It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Tuesday, January 05, 2021
How to identify heat-stressed corals
'Coral hospital' tool could help safeguard reefs facing climate change
IMAGE: THE RICE CORAL MONTIPORA CAPITATA IN WATERS NEAR THE HAWAI'I INSTITUTE OF MARINE BIOLOGY ON MOKU O LO?E IN KĀNE'OHE BAY, HAWAII. view more
CREDIT: D. BHATTACHARYA
Researchers have found a novel way to identify heat-stressed corals, which could help scientists pinpoint the coral species that need protection from warming ocean waters linked to climate change, according to a Rutgers-led study.
"This is similar to a blood test to assess human health," said senior author Debashish Bhattacharya, a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Microbiology in the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences at Rutgers University-New Brunswick. "We can assess coral health by measuring the metabolites (chemicals created for metabolism) they produce and, ultimately, identify the best interventions to ensure reef health. Coral bleaching from warming waters is an ongoing worldwide ecological disaster. Therefore, we need to develop sensitive diagnostic indicators that can be used to monitor reef health before the visible onset of bleaching to allow time for preemptive conservation efforts."
Coral reefs provide habitat, nursery and spawning grounds for fish, food for about 500 million people along with their livelihoods, and coastline protection from storms and erosion. But global climate change threatens corals by warming ocean waters, resulting in coral bleaching and disease. Other threats to corals include sea-level rise, a more acidic ocean, unsustainable fishing, damage from vessels, invasive species, marine debris and tropical cyclones, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The study, published in the journal Science Advances, examined how Hawaiian stony corals respond to heat stress, with a goal of identifying chemical (metabolite) indicators of stress. Heat stress can lead to the loss of algae that live in symbiosis with corals, resulting in a white appearance (bleaching) and, potentially, the loss of reefs.
Scientists subjected the heat-resistant Montipora capitata and heat-sensitive Pocillopora acuta coral species to several weeks of warm seawater in tanks at the Hawai'i Institute of Marine Biology. Then they analyzed the metabolites produced and compared them with other corals not subjected to heat stress.
"Our work, for the first time, identified a variety of novel and known metabolites that may be used as diagnostic indicators for heat stress in wild coral before or in the early stages of bleaching," Bhattacharya said.
The scientists are validating their coral diagnosis results in a much larger study and the results look promising. The scientists are also developing a "coral hospital" featuring a new lab-on-a-chip device, which could check coral health in the field via metabolite and protein indicators.
ITHACA, N.Y. - From an observatory high above Chile's Atacama Desert, astronomers have taken a new look at the oldest light in the universe.
Their observations, plus a bit of cosmic geometry, suggest that the universe is 13.77 billion years old - give or take 40 million years. A Cornell University researcher co-authored one of two papers about the findings, which add a fresh twist to an ongoing debate in the astrophysics community.
The new estimate, using data gathered at the National Science Foundation's Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT), matches the one provided by the standard model of the universe, as well as measurements of the same light made by the European Space Agency's Planck satellite, which measured remnants of the Big Bang from 2009 to '13.
The research was published in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics.
The lead author of "The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: A Measurement of the Cosmic Microwave Background Power Spectra at 98 and 150 GHz" is Steve Choi, NSF Astronomy and Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellow at the Cornell Center for Astrophysics and Planetary Science, in the College of Arts and Sciences.
In 2019, a research team measuring the movements of galaxies calculated that the universe is hundreds of millions of years younger than the Planck team predicted. That discrepancy suggested a new model for the universe might be needed and sparked concerns that one of the sets of measurements might be incorrect.
"Now we've come up with an answer where Planck and ACT agree," said Simone Aiola, a researcher at the Flatiron Institute's Center for Computational Astrophysics and first author of one of two papers. "It speaks to the fact that these difficult measurements are reliable."
IMAGE: ASIATIC BLACK BEAR, PICTURED HERE IN A CAMERA TRAP IMAGE, FIND HABITAT GEARED TOWARD GIANT PANDAS DOESN'T MEET THEIR NEEDS view more
CREDIT: FANG WANG, MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY CENTER FOR SYSTEMS INTEGRATION AND SUSTAINABILITY
Forgive Asiatic black bear if they're not impressed with their popular giant panda neighbors.
For decades, conservationists have preached that panda popularity, and the resulting support for their habitat, automatically benefits other animals in the mountainous ranges. That logic extends across the world, as animals regarded as cute, noble or otherwise appealing drum up support to protect where they live.
