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Tag: Environmental Science

  • Farm waste turned into air-cleaning substance

    Farm waste turned into air-cleaning substance

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    Newswise — Air pollution and its high concentration in cities is one of the problems facing society today, due to its harmful effects on the environment, but also on human health. One of the causes of this pollution is the increase in nitrogen oxide emissions, mainly due to the use of fossil fuels.

    While the emissions of these gases are being reduced, photocatalysis is proving to be a tool for decontaminating air in cities: materials called semiconductors are created which, when coming into contact with the pollutant, under the effect of ultraviolet light, cause it to degrade, thus reducing its concentration in the air.

    Two research groups of the University of Cordoba, belonging to the Chemical Institute for Energy and the Environment (IQUEMA),and the Department of Inorganic Chemistry and Chemical Engineering,have been working to produce these materials. The team,formed by the BioPrEn and Inorganic Chemistry groups, has obtained biodegradable materials to fix nanoparticles with photocatalytic activity (in this case, titanium dioxide), augmentingthe power and, therefore,the decontaminating effect.

    The advances made by this work consist of “first, the creation of a biodegradable medium based on nanocellulose, obtained from agricultural waste; and, second, the development of a surface modification process of these nanoparticles, which results on their greater dispersion and immobilization,and, therefore, enhanced photocatalytic activity”, explains one of the authors of the article, researcher Eduardo Espinosa.

    The progress is twofold: it is possible to create a sustainable material by recovering a form of agricultural waste(thus contributing to the Circular Economy) and the process of fixing photocatalytic nanoparticles to this biodegradable medium is simplified. The benefit is, in fact, exponential, since the result is greater air decontamination due to the porosity and the three-dimensional nature of the material, which means that more photocatalytic particles are exposed to ultraviolet light compared to an opaque material or one in which only one surface is exposed to light.

    What is it like? Where is it used?

    Those who see this material will recognize a light, solid foam, but with very little density, similar to insulation coverings used in construction,or the popular corn “puffs.” To effect decontamination “it can be used as a porous filter through which the gas stream passes, always exposed to ultraviolet light, and the gas comes out decontaminated,” says Espinosa. Thus, gases released by industry, for example, would come out almost clean of nitrogen oxides.

    A further step in this research would be to modify the photocatalytic particle so that it is more sensitive to light from the visible spectrum, without having to resort to ultraviolet sources. In this way the photocatalytic power would be activated by sunlight alone, and this type of technology could be applied to textiles and other types of materials,thereby reducing the concentration of gases only through exposure to the sun.

    References:

    Carrasco, Sergio & Espinosa Víctor, Eduardo & González, Zoilo & Cruz-Yusta, Manuel & Sánchez, Luis & Rodríguez, Alejandro (2023). Simple Route to Prepare Composite Nanocellulose Aerogels: A Case of Photocatalytic De-NO x Materials Application. ACS Sustainable Chemistry &Engineering. https://doi.org/10.1021/acssuschemeng.2c06170

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    University of Cordoba

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  • Arif Efendi applauds global renewable energy efforts

    Arif Efendi applauds global renewable energy efforts

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    Newswise — The demand for renewable energy is continuously growing worldwide. Arif Efendi previously of Doyen Sports notes that the latest efforts in renewables will be crucial to the future of power sourcing. Current efforts include innovations in solar energy, wind power, nuclear energy, hydrogen fuel, and more.

    According to Euro News, “Renewable energy is to become the world’s top source of electricity by 2025.” The benefits of cleaner and more efficient energy are becoming increasingly attractive to top businesses and corporations globally. Such entities do not only turn to renewables for efficiency. They also rely on them for long-term cost benefits and overall environmental impact. Aspects like these serve as optimistic predictions of higher stability and safety levels.

    Arif Efendi is a passionate businessman and investor. His work spans various industries. Due to this, Efendi makes a loyal effort to stay updated on current events and provide solutions for the future. He applauds renewable energy efforts, as it’s one of the only solutions to a safer and cleaner world.

    Moving forward with renewable energy has been in question for far too long. Over the years, people and companies have asked, “How will we switch to renewable energy?” Fortunately, there are now many tangible solutions to this elongated debate. According to the United Nations (UN), “while about 5 million jobs in fossil fuel production could be lost by 2030, an estimated 14 million new jobs would be created in clean energy.”

    The positive environmental effects

    In February, UN Secretary-General António Guterres briefed the General Assembly meeting on the organization’s top priorities for 2023. In his speech, he noted the importance of renewable energy and how it will change the course of the year ahead.

    He noted, “We must focus on two urgent priorities: cutting emissions and achieving climate justice.” There is no other option. Suppose companies and manufacturers do not implement solid plans to reduce emissions or achieve net zero. In that case, the world will experience further issues that it environmentally cannot afford to bear.

    Another powerful statement from the Secretary-General warned fossil-fuel producers. He dedicated these words to those who manage the field: “I have a special message for fossil-fuel producers and their enablers scrambling to expand production and raking in monster profits: If you cannot set a credible course for net-zero, with 2025 and 2030 targets covering all your operations, you should not be in business. Your core product is our core problem. We need a renewables revolution, not a self-destructive fossil-fuel resurgence.” The UN is taking renewable energy importance to a new level this year.

    We must rely on these sources

    Renewable energy is the only way the world can move forward to sustain communities and global corporate operations. Many are already making the change, demonstrating the significance and relative ease of implementing such measures.
    Instead of simply depleting natural resources, renewable energy provides regenerated power for years. For the health of humans, animals, and nature alike, renewable energy must be used to preserve the environment.
    Solar energy adaptation in the Amazon rainforest is an excellent example of impactful renewable energy implementation. Due to dedicated efforts, many communities in the region now have access to the internet and larger amounts of clean water. The new access to daily items, such as ice and electricity, was especially helpful throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, as isolated communities were at higher risk of dangerous viral spreading. Providing more resources like this is highly encouraged to upkeep the natural state of communities in places like the Amazon rainforest.
    Within the next three years, renewables will be the top energy source globally. Predictions like these provide a sense of promise in limiting toxic emissions. Moreover, Efendi reiterates that renewable energy is vital to the continuation of human activity and health.

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    Social Media Experts

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  • Researchers Combat Lake Algae Blooms with Floating Filtration

    Researchers Combat Lake Algae Blooms with Floating Filtration

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    Newswise — Climate change and human activity have been putting pressure on water bodies worldwide, and Canada’s vast network of lakes is no exception. Over the past decades, increasing nutrient levels have led to a process called eutrophication, in the shallow lakes dotting Quebec’s Laurentian region north of Montreal. These changes have led to a surge in algae blooms, rendering the lakes unusable and possibly disrupting the natural ecosystem.

    Restoring these lakes to a healthier condition is a complicated and expensive undertaking, but a new method being investigated by Concordia researchers in the Department of Building, Civil and Environmental Engineering may cut down on both costs and labour in an environmentally friendly way.

    Writing in the journal Water, the researchers describe a system of floating geotextile filters that efficiently remove suspended solids, algae and the nutrients from a shallow lake.  While the project is still in development, the researchers say they believe it has the potential to scale up. This technology could then benefit the health of larger bodies of water such as ponds, rivers, coastal areas and bays.

    The study is led by PhD student Antônio Cavalcante Pereira and Professor Catherine Mulligan. Research associate Dileep Palakkeel Veetil and Sam Bhat of Titan Environmental Containment are also contributors.

    Non-chemical solutions

    Over the summer and early fall seasons of 2019 and 2020, the researchers placed six geotextile layers in a floating filtration unit at Lac Caron. Lac Caron is a shallow eutrophic lake with a maximum depth of 2.6 metres located in Ste-Anne-des-Lacs, about 75 kilometres north of Montreal. The lake has been under a recreational advisory since 2008 due to excessive algae growth.

    The Plexiglas filtration device was made to float by an inflatable rubber tube placed in the centre of an enclosed area. The area was cordoned off by using geotextile turbidity curtains. The specialized curtains hang down from the water surface to reach the lakebed, or near to it, to prevent suspended solid interactions with the rest of the lake.

    Water samples from the lake and the contained areas were collected every two to three days. The specimens were then analyzed for levels of turbidity, suspended solids (TSS), phosphorus, blue-green-algae-phycocyanin (BGA-PC), chlorophyll-a and more.

    The analysis results were encouraging.

    The analysis results were encouraging, according to average removal efficiencies in 2019 and 2020. The researchers compared the filtered lake water to the non-filtered lake water and found the following:

    • Turbidity reduced 53 per cent in 2019/17 per cent in 2020
    • TSS by from 22 per cent/36 per cent
    • Phosphorus by 49 per cent/18 per cent
    • BGA-PC by 57 per cent/34 per cent
    • Chlorophyll-a by 56 per cent/32 per cent.

    Pereira says the year-over-year differences are the result of heterogeneous water quality in lakes due to distinct climate and algae growth patterns. A large, visible algae bloom was visible in 2019, while 2020’s algae was more dispersed throughout the whole water body.

    “Expanding our system for large lake remediation is a long-term goal. But the novelty of this project is the that we just use the in-situ water filtration as a remediating method for eutrophic water bodies,” says Pereira. “We did not add any chemicals to the lake, but we still managed to get good results: algae suppression and turbidity decreases for an entire recreational season.”

    An evolving long-term project

    Mulligan adds that this paper is part of a series that is based on work that first began back in 2008. The project has gone through subsequent iterations over the years and in other lakes in the region.

    The shallow lakes studied in the past were often created by developers excavating existing lakes and incompletely cutting down trees. However, several recent factors are contributing to recurring excessive algae growth. These factors include the continual degradation of fragmentary tree stumps, along with possible nutrient release from runoff and the lack of natural hydrological patterns.

    “It can be a challenge because water quality changes from year to year,” says Mulligan. “When those eutrophic water bodies are subjected to warmer temperatures, they tend to be much more affected by excessive algal blooms.”

