El Niño-linked decreases in soil moisture could trigger massive tropical-plant die offs

New insights could help farmers, water managers in tropical regions prepare for impact on crops

DOE/LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL LABORATORY

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IMAGE: FIGURE 6: IN THE LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL LABORATORY TEAM'S ANALYSIS OF SOIL MOISTURE CHANGES DURING "SUPER EL NIÑO " EVENTS IN 1982-83, 1997-98 AND 2015-16, CELL COLORS INDICATE THE MAGNITUDE OF... view more 

CREDIT: LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL LABORATORY

LOS ALAMOS, N.M., May 11, 2020--New research has found that El Niño events are often associated with droughts in some of the world's more vulnerable tropical regions. Associated with warmer than average ocean temperatures in the eastern Pacific, El Niños can in turn influence global weather patterns and tropical precipitation, and these changes can lead to massive plant die-offs if other extreme factors are also at play.

"We know a lot about El Niño in terms of its impact on weather and surface water resources," said Kurt Solander, a research hydrologist in the Computational Earth Science group at Los Alamos National Laboratory and lead author of the paper. "This new study drills down to reveal how El Niño can affect the moisture content of soil, which controls the growth of plants, the food we eat, and how much water from land gets fed back into the atmosphere through evaporation."

In the paper, Solander and Los Alamos colleagues Brent Newman and Chonggang Xu analyzed changes in soil moisture content in the humid tropics after three "Super El Niño" events from the past--1982-83, 1997-98, and 2015-16. They found that during these years the most severe and consistent decreases in soil moisture occurred in regions like the Amazon basin and maritime Southeast Asia, with some of the changes potentially being significant enough to become a factor responsible for large-scale plant die off. In contrast, some other tropical areas, such as tropical East Africa, will likely see an increase in soil moisture during major El Niño events.

The team used a global dataset based on computer models and historic satellite observations of near-surface soil moisture. By extracting data from the rooting zone from the humid tropics, predicted soil moisture changes during the super El Niños could be examined at local scales. The team combined these data with on-site measurements, collected across the tropics, to verify the accuracy of the satellite and computer models. They were then able to identify ways to improve the estimates of soil moisture changes during El Niño events, and showed that El Niño induced responses varied from significant increases or decreases to minimal change relative to what occurs during non-El Niño years and spatial location.

Super El Niño events typically happen every 15 to 20 years, with mild to moderate events coming every three to five years. The most immediate impact of this new information is that it can help governments or farmers in these areas prepare for the consequences of decreased soil moisture, or understand that crops will need more water during these events.

"Scientists can predict these events with a moderate degree of confidence three to six months in advance," Solander said. "With this new information, water managers in these areas can, for example, regulate how much water they retain in a reservoir to compensate for the expected decreases in available moisture for local agricultural crops."

The work is part of ongoing research at Los Alamos studying spatial patterns of precipitation recycling, which effectively determines how much moisture plants return to the atmosphere. In plant-dense regions like the Amazon basin, researchers at Los Alamos hope to provide insight on atmospheric moisture feedbacks from vegetation as plants adjust to climatic warming, which in turn helps researchers understand how precipitation will change on a global scale.

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The paper, "The pan-tropical response of soil moisture to El Niño)" was published in Hydrology and Earth System Sciences. [doi:10.5194/hess-24-2303-2020] The research was funded by the Next Generation Ecosystem Experiments-Tropics, supported by the United States Department of Energy, Office of Science, and the Office of Biological and Environmental Research through the Terrestrial Ecosystem Science Program.

About Los Alamos National Laboratory

Los Alamos National Laboratory, a multidisciplinary research institution engaged in strategic science on behalf of national security, is managed by Triad, a public service oriented, national security science organization equally owned by its three founding members: Battelle Memorial Institute (Battelle), the Texas A&M University System (TAMUS), and the Regents of the University of California (UC) for the Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration.

Los Alamos enhances national security by ensuring the safety and reliability of the U.S. nuclear stockpile, developing technologies to reduce threats from weapons of mass destruction, and solving problems related to energy, environment, infrastructure, health, and global security concerns.

LA-UR-20-22962

Emotional well-being while home gardening similar to other popular activities, study finds

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: RESEARCH LED BY PRINCETON'S ANU RAMASWAMI, THE SANJAY SWANI '87 PROFESSOR OF INDIA STUDIES, PROFESSOR OF CIVIL AND ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING AND THE PRINCETON ENVIRONMENTAL INSTITUTE (PEI), AND RESEARCH SPECIALIST GRAHAM... view more 

CREDIT: MAE-YUNG TANG, PRINCETON ENVIRONMENTAL INSTITUTE

As civic leaders and urban planners work to make cities more sustainable and livable by investing in outdoor spaces and recreational activities such as biking and walking, Princeton researchers have identified the benefit of an activity largely overlooked by policymakers -- home gardening.