Yet in Biological Conservation, scientists take a closer look at how other animals under the panda "umbrella" fare and find several species have every reason to be ticked at panda-centric policies.
"The popularity of giant pandas, as of the popularity of other beloved threatened animals across the world, has generated tremendous advances in protecting forests and other fragile habitats," said Jianguo "Jack" Liu, Michigan State University's Rachel Carson Chair in Sustainability and a paper author. "But this is an important reminder that it can't assume that what's good for a panda is automatically good for other species. Different species have specific needs and preferences."
The authors of "The hidden risk of using umbrella species as conservation surrogates: A spatio-temporal approach" used camera trap data collected throughout mountain ranges to get a clear understanding of what and how animals were using protected habitats.
What they discovered is that while the pandas are doing very well (the species in 2016 was declared "threatened" rather than "endangered" - a conservation point of pride). But three of the eight species focused upon in this study - the Asiatic black bear, the forest musk deer and the Chinese serow (a goat-like animal) seem to have suffered significant habitat loss and/or degradation under panda-centric habitat management. Pandas are picky about where they live - needing lots of bamboo, a gentle slope and no contact with humans. And the managed habitats have largely delivered for them. Just not so much for others.
Fang Wang, the paper's first author, noted that earlier efforts at tracking how a broader range of animals fared were handicapped by turning a blind eye to different habitat preferences, and not spotting potentially different habitat trends of other animals. The authors suggested that the forests and shrublands in lower elevations next to the habitats that best serve pandas could be better for bear and deer.
"China has made a tremendous achievement in establishing giant panda nature reserves, and now we're learning that one size does not fit all," said Wang, who with Liu and other authors is part of MSU's Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability. "China as well as other countries that face similar conservation challenges have the opportunity to move forward from rescuing single species to protecting animal communities and ecosystems."
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The work was supported by the National Science Foundation, the National Natural Science Foundation of China and the Ocean Park Conservation Foundation. Besides Liu and Wang, the paper was written by Julie Winkler, Andrés Viña, William Joseph McShea, Sheng Li, Thomas Connor, Zhiqiang Zhao, Dajun Wang, Hongbo Yang, Ying Tang and Jindong Zhang.
CAPTION
Animals like this forest musk deer in China, caught by a camera trap, don't necessarily thrive in habitat that specifically protects giant pandas
CAPTION
Giant pandas in China have found their status upgraded to "threatened" thanks to conservation efforts. But new studies indicate what's good for the panda may not be optimal for other species
Results of comprehensive SARS-CoV-2 animal model study published in Nature Microbiology
San Antonio, Texas (January 4, 2020) - Scientists at Texas Biomedical Research Institute (Texas Biomed) and Southwest National Primate Research Center (SNPRC) published their findings regarding a comprehensive animal model study of SARS-CoV-2 in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Microbiology. These findings were originally posted online in BioRxiv in June of 2020. The study evaluated three nonhuman primate (NHP) species (Indian rhesus macaques, African baboons and new-world origin common marmosets) and young and old animals, to determine susceptibility to the SARS-CoV-2 virus and the development of COVID-19 disease. Over the course of the study, the macaque and baboon models showed significant promise as animal models for COVID-19 disease studies moving forward. Based on outcomes, the researchers recommended use of the macaque as a model to help develop vaccines, while the baboon showed greater disease development, making it a potential option for evaluating anti-viral therapeutics and co-morbidities, such as understanding the connection between COVID-19 and diabetes or COVID-19 and heart disease.
"Thanks to the support of our community, Texas Biomed was able to launch and complete the most comprehensive animal model study to date (June 2020) that has provides scientists greater understanding of the immune response to SARS-CoV-2 and definitively identifies two possible animal models to help move vaccines and therapeutics forward," said Larry Schlesinger, M.D., Texas Biomed President and CEO. "The speed and completeness to which this team of researchers operated to execute this study is nothing short of heroic. I am very pleased at the progress the Institute is making in our COVID-19 studies and believe this is the first of many discoveries to come."
COVID-19 is the defining pandemic of a generation. Texas Biomed launched this study in late March 2020 because animal models are a critical component of the biomedical pipeline necessary to fast track drug and vaccine development. The study was completed by May 2020.
"The benefit of Texas Biomed's unique research model lies in the expertise to support individual scientific study and contract research on one campus with the animal, biosafety and regulatory proficiency to help shepherd research from basic discovery through preclinical development and on to human clinical trials," explained Joanne Turner, PhD, Vice President for Research at Texas Biomed.
