Tweets, news offer insights on invasive insect spread

Peer-Reviewed Publication

NORTH CAROLINA STATE UNIVERSITY

A new North Carolina State University study shows the potential for using Twitter and online news articles to track the timing and location of invasive insect spread in the United States and around the globe. Researchers say these sources are promising for filling in gaps when official data are not widely available.

“The idea was to explore if we could use this data to fill in some of the information gaps about pest spread, and ultimately, to support the development of better predictive models of where pest spread is happening, and when to use costly control measures,” said Laura Tateosian, associate teaching professor in the NC State Center for Geospatial Analytics. “Even though these are not formal scientific sources, we found that we could clearly see some of the major events that were occurring about two invasive pests in the news, and on Twitter.”

In the study, the researchers tracked past Tweets about two insects – spotted lanternfly and Tuta absoluta – compiled by a Web-based subscription service, Brandwatch, as well as online news articles aggregated by Google News and GDELT, or the Global Database of Events, Language and Tone Project.

Spotted lanternfly, which was first reported in the United States in Pennsylvania in 2014, is an insect native to Asia that can damage or destroy grapes, cherries, hops, certain lumber trees and other plants. The research team tracked historical posts about spotted lanternfly in Pennsylvania in a single year in 2017, and then globally between 2011 and 2021.

Tuta absoluta, an insect also known as the tomato leaf miner, is native to South America. It was discovered in Spain in 2006, and has spread into parts of Europe, Africa, Asia and the Middle East. It has been nicknamed the “tomato Ebola” because of the devastation it can cause to tomato crops. The researchers tracked posts about Tuta absoluta between 2011 and 2021.

“While some invasive insects have reached their global range, in both of these cases, the pests are actively spreading,” said Ariel Saffer, graduate student in geospatial analytics at NC State. “We launched this as a proof-of-concept study to see if it would be scientifically reasonable to use these sources to track pest spread. We compared information in places where the insects were known to be present to see if these sources accurately captured existing knowledge.”

The researchers found that activity on Twitter and in news stories tracked some of the patterns in official surveys. For example, the volume of Twitter posts and news activity about spotted lanternfly tracked the seasonal pest cycle, with more activity in the summer and fall. In terms of location, they saw a high volume of Tweets and news articles in areas located at the epicenter of outbreaks. In Pennsylvania, news articles captured a subset of counties confirmed in 2017 by USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service survey data, but also uncovered one county not listed in official records.

For Tuta absoluta, the team found posts on Twitter and in news stories often coincided with global pest spread, as compared to reports gathered by the European and Mediterranean Plant Protection Organization (EPPO). Information in news and Twitter posts also aligned with survey data for this pest in Nigeria, and sometimes before that information was widely available in scientific sources.

The researchers say the findings suggest Twitter and news information could be useful to supplement official data sources, but more work is needed.

“News media and social media have the potential to give you more immediate insight into what’s going on, especially if scientific information on insect spread is not immediately published in scientific literature, or not widely available to other scientists,” Saffer said. “Also, relying on data from scientific publications can sometimes offer a patchwork coverage of space and time, depending on when that study happened. It can be hard to get aggregated information in continuous time, especially at the global scale, as that information can be managed by multiple agencies.”

The study, “Plant pest invasions, as seen through news and social media,” appears online in Computers, Environment and Urban Systems. Co-authors included Chelsey Walden-Schreiner and Makiko Shukunobe.

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Note to Editors: The study abstract follows.