The researchers found that, across the study's population, the level of emotional well-being, or happiness, reported while gardening was similar to what people reported while biking, walking or dining out, according to a study published in the journal Landscape and Urban Planning. Home gardening was the only activity out of the 15 studied for which women and people with low incomes reported higher emotional well-being than men and medium- and high-income participants, respectively.

"This has implications for equity in food action planning considering that people with lower incomes tend to have less access to healthy food options," said corresponding author Anu Ramaswami, Princeton's Sanjay Swani '87 Professor of India Studies, professor of civil and environmental engineering and the Princeton Environmental Institute (PEI). "Gardening could provide the health benefits of fresh fruits and vegetables, promote physical activity, and support emotional well-being, which can reinforce this healthy behavior."

The benefits of gardening on happiness were similar across racial boundaries and between urban and suburban areas, said first author Graham Ambrose, a research specialist in Princeton's Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. In addition, whether people gardened alone or with others made no difference, and people who kept vegetable gardens reported a higher level of average emotional well-being than people who worked in ornamental gardens.

The findings came from a study of 370 people in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area for which people used a cellphone app called Daynamica to report their emotional well-being while engaged in any of 15 daily activities. The app was developed by study co-author Yingling Fan, a professor of urban and regional planning at the University of Minnesota, who led a larger emotional well-being study as a part of the National Science Foundation-funded Sustainable Healthy Cities Network led by Ramaswami. Co-author Kirti Das, a postdoctoral research associate in civil and environmental engineering at Princeton, was instrumental in recruiting participants from a range of communities and in implementing the survey.

As part of ongoing research into urban food systems in Ramaswami's Sustainable Urban Infrastructure Systems Lab, she and Ambrose contributed questions to the survey that specifically related to household vegetable gardening. While the social and environmental benefits of community gardens are hot topics in urban research, available data seem to fall short when it comes to gardening in individual households, Ambrose said.

"People know where community gardeners garden, but it is hard to know who is gardening at home, which our group uniquely identified," Ambrose said. For example, study authors found that 31% of participants engaged in home gardening for about 90 minutes per week on average, compared to 19% who engaging in biking (an average of 30 minutes each week) and 85% who walked (an average of one hour and 40 minutes each week).

"Many more people garden than we think and it appears that it associates with higher levels of happiness similar to walking and biking," Ramaswami said. "In the movement to make cities more livable, gardening might be a big part of improving quality-of-life."

The researchers found that home gardening was among the top five activities in terms of how meaningful an activity felt to people while engaging in it.

"The high levels of meaningfulness that respondents reported while gardening might be associated with producing one's own food," Ambrose said. "The boost to emotional well-being is comparable to other leisure activities that currently get the lion's share of infrastructure investment. These finding suggest that, when choosing future well-being projects to fund, we should pay just as much attention to household gardening."

A few cities have conducted pilot household gardening projects with promising results. For example, a project operated by the Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens in Pittsburgh provided participants with materials and training to start a garden at home. In 2017, three years after the project began, 70% of participants were still actively gardening.

The researchers of the current study plan to replicate this work among community gardeners in order to compare the emotional benefit of household gardens versus community gardens, Ramaswami said. These results will be important for food action planning in cities such as Minneapolis where Ramaswami has an ongoing project with community members and organizations, as well as the City of Minneapolis, to develop a food action plan.

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The paper, "Is gardening associated with greater happiness of urban residents? A multi-activity, dynamic assessment in the Twin-Cities region, USA," was published in the June 2020 issue of Landscape and Urban Planning. This research was conducted as part of the Sustainable Healthy Cities Network, an NSF-funded collaboration between universities, cities, governments, nongovernmental organizations and industry partners working together to develop the science and practical knowledge necessary for achieving sustainable, healthy and livable cities.

Scientists reveal solar system's oldest molecular fluids could hold the key to early life
The oldest molecular fluids in the solar system could have supported the rapid formation and evolution of the building blocks of life

ROYAL ONTARIO MUSEUM

The spherical interlocking structure is indicative of formation in water, allowing scientists the measure the chemistry of the remnant solution trapped between grains.

CREDIT: IMAGE CREDIT: CHI MA

TORONTO, May 11, 2020 -- The oldest molecular fluids in the solar system could have supported the rapid formation and evolution of the building blocks of life, new research in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reveals.