Animal models for infectious diseases, such as COVID-19, are allowing scientists worldwide to determine whether the candidate vaccines and antiviral therapeutics currently under development will be viable as human interventions. Additionally, animal models enable scientists to understand how the disease progresses in people with compromised immune systems to assist in the development of treatments for these individuals.
"Finding the appropriate animal models for COVID-19 allows for these critical discoveries to happen now, and they are an important step in combatting this disease," said Dr. Deepak Kaushal, PhD, Director of the Southwest National Primate Research Center and lead Principal Investigator on the macaque portion of the study. "Without well-documented animal data, the FDA is unlikely to license a vaccine or antiviral therapy for human use, even those currently undergoing human trials, because animal model data assure us that we have a complete picture of the disease and how humans may respond to potential therapies."
The team of 43 researchers reported clinical, viral, imaging, immunological and histopathological (tissue examination) findings during SARS-CoV-2 infection/COVID-19 disease in all three species of NHPs. The study ultimately found that nonhuman primates showed similar progression of SARS-CoV-2 infection to that of humans, with some becoming more ill than others, and signs of the virus in both the upper and lower respiratory tracts and signs of pneumonia.
"Our results tell us that these animal models will provide relevant, quantifiable information moving forward as we delve deeper into understanding the disease and targets for therapeutics and vaccines for human trials," Dr. Kaushal explained.
While previous animal studies showed the macaque to be a viable model for SARS-CoV-2, this was the first time that researchers performed a longitudinal study of three different NHPs (looking at disease progression factors over several days) and in both young and older macaques to determine if age is a factor in disease progression. Moreover, the researchers used the most comprehensive set of evaluations, ranging from bronchoalveolar lavages (lung fluid collection) and nasal swabs to determine virus presence to chest x-rays and CT scans to evaluate lung health after infection.
Results showed that the macaque and baboon models develop strong signs of acute viral infection leading to pneumonia, and the NHP immune system mounts a strong response and clears the infection. Specialized sets of myeloid cells (phagocytes) move from blood to the lungs and secrete high levels of Type I interferons, cytokines or proteins that send chemical messages required for controlling viruses in general and coronaviruses in particular. The appearance of these specialized phagocytes (cells that ingest foreign particles or dying cells in the body) corresponded with a decline in measurable amounts of virus and disease parameters. The longitudinal study of young and old animals showed little difference. However, the virus appears to persist and shed longer in the baboons and create greater pathology in the lungs. The marmoset model did not show any significant signs of disease progression.
This study was also the first report of SARS-CoV-2 infection specifically altering lymphoid cells (T cells) in the lung, which generated a strong and very specific immune response in the macaque, enabling the animals to clear the virus. This finding indicates the NHP model will be useful in understanding the immune response to SARS-CoV-2 and aid in the development of interventions that can create a similar response, as well as help evaluate the safety and effectiveness of vaccines, which require a specific immune response in order to be effective.
"While this study was not the first to indicate the macaque would serve as a good model for SARS-CoV-2, the study provides strong scientific evidence in support of this model, as well as the first evidence of the baboon model via comprehensive, clinically-relevant and well-documented research with controls," Dr. Kaushal said. "We strongly believe macaques and baboons will be very helpful in evaluating interventions that generate the strong immune response seen in these animal models."
The study was funded by philanthropic support from more than 300 donors after a call-to-action campaign was launched in late March. The campaign raised more than $3.5 million in one week, and additional donor support has brought the total raise for COVID-19 research at Texas Biomed to more than $5.7 million.
Concurrently, Texas Biomed investigators are submitting several grant applications to the National Institutes of Health and other federal agencies to further these study findings and develop novel vaccine candidates, diagnostics and therapeutics. Scientists have already begun collaborative immune system and co-morbidity studies, as well as small animal model development studies in rodents and guinea pigs. Additionally, the Institute is collaborating with several pharmaceutical and research and development partners to test vaccine and therapeutic candidates.
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Texas Biomed is one of the world's leading independent biomedical research institutions dedicated to eradicating infection and advancing health worldwide through innovative biomedical research. Texas Biomed partners with researchers and institutions around the world to develop vaccines and therapeutics against viral pathogens causing AIDS, hepatitis, hemorrhagic fever, tuberculosis and parasitic diseases responsible for malaria and schistosomiasis disease. The Institute has programs in host-pathogen interaction, disease intervention and prevention and population health to understand the links between infectious diseases and other diseases such as aging, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and obesity. For more information on Texas Biomed, go to http://www.TxBiomed.org.