Plant pest invasions, as seen through news and social media

Authors: Laura G. Tateosian, Ariel Saffer, Chelsey Walden-Schreiner, Makiko Shukunobe

Published: Computers, Environment and Urban Systems

DOI: 10.1016/j.compenvurbsys.2022.101922

Abstract: Invasion by exotic pests into new geographic areas can cause major disturbances in forest and agricultural systems. Early response can greatly improve containment efforts, underscoring the importance of collecting up-to-date information about the locations where pest species are being observed. However, existing invasive species databases have limitations in both extent and rapidity. The spatial extent is limited by costs and there are delays between species establishment, official recording, and consolidation. Local online news outlets have the potential to provide supplemental spatial coverage worldwide and social media has the potential to provide direct observations and denser historical data for modeling. Gathering data from these online sources presents its own challenges and their potential contribution to historical tracking of pest invasions has not previously been tested. To this end, we examine the practical considerations for using three online aggregators, the Global Database of Events, Language and Tone (GDELT), Google News, and a commercial media listening platform, Brandwatch, to support pest biosurveillance. Using these tools, we investigate the presence and nature of cogent mentions of invasive species in these sources by conducting case studies of online news and Twitter excerpts regarding two invasive plant pests, Spotted Lanternfly and Tuta absoluta. Our results using past data demonstrate that online news and social media may provide valuable data streams to supplement official sources describing pest invasions.

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JOURNAL

Computers Environment and Urban Systems

DOI

10.1016/j.compenvurbsys.2022.101922 

ARTICLE TITLE

Plant pest invasions, as seen through news and social media

Climate risk insurance can effectively mitigate economic losses

Peer-Reviewed Publication

POTSDAM INSTITUTE FOR CLIMATE IMPACT RESEARCH (PIK)

In the US, hurricanes caused more than $400 billion in direct economic losses over the historical period 1980–2014, with losses peaking at more than $150 billion in 2005, the year when hurricane Katrina made landfall. "After intense storms with high direct economic losses, the economy may need several years to recover, such that a complete recovery may not always be possible between subsequent intense storms. Our model accounts for these long-term effects of tropical cyclones on economic development that can be much larger than the immediate effects," explains Christian Otto, scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and one of the lead authors of the study, which will be published in the renowned scientific journal Science Advances.

Economic growth losses from hurricanes could more than double in the US

"There is good scientific agreement that with ongoing global warming, the proportion of the most intense hurricanes will increase. Our computer simulations show that hurricane-induced economic growth losses could more than double in the US compared to the historical period even if global warming can be limited to below 2° Celsius in accordance with the Paris Climate Agreement. Without stringent reductions of greenhouse gas emissions, this warming level could be reached as early as in the middle of this century," emphasizes PIK-scientist Kilian Kuhla, the other lead author of the study.

In their study, the authors also assess the effectiveness and limitations of insurance as an adaptation strategy: "Our results show that a comprehensive, tax-financed climate risk insurance accelerates economic recovery, and is thus an effective tool to mitigate climate-change induced increases in economic losses. In the US, the implementation of such an insurance scheme could compensate for the expected increase in hurricane-induced growth losses, at least if global warming can be limited to 2° Celsius," explains co-author Tobias Geiger, scientist at the the German Weather Service and PIK.

This finding could also stimulate the ongoing discussion in Germany on whether natural hazards insurance should become mandatory to counteract the intensification of extreme weather events under global warming.

National insurance mechanisms insufficient in strongly affected developing countries

However, the study also finds that already in the present climate, national insurance solutions may be insufficient to effectively mitigate the economic losses caused by extreme weather events in strongly affected developing countries. For Haiti, as an example of a small island developing state strongly affected by hurricanes, the study shows that even if climate risk insurance were as well developed as in the US, growth losses would still be six times higher. "Our findings demonstrate the importance of international climate finance to help strongly affected developing countries to cope with climate change impacts. Further, climate risk insurance should be complemented by a broad portfolio of other adaptation measures such as investments in better building standards and resilient infrastructure," explains Christian Otto.

The authors stress that in addition to climate adaptation, a rapid and massive reduction of greenhouse gas emissions is key to mitigate climate change-induced losses in the long-run: "Current climate protection policies are insufficient to meet the agreed ‘well below 2°C’ warming limit but may rather lead to 2.7°C of warming. In consequence, US growth losses could more than double compared to a Paris-compatible 2°C scenario and increase more than sixfold compared to the historical period," says Katja Frieler, head of the research department Transformation Pathways at PIK and co-author of the study.

