Leaked Alberta modelling data projects upwards of 775 COVID-19 hospitalizations by mid-December

Caley Ramsay GLOBAL NEWS


The Alberta NDP says leaked modelling data shows that nearly 800 Albertans are projected to be hospitalized with COVID-19 by mid-December.

© Leah Hennel, Government of Alberta Pandemic Response Unit at the Peter Lougheed hospital in Calgary on November 14, 2020.

The Official Opposition said Tuesday it has obtained internal modelling data from Alberta Health Services that shows the increased strain on hospitals, and particularly intensive care units.

The AHS Early Warning System data, which the NDP says it received from healthcare workers, projects upwards of 775 Albertans could be hospitalized with COVID-19 by Dec. 14, with 161 of those people in intensive care. This is on the high end of the projections.

The low end of the data projects 76 people will be in the ICU by Dec. 14.

As of Monday afternoon, there were 453 Albertans in hospital with COVID-19, 96 of whom were being treated in intensive care.

"The premier went into hiding when he should have been taking action to slow the spread of COVID-19 and ease the massive strain on Alberta hospitals," Alberta NDP Leader Rachel Notley said in a news release.

"Now, we have frontline physicians warning they will soon face the horrific scenario of triaging patients and deciding who to save. We have hospitals in Calgary with oxygen shortages and we have photos surfacing online of two ICU beds being crammed into a space suitable for one."

An internal memo sent out by AHS last Friday urged staff in Calgary hospitals to reduce the use of bulk oxygen where possible due to expected constraints caused by the pandemic.

Dr. David Zygun, Edmonton zone medical director for Alberta Health Services, said the memo was part of an "anticipatory" plan to make sure there are ample resources.

"We do have an adequate oxygen supply," he said.

Read more: COVID-19: Staff at Calgary hospitals told to ‘engage in oxygen conservation’ as cases rise

The NDP has been calling on the UCP government for weeks to release updated COVID-19 modelling data.

"Many other provinces have made this kind of information public. But, repeatedly, the premier told us that modelling didn't exist," Notley said.

During question period Tuesday, Notley asked the premier why he continues to hide this important information from Albertans. Kenney stressed that the information Notley is referring to is not modelling data.

"The data to which the honourable leaders of the NDP refers is not modelling. I repeat it is not modelling," Kenney said.

"I don't know whether she is saying that out of ignorance or dishonesty. But Mr. Speaker, it is the Early Warning System about which we've spoken many times. These are two-week projections that AHS always maintains for surges or any kind of illness, particularly a communicable one of this nature. And Mr. Speaker, the important thing is that AHS is constantly adding additional capacity to meet the growing demand and we will be providing more information on hospital capacity in terms of details in the days to come."

Video: Alberta projects COVID hospitalizations could soon soar to 775 by mid-December

Kenney went on to say that comprehensive data of COVID-19 hospitalizations, fatalities, new cases and recoveries are released every day, "so Albertans have seen this very worrisome increase in cases evident for the past several weeks."

Modelling information previously released by the province showed various scenarios of infection, estimated how many Albertans would require hospitalization or critical care and predicted how many deaths the province could see.

However, little information about long-term projections for the province has been provided since the second modelling was shared on April 28.

Read more: Alberta identifying ‘unconventional ICU spaces’ as COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations rise

Kenney said in early October that Alberta does not have new COVID-19 modelling.

"The department of health, Alberta Health Services, the chief medical officer health and her team are obviously completely focused, every hour of every day, on the challenge of the pandemic, on the trend lines and on our goal of preventing and overwhelming the health-care system," Kenney said Oct. 9.

At the time, he also pointed out the projections released in the spring, thankfully, ended up being way off from the rates Alberta actually recorded.

"We have never achieved a fraction of the number of active cases, of hospitalizations, ICU admissions or COVID-related fatalities that were projected in that modelling," Kenney said.

"At this point, we don't believe that creating hypothetical numbers is going to improve our COVID response."

Read more: Alberta hasn’t provided COVID-19 models since April; NDP wants new data released

AHS said Monday that there are currently 173 general adult ICU beds in the province and it has plans to expand that up to a total of 425 ICU beds.

In a statement Tuesday, AHS said it is constantly monitoring the current and future demand on the healthcare system, including the growth in COVID-19 cases. It added that the Early Warning System is one tool used to predict hospitalization and ICU numbers.

"It provides a point-in-time forecast, and is updated constantly throughout the day. Yesterday, it forecast a low (76), medium (113) and high (161) number of ICU spaces needed to meet demand. AHS is already increasing capacity to meet this forecast, and the potential for higher demand due to COVID-19," AHS said.

Read more: Alberta nurse practitioner describes ICU during pandemic: ‘We’re feeling a bit defeated’

In the coming weeks, about 2,250 acute care beds will also be allocated for patients with COVID-19 across Alberta, AHS said. In the past two weeks, an additional 20 critical care beds have opened in Edmonton and 10 additional critical care spaces opened in Calgary this past weekend, according to AHS.

