aussi déployer et instancier facilement leurs ressources entre les différentes plateformes hétérogènes de Cloud Computing. Les fournisseurs de Cloud assurent la mise à disposition des ressources de calcul sous forme des machines virtuelles à leurs utilisateurs. Par contre, ces clients veulent aussi la mise en réseau entre leurs ressources virtuelles. En plus, ils veulent non seulement contrôler et gérer leurs applications, mais aussi contrôler la connectivité réseau et déployer des fonctions et des services de réseaux complexes dans leurs infrastructures virtuelles dédiées. Les besoins des utilisateurs avaient évolué au-delà d'avoir une simple machine virtuelle à l'acquisition de ressources et de services virtuels complexes, flexibles, élastiques et intelligents. L'objectif de cette thèse est de permettre le placement et l’instanciation des ressources complexes dans des infrastructures de Cloud distribués tout en permettant aux utilisateurs le contrôle et la gestion de leurs ressources. En plus, notre objectif est d'assurer la convergence entre les services de cloud et de réseau. Pour atteindre cela, nous proposons des algorithmes de mapping d’infrastructures virtuelles dans les centres de données et dans le réseau tout en respectant les exigences des utilisateurs. Avec l'apparition du Cloud Computing, les réseaux traditionnels sont étendus et renforcés avec des réseaux logiciels reposant sur la virtualisation des ressources et des fonctions réseaux. En plus, le nouveau paradigme d'architecture réseau (Software Defined Networks) est particulièrement pertinent car il vise à offrir la programmation du réseau et à découpler, dans un équipement réseau, la partie plan de données de la partie plan de contrôle. Dans ce contexte, la première partie propose des algorithmes optimaux (exacts) et heuristiques de placement pour trouver le meilleur mapping entre les demandes des utilisateurs et les infrastructures sous-jacentes, tout en respectant les exigences exprimées dans les demandes. Cela inclut des contraintes de localisation permettant de placer une partie des ressources virtuelles dans le même nœud physique. Ces contraintes assurent aussi le placement des ressources dans des nœuds distincts. Les algorithmes proposés assurent le placement simultané des nœuds et des liens virtuels sur l’infrastructure physique. Nous avons proposé aussi un algorithme heuristique afin d’accélérer le temps de résolution et de réduire la complexité du problème. L'approche proposée se base sur la technique de décomposition des graphes et la technique de couplage des graphes bipartis. Dans la troisième partie, nous proposons un cadriciel open source (framework) permettant d’assurer la mise en réseau dynamique entre des ressources Cloud distribués et l’instanciation des fonctions réseau dans l’infrastructure virtuelle de l’utilisateur. Ce cadriciel permettra de déployer et d’activer les composants réseaux afin de mettre en place les demandes des utilisateurs. Cette solution se base sur un gestionnaire des ressources réseaux "Cloud Network Gateway Manager" et des passerelles logicielles permettant d’établir la connectivité dynamique et à la demande entre des ressources cloud et réseau. Le CNG-Manager offre le contrôle de la partie réseau et prend en charge le déploiement des fonctions réseau nécessaires dans l'infrastructure virtuelle des utilisateurs / Cloud computing emerged as a new paradigm for on-demand provisioning of IT resources and for infrastructure externalization and is rapidly and fundamentally revolutionizing the way IT is delivered and managed. The resulting incremental Cloud adoption is fostering to some extent cloud providers cooperation and increasing the needs of tenants and the complexity of their demands. Tenants need to network their distributed and geographically spread cloud resources and services. They also want to easily accomplish their deployments and instantiations across heterogeneous cloud platforms. Traditional cloud providers focus on compute resources provisioning and offer mostly virtual machines to tenants and cloud services consumers who actually expect full-fledged (complete) networking of their virtual and dedicated resources. They not only want to control and manage their applications but also control connectivity to easily deploy complex network functions and services in their dedicated virtual infrastructures. The needs of users are thus growing beyond the simple provisioning of virtual machines to the acquisition of complex, flexible, elastic and intelligent virtual resources and services. The goal of this thesis is to enable the provisioning and instantiation of this type of more complex resources while empowering tenants with control and management capabilities and to enable the convergence of cloud and network services. To reach these goals, the thesis proposes mapping algorithms for optimized in-data center and in-network resources hosting according to the tenants' virtual infrastructures requests. In parallel to the apparition of cloud services, traditional networks are being extended and enhanced with software networks relying on the virtualization of network resources and functions especially through network resources and functions virtualization. Software Defined Networks are especially relevant as they decouple network control and data forwarding and provide the needed network programmability and system and network management capabilities. In such a context, the first part proposes optimal (exact) and heuristic placement algorithms to find the best mapping between the tenants' requests and the hosting infrastructures while respecting the objectives expressed in the demands. This includes localization constraints to place some of the virtual resources and services in the same host and to distribute other resources in distinct hosts. The proposed algorithms achieve simultaneous node (host) and link (connection) mappings. A heuristic algorithm is proposed to address the poor scalability and high complexity of the exact solution(s). The heuristic scales much better and is several orders of magnitude more efficient in terms of convergence time towards near optimal and optimal solutions. This is achieved by reducing complexity of the mapping process using topological patterns to map virtual graph requests to physical graphs representing respectively the tenants' requests and the providers' physical infrastructures. The proposed approach relies on graph decomposition into topology patterns and bipartite graphs matching techniques. The third part propose an open source Cloud Networking framework to achieve cloud and network resources provisioning and instantiation in order to respectively host and activate the tenants' virtual resources and services. This framework enables and facilitates dynamic networking of distributed cloud services and applications. This solution relies on a Cloud Network Gateway Manager and gateways to establish dynamic connectivity between cloud and network resources. The CNG-Manager provides the application networking control and supports the deployment of the needed underlying network functions in the tenant desired infrastructure (or slice since the physical infrastructure is shared by multiple tenants with each tenant receiving a dedicated and isolated portion/share of the physical resources)