 

Article: Christian Otto, Kilian Kuhla, Tobias Geiger, Jacob Schewe, Katja Frieler (2023): Better insurance could effectively mitigate the increase in economic growth losses from US hurricanes under global warming. Science Advances. [DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.add6616]

Weblink to the article once it is published: http://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.add6616

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JOURNAL

Science Advances

DOI

10.1126/sciadv.add6616 

ARTICLE TITLE

Better insurance could effectively mitigate the increase in economic growth losses from US hurricanes under global warming

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

4-Jan-2023

After hurricanes, Florida neighborhoods see steady housing demand, wealthier residents

A new peer-reviewed study finds that, between 2000 and 2016, communities hit by hurricanes see no long-term change in housing demand—but that wealthier residents move in in the years immediately following a storm

Peer-Reviewed Publication

RESOURCES FOR THE FUTURE (RFF)

A new peer-reviewed study, which analyzes Florida housing markets battered by hurricanes, finds that affected areas tend to gentrify slightly in the years following a storm: the average income of new buyers increases while long-term demand stays stable.

The authors of the paper—who are based at Resources for the Future (RFF), the University of California San Diego, and the US Government Accountability Office—use data from county tax assessments, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and Zillow to gauge conditions of the housing markets and population turnover in Florida from 2000 to 2016.

The finding that housing demand didn’t decrease—and, perhaps counterintuitively, attracted wealthier inhabitants—was particularly surprising to the authors, especially given Florida’s reckoning with hurricane adaptation and resilience measures in the face of climate change.

“Hurricanes are projected to get stronger,” coauthor and RFF Fellow Yanjun (Penny) Liao said. “Our findings show that the idea that people will naturally retreat from hazardous areas may not necessarily hold up. In Florida, at least, it appears that market forces are not encouraging people to move to safer places.”

The authors find that hurricanes cause a temporary increase in home prices, likely due to the sudden decrease in housing supply from storm losses. However, they find that prices subside to baseline levels after an average of three years, which is approximately how long it takes for areas to build up housing stock to pre-storm levels. But during those pivotal three years when housing prices are higher than normal, the authors note several important tendencies:

• In the three years following a hurricane, the average income of new buyers increases proportionally to the rise in home prices. By the time prices stabilize, more than a quarter of all homes are occupied by households with a higher income than before the hurricane arrived.
• Home prices in hurricane-ravaged areas are 5 percent higher on average than unaffected ones during the three years following a hurricane. After three years, prices return to—but do not drop below—pre-storm levels.
• There is no significant change to the socio-demographic characteristics of neighborhoods after a hurricane other than income.
• Hurricanes do not fundamentally change the long-run demand for housing in affected areas.

One hypothesis for the gentrification phenomena is that wealthier households may move into communities at a higher rate following a storm because they have a greater ability to both absorb the temporary price increase and any insurance cost increases.

"In some ways, this indicates a market flaw given the current state of the climate,” said coauthor Joshua Graff Zivin of the University of California San Diego. “Policies may be needed to ensure that these communities have strong adaptation and mitigation measures in place to deal with future storms.”

The findings in this study are something that the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) and federal disaster assistance programs could find useful. Gentrification in Florida could lead to higher post-hurricane insurance claims from the NFIP, which could place a heavier burden on federal taxpayers, who back the program. In addition, federal spending in disaster assistance could also increase as a result.

The authors note that future research should examine the equity implications of post-hurricane housing markets, particularly in the context of fluctuating housing prices and options available to lower income buyers and renters in the years following a hurricane.

For more, read the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management article, “How Hurricanes Sweep Up Housing Markets: Evidence from Florida,” by Joshua Graff Zivin of the University of California San Diego, Yanjun (Penny) Liao of Resources for the Future, and Yann Panassié of the US Government Accountability Office.

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JOURNAL

Journal of Environmental Economics and Management

DOI

10.1016/j.jeem.2022.102770 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

How hurricanes sweep up housing markets: Evidence from Florida

Disaster-related trauma disproportionately affects individuals who are older and less educated—and higher income

A new study has found that these vulnerable populations are more likely to experience physical and mental functional limitations following severe weather events that lead to traumatic consequences, such as losing a home.