    This research was funded by NSERC, Concordia University and Titan Environmental Containment.

    Read the cited paper: “An In-Situ Geotextile Filtration Method for Suspended Solids Attenuation and Algae Suppression in a Canadian Eutrophic Lake”

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    Concordia University

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  • Rising Temps Impact Streams in Northeast US

    Rising Temps Impact Streams in Northeast US

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    Newswise — Over the past 25 years, the Northeast has experienced the largest increase in extreme precipitation nationally. Prior research has shown that the amount of extreme precipitation— rain or snow that results in one- to two inches of water in a day— over the past 25 years has been almost 50% greater than from 1901 to 1995.

    A new Dartmouth study provides insight into how changes in precipitation and temperature due to global warming affect streamflow and flooding in the Northeast. The findings are published in the Journal of the American Water Resources Association.

    The researchers examined how precipitation, including snowfall, winter rain on snow events, springtime snowmelt, and soil conditions, impact streamflow. They focused on four watersheds in the Northeast: the Mattawamkeag River in northeastern Maine; the Dead Diamond River in northern New Hampshire; the White River in eastern Vermont; and the Shenandoah River in West Virginia.

    Streamflow in the three northern watersheds is strongly affected by snowmelt, while the Shenandoah River watershed is affected more by rainfall. All four watersheds were selected because they are unregulated rivers, meaning the streamflow is not controlled by a dam, and span a range of latitudes.

    For the first part of the study, the team created a machine learning model from the historical relationships between streamflow and factors that included: temperature; precipitation (rainfall versus snow); the “antecedent precipitation index” or how much moisture is stored in the soil before a storm; the “standardized precipitation index,” which is used to characterize wet and dry spells; and streamflow.

    They drew on more than 95 years of historical climate data spanning from 1915 to 2011, as well as on streamflow data from the U.S. Geological Survey and snow depth observations from the Northeast Regional Climate Center.

    “Both the antecedent precipitation index and the standardized precipitation index are basically measures of how wet the land surface is already, which affects runoff and streamflow,” says first author Charlotte Cockburn, Guarini ’21, who was a master’s student in earth sciences at Dartmouth at the time of the research.

    “If you have a really big rainstorm on a relatively dry surface, a lot of that water can be absorbed by the soil, but if you have multiple rainstorms leading up to the really big rainstorm, there’s no room in the soil for the water, which creates higher streamflow.”

    That was what happened in August 2011, when Hurricane Irene, known as Tropical Storm Irene in much of New England, caused devastating flooding, multiple deaths, and billions of dollars in damage, Cockburn notes.

    To predict streamflow in the cold season months of November to May, the team used average temperature, three-day and 30-day rainfall, and three-day and 30-day snowfall as variables in their model. They created a sub-model to simulate snowmelt. The model would look at a particular date, for example April 1, 2009, and would then predict streamflow based on the model variables.

    “For context, the highest streamflow in Northeast watersheds tends to occur in the spring, actually right around now, when there is snowmelt, larger rainfall events than in the winter, no vegetation to pull water out of the soil, and when the soil is either saturated or frozen,” says senior author Jonathan Winter, an associate professor of geography at Dartmouth.

    As the researchers explain in the study, one of the conundrums with the model is that it is based on historical data and is trained to rely on snowpack as an important driver for projecting streamflow in the cold season.

    So when the model runs into future dates when there will be reduced snowpack due to global warming, it predicts decreases in streamflow. But as Cockburn explains, “The models don’t exactly capture the dynamics of winter changes in streamflow because they are trained on the past and in a world that is warmer due to climate change, we expect rain to be a much more important driver of winter streamflow.”

    For the second part of the study, the team forced the machine learning model with a projection of climate from 2070 to 2099, to see what happens to streamflow in a future climate.

    The key findings are:

    • Across watersheds and seasons, three-day precipitation and initial soil moisture are the most important variables that determine streamflow in the Northeast.
       
    • Thirty-day snowmelt and 30-day rainfall are important to Mattawamkeag River streamflow because the watershed is both the largest and most northern, making it less sensitive to short extreme precipitation events and more sensitive to snow.
       
    • Future cold season streamflow depends on how New England watersheds respond to the change from more snowfall dominated winters to more rainfall dominated winters.
       
    • Future warm season streamflow depends almost exclusively on changes in rainfall.

    “If the Northeast gets wetter soils and more heavy rainfall events, as climate models predict it will, the Northeast will have increased streamflow and higher flood risk,” says Winter.

    This past winter the Northeast had below normal snowpack due to temperatures that were more than 4 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than average.

    “The winter we just had is what we are going to experience more often in the future. It’s a glimpse of what’s to come,” says Winter. “Our analysis however, surprisingly reveals that in the Northeast, snow matters relatively little in comparison to how sensitive streamflow is to precipitation.”

    Winter says, “With climate change, understanding how streamflow may change in a warmer and wetter climate is important as these dynamics have implications for flooding, ecosystems, water resources, and hydropower.”

    Erich Osterberg, an associate professor of in earth sciences and Frank Magilligan, the Frank J. Reagan ’09 Chair of Policy Studies and a professor of geography at Dartmouth, also served as co-authors of the study.

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    Dartmouth College

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  • How Will Farming Change in the Future?

    How Will Farming Change in the Future?

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    Newswise — On November 15, 2022, the 8 billionth person on the planet was born. With concerns about food security on the rise, experts are asking: how will we feed everyone? Climate change, natural resource depletion, soil erosion, and fossil fuel use in farming make the task even more challenging. We need to do something differently, but what? 

    Barath Raghavan, an associate professor of computer science at USC Viterbi, is rethinking traditional farming practices by developing computational tools to help farmers design, develop, and manage sustainable farming methods.  Raghavan, a member of the California Rare Fruit Growers organization, currently grows more than 150 different edible plants in his yard. A decade ago, he started to combine his interests by researching how computing could make agriculture more sustainable.

    Raghavan calls this new area of research “computational agroecology,” uniting technology and farming expertise to develop diverse agricultural landscapes based on natural ecosystems. From crop selection to planting to irrigation, the method allows farmers to explore thousands of different potential designs to optimize food production without fossil fuel-derived pesticides.   

    “How can we design an ecosystem that is as productive and sustainable as a natural forest, but instead of producing food for wildlife, it’s producing food for people?” said Raghavan.  

    “It’s an incredibly hard problem because designing an ecosystem is a super complex, dynamic, natural system. We’re trying to build computing tools that can figure out how ecosystems work, so we can grow food plentifully and sustainably.”   

    “A totally new way to think about agriculture”

    In a new paper published in PNAS Nexus on March 16, Raghavan and his colleagues propose “a totally new way to think about agriculture and the benefits it can have for research and farming,” said Raghavan.  

    In this study, the researchers reconceptualize agriculture as a search through a “state space,” which represents all possible configurations of a system—in this context, agricultural land.  

    To better understand the concept of a state space, imagine a box of blocks: each block could be red, blue or yellow. The state space would consist of all the possible ways to arrange these blocks, such as all red, blue or green, or a combination of the three colors. 

    In the same way, a state space for an agricultural system might consist of all the possible variables that the system can take—such as crop or soil type, weather conditions, irrigation, fertilization or pest control.  

    This allows agricultural researchers and farmers to explore the different paths and strategies available—taking different “blocks” or variables and placing them together to see what works.  

    “Once we can conceive of a farm this way, we can then reframe many … farming planning questions.” Barath Raghavan. 

    Essentially, an agricultural “sandbox” to determine optimal configurations to increase crop yield, improve sustainability, and discover entirely new combinations of crops that grow well together. 

    For instance, the framework enables analytics and machine learning that could allow researchers to analyze the patterns between crop yield and soil moisture content or simulate growing different types of crops together for biodiversity.  

    “Once we can conceive of a farm this way, we can then reframe many research questions and farming planning questions as a search through the space of all possible states the farm could possibly end up in, with certain states being more desirable than others,” said Raghavan.  

    “This allows us to compare and contrast different approaches to farming, explore and combine techniques, and then search the state space in simulation for new farming techniques that have never been tried before and where trial and error in the real world would be far too expensive and time-consuming.”  

    “Playing a chess game with nature” 

    For example, in Southern California, farmers have recently discovered that high-quality coffee can grow plentifully between avocado trees. But figuring out the right way to do that, and maybe even add another couple of crops that work well together, is site specific.  

    “Each farmer doesn’t have the time or ability to do trial and error for years to figure out the right way to grow a half dozen crops on their land,” said Raghavan.

    “Instead, with the conceptual framework and eventually software framework of state spaces, a farmer could spell out an objective—such as diversified harvest with high yield and possible high profit for a specific piece of land—and have the system explore the state space and produce possible plant mixtures, placement, and management techniques that meet the farmer’s criteria.”  

    Raghavan compares the process to “playing a chess game with nature, but one that is both competitive and collaborative.”  

    “You’re making moves on the chessboard, which is your land, and nature is making moves too. Pests are going to eat one crop; a flood is going to damage another. What we are building is a computational framework that allows you to explore all the different ways that you might ‘play’ this game of chess with nature so that we can come up with the best one for your land.”  

    The group including Raghavan recently received a grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture for their research in this area. Now, the team is working through possible use cases with researchers and farmers to incorporate specific use cases and to develop software that can make it easy to simulate and explore state spaces.

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    University of Southern California (USC)

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  • Stripped to the bone

    Stripped to the bone

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    Natural disasters can devastate a region, abruptly killing the species that form an ecosystem’s structure. But how this transpires can influence recovery. While fires scorch the landscape to the ground, a heatwave leaves an army of wooden staves in its wake. Storm surges and coral bleaching do something similar underwater.

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    University of California, Santa Barbara

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  • Hidden ice melt in Himalaya: Study

    Hidden ice melt in Himalaya: Study

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    Newswise — A new study reveals that the mass loss of lake-terminating glaciers in the greater Himalaya has been significantly underestimated, due to the inability of satellites to see glacier changes occurring underwater, with critical implications for the region’s future projections of glacier disappearance and water resources.