"Our ICU occupancy is very high and we thank our incredible front-line teams for the care they are providing in challenging circumstances," AHS said. "We need everyone's help to reduce demand on our healthcare system."

Alberta's chief medical officer of health said Tuesday that she has been concerned about the trajectory and impacts to the healthcare system "for some time."

"Which is, of course, why I have been making recommendations to put interventions in place that will bend the curve," Dr. Deena Hinshaw said.

She said the AHS projections "simply take into account the number of cases that we're actually seeing and the trajectory out, should we continue to see the same kinds of growth trends."

"That really is based simply on actual numbers within that calculation if nothing were to change looking at that worst-case scenario," Hinshaw said.

"So those projections do not take into account the impact of changes and of course, that is exactly the point of those restrictions that were announced last week is to prevent us from hitting those high projections because what we need to do is to bend that curve down."

Video: AHS doctor says Alberta hospitals are under ‘significant strain’ amid COVID-19 pandemic

Dr. Craig Jenne, an infectious disease specialist from the University of Calgary, said the models look fairly accurate, keeping in mind that multiple scenarios are being presented. He said the question that remains is where Alberta sits on the scale. Based on the record rates of infection in the past few days, Jenne believes Alberta is leaning more toward the higher-burden models.

"These high-burden models are showing a near-doubling in ICU occupancy over the next two weeks," he said Tuesday.

"We do know, unfortunately, ICU numbers tend to follow case numbers by two to three weeks. So it is the people being infected today that will be the ICU admissions in the next two weeks. So unfortunately, it looks as though those numbers may already be predetermined by the viral load in the community and record numbers that we've seen over the past several days.

"The hope though is over the next 10 days the curve begins to flatten and then that will have an impact on hospitalizations and intensive care units. But unfortunately, not for four to five weeks from today -- or the new restrictions -- will we see a dramatic impact on intensive care unit admissions if the restrictions work. And that's another big if at this particular moment."

New restrictions announced last week by the premier were designed to address COVID-19 hot spots while keeping the majority of businesses open. Retails must limit their capacity to 25 per cent and dine-in restaurant seating is now limited to one household per table. Indoor gatherings were also banned across the province.

Read more: Alberta enacts 2nd COVID-19 state of public health emergency. Here’s what it means

Jenne said it's too soon to say if the new restrictions will have a big impact on the COVID-19 curve in Alberta, but suggested they may not go far enough.

"So far from the data we have not seen any hint that the curve had begun to flatten here in Alberta," he said.

"Unfortunately, we do know in the next few weeks we will continue to stress the system. There's nothing that can be done today that's going to stop new admissions for the next two weeks. The big question is, how well will the restrictions work going forward? It looks as though evidence from other jurisdictions that the restrictions we brought in may not be enough. Again, even with more strict restrictions, curves have not completely flattened and so as a result -- it would be a guess -- but based on the evidence, lighter restrictions are going to be less effective at bringing that curve under control.

"So I'm not overly optimistic that the current level of restrictions will be enough. Hopefully they'll help. Hopefully they'll slow things. But I don't think this will be enough to flatten that curve or to -- at least in the short-term -- ease the healthcare burden."

Hinshaw said Monday she suspects case counts and hospitalizations will continue to increase over the next several days, "as we wait for the impact of the restrictions that were announced last week."

However, she stressed that "at this time, there is adequate capacity to care for all those with COVID."

CANADA

COMMENTARY: Battling an ‘infodemic’ a real concern as COVID-19 vaccine nears
  

© REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration

A woman holds a small bottle labeled with a "Vaccine COVID-19" sticker and a medical syringe in this illustration taken April 10, 2020.

Editor’s note: The opinions in this article are the author’s, as published by our content partner, and do not necessarily represent the views of MSN or Microsoft.

Meera Estrada GLOBAL NEWS 

COVID-19 has taken the lives of over 1.4 million people worldwide. But we are now closer than ever to a vaccine.

With Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca leading the pack in COVID-19 vaccine development, there is glimmering hope for the near future. Governments in the U.S., U.K. and Germany have already made plans to start rolling out vaccines to their populations most vulnerable as early as next month.


But global efforts to put an end to the pandemic will prove challenging without the public onside. After all, a vaccine is only as effective as its distribution.

"The coronavirus disease is the first pandemic in history in which technology and social media are being used on a massive scale to keep people safe, informed, productive and connected," the World Health Organization has said.

Read more: Misinformation is spreading as fast as coronavirus. It will ‘take a village’ to fight it

But just as the virus has spread around the globe, so too has misinformation. As early as February the WHO warned of an "infodemic," a flood of fake news and misinformation being disseminated about the pandemic over social media. From Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, WhatsApp to a slew of other social media hubs, misinformation has reached an epic scale.

U.S. President Donald Trump has been called out as the biggest superspreader of COVID-19 misinformation, according to findings in a study conducted last month by Cornell University.