Peer-Reviewed Publication

BOSTON UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH

Major weather events such as last month’s 6.4 magnitude California earthquake, tornados in Louisiana, and a “once-in-a-generation” multi-state winter storm caused major damage to homes across the US and disrupted daily lives. As climate experts predict these natural disasters will continue to increase in severity and frequency, a new study led by a School of Public Health researcher is shedding new insight on the adverse health impacts that certain vulnerable populations experience following the loss of a home due to severe weather damage.

Published in the American Journal of Epidemiology, the study found that individuals from disadvantaged backgrounds disproportionately experience disaster-related home loss—and that they are more likely to be severely affected by home loss, namely by developing physical and mental functional limitations in the years after they lose their home.

The first-of-its-kind study builds upon previous research that has focused only on population-average data of home loss and adverse health effects; the new study identifies subgroups of vulnerable populations who are more likely to be severely affected by this traumatic experience. These include people who are older, not married, living alone, less educated, and unemployed, as well as those who had health problems prior to the losing their home.

The researchers say that identifying populations at exceptionally high risk of post-disaster functional impairment may better inform resource allocation during disaster mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery efforts at the local and federal level.

“Our study moved beyond the traditional finding on population-average effects and identified complex effect heterogeneity,” says study lead and corresponding author Dr. Koichiro Shiba, assistant professor of epidemiology at Boston University School of Public Health. “These results help policymakers by providing insights on the impacts that disaster damages may have on health disparities, which analysis of population-average effects ignores. The results can also be used to identify which subpopulations need to be prioritized in post-disaster public health supports.”

For the study, Dr. Shiba and colleagues used machine learning methods to identify variations in the association between disaster-related trauma and functional limitations among a group of older survivors of the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami. The 9.1-magnitude earthquake and 40-meter tsunami killed nearly 16,000 people and rendered more than 450,000 people homeless. The team used pre- and post-disaster survey data from the Iwanuma Study, part of a larger nationwide study of the living conditions of Japanese older adults, to measure individuals’ functional limitations in 2013 and 2016 based on three indicators: standardized assessments of physical disability (such as whether someone can turn over in bed independently); the ability to accomplish daily activities independently (such as walking, bathing, going to the bathroom); and higher-level functional capacities (such as using public transportation).

The researchers found that individuals experiencing more severe functional limitations after home loss tended to have less education and more pre-disaster health problems, such as depression. But notably, they also found that these individuals had higher income prior to losing their home.

One speculation for this finding could be explained by status inconsistency – “where different aspects of social status contradict with each other and potentially magnify the adverse impacts of disaster-related home loss,” Shiba explains. Previous studies have shown that higher-income people are also more likely to engage in excessive drinking, which could lead to limited functioning. Another explanation, he says, is that “instead of moving to a temporary housing village with other survivors, richer people might have been able to afford and relocate to private housing after home loss, which could result in loss of pre-existing social capital and support.”

Understanding these underlying mechanisms resulting from home loss and other traumatic experiences will help inform more targeted public health interventions following the inevitable occurrence of future severe weather events, he says.

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JOURNAL

American Journal of Epidemiology

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Uncovering heterogeneous associations of disaster-related traumatic experiences with subsequent mental health problems: A machine learning approach

Researchers detect fluoride in water with new simple color change test

Test is first to use artificial cell sensors to detect environmental contaminant

Peer-Reviewed Publication

NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: DIAGRAM OF CELL-FREE BIOSENSOR view more 

CREDIT: LUCKS/KAMAT; NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY

Environmental contaminants like fluoride, lead and pesticides exist all around and even within us. While researchers have simple ways to measure concentrations of such contaminants inside lab environments, levels are much more difficult to test in the field. That’s because they require costly specialized equipment.

Recent efforts in synthetic biology have leveraged cellular biosensors to both detect and report environmental contaminants in a cost-effective and field-deployable manner. Even as progress is being made, scientists have struggled to answer the question of how to protect sensor components from substances that naturally exist in extracted samples.