    Published in Nature Geoscience on April 3, the study was conducted by an international team including researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Graz University of Technology (Austria), the University of St. Andrews (UK), and Carnegie Mellon University (USA).

    The researchers found that a previous assessment underestimated the total mass loss of lake-terminating glaciers in the greater Himalaya by 6.5%. The most significant underestimation of 10% occurred in the central Himalaya, where glacial lake growth was the most rapid. A particularly interesting case is Galong Co in this region, with a high underestimation of 65%.

    This oversight was largely due to the limitations of satellite imaging in detecting underwater changes, which has led to a knowledge gap in our understanding of the full extent of glacier loss. From 2000 to 2020, proglacial lakes in the region increased by 47% in number, 33% in area, and 42% in volume. This expansion resulted in an estimated glacier mass loss of around 2.7 Gt, equivalent to 570 million elephants, or over 1,000 times the total number of elephants in the world. This loss was not considered by previous studies since the utilized satellite data can only measure the lake water surface but not underwater ice that is replaced by water.

    “These findings have important implications for understanding the impact of regional water resources and glacial lake outburst floods,” said lead author ZHANG Guoqing from the Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, CAS.

    By accounting for the mass loss from lake-terminating glaciers, the researchers can more accurately assess the annual mass balance of these glaciers compared to land-terminating ones, thus further highlighting the accelerated glacier mass loss across the greater Himalaya.

    The study also highlights the need to understand the mechanisms driving glacier mass loss and the underestimated mass loss of lake-terminating glaciers globally, which is estimated to be around 211.5 Gt, or roughly 12%, between 2000 and 2020.

    “This emphasizes the importance of incorporating subaqueous mass loss from lake-terminating glaciers in future mass-change estimates and glacier evolution models, regardless of the study region,” said co-corresponding author Tobias Bolch from Graz University of Technology.

    David Rounce, a co-author from Carnegie Mellon University, noted that in the long run, the mass loss from lake-terminating glaciers may continue to be a major contributor to total mass loss throughout the 21st century as glaciers with significant mass loss may disappear more rapidly compared to existing projections.

    “By more accurately accounting for glacier mass loss, researchers can better predict future water resource availability in the sensitive mountain region,” said co-author YAO Tandong, who also co-chairs Third Pole Environment (TPE), an international science program for interdisciplinary study of the relationships among water, ice, climate, and humankind in the region and beyond.

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    Chinese Academy of Sciences

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  • New ways to protect food crops from climate change and other disruptions

    New ways to protect food crops from climate change and other disruptions

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    Newswise — “There’s no doubt we can produce enough food for the world’s population – humanity is strategic enough to achieve that. The question is whether – because of war and conflict and corruption and destabilization – we do,” said World Food Programme leader David Beasley in an interview with Time magazine earlier this year.    

    Indeed, projections show that we are not on track to achieve Sustainable Development Goal 2 of Zero Hunger by 2030. As climate and security crises continue to destabilise our food sources, researchers are taking a critical look not just at how we produce food – but at the entire systems behind our food supplies. In this case, the systems behind the seeds that produce our food crops.    

    “Whilst adapting crops to climate change and conserving their variation is essential for food security, these measures are meaningless if farmers do not have access to the seeds,” says crop scientist and food system expert Ola Westengen. Westengen leads the team of researchers from the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU) who recently reviewed the state of seed systems for small-holder farmers in low/middle income countries. Their findings are now published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).   

    What are seed systems?    

    Seed systems are the provision, management and distribution of seeds. They cover the entire seed chain, from the conservation of their diversity and variety development, to their production and distribution, and the rules that govern these activities.  In short, they are the structures that make seeds available to farmers so that crops can be sown, harvested and end up on our plates.    

    Whilst a well-functioning seed system will ensure seed security for all farmers, the researchers say that, in practice, it is rarely the case that seed systems function as well as they might. Seed systems can be disrupted by conflict and disasters, as well as by problems stemming from social inequality, lack of coordination or inappropriate policies.      

    What does this study tell us that we don’t already know?   

    “There are recent innovations and investments by governments and donors to improve farmers’ access to diverse crop varieties and quality seeds,” explains Teshome Hunduma, a seed governance researcher and co-author of the study. “For example, there are now more flexible policies and regulations that encourage diversity in the seed systems used by farmers, rather than pushing farmers to switch to commercial seed systems that focus on less diverse commodity crops – which is the norm.” Commodity crops are those grown in large volume and high intensity for the purpose of sale, as opposed to those grown by small-holder farmers for direct processing and consumption.   

    “The study highlights emerging initiatives that are helping farmers to secure food supplies, such as participatory plant breeding,” says Teshome. Participatory plant breeding is the development and selection of new crop varieties where the farmers are in control. Farmers, who know the needs of their farms best, work with researchers and others to improve crops and develop plant varieties that are in line with their household needs and culture, and that are resilient to environmental and climate challenges.    

    “Farmers prefer and need different types of seeds, based on diverse social, cultural and ecological conditions,” adds ethnobotanist and co-author Sarah Paule Dalle.       

    The study discusses various disruptions to farmer’s access to seeds. Social inequality is one such disruption. How so?   

    “A seed system that only serves a segment of a farming society contributes to seed insecurity,” replies Teshome. “For example, commercial seed systems deliver high-yielding varieties of quality hybrid seeds. Whilst wealthy farmers can afford such seeds, poor farmers can’t.”    

    “Similarly, whilst commercial seed systems that focus on commodity crops may benefit men who might primarily be interested in market value, such systems have little to offer women who want crops that provide household nutrition and meet their cultural preferences.”   

    “This means poor farmers and women do not have the same access to seeds that meet their needs. The result is seed, and thus food, insecurity due to social and economic inequality.”     

    Political-economic factors have driven the globalization of food systems over the last decades, which also includes seed systems. “Seeds have become big business”, say the researchers. According to studies quoted in the article, the four largest multinational companies in seed trade today control about 60% of the ~50 billion USD global commercial seed market. The large private actors have the power not only to shape markets, but also to influence science and innovation agendas and policy frameworks.     

    This can be problematic, say the researchers, when private sector research and development typically focuses on the most profitable crops, such as maize and soy. Crops grown and consumed by subsistence farmers are thus largely neglected, and the potential of crop diversity – the foundation of agriculture – remains largely untapped. Technology that could help develop more robust varieties remains hypothetical.   

    How does the ownership of crop diversity threaten food supplies and what can be done?      

    The term crop diversity refers both to different crops and different varieties of a crop. According to the Global Crop Diversity Trust (one of the world’s primary international organizations on crop diversity conservation), securing and making available the world’s crop diversity is essential for future food and nutrition security.      

    “Plant breeders and scientists use crop diversity to develop new, more resilient and productive varieties that consumers want to eat, that are nutritious and tasty, and that are adapted to local preferences, environments and challenges,” explains Benjamin Kilian, a plant genetics expert at the Global Crop Diversity Trust. The Crop Trust, together with the Norwegian University of Life Sciences, implements the major project from which this study emerged: Biodiversity for Opportunities, Livelihoods and Development (BOLD). Coordinated by Kilian, the project supports the conservation and use of crop diversity to strengthen food and nutrition security on a global scale. It builds on the Crop Wild Relatives project and is funded by the Norwegian government.   

    “In the BOLD project, researchers work with genebanks, plant breeders and others in the seed value chain to co-develop seed systems that are both resilient to climate stresses and inclusive of small-holder farmers on the frontline of adaptation,” adds Westengen.     

    Will access to seeds in the vulnerable areas that you are studying be improved in time to make a difference?   

    “We hope so, if we make the right moves to include small-holder farmers in seed system development,” says Dalle. “A well-functioning seed system should also be resilient. That is, it should withstand shocks such as drought or pandemics and breakdowns or disruptions such as war and conflict.”    

    “To do this, the system should promote a diversity of seeds, both local varieties and those improved to better adapt to stresses. It should also involve diverse groups of people such as farmer cooperatives/groups, and both public and private companies to increase the choice of seeds and seed sources. During lockdowns in the COVID-19 pandemic, for example, farmers’ own seed systems enabled access to seeds in developing countries when the activities of private companies and agro-dealers were restricted,” explains Dalle.   

    Westengen summarizes: “Our study highlights links between the crucial work of the Global Crop Diversity Trust and the farmers on the frontline of adapting our food systems to climate change. It is an argument for co-designing seed system development in full cooperation with farmers and other actors in the seed system. This way, efforts can meet the needs of various groups of farmers in different agroecological contexts. There is no one-size-fits-all; if there is one natural law in biology, it is that diversity is key to future evolution. That also goes for seed systems – and food system development.”   

    Navigating towards resilient and inclusive seed systems by Ola T. Westengen, Sarah Paule Dalle and Teshome Hunduma Mulesa was published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) this week. PNAS is widely considered one of the most prestigious and highly cited multidisciplinary research journals.   

    About the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU)  
    NMBU’s research and education enables people all over the world to tackle the big, global challenges regarding the environment, sustainable development, how to improve human and animal health, renewable energy sources, food production, and land- and resource management. 

     About the Crop Trust 
    The Crop Trust is an international organization working to conserve crop diversity and thus protect global food and nutrition security. At the core of Crop Trust is an endowment fund dedicated to providing guaranteed long-term financial support to key genebanks worldwide. The Crop Trust supports the Svalbard Global Seed Vault and coordinates large-scale projects worldwide to secure crop diversity and make it available for use. The Crop Trust is recognized as an essential element of the funding strategy of the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture.  

    About the BOLD Project 
    BOLD (Biodiversity for Opportunities, Livelihoods, and Development) is a major 10-year project to strengthen food and nutrition security worldwide by supporting the conservation and use of crop diversity. The project works with national genebanks, pre-breeding and seed system partners globally. Funded by the government of Norway, BOLD is led by the Crop Trust in partnership with the Norwegian University of Life Sciences and the International Plant Treaty. 