An international group of scientists, led by researchers from the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) and co-authors from McMaster University and York University, used state-of-the-art techniques to map individual atoms in minerals formed in fluids on an asteroid over 4.5 billion years ago.

Studying the ROM's iconic Tagish Lake meteorite, scientists used atom-probe tomography, a technique capable of imaging atoms in 3D, to target molecules along boundaries and pores between magnetite grains that likely formed on the asteroid's crust. There, they discovered water precipitates left in the grain boundaries on which they conducted their ground-breaking research.

"We know water was abundant in the early solar system," explains lead author Dr. Lee White, Hatch postdoctoral fellow at the ROM, "but there is very little direct evidence of the chemistry or acidity of these liquids, even though they would have been critical to the early formation and evolution of amino acids and, eventually, microbial life."

This new atomic-scale research provides the first evidence of the sodium-rich (and alkaline) fluids in which the magnetite framboids formed. These fluid conditions are preferential for the synthesis of amino acids, opening the door for microbial life to form as early as 4.5 billion years ago.

"Amino acids are essential building blocks of life on Earth, yet we still have a lot to learn about how they first formed in our solar system," says Beth Lymer, a PhD student at York University and co-author of the study. "The more variables that we can constrain, such as temperature and pH, allows us to better understand the synthesis and evolution of these very important molecules into what we now know as biotic life on Earth."

The Tagish Lake carbonaceous chondrite was retrieved from an ice sheet in B.C.'s Tagish Lake in 2000, and later acquired by the ROM, where it is now considered to be one of the museums iconic objects. This history means that the sample used by the team has never been above room temperature or exposed to liquid water, allowing the scientists to confidently link the measured fluids to the parent asteroid.

By using new techniques, such as atom probe tomography, the scientists hope to develop analytical methods for planetary materials returned to Earth by space craft, such as by NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission or a planned sample-return mission to Mars in the near future.

"Atom probe tomography gives us an opportunity to make fantastic discoveries on bits of material a thousand times thinner than a human hair," says White. "Space missions are limited to bringing back tiny amounts of material, meaning these techniques will be critical to allowing us to understand more about the solar system while also preserving material for future generations."

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ABOUT THE ROM

Opened in 1914, the Royal Ontario Museum showcases art, culture and nature from around the world and across the ages. Among the top 10 cultural institutions in North America, Canada's largest and most comprehensive museum is home to a world-class collection of 13 million art objects and natural history specimens, featured in 40 gallery and exhibition spaces. As the country's preeminent field research institute and an international leader in new and original findings, the ROM plays a vital role in advancing our understanding of the artistic, cultural and natural world. Combining its original heritage architecture with the contemporary Daniel Libeskind-designed Michael Lee-Chin Crystal, the ROM serves as a national landmark, and a dynamic cultural destination in the heart of Toronto for all to enjoy.

Hayabusa2 reveals more secrets from Ryugu

Ryugu's interaction with the sun changes what we know about asteroid history

UNIVERSITY OF TOKYO

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IMAGE: FALSE COLOR MAP OF THE SURFACE OF RYUGU WITH CRATERS MARKED BY CIRCLES. view more 

CREDIT: © 2020 MOROTA ET AL.

In February and July of 2019, the Hayabusa2 spacecraft briefly touched down on the surface of near-Earth asteroid Ryugu. The readings it took with various instruments at those times have given researchers insight into the physical and chemical properties of the 1-kilometer-wide asteroid. These findings could help explain the history of Ryugu and other asteroids, as well as the solar system at large.

When our solar system formed around 5 billion years ago, most of the material it formed from became the sun, and a fraction of a percent became the planets and solid bodies, including asteroids. Planets have changed a lot since the early days of the solar system due to geological processes, chemical changes, bombardments and more. But asteroids have remained more or less the same as they are too small to experience those things, and are therefore useful for researchers who investigate the early solar system and our origins.

"I believe knowledge of the evolutionary processes of asteroids and planets are essential to understand the origins of the Earth and life itself," said Associate Professor Tomokatsu Morota from the Department of Earth and Planetary Science at the University of Tokyo. "Asteroid Ryugu presents an amazing opportunity to learn more about this as it is relatively close to home, so Hayabusa2 could make a return journey relatively easily. "

Hayabusa2 launched in December 2014 and reached Ryugu in June 2018. At the time of writing, Hayabusa2 is on its way back to Earth and is scheduled to deliver a payload in December 2020. This payload consists of small samples of surface material from Ryugu collected during two touchdowns in February and July of 2019. Researchers will learn much from the direct study of this material, but even before it reaches us, Hayabusa2 helped researchers to investigate the physical and chemical makeup of Ryugu.