A cross-disciplinary team of synthetic biologists at Northwestern University is developing a sensor platform that will be able to detect a range of environmental and biological targets in real-world samples. Using an established riboswitch to build a biosensor for fluoride, the team found they could both protect the sensor and operate similarly to the way cells do by encapsulating the sensor inside a fatty membrane.

In a new paper published today (Jan. 4) in the journal Science Advances, researchers demonstrated that by modifying the makeup and penetrability of the lipid bilayer membrane, they could further tune and control the performance of their sensor.

“So much data is being generated, and a lot of it is being driven by health apps like smart watches,” said Julius Lucks, a co-corresponding author and professor of chemical and biological engineering at Northwestern’s McCormick School of Engineering. “We can sense our heartbeat, our temperature, but if you think about it, we really have no way to sense chemical things. We’re living in an information age, but the information we have is so miniscule — chemical sensing opens enormous dimensions of information that you can tap into.”

Lucks is also the associate chair of the chemical and biological engineering department. His lab has advanced the field’s understanding of molecular systems that respond to environmental changes by studying RNA and its role in cells; how RNA is used by cells to sense changes in their environment; and how these concepts can be used within cell-free systems to monitor the environment for health and sustainability.  

Cell-free synthetic biology, in which engineered biomolecular systems are used to activate biological machinery rather than living cells, is compelling because it is efficient, versatile and low-cost. Lucks designed a riboswitch sensor using bacterial cell extracts to power gene expression reactions (including fluorescent RNA or protein that lights up in response to contaminants) that produce visual outputs cheaply and within minutes.

Neha Kamat, an assistant professor of biomedical engineering within McCormick and a co-corresponding author, originally met Lucks at their faculty orientation and was interested in his desire to expand access to information. Kamat, whose expertise is in engineered membranes and membrane assembly, wondered if she could make Lucks’s test tube system better using a vesicle, a membrane with two layers.  

“They’re using RNA and its associated machinery to sense molecules in real water samples and generate meaningful outputs,” Kamat said. “My lab works a lot with the lipids commonly used to encapsulate mRNA for drug delivery, with the goal of using these compartments to build more cell-like structures. We had the idea that we could protect Julius’s switches and allow them to work in samples that might be kind of dirty with other contaminants, like a cell can.”

Other researchers have tried to place a sensor inside a membrane, but the switch stopped working properly and produced a much smaller signal because it’s difficult to fit everything within the small container and then scale it up. To overcome this, the team modified the genetic output in the sensor to amplify and color it, so it’s visible by eye and “you don’t need a fancy detector to do it,” said Lucks.

Encapsulation and protection are important to the sensor to make it function in native environments, like a wastewater channel with lots of other contaminants to erode the switch. This would be an example of “distributed sensing,” which could aid in fields from agriculture to human health.

The group came together more officially when they received Northwestern’s Chemistry of Life Processes Institute’s (CLP) Cornew Innovation Award by pitching their “potentially disruptive” idea to the CLP’s advisory board. The team earned seed funding to get their idea off the ground.

Lucks calls this project a “jumping off point” from which they will be able to embed sensors into more materials, including “smart” materials that can change properties, as in biology.

“As synthetic biologists, one of our major themes is identifying challenges and looking to nature,” Lucks said. “What is it doing already? Can we build off that and make it do more to meet our needs?”

Fluoride became an obvious choice because there’s a natural RNA molecule that senses it, allowing the team to design a simpler mechanism. But in the future, Kamat and Lucks have high ambitions about where use of the sensors can expand.

For example, the sensors could flow through the human body to detect small molecules and biomarkers before the sensor is retrieved through urine or another passive method. It could also detect levels of nitrate in soil and aid in monitoring run-off. Beyond that, Lucks and Kamat are excited to see uses within materials science such as soft robotics, thinking about how to build something akin to a butterfly that smells through its feet.

The paper, “Robust and tunable performance of a cell-free biosensor encapsulated in lipid vesicles,” was supported by the CLP, the National Science Foundation (grant numbers 1844219, 1844336 and 2145050) and the U.S. Department of Defense National Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship. Margrethe A. Boyd and Walter Thavarajah (of Northwestern) were also co-authors on the study.