With skepticism mounting, global efforts to control this virus may be seriously jeopardized if people are unwilling to roll up their sleeves for vaccination.

Vaccine hesitancy is a real and growing concern across the globe, including right here in Canada.


Canadians could get first COVID-19 vaccine in early 2021

I've had surprising conversations with my own parents about their trepidation in regards to vaccination. They are not anti-vaxxers by any means. My mother was a health-care professional for over 40 years; she worked tirelessly on the front lines during the SARS outbreak and understands the seriousness of infectious disease first-hand. Both my mother and father are in their 70s, both with diabetes, which puts them at higher risk for COVID-19 complications, but even still, they have reservations about vaccination -- largely fuelled by social media.

This week alone my father forwarded me two videos that were sent to him on WhatsApp, one outlining how to legally decline vaccination and another offering various reasons not to vaccinate against COVID-19. After a few moments of watching, I quickly asked him to delete the videos and not share any further.

My parents are smart individuals, with educational backgrounds in science. That is what makes much of this misinformation and fake news around COVID-19 so scary -- so many people fall prey to it.

Much of the rhetoric is not the usual anti-vax sentiment. It is not even necessarily anti-science or anti-intellectual, but it is false. Yet repeated exposure to such content has the ability to sway perceptions around not only the vaccine, but even the virus overall.

Read more: Canada’s coronavirus vaccine rollout — Who will get it first?

In summer polling, a majority of respondents said they were in favour of the Canadian government's requiring that people get inoculated once a vaccine has been developed. However, the latest polling finds that is no longer the case, with 54 per cent of respondents saying a vaccine should be voluntary (an 11 percentage point increase from July) while only 39 per cent say getting a vaccine should be mandatory, a marked 18 percentage point decline from July. There is a noticeable shift in when and even if people want to get vaccinated.

Much of the concern lies around the speed with which the vaccine has been developed and subsequent safety. A Statistics Canada survey in August found some Canadians are also worried about possible side effects of a COVID-19 vaccine.

Not surprisingly, much of the fake news that is swirling around feeds into exactly these fears. While it is true that the average vaccine takes at least 10 years to develop, the context of this particular development is critical when looking at timelines.


Coronavirus: The challenges in distributing vaccines

We have to take into account the work that was done on previous coronaviruses, like SARS and MERS, paired with the global prioritization that has been put on a COVID-19 vaccine. With the initial research groundwork laid and usual administrative red tape for funding and approvals avoided, researchers have been able to shave anywhere between six and nine years off the development process.

Our federal government and public health officials have acknowledged they have cut red tape in order to speed up approvals, but they are insistent that they will not take shortcuts when it comes to safety, quality and efficacy.

Health Canada "is one of the most stringent regulatory authorities in the world," chief public health officer Dr. Theresa Tam has said. She wants Canadians to understand that the speed with which these vaccines are being developed does not diminish our government's commitment to their safety.

Read more: AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine manufacturing error raises questions

Aware of the misinformation that is spreading, the government is planning a campaign to educate the public on vaccination. A group of scientists have already taken steps by using the same social media tools for education.

For example, the hashtag #TeamHalo is being used on platforms like TikTok and Twitter by specialists working on vaccine development to debunk falsehoods and provide answers to questions everyday people may have on development.

To date, Canada has agreements with five vaccine manufacturers, with two more in the final stages of a deal. We are slated to receive 194 million doses with options for an additional 220 doses for purchase.

The Public Health Agency of Canada is working closely with the Canadian Armed Forces on a distribution plan. In order for us to achieve herd immunity, roughly 70 per cent of Canadians would need to be vaccinated.

But with a growing minority of Canadians on the fence about vaccination, we could be putting ourselves at risk of not getting there.

Meera Estrada is a cultural commentator and co-host of kultur’D! on Global News Radio 640 Toronto.

 

Alcohol-free hand sanitizer just as effective against COVID as alcohol-based versions

BRIGHAM YOUNG UNIVERSITY

Research News

 

IMAGE: AN ILLUSTRATION OF HAND SANITIZER IN USE view more 

CREDIT: BYU PHOTO

A new study from researchers at Brigham Young University finds that alcohol-free hand sanitizer is just as effective at disinfecting surfaces from the COVID-19 virus as alcohol-based products.

The BYU scientists who conducted the study suspected that the CDC's preference for alcohol sanitizer stemmed from as-yet limited research on what really works to disinfect SARS-CoV-2. To explore other options, they treated samples of the novel coronavirus with benzalkonium chloride, which is commonly used in alcohol-free hand sanitizers, and several other quaternary ammonium compounds regularly found in disinfectants. In most of the test cases, the compounds wiped out at least 99.9% of the virus within 15 seconds.

"Our results indicate that alcohol-free hand sanitizer works just as well, so we could, maybe even should, be using it to control COVID," said lead study author Benjamin Ogilvie.