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  • Stones for the climate

    Stones for the climate

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    Newswise — If the cook varies the amount of ingredients when preparing a dish, a completely new taste is created. It is exactly the same with binding of CO2 in the sea – a change in the substances in the water changes everything. The so-called alkalinity, i.e. the acid binding capacity, is created by the weathering of rocks and their entry into the ocean. Increased erosion on land causes an increase in weathering of silicates and carbonates. The researchers identified the factors for more alkalinity using the model: Degree of erosion, area fraction of carbonate, temperatures, catchment size, and soil thickness.

    Method and influencing factors

    “The model we used is a statistical, not a mechanistic model. We applied it to identify the factors influencing alkalinity based on our compiled data set and to describe their interdependencies,” says Nele Lehmann of the Hereon Institute for Carbon Cycles, lead author of the study, which was an international collaboration with the Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz-Zentrum für Polar- und Meeresforschung (AWI) and funding from the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD).

    If warming continues slowly, alkalinity would drop by up to 68 percent by 2100, depending on the watersheds. That means the ocean’s ability to sequester CO2 would decrease significantly. Rapidly progressing warming, on the other hand, would lead to higher temperatures and thus more precipitation in temperate climate zones. This would increase alkalinity by up to 33 percent. “But that doesn’t mean that more emissions are good for the climate. The impact of alkalinity is small compared to the amounts of man-made CO2 emitted around the world. The process of weathering unfolds its effects over much longer periods of time,” Lehmann said.

    Climate change is greatly accelerating the interplay of carbon cycling and weathering that is fundamental to the development of life. The team first looked for existing data. The goal was to find as many alkalinity measurements as possible in the immediate vicinity of erosion measurement sites. To do this, the researchers searched databases and publications, and took samples themselves. They conducted the investigation of the alkalinity factors using their new model. The biggest limitation: the erosion rate measurements the researchers used have often only been taken over 20 years, are complex and expensive. This made it difficult to produce the data set. Especially in the higher latitudes, there are hardly any measurements, so the study is limited to the mid-latitudes.

    New questions in the Arctic

    Next, Lehmann would like to investigate alkalinity and the erosion rate in the Arctic. There, the data situation is patchy. And climate change is clearly being noticeable, so potentially the biggest change in alkalinity flux could also occur. Of particular importance: whether erosion itself is changing as a result of climate change.

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  • Two striking new species of carnivorous plants discovered in the Andes of Ecuador

    Two striking new species of carnivorous plants discovered in the Andes of Ecuador

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    Newswise — A team of botanists from Ecuador, Germany, and the United States has described two new species of carnivorous plants with striking appearance. They are part of the butterworts (genus Pinguicula), a group of flowering plants with about 115 species that can catch and digest small insects with their sticky leaves. Whereas the majority of butterwort species is distributed in the northern hemisphere, these new species were discovered in the high Andes of southern Ecuador, close to the border with Peru.

    Carnivorous plants use animals (usually small insects) as an additional source of nutrients to compensate the nutrient deficiency of the substrate they’re growing in. This gives them a competitive advantage over other plants and enables them to thrive in challenging habitats. The tropical high Andes have a variety of such habitats, for example marshland and rocky slopes covered in constant rain and clouds.

    The two new species described in the study, Pinguicula jimburensis and Pinguicula ombrophila, were found on the shore of a highland lagoon at 3400 m and on a nearly vertical rock face at 2900 m, respectively. Their small-scale habitats lie within the so-called Amotape-Huancabamba zone, which encompasses large portions of southern Ecuador and northern Peru. This area is characterized by exceptional biodiversity, due in part to the fact that the rugged terrain and varied climate of the Andes provide so many microhabitats.

    “And as small and scattered as the species’ suitable habitats are, so is the species composition,” says senior author Tilo Henning of Leibniz Center for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF), who is a specialist in this plant family in this region. His colleague Álvaro Pérez of the Pontifica Universidad Catolica del Ecuador and his team were the first to discover the plants. They then got in touch with Henning.

    “Both of these new species are only known from a single location, where only a few dozens of plant individuals occur in each case.” For one of them, only one population with about 15 mature individuals was discovered, making it vulnerable even if it is hidden in an isolated, difficult-to-access area. This narrow endemism (limited distribution in a particular area) is typical of the Amotape-Huancabamba zone, and there are many more new plant and animal species awaiting discovery, Henning says.

    With the description of these two new species, the number of Pinguicula species recorded in Ecuador has tripled, as previously only P. calyptrata was known, discovered by none other than Alexander von Humboldt. The authors are convinced that there are many more new species awaiting formal scientific recognition, but admit that lately it has been a race against time.

    “The results presented in this study show that the assessment of the Neotropical biodiversity is far from complete. Even in well-known groups such as the carnivorous plants, new taxa are continuously discovered and described, in particular from remote areas that become accessible in the course of the unlimited urban sprawl,” Henning, Pérez, and their colleagues write in a scientific article dedicated to the new plants that was published in the peer-reviewed journal PhytoKeys. “This is both encouraging and worrying at the same time“.

    “Relentless urban sprawl and the accompanying destruction of habitats pose a massive threat to biodiversity in general, and to the tightly-knit and specialized organisms that depend on their fragile microhabitats in particular,” Henning points out. Although the two new species are relatively safe from direct human interference – as they both occur within protected areas – human-induced climate change is increasingly affecting ecosystems regardless of location, especially those that rely on regular precipitation, such as mountain wetlands.

    The dependence on a constant climate is even reflected in the name of one of the two new species: Pinguicula ombrophila means “rain-loving butterwort”, as the plant prefers very wet conditions, receiving moisture from the waterlogged paramo-soil and enjoying the frequent rain and fog typical for this area.

    Research article: Pérez ÁJ, Tobar F, Burgess KS, Henning T (2023) Contributions to Ecuadorian butterworts (Lentibulariaceae, Pinguicula): two new species and a re-evaluation of Pinguicula calyptrata. PhytoKeys 222: 153-171. https://doi.org/10.3897/phytokeys.222.98139

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    Pensoft Publishers

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  • Southern Flying Squirrel rediscovered in Honduras after 43 years

    Southern Flying Squirrel rediscovered in Honduras after 43 years

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    Newswise — The presence of The Southern Flying Squirrel (Glaucomys volans) was documented in Honduras for the first time after 43 years. The record is from a site of the forest management plan called “Las Lechuzas”, municipality of Concordia, department of Olancho. Apart from this newly confirmed location, the species has also been recorded in Zambrano, department of Francisco Morazán in 1935, in Gracias, department of Lempira, and finally in the Department of paradise in 1979. Based on these records, Honduras is considered the southernmost distribution known for this species.

    The discovery was possible thanks to a project of El Aserradero Sansone, a company focused on sustainable forestry activities in Honduras, and is published in a research article in the peer-reviewed journal Check List.

    This finding confirmed that there is at least one population of G. volans in the country, at the Las Lechuzas site, which is currently also the southernmost locality known in its global distribution. The species has been assessed as Least Concern by the IUCN (meaning it has stable populations), but is considered Data Deficient on the Red List of Honduran species.  Considering the low number of records and the high rate of destruction of pine forests in Honduras, G. volans is a priority for conservation in the country.

    In support of the conservation of the biodiversity of Las Lechuzas, the company Sansone is now committed to giving priority to the conservation of G. volans in the area. The use of artificial shelters for G. volans is also being studied, as the animal is at greater risk when its nests are disturbed. Based on recommendations suggested in the study, Sansone will work to increase the quantity and quality of tree seedlings that will grow in the canopy and educate people in the community about the need to protect pine ecosystems and rare animals. Additionally, within the 3,139.62 ha of the management plan of Las Lechuzas, there are 836.63 ha that have been declared as hydrological protection zones. Currently, there is no record of G. volans in any protected area of Honduras.

    “As a professional with an experience of 43 years, I capitalize on the detection of the Flying Squirrel as an event that opens the doors to the true dimension posed by the Honduran forest law in the proper administrative management. That includes biodiversity conservation and protection and rationality of the protection of natural resources. The latter turns out to be of greater importance in view of the strong social pressures in favor of the conversion of the use of forest land destined for extensive agriculture and livestock, as well as the environmental impacts caused by climate change that is being sustained by the mismanagement of our resources,” says José Muñoz, one of the authors in the study.

    About El Aserradero Sansone:

    El Aserradero Sansone was founded in 1957, characterized by compliance with the laws of Honduras, especially those related to forest management. It has developed an evolutionary and progressive process of achievements in the implementation of management plans, including such related to the evaluation of environmental impacts.

    In this sense, the environmental importance in the management of natural resources has continued to promote evolution, defining the need to venture into aspects related to the conservation of flora and fauna as well as the incidence of climatic and environmental factors in the administration of natural resources. Within this responsibility, the last challenge that the company Sansone is welcoming with great optimism lies in adhering to the international criteria and indicators of the forest certification process through the principles of FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) and through the GFA company of Hamburg, Germany.

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  • Coffee plantations limit birds’ diets

    Coffee plantations limit birds’ diets

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    BYLINE: Paul Gabrielsen

    Newswise — Cast your mind back to the spring of 2020, when grocery store shelves sat bare of essential items and ingredients. For birds who live in the forests of Central America, replacement of forest land with coffee plantations essentially “clears out the shelves” of their preferred foods, causing them to shift their diets and habitats to survive.

    A new study led by researchers at the University of Utah explores a record of birds’ diets preserved in their feathers and radio tracking of their movements to find that birds eat far fewer invertebrates in coffee plantations than in forests, suggesting that the disturbance of their ecosystem significantly impacts the birds’ dietary options.

    “Growing human ecological impact on the planet, especially via habitat loss and degradation and climate change, often impacts bird diets negatively as well,” said Çağan H. Şekercioğlu, the study’s lead author and an ecology and ornithology professor in the U’s School of Biological Sciences. “These negative changes, including declines in key dietary resources like insects and other invertebrates can lead to reduced survival, especially of rapidly growing young, often leading to population declines and losses of these undernourished birds.”