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JOURNAL

Science Advances

DOI

10.1126/sciadv.add6605 

ARTICLE TITLE

Robust and tunable performance of a cell-free biosensor encapsulated in lipid vesicles

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

4-Jan-2023

Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekA

Climate warming reduces organic carbon burial beneath oceans

Painstaking study of 50-plus years of seafloor sediment cores has surprise payoff

Peer-Reviewed Publication

RICE UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: THE JOIDES RESOLUTION IS A SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH VESSEL OPERATED BY TEXAS A&M UNIVERSITY FOR THE INTERNATIONAL OCEAN DISCOVERY PROGRAM THAT DRILLS INTO THE OCEAN FLOOR TO COLLECT AND STUDY CORE SAMPLES. view more 

CREDIT: COURTESY OF THE INTERNATIONAL OCEAN DISCOVERY PROGRAM

HOUSTON – (Jan. 4, 2023) – An international team of scientists painstakingly gathered data from more than 50 years of seagoing scientific drilling missions to conduct a first-of-its-kind study of organic carbon that falls to the bottom of the ocean and gets drawn deep inside the planet.

Their study, published this week in Nature, suggests climate warming could reduce organic carbon burial and increase the amount of carbon that’s returned to the atmosphere, because warmer ocean temperatures could increase the metabolic rates of bacteria.

Researchers from Rice University, Texas A&M University, the University of Leeds and the University of Bremen analyzed data from drilled cores of muddy seafloor sediments that were gathered during 81 of the more than 1,500 shipboard expeditions mounted by the International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) and its predecessors. Their study provides the most detailed accounting to date of organic carbon burial over the past 30 million years, and it suggests scientists have much to learn about the dynamics of Earth’s long-term carbon cycle.

“What we’re finding is that burial of organic carbon is very active,” said study co-author Mark Torres of Rice. “It changes a lot, and it responds to the Earth's climatic system much more than scientists previously thought.”

The paper’s corresponding author, Texas A&M oceanographer Yige Zhang, said, “If our new records turn out to be right, then they’re going to change a lot of our understanding about the organic carbon cycle. As we warm up the ocean, it will make it harder for organic carbon to find its way to be buried in the marine sediment system.”

Carbon is the main component of life, and carbon constantly cycles between Earth’s atmosphere and biosphere as plants and animals grow and decompose. Carbon can also cycle through the Earth on a journey that takes millions of years. It begins at tectonic subduction zones where the relatively thin tectonic plates atop oceans are dragged down below thicker plates that sit atop continents. Downward diving oceanic crust heats up as it sinks, and most of its carbon returns to the atmosphere as carbon dioxide (CO2) from volcanoes.

Scientists have long studied the amount of carbon that gets buried in ocean sediments. Drilled cores from the ocean floor contain layers of sediments laid down over tens of millions of years. Using radiometric dating and other methods, researchers can determine when specific sediments were laid down. Scientists can also learn a lot about past conditions on Earth by studying minerals and microscopic skeletons of organisms trapped in sediments.

“There are two isotopes of carbon — carbon-12 and carbon-13,” said Torres, an assistant professor in Rice’s Department of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences. “The difference is just one neutron. So carbon-13 is just a bit heavier.

“But life is lazy, and if something’s heavier — even that tiny bit — it’s harder to move,” Torres said. “So life prefers the lighter isotope, carbon-12. And if you grow a plant and give it CO2, it will actually preferentially take up the lighter isotope. That means the ratio of carbon-13 to -12 in the plant is going to be lower — contain less 13 — than in the CO2 you fed the plant.”

For decades scientists have used isotopic ratios to study the relative amounts of inorganic and organic carbon that was undergoing burial at specific points in Earth’s history. Based on those studies and computational models, Torres said scientists have largely believed the amount of carbon undergoing burial had changed very little over the past 30 million years.