Alcohol-free hand sanitizers, which are also effective against common cold and flu viruses, have a number of advantages over their alcohol-based counterparts, Ogilvie explained.

"Benzalkonium chloride can be used in much lower concentrations and does not cause the familiar 'burn' feeling you might know from using alcohol hand sanitizer. It can make life easier for people who have to sanitize hands a lot, like healthcare workers, and maybe even increase compliance with sanitizing guidelines," he said.

In the face of shortages, "having more options to disinfect hospitals and public places is critical," added Ph.D. student Antonio Solis Leal, who conducted the study's experiments.

Switching to alcohol-free hand sanitizer is logistically simple as well.

"People were already using it before 2020," said BYU professor and coauthor Brad Berges. "It just seems like during this pandemic, the non-alcohol-based hand sanitizers have been thrown by the wayside because the government was saying, 'we don't know that these work,' due to the novelty of the virus and the unique lab conditions required to run tests on it."

Since benzalkonium chloride typically works well against viruses surrounded by lipids--like COVID--the researchers believed that it would be a good fit for disinfecting the coronavirus.

To test their hypothesis, they put COVID samples in test tubes and then mixed in different compounds, including .2% benzalkonium chloride solution and three commercially available disinfectants containing quaternary ammonium compounds, as well as soil loads and hard water.

Working fast to simulate real-world conditions--because hand sanitizer has to disinfect quickly to be effective--they neutralized the disinfecting compounds, extracted the virus from the tubes, and placed the virus particles on living cells. The virus failed to invade and kill the cells, indicating that it had been deactivated by the compounds.

"A couple of others have looked at using these compounds against COVID," said Berges, "but we're the first to actually look at it in a practical timeframe, using four different options, with the realistic circumstance of having dirt on your hands before you use it."

The team believes their findings "may actually provide a change in government directions about hand sanitizer," Berges said.

Ogilvie hopes that reintroducing alcohol-free sanitizers into the market can relieve the shortages--and reduce the chances of people encountering some potentially "sketchy" alcohol sanitizers that have cropped up in response to the demand.

"Hand sanitizer can play an especially important role in controlling COVID," he concluded. "This is information that could affect millions of people."

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The study is published online in the Journal of Hospital Infection.

Seismic activity of New Zealand's alpine fault more complex than suspected

SEISMOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA

Research News

 

A rupture along the full length of the fast-slipping Alpine Fault on New Zealand's South Island poses the largest potential seismic threat to the southern and central parts of the country. But new evidence of a 19th century earthquake indicates that in at least one portion of the fault, smaller earthquakes may occur in between such large rupture events.

The findings published in the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America suggest that some places along the fault, particularly around the towns of Hokitika and Greymouth, could experience strong ground shaking from Alpine fault earthquakes more often than previously thought.

The best paleoseismic evidence to date suggests the southern and central sections of the Alpine Fault, at the boundary separating the Australian and Pacific tectonic plates, typically rupture during very large full-section earthquakes of magnitude 7.7 or larger. The last such earthquake took place in 1717.

After trenching along the fault at the Staples site near the Toaroha River, however, Robert Langridge of GNS Science and colleagues uncovered evidence of a more recent earthquake along the northeastern end of the fault's central portion. Radiocarbon dating places this earthquake between 1813 and 1848.

"One of the real challenges with the Alpine Fault--because it is so bush-covered--is actually finding sites that have been cleared and therefore can be studied," said Langridge. "Once we started working there [at the Staples site] the story really grew in large part because of the richness of dateable organic material in the trenches."

The four most recent earthquakes uncovered by the researchers at the site range in dates from 1084 to 1848. The events were confirmed by data collected from other nearby trenching sites and from geological deposits called turbidites, which are sediments shaken loose into a body of water by seismic activity, in lakes along the central section of the Alpine fault.

The most recent earthquake could represent a "partial-section" rupture of only the central portion of the Alpine fault, a rupture of the fault's northern section that continued southwest into the central segment, or even triggered slip from a rupture along the nearby Marlborough Fault System. Langridge and colleagues said that there isn't enough evidence yet to favor one of these scenarios over the others.

However, the findings do suggest that seismic activity on the Alpine Fault is more complex than suspected, particularly along its northern reaches where the plate boundary transitions into another fault zone.

"One of the outcomes of this study is that you should expect a shorter recurrence interval of strong shaking at fault section ends," Langridge said. "Because of the recurrence times of earthquakes though, you obviously have to wait a long time to see the effects of such fault behavior."

"That's why paleoseismology is a vital tool in understanding faults," he added, "because otherwise we'd have only short insights into the past."

The Alpine Fault is sometimes compared with California's San Andreas Fault, being another fast-moving strike slip fault near a plate boundary. Langridge said researchers in California and New Zealand have a long history of earthquake science collaboration and are learning from each other about the treatment of active faults and fault segmentation for seismic hazard models.

"The San Andreas Fault, being on the opposite side of the Pacific plate, it is like our distant brother or whanau--family," said Langridge.