Subscriptions to satellite alerts linked to decreased deforestation in Africa
IMAGE: THE RESEARCH COVERED 22 TROPICAL COUNTRIES, OUTLINED IN ORANGE, ACROSS SOUTH AMERICA, AFRICA AND ASIA. FOREST COVER IN 2010 IS INDICATED IN GREEN. view more
CREDIT: FANNY MOFFETTE / UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON
MADISON, Wis. -- Deforestation dropped by 18 percent in two years in African countries where organizations subscribed to receive warnings from a new service using satellites to detect decreases in forest cover in the tropics.
The carbon emissions avoided by reducing deforestation were worth between $149 million and $696 million, based on the ability of lower emissions to reduce the detrimental economic consequences of climate change.
Those findings come from new research into the effect of GLAD, the Global Land Analysis and Discovery system, available on the free and interactive interface Global Forest Watch. Launched in 2016, GLAD provides frequent, high-resolution alerts when it detects a drop in forest cover. Governments and others interested in halting deforestation can subscribe to the alerts on Global Forest Watch and then intervene to limit forest loss.
The research was led by Fanny Moffette, a postdoctoral researcher in applied economics in the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies and the Department of Agricultural and Applied Economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Moffette collaborated with Jennifer Alix-Garcia at Oregon State University, Katherine Shea at the World Resources Institute and Amy Pickens at the University of Maryland.
The researchers published their findings Jan. 4 in Nature Climate Change. They studied deforestation in 22 tropical countries across South America, Africa and Asia from 2011 to 2018.
Moffette and her co-authors set out to understand whether these kinds of automated alerts could achieve their goal of reducing forest loss, which has global climate implications. Land-use changes like deforestation account for 6 percent to 17 percent of global carbon emissions. And avoiding deforestation is several times more effective at reducing carbon emissions than regrowing forests.
"The first question was to look at whether there was any impact from having access to this free alert system. Then we were looking at the effect of users subscribing to this data to receive alerts for a specific area," says Moffette.
Simply being covered by GLAD did not help a country combat deforestation. Only those African countries in which organizations had actually subscribed to receive alerts saw a decrease in deforestation. Intuitively, this finding makes sense, says Moffette. Having access to information is good. But what you need to change the course of deforestation are people committed to using that information and acting.
However, deforestation did not decrease in South American or Asian countries, even where organizations subscribed to receive warnings. There are multiple potential causes for this continental discrepancy.
"We think that we see an effect mainly in Africa due to two main reasons," says Moffette. "One is because GLAD added more to efforts in Africa than on other continents, in the sense that there was already some evidence of countries using monitoring systems in countries like Indonesia and Peru. And Colombia and Venezuela, which are a large part of our sample, had significant political unrest during this period."
The GLAD program is still young, and as more governments and organizations sign on to receive warnings, and decide how to intervene at sites of deforestation, the system's influence may grow.
Developed by a team at the University of Maryland that includes one of Moffette's collaborators, GLAD made several improvements over its predecessors. It has very high spatial resolution, roughly 900 square meters, which is orders of magnitude more precise than older tools. And it can provide alerts up to every eight days if the skies are cloud-free when satellites re-image a section of Earth. Users can define custom areas to monitor. They then receive weekly emails, available in six languages, that contain geographic coordinates of the alerts within the monitored areas.
Going forward, the team is looking to evaluate the effect of new features of the monitoring platform, such as data that can inform forest restoration, while supporting efforts of organizations that try to intervene to halt deforestation.
"Now that we know subscribers of alerts can have an effect on deforestation, there's potential ways in which our work can improve the training they receive and support their efforts," says Moffette.
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Alert system shows potential for reducing deforestation, mitigating climate change
CORVALLIS, Ore. - Forest loss declined 18% in African nations where a new satellite-based program provides free alerts when it detects deforestation activities.
A research collaboration that included Jennifer Alix-Garcia of Oregon State University found that the Global Land Analysis and Discovery System, known as GLAD, resulted in carbon sequestration benefits worth hundreds of millions of dollars in GLAD's first two years.
Findings were published today in Nature Climate Change.
The premise of GLAD is simple: Subscribe to the system, launch a free web application, receive email alerts when the GLAD algorithm detects deforestation going on and then take action to save forests.