    The study is published in Frontiers of Ecology and Evolution. Find the full study here.

    The forests of Costa Rica

    PHOTO CREDIT: ÇAĞAN H. ŞEKERCIOĞLU

    An Ochre-bellied Flycatcher.

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    All over the world, forests are being reduced from once-verdant havens of life to much smaller remnants, scattered amongst the agricultural land that has replaced them. Only about one percent of bird species prefer the types of habitats dominated by humans and human activity, but the rapid disappearance of natural forest habitat means that about a third of bird species now find themselves working to survive in human-dominated environments.

    In Costa Rica, the land around the Las Cruces Biological Station near the Panama border, has gone from fully forested to now 50% coffee plantations, 20% cattle pastures and 10% other human environments—only 20% of the land is still forested. The agricultural areas are drenched in pesticides, fertilizers and fungicides, drastically impacting the communities of invertebrates on which local birds feed.

    Those local birds include four species that the researchers focused on in the study: orange-billed nightingale-thrush, silver-throated tanager, white-throated thrush and ochre-bellied flycatcher. All four species can be found in both the forests and the open countryside where they feed on both fruits and invertebrates. But the invertebrates (including insects) are an important part of their diet, since they provide key nutrients including protein and nitrogen.

    Şekercioğlu and his colleagues, including researchers from the United States, Costa Rica, and Singapore, wanted to understand how the bird species they studied were obtaining their nutrients between the agricultural and forest environments, specifically during the crucial breeding season when proper nutrition is key to sustaining the species.

    An isotopic food diary

    PHOTO CREDIT: ÇAĞAN H. ŞEKERCIOĞLU

    An Orange-billed Nightingale-thrush.

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    To learn more about the birds’ diet, the researchers analyzed isotopes in their feathers. We are what we eat, and the chemical signatures of the foods we eat, in the form of isotope ratios, are incorporated into our tissues.

    Isotopes are different versions of the same element that differ only in the amount of neutrons in their nucleus – an infinitesimal difference in mass between a carbon atom with, say, six neutrons and a carbon atom with seven. But biological and physical processes can prefer either light or heavy isotopes, changing the resulting ratio in a way that can be measured and can provide valuable information.

    In humans, for example, a record of our diets is preserved in the isotopes in our hair. In a previous study, co-author Thure Cerling, a distinguished professor in the U’s Department of Geology and Geophysics, and colleagues analyzed hair clippings from barbershops and salons around the Salt Lake Valley and learned about the relative ratios of corn-fed meat and plant-based protein in the diets of local residents.

    In Costa Rica, the researchers hoped to do the same, but with the stable carbon and nitrogen isotopes in the birds’ feathers. They collected 170 feathers from the four bird species to analyze diet, and tracked 49 birds’ movements using radio tracking to see where they spent their time.

    “It’s definitely not the first time feather isotopic analysis has been used to study bird diets,” said co-author Seth Newsome of the University of New Mexico, “but it might be the first time, especially in the tropics, it has been used in conjunction with radio telemetry to examine diet composition and relative use of agricultural versus natural habitats.”

    The results showed that the birds’ habitat of choice had a significant effect on their diet. The isotopic data suggested that three of the four species studied ate significantly fewer invertebrates in coffee plantations than in forests. For silver-throated tanagers and the white-throated thrushes, the data suggested that they were eating twice as much invertebrate biomass in forests than in coffee plantations.

    “Our results suggest that coffee plantations are deficient in invertebrates preferred by forest generalist birds that forage in both native forest remnants and coffee plantations,” Şekercioğlu said.

    Consequences of habitat shifts

    PHOTO CREDIT: ÇAĞAN H. ŞEKERCIOĞLU

    A Silver-throated Tanager.

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    The coffee plantations were planted decades ago, and the researchers don’t have the data to know how the birds behaved when the forest was intact. But from what we know about the birds’ behaviors now, we can infer what the results mean for the birds’ lifestyles.

    To consume enough invertebrates, Şekercioğlu said, the birds need to forage frequently in the small forest fragments of around 7-12 acres (about the size of the parking lot at the U’s Rice-Eccles Stadium) and narrow corridors of forests alongside rivers, only around 30-60 ft wide.

    “We think that the more mobile birds like silver-throated tanager and white-throated thrush move constantly to get enough food, especially protein-rich invertebrates,” Şekercioğlu said, a hypothesis supported by a 2007 radio tracking study. “Less mobile species like orange-billed nightingale thrush that can have lifelong home range sizes as small as an acre (half a hectare) either have to adapt to coffee plantations and eat fewer invertebrates or they disappear.” The orange-billed nightingale thrush isn’t alone—a 2019 study showed that more bird species were in decline in the region than were stable.

    So for the birds of Costa Rica, and for birds in other, similar tropical regions, forest reserves can provide critical resources for birds that have shifted their habitats to the remaining forest and travel through coffee plantations to reach other forest fragments.

    “These birds’ shifting their feeding to other places may result in new ecological interactions that can themselves have negative consequences,” Şekercioğlu said. “For example, increased competition with birds in these new places or overpredation on a prey species that was formerly not consumed as much.”

    How you can help

    PHOTO CREDIT: ÇAĞAN H. ŞEKERCIOĞLU

    A White-throated Thrush.

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    If you’re a coffee drinker, you can help by choosing to buy bird-friendly coffee. According to Şekercioğlu, bird-friendly coffee is grown in plantations with more tree cover and forest remnants, which are beneficial for native birds. He recommends buying shade-grown coffee, coffee certified as Bird Friendly by the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center, or coffee from Ethiopia which, he said, is among the bird-friendliest.

    And local governments in tropical regions can help by prioritizing the conservation of intact forest, secondary growth forests and strips of forest alongside rivers to increase the connectivity of forest remnants.

    “It is urgent,” Şekercioğlu said, “to prioritize the conservation and regeneration of forest remnants in increasingly human-dominated agricultural areas that continue to replace the world’s most biodiverse tropical forests.”

    Find the full study here.

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    University of Utah

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  • Joshua Tree Residents Pledge $4 Million Gift to CSUF to Support Desert Science

    Joshua Tree Residents Pledge $4 Million Gift to CSUF to Support Desert Science

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    Newswise — Brian and Lori Rennie have pledged a planned gift to Cal State Fullerton valued at $4 million to support desert science studies, conservation and climate change research. The couple’s gift to the university includes their Joshua Tree property and 2,500-square-foot Santa Fe pueblo-style home.

    Alumnus Brian Rennie ’70 (B.S. biological science) said the property can be used for events and research.

    “We were seeking the right organization to respect the land and the desert as much as we do, and to continue to utilize it in a way that supports our intentions,” Rennie said. “We feel confident that this will happen through our gift to the university.”

    Marie Johnson, dean of CSUF’s College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, said this gift will allow faculty to expand their research efforts in desert environments, which will create impactful learning experiences for CSUF students.

    “We often say our university aspires to be a steward of place,” Johnson said. “Brian and Lori’s gift will allow us to fulfill that aspiration by creating the conditions for deep, meaningful engagement with desert ecosystems and our arid Southern California environment.”

    Read more about Brian and Lori Rennie’s donation at CSUF News.

    About Cal State Fullerton: The largest university in the CSU and the only campus in Orange County, Cal State Fullerton offers 110 degree programs and Division 1 athletics. Recognized as a national model for supporting student success, CSUF excels with innovative, high-impact educational practices, including faculty-student collaborative research, study abroad and competitive internships. Our vibrant and diverse campus is a primary driver of workforce and economic development in the region. CSUF is a top public university known for its success in supporting first-generation and underrepresented students, and preparing all students to become leaders in the global marketplace. Our It Takes a Titan campaign, a five-year $250 million comprehensive fundraising initiative, prioritizes investments in academic innovation, student empowerment, campus transformation and community enrichment. Visit fullerton.edu.

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  • KRICT has developed a breakthrough technology to achieve closed-loop recycling of textile wastes

    KRICT has developed a breakthrough technology to achieve closed-loop recycling of textile wastes

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    Newswise — The apparel industry accounts for 10% of global carbon emissions. The annual amount of fiber production reached 113 million tons in 2021* and the demand is increasing every year. However, almost 90% of post-consumer fiber wastes are disposed of through incineration or in landfills. Among these forms of waste, synthetic fiber has become a major threat to the environment and human health because, similar to other plastics, it is not biodegradable in nature. Owing to its low cost and durability, polyester is the most widely used synthetic fiber on the planet, accounting for more than half of all fabrics annually produced. Comprehensive recycling of polyester is thus a critical challenge for environmental sustainability and the health of future generations.

    *Source: Preferred Fiber & Materials Market Report 2022

    In practice, crude textile waste is not suitable for reuse or recycling because it is mixed with different fabric materials, colored by different dyes, and contaminated by various other impurities. Sorting it into homogeneous materials is necessary to make the waste recyclable by a chemical or mechanical method. To this end, the research team (P.I.: Dr. Joungmo Cho) in Korea Research Institute of Chemical Technology (KRICT) has developed a new chemical technology referred to as ‘chemical sorting’. This technology is applied to separate polyester from waste textiles that are disposed of in a mixed and contaminated form. In the process, a unique chemical compound, which selectively disrupts the chemical interaction between polyester and the dye used for its color, is used for the separation. The research team has also developed a new chemical recycling technology that consumes less energy than conventional methods to convert polyester into valuable monomers*, which can be repeatedly used for the synthesis of polymer materials.