Private and public clouds require users to specify requests for resources such as CPU and memory (RAM) to be provisioned for their applications. The values of these requests do not necessarily relate to the application’s run-time requirements, but only help the cloud infrastructure resource manager to map requested virtual resources to physical resources. If an application exceeds these values, it might be throttled or even terminated. Consequently, requested values are often overestimated, resulting in poor resource utilization in the cloud infrastructure. Autoscaling is a technique used to overcome these problems. In this research, we formulated two new predictive CPU autoscaling strategies forKubernetes containerized applications, using time-series analysis, based on Holt-Winters exponential smoothing and long short-term memory (LSTM) artificial recurrent neural networks. The two approaches were analyzed, and their performances were compared to that of the default Kubernetes Vertical Pod Autoscaler (VPA). Efficiency was evaluated in terms of CPU resource wastage, and insufficient CPU percentage and amount for container workloads from Alibaba Cluster Trace 2018, and others. In our experiments, we observed that Kubernetes Vertical Pod Autoscaler (VPA) tended to perform poorly on workloads that periodically change. Our results showed that compared to VPA, predictive methods based on Holt- Winters exponential smoothing (HW) and Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) can decrease CPU wastage by over 40% while avoiding CPU insufficiency for various CPU workloads. Furthermore, LSTM has been shown to generate stabler predictions compared to that of HW, which allowed for more robust scaling decisions. / Privata och offentliga moln kräver att användare begär mängden CPU och minne (RAM) som ska fördelas till sina applikationer. Mängden resurser är inte nödvändigtvis relaterat till applikationernas körtidskrav, utan är till för att molninfrastrukturresurshanteraren ska kunna kartlägga begärda virtuella resurser till fysiska resurser. Om en applikation överskrider dessa värden kan den saktas ner eller till och med krascha. För att undvika störningar överskattas begärda värden oftast, vilket kan resultera i ineffektiv resursutnyttjande i molninfrastrukturen. Autoskalning är en teknik som används för att överkomma dessa problem. I denna forskning formulerade vi två nya prediktiva CPU autoskalningsstrategier för containeriserade applikationer i Kubernetes, med hjälp av tidsserieanalys baserad på metoderna Holt-Winters exponentiell utjämning och långt korttidsminne (LSTM) återkommande neurala nätverk. De två metoderna analyserades, och deras prestationer jämfördes med Kubernetes Vertical Pod Autoscaler (VPA). Prestation utvärderades genom att observera under- och överutilisering av CPU-resurser, för diverse containerarbetsbelastningar från bl. a. Alibaba Cluster Trace 2018. Vi observerade att Kubernetes Vertical Pod Autoscaler (VPA) i våra experiment tenderade att prestera dåligt på arbetsbelastningar som förändras periodvist. Våra resultat visar att jämfört med VPA kan prediktiva metoder baserade på Holt-Winters exponentiell utjämning (HW) och långt korttidsminne (LSTM) minska överflödig CPU-användning med över 40 % samtidigt som de undviker CPU-brist för olika arbetsbelastningar. Ytterligare visade sig LSTM generera stabilare prediktioner jämfört med HW, vilket ledde till mer robusta autoskalningsbeslut.

Increasingly unpredictable, extreme and erratic rainfall with higher temperatures threatens to undermine the adaptive capacity of food systems and ecological resilience of smallholder landscapes. Despite growing concern, land managers still lack quantitative techniques to collect empirical data about the potential impact of climatic variability and change. This thesis aims to assess how ecosystem services and function and how this links with biodiversity and human wellbeing in smallholder agro-ecosystems in a changing climate. To this end, rather than relying on scenarios or probabilistic modelling, space was used as a proxy for time to compare states in disparate climatic conditions. Furthermore, an integrated methodological framework to assess ecosystem services at the field and landscape level was developed and operationalised, the results of which can be modelled with measures of wellbeing. Various multidisciplinary analytical tools were utilised, including ecological and socio-economic surveys, biological assessments, participatory open enquiry, and documenting ethnobotanical knowledge. The study was located within monsoon rice farms in the Terai Plains of Nepal, and dry season vegetable farms in Northern Ghana. Sites were selected that are climatically and culturally diverse to enable comparative analysis, with application to broad areas of adaptive planning. The linkages that bring about biophysical and human changes are complex and operate through social, political, economic and demographic drivers, making attribution extremely challenging. Nevertheless, it was demonstrated that within hotter and drier conditions in Ghana long-tongued pollinators and granivores, important for decomposition processes and pollination services, are more abundant in farms. Results further indicated that in cooler and drier conditions in Nepal, the taxonomic diversity of indigenous and close relative plant species growing in and around farms, important for the provisioning of ecosystem services, decreases. All other things equal, in both Nepal and Ghana findings indicate that overall human wellbeing may be adversely effected in hotter conditions, with a potentially significantly lower yields, fewer months of the year in which food is available, higher exposure to natural hazards and crop loss, unemployment, and psychological anxiety. Yet, surveys indicate smallholders continue to maintain a fair diversity of species in and around farms, which may allow them to secure basic necessities from provisioning ecosystem services. Moreover, farmers may employ adaptive strategies such as pooling labour and food sharing more frequently, and may have greater access to communication, technology, and infrastructure. Novel methodological and empirical contributions of this research offer predictive insights that could inform innovations in climate-smart agricultural practice and planning.