GLAD, launched in 2016, delivers alerts created by the University of Maryland's Global Land Analysis and Discovery lab based on high-resolution satellite imaging from NASA's Landsat Science program. The information is made available to subscribers via the interactive web application, Global Forest Watch.
"Before GLAD, government agencies and other groups in the business of deforestation prevention had to lean on reports from volunteers or forest rangers," Alix-Garcia said. "Obviously the people making those reports can't be everywhere, which is a massive limitation for finding out about deforestation activity in time to prevent it."
Changes in land use make a huge difference in how much carbon dioxide reaches the atmosphere and warms the planet, said Alix-Garcia, an economist in OSU's College of Agricultural Sciences.
"Reforestation is good, but avoiding deforestation is way better - almost 10 times better in some instances," she said. "That's part of why cost-effective reduction of deforestation ought to be part of the foundation of global climate change mitigation strategies."
Deforestation, Alix-Garcia adds, is a key factor behind the 40% increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide since the dawn of the industrial age, which in turn is contributing heavily to a warming planet. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the global average atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration in 2018 was 407.4 parts per million, higher than at any time in at least 800,000 years.
The annual rate of increase in atmospheric CO2 over the past six decades is roughly 100 times faster than increases resulting from natural causes, such as those that happened following the last ice age more than 10,000 years ago, according to NOAA.
Alix-Garcia, study leader Fanny Moffette of the University of Wisconsin and collaborators at the University of Maryland and the World Resources Institute looked at deforestation in 22 nations in the tropics in South America, Africa and Asia between 2011 and 2018 - the last five years before GLAD and first two years after.
In Africa, the results were telling: Compared to the prior five years, the first two years of GLAD showed 18% less forest loss where forest protectors were subscribing to the system.
Using a concept known as the social cost of carbon - the marginal cost to society of each additional metric ton of greenhouse gas that reaches the atmosphere - researchers estimate the alert system was worth between $149 million and $696 million in Africa those two years.
There was no substantial change in deforestation in Asia or South America, however, but possible explanations for that are numerous and suggest GLAD can make a greater difference in those places in years to come, the researchers say.
"We think that we see an effect mainly in Africa due to two main reasons," Moffette said. "One is because GLAD added more to efforts in Africa than on other continents, in the sense that there was already some evidence of countries using monitoring systems in countries like Indonesia and Peru. And Colombia and Venezuela, which are a large part of our sample, had significant political unrest during this period."
The GLAD program is still young and as more groups sign up to receive alerts and decide how to intervene in deforestation, the system's influence may grow, she added.
"Now that we know subscribers of alerts can have an effect on deforestation, there are ways in which our work can potentially improve the training the subscribers receive and support their efforts," Moffette said.
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Surprising news: drylands are not getting drier
New study--first to investigate the long-term effect of soil moisture-atmosphere feedbacks in drylands--finds that soil moisture exerts a negative feedback on surface water availability in drylands, offsetting some of the expected decline
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING AND APPLIED SCIENCE
IMAGE: A DRYLAND ECOSYSTEM IN NORTHERN CALIFORNIA SHOWS DECREASING SOIL MOISTURE BUT LITTLE CHANGES IN SURFACE WATER AVAILABILITY. view more
CREDIT: COLUMBIA ENGINEERING
New Columbia Engineering study--first to investigate the long-term effect of soil moisture-atmosphere feedbacks in drylands--finds that soil moisture exerts a negative feedback on surface water availability in drylands, offsetting some of the expected decline
New York, NY--January 4, 2021--Scientists have thought that global warming will increase the availability of surface water--freshwater resources generated by precipitation minus evapotranspiration--in wet regions, and decrease water availability in dry regions. This expectation is based primarily on atmospheric thermodynamic processes. As air temperatures rise, more water evaporates into the air from the ocean and land. Because warmer air can hold more water vapor than dry air, a more humid atmosphere is expected to amplify the existing pattern of water availability, causing the "dry-get-drier, and wet-get-wetter" atmospheric responses to global warming.
A Columbia Engineering team led by Pierre Gentine, Maurice Ewing and J. Lamar Worzel professor of earth and environmental engineering and affiliated with the Earth Institute, wondered why coupled climate model predictions do not project significant "dry-get-drier" responses over drylands, tropical and temperate areas with an aridity index of less than 0.65, even when researchers use the high emissions global warming scenario. Sha Zhou, a postdoctoral fellow at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and the Earth Institute who studies land-atmosphere interactions and the global water cycle, thought that soil moisture-atmosphere feedbacks might play an important part in future predictions of water availability in drylands.