    *monomer: a single molecular substance can react with other monomer molecules to form a polymer by chemical bonding

    Postconsumer clothes, made up of various materials with unknown compositions, are often discarded. They commonly comprise a variety of textiles such as cotton, wool, polyester, acrylic, nylon, elastane, and other blended fibers. Recycling cannot be achieved without sorting them into individual materials because of their incompatible chemical and physical properties. Industrially, the separation of individual materials from waste fabrics is accomplished by manual sorting, largely depending on human labor. This method has low accuracy and is unreliable and in turn fails to collect homogeneous materials, which is often critical for further steps of recycling. Recently, studies have been actively carried out to develop an automatic sorting machine, employing hyperspectral imaging technologies to acquire structural information of individual fabric targets. However, the sorting system still remains far from commercialization, mainly due to technical and economic barriers.

    The KRICT research team adopted an inexpensive and non-toxic biodegradable compound to chemically discriminate polyester from a mixture of waste fabrics. When the compound is applied to textiles. colorants only present in polyester are completely extracted while no significant changes occur in other materials. As a consequence, clean polyester can be separated from the mixture of colored fabrics. The method is applicable to select polyester from an uncolored fabric mixture as well. When uncolored fabric comes into contact with the waste colorants extracted from the sorting process, only polyester accepts the colorants while the other materials remain unchanged. As a consequence, the fabrics containing only polyester can be separated from mixed fabric waste in an inexpensive, accurate, and facile manner. The resulting sorted polyester can be used as clean feedstock for chemical recycling because the sorting method eliminates most organic impurities including intractable dyes.

    Chemical recycling, which converts polymer waste into the original building blocks, has potential to achieve circularity in recycling of polyester wastes whereas mechanical recycling can be used to produce only low quality material. In the conventional chemical recycling method, a high reaction temperature of above 200℃ is required to completely decompose polyester. Furthermore, energy-intensive purification steps are also inevitable in most commercial applications to obtain a high quality monomer product.

    The KRICT research team has developed a low-temperature glycolysis reaction system to convert chemically sorted waste polyester into pure bis(2-hydroxyethyl) terepthalate, which is an important building block monomer to produce new polymers. Monomer compounds obtained from the chemical recycling have quality equivalent to that derived from petroleum. Since the same compound as that used in ‘chemical sorting’ functions as an additive to lower the energy barrier of depolymerization, the reaction system can be easily and economically integrated with the chemical sorting technology for applications involving plastic or textile recycling where there is high demand for good product quality.

    Dr. Cho said, “Recently, the garment industry has utilized transparent and clean post-consumer PET bottles to produce recycled polyester clothes. However, this method is not sustainable because the material cannot be repeatedly recycled. In contrast, our current technology would not be limited by the complexity of the constituent materials or the initial level of impurity in the waste. Whether the targeted materials are derived from petroleum directly or recycled from waste, the technology can repeatedly process most post-consumer textile streams. Thus it will help reduce waste in landfills and substantially achieve a circular economy in the plastic and textile industries.”

    The chemical recycling technology has been licensed to Renew System Co., Ltd. (South Korea). Multidisciplinary R&D teams are now closely working together to build multi-scale facilities for the chemical recycling of waste clothing. A demonstration plant will be ready by the end of 2024 and commercial operation with an annual capacity of 10,000 tons is planned to start in 2025.

     

     

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    KRICT is a non-profit research institute funded by the Korean government. Since its foundation in 1976, KRICT has played a leading role to advance national chemical technologies in the fields of chemistry, material science, environmental science, and chemical engineering. Now, KRICT is moving forward to become a globally leading research institute tackling the most challenging issues in the field of Chemistry and Engineering and will continue to fulfill its role in developing chemical technologies that benefit the entire world and keep our earth healthy. More detailed information on KRICT can be found at https://www.krict.re.kr/eng/

    This study was supported by the Materials/Parts Technology Development Program funded by the Ministry of Trade, Industry & Energy (MOTIE, Republic of Korea) and by the Institutional Program of the Korea Research Institute of Chemical Technology (KRICT). The research was published in ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering, volume 10 (51) and featured on the front cover of the volume.

    Credit: Korea Research Institute of Chemical Technology (KRICT)

    Usage Restrictions of Multimedia (Attachment File): The sources of photos and research results from KRICT must be specified

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  • Discovery of novel gene to aid breeding of climate resilient crops

    Discovery of novel gene to aid breeding of climate resilient crops

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    Newswise — Researchers have revealed for the first time how a key gene in plants allows them to use their energy more efficiently, enabling them to grow more roots and capture more water and nutrients. 

    An international team of plant scientists led by Penn State University and in collaboration with the University of Nottingham have discovered this novel regulatory gene (called bHLH121) that enables corn roots to acquire more water and nutrients. The findings have been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.

    The gene controls the formation of air spaces among living root tissues (termed root cortical aerenchyma). Replacing a large percentage of root cells with airspaces saves the plant a lot of energy which is otherwise required to feed all these root cells. This makes roots metabolically more efficient, enabling them to use the resources saved to build more roots and explore the soil more effectively and capture more water and nutrients.  

    This discovery could lead to the breeding of crops that can withstand drought and low-nitrogen soil conditions and ultimately ease global food insecurity, the researchers suggest. 

    Rahul Bhosale, Assistant Professor in Crop Functional Genomics from the School of Biosciences at the University of Nottingham and BBSRC Discovery Fellow said: “Identifying this gene and how it works will enable us to create more resilient crops that can withstand water and nutrient stress conditions being experienced as a result of climate change.”

    The research team used powerful imaging tools developed in previous research at Penn State that rapidly measured cells in thousands of roots. An imaging technique called Laser Ablation Tomography was critical for this approach. This state-of-the-art approach is also now available at the University of Nottingham through BBSRC Alert Funding and support from US partners. 

    Hannah Schneider, Assistant Professor of Crop Physiology at Wageningen University & Research, Netherlands said: “We first performed the field experiments that went into this study starting in 2010, growing more than 500 lines of corn at sites in Pennsylvania, Arizona, Wisconsin and South Africa,” she said. “I worked at all those locations. We saw convincing evidence that we had located a gene associated with root cortical aerenchyma.

    This research revealed that mutant corn lines lacking the bHLH121 gene showed reduced root air space formation. In contrast, overexpressing bHLH121 caused more air space formation. 

    Characterization of these lines under suboptimal water and nitrogen availability in multiple locations revealed that the bHLH121 gene is required for root air space formation and provides a new tool for plant breeders to select varieties with improved soil exploration, and thus yield, under suboptimal conditions. 

    Professor Jonathan Lynch, who led the research at Penn State commented: “These findings are the result of many people at Penn State and beyond collaborating with us, working over many years,” he said. “We discovered the function of the aerenchyma trait and then the gene associated with it, And, it came about because of technologies that have been devised here at Penn State, such as Shovelomics — digging up roots in the field — Laser Ablation Tomography and Anatomics Pipeline. We put all those together in this work.” 

    The results are significant, Lynch continued, because finding a gene behind an important trait that’s going to help plants have better drought tolerance and better nitrogen and phosphorus capture looms large in the face of climate change. 

    “Those are super important qualities — both here in the U.S. and around the world,” he said. “Droughts are the biggest risk to corn growers and are worsening with climate change, and nitrogen is the biggest cost of growing corn, from both a financial and environmental perspective. Breeding corn lines more efficient at scavenging for the nutrient would be a major development.” 

    The U.S. Department of Energy, the Howard G Buffett Foundation, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture supported this research. 

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    University of Nottingham

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  • 19th Century ‘dinner plate’ still useful in ocean science

    19th Century ‘dinner plate’ still useful in ocean science

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    Newswise — A simple 19th Century tool is still useful to ocean scientists in the age of satellites, new research shows.

    A Secchi disk –  historically called a “dinner plate” by sailors – is used in the open ocean to measure concentrations of microscopic algae called phytoplankton.

    It works by lowering the white disk into the water and recording the depth at which it disappears.

    In the new study, a research team including the University of Exeter, Plymouth Marine Laboratory, Vrije Universiteit (Netherlands) and the Italian Institute of Marine Sciences (ISMAR) compared the performance of Secchi disks with satellites and high-performance chromatography.

    Secchi disks performed almost as well as modern methods at monitoring phytoplankton abundance – meaning Secchi measurements going back more than a century can help scientists understand long-term changes in the ocean.

    “Phytoplankton produce half the world’s oxygen and form the base of ocean food webs, so monitoring them helps us track everything from climate change to the health of ecosystems,” said Dr Bob Brewin, from the Centre for Geography and Environmental Science on Exeter’s Penryn Campus in Cornwall.

    “New technology undoubtedly gives us new opportunities, but our study shows Secchi disks do a good job of estimating chlorophyll (a way of measuring phytoplankton abundance) – which means we should be able to integrate data from the past with modern measurements.

    “This gives us a priceless source of long-term data on how our oceans are changing.”

    Secchi disks are still used all around the world to monitor ocean biomass and water quality, and co-author Dr Jaime Pitarch, from ISMAR, said the findings support their continued use.

    “It’s a simple, cheap tool, but our research shows it’s also remarkably effective,” he said.

    In fact, researchers including Dr Brewin at Exeter, are working on a project that will use 3D-printed Secchi disks to monitor water quality in lakes in India and Africa, and coastal regions of the US.

    Prior to the 1850s, mariners used a variety of objects (in the same way as Secchi disks) to help with navigation, including cloths, pans and plates.

    It was the Vatican astronomer Angelo Secchi, invited by the Papal Navy Commander Alessandro Cialdi to join a scientific cruise to study the murkiness of the sea in 1865, who standardised the method.

    The measurements in the new study were collected on Atlantic Meridional Transect cruises, and Dr Brewin’s work is funded by a UKRI Future Leader Fellowship.

    The paper, published in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science, is entitled: “Evaluating historic and modern optical techniques for monitoring phytoplankton biomass in the Atlantic Ocean.”

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  • Humans are leaving behind a ‘frozen signature’ of microbes on Mount Everest

    Humans are leaving behind a ‘frozen signature’ of microbes on Mount Everest

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    Newswise — Almost 5 miles above sea level in the Himalayan mountains, the rocky dip between Mount Everest and its sister peak, Lhotse, lies windswept, free of snow. It is here at the South Col where hundreds of adventurers pitch their final camp each year before attempting to scale the world’s tallest peak from the southeastern side.