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Long-term data shows racial & ethnic disparities in effectiveness of anti-smoking measures

OREGON STATE UNIVERSITY

Research News

 

CORVALLIS, Ore. -- Tobacco control efforts have reduced cigarette smoking for many, but those efforts have disproportionately helped white smokers, while other racial and ethnic groups are still struggling, an Oregon State University researcher's analysis found.

The study, published recently in the journal Nicotine & Tobacco Research, compared cigarette use among racial and ethnic groups. Across all groups, the number of cigarettes consumed per day dropped roughly 30% between 1992 and 2019.

However, the reduction in cigarette use was highest for non-Hispanic whites, an indication that the tobacco control policies implemented over the last 25 years have benefited this group more than others, said Kari-Lyn Sakuma, lead author on the study and an assistant professor in OSU's College of Public Health and Human Sciences.

"I think the biggest takeaway is that while there's been major advances in reducing cigarette use, and in death and sickness associated with cigarettes, we still have a long way to go, particularly as we start to look at who benefited the most from these major efforts to reduce the impact of cigarettes on health," Sakuma said.

"We can see dramatic decreases among white populations. But when you start looking at racial and ethnic groups, and examining more closely the different cigarette use behaviors, it gives us clues as to where the disparities exist and where we can do better to target our public health efforts."

The study compared cigarette use among African Americans, Asian/Pacific Islanders, Hispanics/Latinos, American Indian/Alaskan Natives and non-Hispanic whites, as these were the racial and ethnic groups delineated by the U.S. Census Bureau's Current Population Survey.

Researchers compared results for each group in the U.S. as a whole with each group's results in California specifically. California was chosen as a state that has been at the forefront in legislation and intervention to curb tobacco use, and the data shows cigarette use there has declined more sharply than the U.S. average, across all groups.

Researchers looked at the change over time in how many cigarettes smokers said they smoked each day and how many days they smoked; the rate of uptake, or how many people started smoking for the first time; and how many people successfully quit smoking.

Sakuma has been studying the disparate impact of tobacco use among specific racial and ethnic groups for years. She said tobacco companies have poured lots of money into advertising and marketing their products specifically in low-income neighborhoods and in African American and Hispanic/Latino neighborhoods. These companies also invest significant funds in countering public health policies that could help protect communities.

Lower income neighborhoods have fewer resources to combat these messages, especially because most tobacco control measures start with local pressure -- such as communities pushing to ban cigarette billboards near schools.

"In other communities, there's other things that they need to fight for. While one community may have the task force and resources to create policies to reduce advertising around schools, other folks in lower-income areas are fighting for their schools to remain open," Sakuma said. "It's a difference in ability to address these issues."

Communities with more resources can also afford to fight court battles with tobacco companies and raise public awareness around ballot measures seeking to reduce cigarette use.

Moving forward, Sakuma said, policy makers should prioritize public health efforts that use the study results to tailor public health messaging and outreach for racial and ethnic groups that could benefit more fully from the tobacco control measures of the last few decades.

"We've been successful in the past, but we have to maintain that success while targeting some efforts and distributing more resources among higher-risk groups or more vulnerable communities," she said.

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European colonization accelerated erosion tenfold

UNIVERSITÉ CATHOLIQUE DE LOUVAIN

Research News

 

IMAGE: CLEARANCE OF NATIVE FORESTS FOR CULTIVATION ACCELERATES SOIL EROSION AND CAUSES RAPID SEDIMENTATION IN ALLUVIAL PLAINS. PHOTO TAKEN AT THE BIO BIO REGION (CHILE) view more 

CREDIT: VEERLE VANACKER

Rates of soil erosion and alluvium accumulation in North America accelerated 10-fold after Europeans colonized the continent, according to new research carried out by scientists from China, Belgium and USA.

In a paper published today in Nature Communications, the researchers show how humans have altered the North American landscape at a rate far in excess of what nature alone can achieve. The results, they suggest, may have implications for instructing land management and restoration efforts.

Prof. David Kemp from China University of Geosciences in Wuhan said "On nearly every continent, humans are altering the natural landscape, and modifying the land to meet our needs for agriculture, energy and water security. One key consequence of our actions is an increase in sediment movement, particularly soil erosion.

"We knew already that when European colonizers started farming in North America there was an increase in erosion. This led to the deposition of large amounts of river and floodplain sediment, known as alluvium. Our study quantifies this increase across the continent as a whole, and reveals an order of magnitude jump in rates of alluvium deposition soon after Europeans arrived".

Prof. Veerle Vanacker, of Université catholique de Louvain, explained "When we use these data to quantify landscape change, we find that in the past century humans have moved as much sediment on North America as it would take natural processes to move in up to 3000 years."

She added "What these findings mean is that anthropogenic activities have unprecedented impact on sediment dynamics. Unsustainable land use practices entail large societal costs in terms of soil fertility decline, flooding and stream degradation and direct costs for soil and watershed restoration. The study improves our ability to set benchmarks for erosion monitoring and control. "

Prof. Peter Sadler of University of California, Riverside, added "To arrive at our conclusions, we compiled and analysed a large database of alluvium accumulation rates that extend back to a time well before the first Europeans lived on the continent.