The new study, published today by Nature Climate Change, is the first to show the importance of long-term soil moisture changes and associated soil moisture-atmosphere feedbacks in these predictions. The researchers identified a long-term soil moisture regulation of atmospheric circulation and moisture transport that largely ameliorates the potential decline of future water availability in drylands, beyond that expected in the absence of soil moisture feedbacks.
"These feedbacks play a more significant role than realized in long-term surface water changes," says Zhou. "As soil moisture variations negatively impact water availability, this negative feedback could also partially reduce warming-driven increases in the magnitudes and frequencies of extreme high and extreme low hydroclimatic events, such as droughts and floods. Without the negative feedback, we may experience more frequent and more extreme droughts and floods."
The team combined a unique, idealized multi-model land-atmosphere coupling experiment with a novel statistical approach they developed for the study. They then applied the algorithm on observations to examine the critical role of soil moisture-atmosphere feedbacks in future water availability changes over drylands, and to investigate the thermodynamic and dynamic mechanisms underpinning future water availability changes due to these feedbacks.
They found, in response to global warming, strong declines in surface water availability (precipitation minus evaporation, P-E) in dry regions over oceans, but only slight P-E declines over drylands. Zhou suspected that this phenomenon is associated with land-atmosphere processes. "Over drylands, soil moisture is projected to decline substantially under climate change," she explains. "Changes in soil moisture would further impact atmospheric processes and the water cycle."
Global warming is expected to reduce water availability and hence soil moisture in drylands. But this new study found that the drying of soil moisture actually negatively feeds back onto water availability--declining soil moisture reduces evapotranspiration and evaporative cooling, and enhances surface warming in drylands relative to wet regions and the ocean. The land-ocean warming contrast strengthens the air pressure differences between ocean and land, driving greater wind blowing and water vapor transport from the ocean to land.
"Our work finds that soil moisture predictions and associated atmosphere feedbacks are highly variable and model dependent," says Gentine. "This study underscores the urgent need to improve future soil moisture predictions and accurately represent soil moisture-atmosphere feedbacks in models, which are critical to providing reliable predictions of dryland water availability for better water resources management."
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About the Study
The study is titled "Soil moisture-atmosphere feedbacks mitigate declining water availability in dryland."
Authors are: Sha Zhou 1,2,3,4,5; A. Park Williams 1; Benjamin R. Lintner 6; Alexis M. Berg 7; Yao Zhang 4,5; Trevor F. Keenan 4,5; Benjamin I. Cook 1,8; Stefan Hagemann 9; Sonia I. Seneviratne 10; Pierre Gentine 2,3 1 Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University 2 Earth Institute, Columbia University 3 Department of Earth and Environmental Engineering Columbia University 4 Climate and Ecosystem Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory 5 Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management UC 6 Department of Environmental Sciences Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey 7 Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Harvard University 8 NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies 9 Helmholtz-Zentrum Geesthacht Institute of Coastal Research, Germany 10 Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science ETH Zurich
The study was supported by NASA ROSES Terrestrial hydrology (NNH17ZDA00IN-THP) and NOAA MAPP NA17OAR4310127, Lamont-Doherty Postdoctoral Fellowship, and the Earth Institute Postdoctoral Fellowship.
Columbia Engineering, based in New York City, is one of the top engineering schools in the U.S. and one of the oldest in the nation. Also known as The Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science, the School expands knowledge and advances technology through the pioneering research of its more than 220 faculty, while educating undergraduate and graduate students in a collaborative environment to become leaders informed by a firm foundation in engineering. The School's faculty are at the center of the University's cross-disciplinary research, contributing to the Data Science Institute, Earth Institute, Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute, Precision Medicine Initiative, and the Columbia Nano Initiative. Guided by its strategic vision, "Columbia Engineering for Humanity," the School aims to translate ideas into innovations that foster a sustainable, healthy, secure, connected, and creative humanity.
IMAGE: A SECTIONED QUARTZ-QUARTZ GRAIN CONTACT REVEALING A THIN CLAY FILM (RIBBON-LIKE STRUCTURE). COMPACTION AND SHEAR OF THESE THIN CLAY FILMS HAS PLAYED A KEY ROLE IN CONTROLLING COMPACTION OF THE... view more
CREDIT: MICROSTRUCTURES WERE OBTAINED BY B.A. VERBERNE.
