Nathali Athukorala

Dilusha Chandrasiri, Maneesha Herath, Yasith Hewarathna et al.

This study presents a comprehensive analysis of bird diversity across Sri Lanka by integrating spatial, temporal, and environmental data. Bird observation records were combined with environmental variables, including weather conditions, air pollution, the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), land cover, elevation, and Artificial Light At Night (ALAN), and rigorously preprocessed to ensure data quality. Spatial analyses were conducted on multiple grid scales (2 km, 5 km, 10 km) to evaluate patterns in species richness while minimizing sampling bias through spatial thinning. Temporal trends were assessed using effort-corrected metrics including rarefied richness and occupancy rates to account for variations in observation effort over time. Environmental drivers of bird diversity were examined using multivariate statistical models, including Poisson Generalized Linear Models (GLMs) and correlation analyses, to identify key associations between ecological factors and species richness. Additionally, community structure, dominance patterns, and beta diversity were analyzed to understand variations in species composition across regions and time. The study found that land-cover type is a stronger predictor of bird diversity than individual continuous variables such as NDVI or temperature alone. Urbanization, measured by ALAN, exhibits nuanced scale-dependent effects, supporting high abundances of a few generalist species while reducing overall richness. The findings provide actionable insights into the patterns and drivers of avian diversity in Sri Lanka, offering a scalable and reproducible framework for biodiversity research and conservation planning.

Sonath Kirindage, Vihanga Nimsara, Sakindu Rajapaksa et al.

Timely intensive care dictates survival, yet emergency infrastructure remains unevenly distributed across Sri Lanka. While pre-hospital services have expanded, the transition to definitive care remains a critical bottleneck. This study evaluates national emergency resilience by quantifying the gap between clinical demand and the availability of specialized resources across all 25 districts. Using the latest national epidemiological data and terrain-aware H3 hexagonal modeling, we analyzed accessibility for seven critical conditions based on spatial gaps, clinical need-gaps, lethality, coverage, and resource availability. Based on these metrics, unsupervised K-Means clustering was applied to categorize districts into four policy-actionable archetypes: Critical Structural Exclusion, Institutional Mirages, Operational Capacity Strain, and High-Resilience Benchmarks. Our study suggests that severe service deficits exist in the Northern and Eastern provinces, where spatial gaps exceed 70%, rendering the Golden Hour operationally impossible. Notably, specialist scarcity drives systemic pressure more than bed capacity; underserved regions effectively function as institutional mirages. This study suggests that improving accessibility by 25% in high-priority clusters would reduce the national need-gap by 9.65%, providing a roadmap for the strategic redistribution of specialists to ensure healthcare equity.