"What really stood out in these data was the observation that for the past 40,000 years, rates of alluvium accumulation hardly changed at all and the landscape was quite stable. It was only in the last 200 years that the rates suddenly increased - right around the time that Europeans started intensive farming."

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More details: Kemp, D.B., Sadler, P.M. & Vanacker, V. The human impact on North American erosion, sediment transfer, and storage in a geologic context. Nature Communications, 11, 6012 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-19744-3

CAPTION

Water and soil conservation measures, such as wooden dams, are very effective in reducing runoff and transferring sediment to the alluvial plain. Photo taken in the Andes (Ecuador)

CREDIT

Veerle Vanacker

 

Geoscientists use zircon to trace origin of Earth's continents

PENN STATE

Research News

 

IMAGE: JESSE REIMINK, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF GEOSCIENCES AT PENN STATE, IS AMONG A TEAM OF RESEARCHERS TO USE THE MINERAL ZIRCON TO HELP UNDERSTAND HOW THE EARTH'S CONTINENTS FORMED BILLIONS OF... view more 

CREDIT: PENN STATE

Geoscientists have long known that some parts of the continents formed in the Earth's deep past, but the speed in which land rose above global seas -- and the exact shapes that land masses formed -- have so far eluded experts.

But now, through analyzing roughly 600,000 mineral analyses from a database of about 7,700 different rock samples, a team led by Jesse Reimink, assistant professor of geosciences at Penn State, thinks they're getting closer to the answers.

The researchers say that Earth's land masses began to slowly rise above sea level about 3 billion years ago. When their interpretation is combined with previous work, including work from other Penn State researchers, it suggests that continents took roughly 500 million years to rise to their modern heights, according to findings recently published in Earth and Planetary Science Letters.

To reach this conclusion, scientists applied a unique statistical analysis to crystallization ages from the mineral zircon, which is reliably dateable and is frequently found in sedimentary rocks. While these researchers did not date these samples, the samples were all dated using the the uranium-lead decay system. This method measures the amount of lead in a sample and calculates from the well established rate of uranium decay, the age of the crystal. When zirconium forms, no lead is incorporated into its structure, so any lead is from uranium decay.

The minerals found in the sedimentary rock samples originally formed in older magmas but, through erosion and transport, traveled in rivers and were eventually deposited in the ocean where they were turned into sedimentary rock beneath the surface of the sea floor. The ages of zircons retrieved from individual rock samples can be used to tell the type of continent they were eroded from.

The ages of zircons from Eastern North American rocks are, for instance, different from those of land masses such as Japan, which was formed by much more recent volcanic activity.

"If you look at the Mississippi River, it's eroding rocks and zircons from all over North America. It's gathering mineral grains that have a massive age range from as young as a million years to as old as a few billions of years," Reimink said. "Our analysis suggests that as soon as sediment started to be formed on Earth they were formed from sedimentary basins with a similarly large age range."

Sediments are formed from weathering of older rocks, and carry the signature of past landmass in time capsules such as zircons. The research doesn't uncover the overall size of primordial continents, but it does speculate that modern-scale watersheds were formed as early as 2.7 billion years ago.

"Our research matches nicely with the preserved rock record," Reimink said.

This finding is critical for a few reasons. First, knowing when and how the continents formed advances research on the carbon cycle in the land, water and atmosphere. Secondly, it gives us clues as to the early origins of Earth. That could prove useful as we discover more about life and the formation of other planets. Earth is a life-sustaining planet, in part, because of how continental crust influences our atmospheric and oceanic composition. Knowing how and when these processes occurred could hold clues to the creation of life.

"Whenever we're able to determine processes that led to our existence, it relates to the really profound questions such as: Are we unique? Is Earth unique in the universe? And are there other Earths out there," Reimink said. "These findings help lead us down the path to the answers we need about Earth that allow us to compare our planet to others."

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Joshua Davies of Université du Québec à Montréal and Alessandro Ielpi of Laurentian University contributed to this research.

The Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada partially supported this work.

After 100 years, Cornell University plant pathologists revisit fire blight hypothesis

AMERICAN PHYTOPATHOLOGICAL SOCIETY

Research News

 

IMAGE: FLY FEEDING ON THE OOZE DROPLET IN THE EXPERIMENTAL CHAMBER. view more 

CREDIT: MATTHEW BOUCHER

Historically credited as being the first bacterium ever characterized as a plant pathogen, fire blight is a bacterial disease that leads to significant losses of pear and apple. The role of insects in the spread of this disease has been long studied. In a new study, plant pathologists based at Cornell University and Cornell AgriTech take a hypothesis that has been more or less ignored for 100 years and provided support for its validity.