Boulder, Colo., USA: Europe's largest gas field, the Groningen field in the Netherlands, is widely known for induced subsidence and seismicity caused by gas pressure depletion and associated compaction of the sandstone reservoir. Whether compaction is elastic or partly inelastic, as implied by recent experiments, is key to forecasting system behavior and seismic hazard.
Bart Verberne and colleagues sought evidence for a role of inelastic deformation through comparative microstructural analysis of unique drill-core, recovered from the seismogenic center of the field in 2015, 50 years after gas production started, versus core recovered before production (1965). Quartz grain fracturing, crack healing, and stress-induced Dauphiné twinning are equally developed in the 2015 and 1965 cores, with the only measurable effect of gas production being enhanced microcracking of sparse K-feldspar grains in the 2015 core.
Interpreting these grains as strain markers, Verberne and colleagues suggest that reservoir compaction involves elastic strain plus inelastic compression of weak clay films within grain contacts.
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FEATURED ARTICLE Drill core from seismically active sandstone gas reservoir yields clues to internal deformation mechanisms Berend A. Verberne; Suzanne J.T. Hangx; Ronald P.J. Pijnenburg; Maartje F. Hamers; Martyn R. Drury; Christopher J. Spiers
GEOLOGY articles are online at http://geology.geoscienceworld.org/content/early/recent. Representatives of the media may obtain complimentary articles by contacting Kea Giles at the e-mail address above. Please discuss articles of interest with the authors before publishing stories on their work, and please make reference to GEOLOGY in articles published. Non-media requests for articles may be directed to GSA Sales and Service, gsaservice@geosociety.org. https://www.geosociety.org
CAPTION
Idealized volume of reservoir sandstone undergoing vertical compaction with zero horizontal strain, typical of producing gas reservoirs. Note, in this simplification, all grain surfaces are coated with uniform clay films. In a real sandstone reservoir, clay films are discontinuous and locally absent, especially in distal regions of the field (orange--load-supporting quartz framework; blue--sparse feldspar grains; red--clay films).
CREDIT
The conceptual model was developed by B.A. Verberne, S. Hangx, and C. Spiers.
USAGE RESTRICTIONS
Credit B.A. Verberne, S. Hangx, and C. Spiers.
Reawakened geyser does not foretell Yellowstone volcanic eruptions, study shows
UNLIKE FAKE TERROR STORIES
IN RT AND UK TABS
Analysis of Steamboat Geyser also finds relationship between column height and reservoir depth
IMAGE: A 2019 ERUPTION OF STEAMBOAT GEYSER IN THE NORRIS GEYSER BASIN OF YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK. THE GEYSER'S FIRST DOCUMENTED ACTIVITY WAS IN 1878, AND IT HAS TURNED OFF AND ON... view more
CREDIT: UC BERKELEY PHOTO BY MARA REED
When Yellowstone National Park's Steamboat Geyser -- which shoots water higher than any active geyser in the world -- reawakened in 2018 after three and a half years of dormancy, some speculated that it was a harbinger of possible explosive volcanic eruptions within the surrounding geyser basin. These so-called hydrothermal explosions can hurl mud, sand and rocks into the air and release hot steam, endangering lives; such an explosion on White Island in New Zealand in December 2019 killed 22 people.
A new study by geoscientists who study geysers throws cold water on that idea, finding few indications of underground magma movement that would be a prerequisite to an eruption. The geysers sit just outside the nation's largest and most dynamic volcanic caldera, but no major eruptions have occurred in the past 70,000 years.
"Hydrothermal explosions -- basically hot water exploding because it comes into contact with hot rock -- are one of the biggest hazards in Yellowstone," said Michael Manga, professor of earth and planetary sciences at the University of California, Berkeley, and the study's senior author. "The reason that they are problematic is that they are very hard to predict; it is not clear if there are any precursors that would allow you to provide warning."
He and his team found that, while the ground around the geyser rose and seismicity increased somewhat before the geyser reactivated and the area currently is radiating slightly more heat into the atmosphere, no other dormant geysers in the basin have restarted, and the temperature of the groundwater propelling Steamboat's eruptions has not increased. Also, no sequence of Steamboat eruptions other than the one that started in 2018 occurred after periods of high seismic activity.
"We don't find any evidence that there is a big eruption coming. I think that is an important takeaway," he said.
The study will be published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Manga, who has studied geysers around the world and created some in his own laboratory, set out with his colleagues to answer three main questions about Steamboat Geyser: Why did it reawaken? Why is its period so variable, ranging from 3 to 17 days? and Why does it spurt so high?