"We used Hayabusa2's ONC-W1 and ONC-T imaging instruments to look at dusty matter kicked up by the spacecraft's engines during the touchdowns," said Morota. "We discovered large amounts of very fine grains of dark-red colored minerals. These were produced by solar heating, suggesting at some point Ryugu must have passed close by the sun."

Morota and his team investigated the spatial distribution of the dark-red matter around Ryugu as well as its spectra or light signature. The strong presence of the material around specific latitudes corresponded to the areas that would have received the most solar radiation in the asteroid's past; hence, the belief that Ryugu must have passed by the sun.

"From previous studies we know Ryugu is carbon-rich and contains hydrated minerals and organic molecules. We wanted to know how solar heating chemically changed these molecules," said Morota. "Our theories about solar heating could change what we know of orbital dynamics of asteroids in the solar system. This in turn alters our knowledge of broader solar system history, including factors that may have affected the early Earth."

When Hayabusa2 delivers material it collected during both touchdowns, researchers will unlock even more secrets of our solar history. Based on spectral readings and albedo, or reflectivity, from within the touchdown sites, researchers are confident that both dark-red solar-heated material and gray unheated material were collected by Hayabusa2. Morota and his team hope to study larger properties of Ryugu, such as its many craters and boulders.

"I wish to study the statistics of Ryugu's surface craters to better understand the strength characteristics of its rocks, and history of small impacts it may have received," said Morota. "The craters and boulders on Ryugu meant there were limited safe landing locations for Hayabusa2. Finding a suitable location was hard work and the eventual first successful touchdown was one of the most exciting events of my life."

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Journal article

T. Morota, S. Sugita, Y. Cho, M. Kanamaru, E. Tatsumi, N. Sakatani, R. Honda, N. Hirata, H. Kikuchi, M. Yamada, Y. Yokota, S. Kameda, M. Matsuoka, H. Sawada, C. Honda, T. Kouyama, K. Ogawa, H. Suzuki, K. Yoshioka, M. Hayakawa, N. Hirata, M. Hirabayashi, H. Miyamoto, T. Michikami, T. Hiroi, R. Hemmi, O. S. Barnouin, C. M. Ernst, K. Kitazato, T. Nakamura, L. Riu, H. Senshu, H. Kobayashi, S. Sasaki, G. Komatsu, N. Tanabe, Y. Fujii, T. Irie, M. Suemitsu, N. Takaki, C. Sugimoto, K. Yumoto, M. Ishida, H. Kato, K. Moroi, D. Domingue, P. Michel, C. Pilorget, T. Iwata, M. Abe, M. Ohtake, Y. Nakauchi, K. Tsumura, H. Yabuta, Y. Ishihara, R. Noguchi, K. Matsumoto, A. Miura, N. Namiki, S. Tachibana, M. Arakawa, H. Ikeda, K. Wada, T. Mizuno, C. Hirose, S. Hosoda, O. Mori, T. Shimada, S. Soldini, R. Tsukizaki, H. Yano, M. Ozaki, H. Takeuchi, Y. Yamamoto, T. Okada, Y. Shimaki, K. Shirai, Y. Iijima, H. Noda, S. Kikuchi, T. Yamaguchi, N. Ogawa, G. Ono, Y. Mimasu, K. Yoshikawa, T. Takahashi, Y. Takei, A. Fujii, S. Nakazawa, F. Terui, S. Tanaka, M. Yoshikawa, T. Saiki, S. Watanabe and Y. Tsuda. Sample collection from asteroid 162173 Ryugu by Hayabusa2: Implications for surface evolution. Science. DOI: 10.1126/science.aaz6306

Funding and support

Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) KAKENHI (Grant Nos. 17H06459, 19H01951, 17H01175, 17KK0097, 19H00727, 18H01267, 18K11610, 19K03955, 16H04044, 19K03958). JSPS Core-to-Core program "International Network of Planetary Sciences." NASA EW and PDART programs. NASA/Solar System Workings (NNH17ZDA001N/80NSSC19K0548) and Auburn University's intramural research grant. OSIRIS-REx under Contract NNM10AA11C issued through the NASA New Frontiers Program. NASA Hayabusa2 Participating Scientist Program. French space agency CNES and Academies of Excellence: Complex systems and Space, environment, risk, and resilience, part of the IDEX JEDI of the Université Côte d'Azur. European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement No. 870377 (project NEO-MAPP).