According to first author Matthew Boucher, the study describes a long hypothesized but never experimentally supported transmission mechanism for fire blight. Boucher and colleagues show that flies in an apple orchard can acquire the bacterial agent (Erwinia amylovora) of fire blight from sugary droplets exuding from diseased apple trees and subsequently transmit the bacterium to uninfected shoots so long as those shoots are damaged in some way.

"This transmission mechanism is mechanical, the bacterium does not appear to have a close evolutionary relationship with any given insect and may seem inefficient to an unsuspecting observer," explained Boucher. "However, we show that the massive populations of E. amylovora in the sugary droplets exuding from trees allow flies to acquire enough bacteria for the population to persist in and on flies for as long as seven days in some cases."

Flies can continually shed bacteria over the course of those seven days, resulting in multiple opportunities for a single insect to initiate an infection.

"Demonstrating that bacterial populations can survive within the insect is important because previous research largely discounted E. amylovora survivability within an insect." More research is needed, especially under field conditions, but this is an exciting step toward understanding the diversity of interactions between plants, insects, and phytopathogens.

"We also show that insects do not need to have intimated, co-evolved relationships with plant pathogens to be important agents in the disease cycle. There are only one or two similar pathogens in documented research, but there are likely more out there that need to be studied to advance our knowledge of this end of the disease-vector spectrum," Boucher said when asked what makes his work groundbreaking. "As a collective work, we show the importance of integrating historical literature into modern research and revisiting topics and hypothesis that may not have been technologically feasible to investigate when they were first proposed."

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This work is a foundational study that will provide excellent context for future researchers interested in the topic. For more information, read "Interactions Between Delia platura and Erwinia amylovora Associated with Insect Mediated Transmission of Shoot Blight" published in PhytoFrontiers.

Watching the Arctic thaw in fast-forward

ALFRED WEGENER INSTITUTE, HELMHOLTZ CENTRE FOR POLAR AND MARINE RESEARCH

Research News

 

The Arctic is warming more quickly than almost any other region on Earth as a result of climate change. One of the better known: the continually shrinking summer sea-ice extent in the Arctic. But global warming is also leaving its mark on terrestrial permafrost. For several years, permafrost regions have been thawing more and more intensively in North America, Scandinavia and Siberia - e.g. in the extreme northwest of Alaska. Permafrost is soil that has remained permanently frozen to depths of up to several hundred metres, often since the last glacial period, roughly 20,000 years ago, or in some cases even longer.

The permafrost regions near the city of Kotzebue, Alaska, are dotted with hundreds of thaw lakes. These are formed when the permafrost soils begin to thaw and subside. Meltwater from the soil or from the winter snowfall and summer rainfall collects in the hollows. Some are several thousand years old and were formed since the end of the last glacial period. But in recent years, the lake landscape has changed due to more frequent relatively mild winters there. In summer, the permafrost soils thaw extensively and they don't completely refreeze in winter, which means that the lakes' shores become unstable and collapse, causing water to drain from the lakes. Researchers from the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) observed a particularly extreme example of this in the seasons 2017 and 2018: within a year, more lakes drained than ever before - roughly 190 in total. "The scale shocked us," says AWI geographer Ingmar Nitze. "The winter 2017/2018 was extremely wet and warm. Conditions were similar to those our climate models predict will be normal by the end of this century. In a way, we caught a glimpse of the future. By then, widespread lake drainage will have reached a catastrophic scale."

As Nitze and his co-authors report in the journal The Cryosphere, the mean temperature in the 2017/2018 season was circa five degrees Celsius above the long-term average. In Kotzebue, the winter temperature is usually about minus 20 degrees - but in that year the temperature was 10 to 20 degrees higher on several days. Furthermore, as a result of the moist air, there was a significant amount of snow. Since snow insulates the soil against the cold air in winter, the active layer and upper permafrost that had partially thawed in summer did not refreeze sufficiently during this relatively mild winter. A chain of factors likely led to the drainage of the lakes, one of which was the fact that the permafrost around the shores had degraded, facilitating lateral drainage. In addition, the large amount of meltwater from the thawing snow masses increased the lake water levels. Making matters worse, the water was able to drain easily, cutting veritable flood channels through the thawed soil surface layer. "With a depth of one to three metres, the lakes are relatively shallow and so drain quickly," explains Ingmar Nitze. Fortunately, since the region is sparsely populated, no major damage was done. But that's not the point, adds the researcher. "This drainage event simply shows the extreme scale of warming and impacts to tundra and permafrost landscapes that we'll see in the Arctic in the coming decades. But above all, it shows that extreme events won't occur only at the end of the century, but are already taking place and will do so in the years to come." This is a cause for concern, since it means that the ancient plant remains stored in the permafrost soils can become exposed and broken down by microbes. The carbon contained within the plants is then released as carbon dioxide or methane, which exacerbates the greenhouse effect - a vicious circle.