    According to new University of Colorado Boulder-led research, they’re also leaving behind a frozen legacy of hardy microbes, which can withstand harsh conditions at high elevations and lie dormant in the soil for decades or even centuries.

    The research not only highlights an invisible impact of tourism on the world’s highest mountain, but could also lead to a better understanding of environmental limits to life on Earth, as well as where life may exist on other planets or cold moons. The findings were published last month in Arctic, Antarctic, and Alpine Research, a journal published on behalf of the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR) at CU Boulder.

    “There is a human signature frozen in the microbiome of Everest, even at that elevation,” said Steve Schmidt, senior author on the paper and professor of ecology and evolutionary biology.

    In decades past, scientists have been unable to conclusively identify human-associated microbes in samples collected above 26,000 feet. This study marks the first time that next-generation gene sequencing technology has been used to analyze soil from such a high elevation on Mount Everest, enabling researchers to gain new insight into almost everything and anything that’s in them.

    The researchers weren’t surprised to find microorganisms left by humans. Microbes are everywhere, even in the air, and can easily blow around and land some distance away from nearby camps or trails.

    “If somebody even blew their nose or coughed, that’s the kind of thing that might show up,” said Schmidt.

    What they were impressed by, however, was that certain microbes which have evolved to thrive in warm and wet environments like our noses and mouths were resilient enough to survive in a dormant state in such harsh conditions.

    Life in the cryosphere

    This team of CU Boulder researchers—including Schmidt, lead author Nicholas Dragone and Adam Solon, both graduate students in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Science (CIRES)—study the cryobiosphere: Earth’s cold regions and the limits to life in them. They have sampled soils everywhere from Antarctica and the Andes to the Himalayas and the high Arctic. Usually, human-associated microbes don’t show up in these places to the extent they appeared in the recent Everest samples.

    Schmidt’s work over the years connected him with researchers who were headed to Everest’s South Col in May of 2019 to set up the planet’s highest weather station, established by the National Geographic and Rolex Perpetual Planet Everest Expedition.

    He asked his colleagues: Would you mind collecting some soil samples while you’re already there?

    So Baker Perry, co-author, professor of geography at Appalachian State University and a National Geographic Explorer, hiked as far away from the South Col camp as possible to scoop up some soil samples to send back to Schmidt.

    Extremes on Earth, and elsewhere

    Dragone and Solon then analyzed the soil in several labs at CU Boulder. Using next-generation gene sequencing technology and more traditional culturing techniques, they were able to identify the DNA of almost any living or dead microbes in the soils. They then carried out extensive bioinformatics analyses of the DNA sequences to determine the diversity of organisms, rather than their abundances.  

    Most of the microbial DNA sequences they found were similar to hardy, or “extremophilic” organisms previously detected in other high-elevation sites in the Andes and Antarctica. The most abundant organism they found using both old and new methods was a fungus in the genus Naganishia that can withstand extreme levels of cold and UV radiation.

    But they also found microbial DNA for some organisms heavily associated with humans, including Staphylococcus, one of the most common skin and nose bacteria, and Streptococcus, a dominant genus in the human mouth.

    At high elevation, microbes are often killed by ultraviolet light, cold temperatures and low water availability. Only the hardiest critters survive. Most—like the microbes carried up great heights by humans—go dormant or die, but there is a chance that organisms like Naganishia may grow briefly when water and the perfect ray of sunlight provides enough heat to help it momentarily prosper. But even for the toughest of microbes, Mount Everest is a Hotel California: “You can check out any time you like/ But you can never leave.”

    The researchers don’t expect this microscopic impact on Everest to significantly affect the broader environment. But this work does carry implications for the potential for life far beyond Earth, if one day humans step foot on Mars or beyond.

    “We might find life on other planets and cold moons,” said Schmidt. “We’ll have to be careful to make sure we’re not contaminating them with our own.”

    Additional authors on this publication include: Anton Seimon, Department of Geography and Planning, Appalachian State University; and Tracie Seimon, Wildlife Conservation Society, Zoological Health Program, Bronx, New York.

    This work was supported by the National Geographic and Rolex Perpetual Planet Everest Expedition, the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, and the University of Colorado Boulder Libraries Open Access Fund.

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  • Brown widow spiders’ aggression likely driver of black widow decline

    Brown widow spiders’ aggression likely driver of black widow decline

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    Newswise — Annapolis, MD; March 13, 2023—Black widow spiders have earned a fearsome reputation for their venomous bite. But in parts of the southern United States these spiders have much to fear themselves—from spider relatives who really don’t like their company.

    In the past couple decades, researchers have noticed black widow spiders commonly being displaced by the brown widow, a fellow species in the same genus, Latrodectus. But new research suggests this isn’t a just simple case of one species winning the competition for food or habitat. Instead, a study shows brown widow spiders have a striking propensity to seek out and kill nearby black widows.

    In experiments pairing brown widow spiders in container habitats with related cobweb spider species, the brown widows were 6.6 times more likely to kill southern black widows than other related species. The findings of the study, conducted by researchers at the University of South Florida (USF), are reported in an article to be published March 13 in the Annals of the Entomological Society of America.

    “We have established brown widow behavior as being highly aggressive towards the southern black widows, yet much more tolerant of other spiders within the same family,” says Louis Coticchio, who led the study as part of his undergraduate research at USF.

    Brown widow spiders (Latrodectus geometricus) are believed to be native to Africa but have been introduced on all continents but Antarctica. Black widow spiders are native to North America and comprise two closely related species, the western black widow (Latrodectus hesperus) and the southern black widow (Latrodectus mactans).

    What Drives Brown Widow Spiders’ Displacement of Black Widows?

    Coticchio spent the first part of his career as a zookeeper specializing in venomous animals in California and returned to Florida to earn a degree in biology, channeling a passion for spiders into his research projects. In collecting wild spiders in Florida, he says he noticed brown widows displacing black widows but not other related species. This got him wondering.

    “I had a sneaking suspicion that Florida in particular provided plenty of food and habitat for both the brown and black widow, and that there was possibly some other area such as behavioral differences that were playing a role,” he says. “My observations in the field showed that brown widows appeared to be much more tolerant of other species outside of their genus, and so if resources were the main factor, then we should have seen the same behavior with other spiders competing for the same resources, but that did not seem to be that case.”

    Coticchio partnered with advisor Deby Cassill, Ph.D., associate professor in the Department of Integrative Biology at USF. Along with spider expert Richard Vetter of the University of California, Riverside, they devised a three-part study to explore the potential drivers of brown widows displacing black widows.

    One element of their study applied mathematical modeling to the risk factors to survival that brown and black widow spiders face, which showed both species are far more likely to die by predation than by starvation. In other words, “competition for scarce resources is not a significant cause of mortality among spiderlings for either species,” the researchers say.

    They also compared rates of growth and fertility between brown and black widows, finding that sub-adult brown widow females were 9.5 percent larger than black widows, and adult female brown widows reached reproductive maturity 16 percent sooner. While adult male brown widows were 25 percent smaller than adult male black widows, they reached reproductive maturity 21 percent sooner. Meanwhile, brown widow females were about twice as fertile as black widows, with brown widows often producing multiple egg sacs at a time versus black widows producing just one.

    Placing brown widows in proximity with black widows and other spider species, however, showed the clearest results. Sub-adult brown widow females simply cohabitated with red house spider (Nesticodes rufipes) females in 50 percent of pairings and were killed and consumed by the red house spiders in 40 percent. Brown widows cohabitated with triangulate cobweb spiders (Steatoda triangulosa) in 80 percent of pairings and were killed in just 10 percent. But when sub-adult brown and black widow females were paired, the brown widows killed and consumed the black widows in 80 percent of pairings. In pairings of adults, black widows were killed in 40 percent of trials, while they defensively killed brown widows in 30 percent of trials and cohabitated in the remaining 30 percent.

    Throughout the experiments, brown widow spiders regularly ventured into black widow webs, the researchers say. Red house spiders and triangulate cobweb spiders also showed such “bold” behavior, but black widows were never observed as aggressors.

    Surprising Behavior and New Questions Raised

    “We didn’t expect to find such a dramatic and consistent difference in the personalities of the brown widow and the black widow,” Cassill says. “Brown widows are boldly aggressive and will immediately investigate a neighbor and attack if there is no resistance from the neighbor. For two bold spiders, the initial attack is often resolved by both individuals going to separate corners and eventually being OK with having a nearby neighbor. The black widows are extremely shy, counterattacking only to defend themselves against an aggressive spider.”

    The characterization of brown widow spiders as “aggressive,” however, is a relative term, reflecting their stance toward black widow spiders, but not toward humans. While widow spiders are “synanthropic” (i.e., commonly found around human-made structures, such as barns, garages, and sheds), they “are very shy when harassed by humans or larger animals that are not considered prey,” Coticchio says. “They will run or roll up into a ball and play dead when being attacked or harassed by most other animals outside of their prey range.” Brown widow venom causes less severe reactions to humans than black widows, and bites to people are very rare.

    Brown widow spiders’ evident aggression toward black widows raises many questions, perhaps first and foremost: Why? What drives such behavior toward a closely related species? The researchers note that invasive species typically outcompete natives through advantages in factors such as fertility, growth, dispersal, or defenses against predators. Direct predation by an invasive species on its native relative, across the animal kingdom, is rare.

    “One question I would love to answer is how brown widows interact with other species of spiders, more specifically black widows in Africa, where brown widows are believed to have originated,” Coticchio says. “I would love to see if their behavior and displacement of black widows is something that they have adapted here in North America, or if this behavior is something they exhibit naturally even in areas where they have coevolved with black widows for much longer periods of time.”  