The team found answers to two of those questions. By comparing the column heights of 11 different geysers in the United States, Russia, Iceland and Chile with the estimated depth of the reservoir of water from which their eruptions come, they found that the deeper the reservoir, the higher the eruption jet. Steamboat Geyser, with a reservoir about 25 meters (82 feet) below ground, has the highest column -- up to 115 meters, or 377 feet -- while two geysers that Manga measured in Chile were among the lowest -- eruptions about a meter (3 feet) high from reservoirs 2 and 5 meters below ground.
"What you are really doing is you are filling a container, it reaches a critical point, you empty it and then you run out of fluid that can erupt until it refills again," he said. "The deeper you go, the higher the pressure. The higher the pressure, the higher the boiling temperature. And the hotter the water is, the more energy it has and the higher the geyser."
To explore the reasons for Steamboat Geyser's variability, the team assembled records related to 109 eruptions going back to its reactivation in 2018. The records included weather and stream flow data, seismometer and ground deformation readings, and observations by geyser enthusiasts. They also looked at previous active and dormant periods of Steamboat and nine other Yellowstone geysers, and ground surface thermal emission data from the Norris Geyser Basin.
They concluded that variations in rainfall and snow melt were probably responsible for part of the variable period, and possibly for the variable period of other geysers as well. In the spring and early summer, with melting snow and rain, the underground water pressure pushes more water into the underground reservoir, providing more hot water to erupt more frequently. During winter, with less water, lower groundwater pressure refills the reservoir more slowly, leading to longer periods between eruptions. Because the water pushed into the reservoir comes from places even deeper than the reservoir, the water is decades or centuries old before it erupts back to the surface, he said.
In October, Manga's team members demonstrated the extreme impact water shortages and drought can have on geysers. They showed that Yellowstone's iconic Old Faithful Geyser stopped erupting entirely for about 100 years in the 13th and 14th centuries, based on radiocarbon dating of mineralized lodgepole pine trees that grew around the geyser during its dormancy. Normally the water is too alkaline and the temperature too high for trees to grow near active geysers. The dormancy period coincided with a lengthy warm, dry spell across the Western U.S. called the Medieval Climate Anomaly, which may have caused the disappearance of several Native American civilizations in the West.
"Climate change is going to affect geysers in the future," Manga said.
Manga and his team were unable to determine why Steamboat Geyser started up again on March 15, 2018, after three years and 193 days of inactivity, though the geyser is known for being far more variable than Old Faithful, which usually goes off about every 90 minutes. They could find no definitive evidence that new magma rising below the geyser caused its reactivation.
The reactivation may have to do with changes in the internal plumbing, he said. Geysers seem to require three ingredients: heat, water and rocks made of silica -- silicon dioxide. Because the hot water in geysers continually dissolves and redeposits silica -- every time Steamboat Geyser erupts, it brings up about 200 kilograms, or 440 pounds of dissolved silica. Some of this silica is deposited underground and may change the plumbing system underneath the geyser. Such changes could temporarily halt or reactivate eruptions if the pipe gets rerouted, he said.
Manga has experimented with geysers in his lab to understand why they erupt periodically, and at least in the lab, it appears to be caused by loops or side chambers in the pipe that trap bubbles of steam that slowly dribble out, heating the water column above until all the water can boil from the top down, explosively erupting in a column of water and steam.
Studies of water eruptions from geysers could give insight into the eruptions of hot rock from volcanoes, he said.
"What we asked are very simple questions and it is a little bit embarrassing that we can't answer them, because it means there are fundamental processes on Earth that we don't quite understand," Manga said. "One of the reasons we argue we need to study geysers is that if we can't understand and explain how a geyser erupts, our hope for doing the same thing for magma is much lower."
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The research, led by UC Berkeley graduate student and first author Mara Reed, resulted from a collaboration that started in one of the annual summer workshops put on by the Cooperative Institute for Dynamic Earth Research, or CIDER. Other co-authors are Carolina Munoz-Saez of the University of Chile and Rice University in Texas, Sahand Hajimirza of Rice University, Sin-Mei Wu of the University of Utah, Anna Barth of Columbia University in New York, Társilo Girona of the University of Alaska, Majid Rasht-Behesht of Brown University in Rhode Island, Erin White of Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, Marianne Karplus of the University of Texas and Shaul Hurwitz of the U.S. Geological Survey in California.