Useful links

Previous research on Ryugu

https://www.u-tokyo.ac.jp/focus/en/press/z0508_00036.html

Department of Earth and Planetary Science

http://www.eps.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp/index-en.html

Graduate School of Science

https://www.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp/en/index.html

Research contact

Associate Professor Tomokatsu Morota
Department of Earth and Planetary Science, The University of Tokyo,
7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, 113-0033 Tokyo, Japan
Tel: +81-(0)70-3179-8040
Email: morota@eps.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp

Press Contact

Solve invasive seaweed problem by turning it into biofuels and fertilisers

Seaweed could produce sustainable fuels, chemicals and fertiliser while helping protect tourist hotspots

UNIVERSITY OF BATH

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VIDEO: PROFESSOR MIKE ALLEN AND HIS SON ARCHIE TALK ABOUT THEIR WORK ON PLASTIC POLLUTION AND MAKING FUELS FROM SEAWEED view more 

CREDIT: PROFESSOR MIKE ALLEN, PLYMOUTH MARINE LABORATORY

UK researchers have developed a cheap and simple way of creating biofuel and fertiliser from seaweed, whilst removing plastic from the oceans and cleaning up tourist beaches in the Caribbean and Central America.

Millions of tonnes of rotting seaweed washes up on beaches of Mexico, the Caribbean and elsewhere every year.

Partly fuelled by fertilisers washing into the sea from farming in the Americas, the foul-smelling Sargassum seaweed devastates the tourism industry and harms fisheries and ocean ecosystems.

A research team, led by the University of Exeter and the University of Bath, has developed a cheap and simple way to pre-process seaweed before making bulk chemicals and biofuels from it.

Making biofuels financially viable

"Ultimately, for this to work it has to make financial sense," said Professor Mike Allen, from the University of Exeter and Plymouth Marine Laboratory.

"Processing marine biomass like seaweed usually requires removing it from the salt water, washing it in fresh water and drying it.

"The costs of these processes can be prohibitively high.

"We needed to find a process that would pay for and sustain itself - something both economically and environmentally viable.

"This work provides a crucial missing step towards a true salt-based Marine Biorefinery by establishing the initial fractionation step."

Using acidic and basic catalysts, the team devised a process that releases sugars that can be used to feed a yeast that produces a palm oil substitute. The same method also prepares the residual seaweed for the next stage of processing, called hydrothermal liquefaction.

This process subjects the organic material to high temperature and pressure, turning the seaweed into bio-oil that can be processed further into fuels, and high-quality, low-cost fertiliser.

Ed Jones, first author on the paper and PhD student at the Centre for Sustainable Circular Technologies at the University of Bath said: "In contrast with existing pre-treatment strategies, we show that an entirely salt-based biochemical conversion route can work."

"For the first time this study demonstrates that, rather than a hindrance, the presence of saltwater can be helpful."

Professor Christopher Chuck, Director of the Centre for Integrated Bioprocessing Research at the University of Bath and the project lead said: "The variety of products created by this process is a major strength. The oil industry creates a variety of products including liquid fuel, plastics and fertilisers - and we can benefit from a similar flexibility.

"We can simply alter the process conditions to produce larger or smaller amounts of specific by-products, allowing us to have meet variable demand."

Removing ocean plastics

Not only is all the seaweed used in products, but any plastic collected alongside the seaweed will also be converted alongside the seaweed. Part of the inspiration for the project came from Professor Allen's children, Rosie (12) and Archie (9), who helped collect seaweed samples for trial studies from the Devon coast.

Professor Allen said: "It was Rosie who triggered a whole stream of research following the painstaking removal of plastic litter from the children's seaweed samples by asking: 'Dad, can't you just convert the plastics alongside the seaweed?'"

Removing an environmental nuisance

Another strength of the plan is its use of invasive seaweed such as Sargassum - an environmental nuisance which currently costs the tourist industry vast sums, both in clean-up costs and because it deters visitors.

Professor Allen said: "Many countries in the Caribbean and Central America rely heavily on tourism, so the coronavirus pandemic and the ongoing Sargassum problem have put them on their knees. Last month more than 4 million tonnes of problematic seaweed washed up on their shores."

This is the latest in a string of developments around seaweed processing from the team which is supported by UKRI, Global Challenges Research Fund, Roddenberry Foundation, Innovate UK and Newton Fund. Exploiting their diverse expertise in phycology, chemistry, ecology, biotechnology and chemical engineering, they are now seeking to develop seaweed based biorefineries to provide local solutions and opportunities on the global stage.

Beginning with just an inquisitive family on their local Devon beach, the ideas and concepts they have inspired are now being applied on the international stage.

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The latest publication is published in the Journal of Chemical Technology and Biotechnology, entitled: "Saltwater based fractionation and valorisation of macroalgae."