    ###

    “Predation by the Introduced Brown Widow Spider (Araneae: Theridiidae) May Explain Local Extinctions of Native Black Widows in Urban Habitats” will be published online on March 13, 2023, in the Annals of the Entomological Society of America. Journalists may request advance copies of the article via the contact below or download the published paper after 10 a.m. March 13, 2023, at https://academic.oup.com/aesa/advance-article/doi/10.1093/aesa/saad003/7044733.

     

    ABOUT: ESA is the largest organization in the world serving the professional and scientific needs of entomologists and people in related disciplines. Founded in 1889, ESA today has more than 7,000 members affiliated with educational institutions, health agencies, private industry, and government. Headquartered in Annapolis, Maryland, the Society stands ready as a non-partisan scientific and educational resource for all insect-related topics. For more information, visit www.entsoc.org.

    The Annals of the Entomological Society of America publishes cutting-edge entomological research, reviews, collections of articles, and discussions of topics of broad interest and national or international importance. It aims to stimulate interdisciplinary dialogue across the entomological disciplines and advance cooperative interaction among diverse groups of entomologists. For more information, visit https://academic.oup.com/aesa, or visit www.insectscience.org to view the full portfolio of ESA journals and publications.

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  • The world’s atmospheric rivers now have an intensity ranking like hurricanes

    The world’s atmospheric rivers now have an intensity ranking like hurricanes

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    Newswise — WASHINGTON — Atmospheric rivers, which are long, narrow bands of water vapor, are becoming more intense and frequent with climate change. A new study demonstrates that a recently developed scale for atmospheric river intensity (akin to the hurricane scale) can be used to rank atmospheric rivers and identify hotspots of the most intense atmospheric rivers not only along the U.S. West Coast but also worldwide.

    Atmospheric rivers typically form when warm temperatures create moist packets of air, which strong winds then transport across the ocean; some make landfall. The intensity scale ranks these atmospheric rivers from AR-1 to AR-5 (with AR-5 being the most intense) based on how long they last and how much moisture they transport.

    In part because some West Coast weather outlets are using the intensity scale, “atmospheric river” is no longer an obscure meteorological term but brings sharply to mind unending rain and dangerous flooding, the authors said. The string of atmospheric rivers that hit California in December and January, for instance, at times reached AR-4. Earlier in 2022, the atmospheric river that contributed to disastrous flooding in Pakistan was an AR-5, the most damaging, most intense atmospheric river rating.

    The scale helps communities know whether an atmospheric river will bring benefit or cause chaos: The storms can deliver much-needed rain or snow, but if they’re too intense, they can cause flooding, landslides and power outages, as California and Pakistan experienced. The most severe atmospheric rivers can cause hundreds of millions of dollars of damage in days in the western U.S.; damage in other regions has yet to be comprehensively assessed.

    “Atmospheric rivers are the hurricanes of the West Coast when it comes to the public’s situational awareness,” said F. Martin Ralph, an atmospheric scientist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography and a coauthor on the new study. People need to know when they’re coming, have a sense for how extreme the storm will be, and know how to prepare, he said. “This scale is designed to help answer all those questions.”

    Ralph and his colleagues originally developed the scale for the U.S. West Coast. The new study demonstrates that atmospheric river events can be directly compared globally using the intensity scale, which is how the researchers identified where the most intense events (AR-5) form and fizzle out, and how many of those make landfall.

    The researchers used climate data and their previously developed algorithm for identifying and tracking atmospheric rivers to build a database of intensity-ranked atmospheric river events around the globe over 40 years (1979/1980 to 2019/2020). The study was published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, which publishes research that advances understanding of Earth’s atmosphere and its interaction with other components of the Earth system.

    “This study is a first step toward making the atmospheric river scale a globally useful tool for meteorologists and city planners,” said Bin Guan, an atmospheric scientist at the Joint Institute for Regional Earth System Science and Engineering, a collaboration between University of California-Los Angeles and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who led the study. “By mapping out the footprints of each atmospheric river rank globally, we can start to better understand the societal impacts of these events in many different regions.”

    The authors also found that more intense atmospheric rivers (AR-4 and AR-5) are less common than weaker events, with AR-5 events occurring only once every two to three years when globally averaged. The most intense atmospheric rivers are also less likely to make landfall, and when they do, they are unlikely to maintain their strength for long and penetrate farther inland. “They tend to dissipate soon after landfall, leaving their impacts most felt in coastal areas,” said Guan.

    The study found four “centers,” or hotspots, of where AR-5s tend to die, in the extratropical North Pacific and Atlantic, Southeast Pacific, and Southeast Atlantic. Cities on the coasts within these hotspots, such as San Francisco and Lisbon, are most likely to see intense AR-5s make landfall. Midlatitudes in general are the most likely regions to have atmospheric rivers of any rank.

    Strong El Niño years are more likely to have more atmospheric rivers, and stronger ones at that, which is noteworthy because NOAA recently forecasted that an El Niño condition is likely to develop by the end of the summer this year.

    While local meteorologists, news outlets and other West Coasters may have incorporated “atmospheric river” and the intensity scale into their lives, adoption has been slower elsewhere, Ralph said. He hopes to see, within five years or so, meteorologists on TV around the world incorporating the atmospheric river intensity scale into their forecasts, telling people whether the atmospheric river will be beneficial or if they need to prepare for a serious storm.

    #

    AGU (www.agu.org) is a global community supporting more than half a million advocates and professionals in Earth and space sciences. Through broad and inclusive partnerships, AGU aims to advance discovery and solution science that accelerate knowledge and create solutions that are ethical, unbiased and respectful of communities and their values. Our programs include serving as a scholarly publisher, convening virtual and in-person events and providing career support. We live our values in everything we do, such as our net zero energy renovated building in Washington, D.C. and our Ethics and Equity Center, which fosters a diverse and inclusive geoscience community to ensure responsible conduct.

    *****

    Notes for Journalists:

    This study is published with open access and is freely available. Download a pdf copy of the paper here.

    Paper title:

    “Global application of the atmospheric river scale”

    Authors:

    • Bin Guan (corresponding author), Duane E. Waliser, Joint Institute for Regional Earth System Science and Engineering, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California, USA
    • F. Martin Ralph, Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California San Diego, San Diego, California, USA

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    American Geophysical Union (AGU)

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  • Insular dwarfs and giants more likely to go extinct

    Insular dwarfs and giants more likely to go extinct

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    Newswise — Leipzig/Halle. Islands are “laboratories of evolution” and home to animal species with many unique features, including dwarfs that evolved to very small sizes compared to their mainland relatives, and giants that evolved to large sizes. A team of researchers from the German Centre of Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) and Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU) has now found that species that evolved to more extreme body sizes compared to their mainland relatives have a higher risk of extinction than those that evolved to less extreme sizes. Their study, which was published in Science, also shows that extinction rates of mammals on islands worldwide increased significantly after the arrival of modern humans.

    Islands are hotspots for biodiversity – they cover less than 7% of the Earth’s land area, but account for up to 20% of all terrestrial species on the planet. However, islands are also hotspots for species extinction as 50% of today’s IUCN threatened species are native to islands.

    In response to the unique characteristics of island environments, many organisms undergo remarkable evolutionary changes, among the most notable of which include extreme modifications of body size. This phenomenon is known as gigantism or dwarfism – in general, relatives of large continental species tend to become smaller on islands and small species tend to become larger. Some of these are already extinct evolutionary marvels such as dwarf mammoths and hippos that shrunk to less than one-tenth the size of their mainland ancestors, and rodents and gymnures of unusual size that increased by over 100-fold. These also include dwarf and giant species currently threatened with extinction, such as the tamaraw of Mindoro (Bubalus mindorensis), a dwarf buffalo with a shoulder height of approximately 100 cm, and the giant Jamaican hutia (Geocapromys brownii), a rat-like mammal about the size of a rabbit.

    A team of researchers led by iDiv and MLU now confirmed that evolution towards these features frequently goes hand in hand with increased susceptibility to extinctions. “On the one hand, phyletic giants might provide bigger reward for hunting”, explains Dr Roberto Rozzi, former postdoctoral researcher at iDiv’s synthesis centre sDiv and at the Berlin Museum of Natural History, and now Curator of Palaeontology at the ZNS of Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg. “On the other hand, dwarfed species seem to have less deterrence power, facilitating hunting or predation by introduced predators.”

    Higher extinction risk of extreme dwarfs and giants

    To quantify how evolution towards dwarfism and gigantism may have affected the risk and rate of extinction (before and after human arrival), the researchers used data on fossil and living island mammals including over 1,200 extant and 350 extinct species of insular mammals on 182 islands and paleo-islands (formerly isolated landmasses that are now part of the mainland areas) worldwide.

    Their findings indicate a previously unknown result that those species that underwent more extreme body size shifts, either larger or smaller, were more likely to be endangered or to go extinct on islands. Comparison between the two directions of body size change showed that insular giant species have a slightly higher extinction risk than insular dwarfs. However, this difference was only significant when extinct species were included. Since the European expansion around the globe, extinctions have similarly affected dwarfed and giant insular mammals. “This likely reflects the impact of more intense and multifaceted human pressures, such as overexploitation and accelerated habitat loss, but also introductions of novel diseases and invasive predators”, says Dr Roberto Rozzi.

    Overlap of human colonization and increased extinction rates of insular mammals

    The researchers also analyzed the global fossil record of mammals on islands over the last 23 million years (late Cenozoic) and found a clear correlation between island extinctions at a global level and the arrival of modern humans. “We recorded an abrupt shift in the extinction regime from pre-sapiens to sapiens-dominated island ecosystems. Time overlap of insular mammals with H. sapiens increased their extinction rates more than 10-fold. However, our results at the global level do not rule out the concomitant contribution of environmental drivers such as climate change on local extinctions of island mammals”, says senior author Prof Jonathan Chase from iDiv and MLU. “While it is important to acquire more paleontological field data to further refine extinction chronologies, conservation agendas should, at the same time, give special priority to protecting the most extreme insular giants and dwarfs, many of which are already threatened with extinction.”

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    German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) Halle-Jena-Leipzig

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