For their study, Ingmar Nitze and his colleagues evaluated satellite images of the region surrounding Kotzebue and northwestern Alaska. In the pictures, the full and drained lakes can be easily distinguished. It is also clear when the lakes begin to drain. Winter 2017/2018 was the warmest in the region since continuous records began at the Kotzebue station in 1949. Accordingly, the experts had expected several lakes to drain. But they hadn't expected it to happen on this scale. "In the mild years 2005 and 2006, several lakes drained - but this time there were twice as many." And that's worrying, the experts warn, because at the same time it means the permafrost's potential to preserve large amounts of carbon is shrinking at an alarming rate.

Scientists warn of the social and environmental risks tied to the energy transition

A new international study by the ICTA-UAB and the McGill University (Canada)

 maps resistance movements' associated with green energy and fossil fuel projects

UNIVERSITAT AUTONOMA DE BARCELONA

Research News

 

IMAGE: DEMONSTRATION AGAINST HYDROPOWER UTILITY IN WINNIPEG, MANITOBA, CANADA (NOV 2019). view more 

CREDIT: DANIELA DEL BENE

To meet the most ambitious 1.5º C climate goal requires a rapid phaseout of fossil fuels and mass use of renewables. However, new international research by the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (ICTA-UAB) warns that green energy projects can be as socially and environmentally conflictive as fossil fuel projects. While renewable energies are often portrayed as being environmentally sustainable, this new study cautions about the risks associated with the green energy transition, arguing for an integrated approach that redesigns energy systems in favor of social equity and environmental sustainability. The research, which analyzes protests over 649 energy projects, has been recently published in the journal Environmental Research Letters.

The study, authored by an international group of researchers with a large presence of the ICTA-UAB and led by Dr. Leah Temper, from McGill University, draws on data from the Global Atlas of Environmental Justice (EJAtlas), an online database by ICTA-UAB that systematizes over 3000 ecological conflicts. The research examines what energy projects are triggering citizen mobilizations, the concerns being expressed as well as how different groups are impacted, and the success of these movements in stopping and modifying projects.

The study finds that conflicts over energy projects disproportionately impact rural and indigenous communities and that violence and repression against protesters was rife, with assassination of activists occurring in 65 cases, or 1 out of 10 cases studied. However, the study also points to the effectiveness of social protest in stopping and modifying energy projects, finding that over a quarter of projects facing social resistance turn out to be either cancelled, suspended, or delayed. Furthermore, it highlights how communities engage in collective action as a means of shaping energy futures and make claims for localization, democratic participation, shorter energy chains, anti-racism, climate-justice-focused governance, and Indigenous leadership.

According to Dr. Temper, "the study shows that the switch from fossil fuels to green energy is not inherently socially and environmentally benign and demonstrates how communities are standing up to demand a say in energy systems that works for them. These results call for action to ensure that the costs of decarbonization of our energy system do not fall on the most vulnerable members of our society." The study urges climate and energy policymakers to pay closer attention to the demands of collective movements to meaningfully address climate change and to move towards a truly just transition.

The study finds that amongst low-carbon energy projects, hydropower is the most socially and environmentally damag-ing, leading to mass displacement and high rates of violence. Out of the 160 cases of hydropower plants from 43 coun-tries studied, almost 85% of the cases are either high or medium intensity. Indigenous peoples are particularly at risk and are involved in 6 out of 10 cases. Co-author Dr. Daniela Del Bene, from ICTA-UAB, urges caution around large-scale renewables. "The case of hydropower dams shows that even less carbon-emitting technologies can cause severe im-pacts and lead to intense conflicts, including violence and assassinations of opponents. The energy transition is not only a matter of what technology or energy source to use but also of who controls and decides upon our energy systems", she says.

On the other hand, wind, solar, and geothermal renewable energy projects, were the least conflictive and involved lower levels of repression than other projects.

According to co-author Sofia Avila, "conflicts around mega wind and solar power infrastructures are not about "blocking" climate solutions but rather about "opening" political spaces to build equitable approaches towards a low-carbon future. For example, in Mexico, long-lasting claims of injustice around an ambitious Wind Power Corridor in Oaxaca has spearheaded citizen debates around a just transition, while different proposals for cooperative and decentralized energy production schemes are emerging in the country."

According to Prof. Nicolas Kosoy, from McGill University, "participation and inclusiveness are key to resolving our socio-environmental crises. Both green and brown energy projects can lead to ecological devastation and social exclusion if local communities and ecosystems rights continue to be trampled upon."

The study argues that place-based mobilizations can point the way towards responding to the climate crisis while tackling underlying societal problems such as racism, gender inequality, and colonialism. According to Dr. Temper, addressing the climate crisis calls for more than a blind switch to renewables. Demand-side reduction is necessary but this needs to work in tandem with supply side approaches such as moratoria, and leaving fossil fuels in the ground are necessary. "Equity concerns need to be foremost in deciding on unminable and unburnable sites. Instead of creating new fossil fuel and green sacrifices zones, there is a need to engage these communities in redesigning just energy futures", she says.

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