Zhang said, “We had this idea of using the actual data and calculating their organic carbon burial rates to come up with the global carbon burial. We wanted to see if this ‘bottom-up’ method agreed with the traditional method of isotopic calculations, which is more ‘top down.’”

The job of compiling data from IODP expeditions fell to study first author, Ziye Li of Bremen, who was then a visiting student in Zhang’s lab at A&M.

Zhang said the study findings were shocking.

“Our new results are very different — they’re the opposite of what the isotope calculations are suggesting,” he said.

Zhang said this is particularly the case during a period called the mid-Miocene, about 15 million years ago. Conventional scientific wisdom held that a large amount of organic carbon was buried around this interval, exemplified by the organic-rich “Monterey Formation” in California. The team’s findings suggest instead that the smallest amount of organic carbon was buried during this interval over the last 23 million years or so.

He described the team’s paper as the beginning of a potentially impactful new way to analyze data that may aid in understanding and addressing climate change.

“It’s people’s curiosity, but I also want to make it more informative about what’s going to happen in the future,” Zhang said. “We’re doing several things quite creatively to really use paleo data to inform us about the present and future.”

The research was supported by the American Chemical Society’s Petroleum Research Fund (59797-DNI2). On behalf of the National Science Foundation, Texas A&M has served as the science operator of the IODP drill ship JOIDES Resolution for the past 36 years as part of the largest federal research grant currently managed by the university.

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A schematic depiction of the burial and deep subduction of organic carbon.

CREDIT

R. Dasgupta/Rice University

Peer-reviewed paper:

“Neogene burial of organic carbon in the global ocean” | Nature | DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-05413-6

Ziye Li, Yi Ge Zhang, Mark Torres and Benjamin J. W. Mills

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05413-6

High-resolution IMAGES are available for download at:

https://news-network.rice.edu/news/files/2023/01/0104_CARBON-jr-lg.jpg
CAPTION: The JOIDES Resolution is a scientific research vessel operated by Texas A&M University for the International Ocean Discovery Program that drills into the ocean floor to collect and study core samples. (Photo courtesy of the International Ocean Discovery Program)

https://news-network.rice.edu/news/files/2023/01/0104_CARBON-mt-lg.jpg
CAPTION: Mark Torres (Photo by Tommy LaVergne/Rice University)

https://news-network.rice.edu/news/files/2023/01/0104_CARBON-RDfig-lg.jpg
CAPTION: A schematic depiction of the burial and deep subduction of organic carbon. (Image courtesy of R. Dasgupta/Rice University)

Related stories:

Mark Torres wins Geochemical Society's Clarke Award – Feb. 12, 2021
https://news.rice.edu/news/2021/mark-torres-wins-geochemical-societys-clarke-award

Glaciers may have helped warm Earth – July 31, 2017
https://news2.rice.edu/2017/07/31/glaciers-may-have-helped-warm-earth/

Links:

Texas A&M University research feature – Jan. 4, 2023
https://artsci.tamu.edu/news/2023/01/texas-aandm-oceanographers-research-points-to-new-method-of-understanding-global-organic-carbon-cycle.html

This release can be found online at news.rice.edu.

Follow Rice News and Media Relations via Twitter @RiceUNews.

Located on a 300-acre forested campus in Houston, Rice University is consistently ranked among the nation’s top 20 universities by U.S. News & World Report. Rice has highly respected schools of Architecture, Business, Continuing Studies, Engineering, Humanities, Music, Natural Sciences and Social Sciences and is home to the Baker Institute for Public Policy. With 4,240 undergraduates and 3,972 graduate students, Rice’s undergraduate student-to-faculty ratio is just under 6-to-1. Its residential college system builds close-knit communities and lifelong friendships, just one reason why Rice is ranked No. 1 for lots of race/class interaction and No. 1 for quality of life by the Princeton Review. Rice is also rated as a best value among private universities by Kiplinger’s Personal Finance.

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JOURNAL

Nature

DOI

10.1038/s41586-022-05413-6 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Meta-analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Neogene burial of organic carbon in the global ocean

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

4-Jan-2023

Climate change could cause “disaster” in the world’s oceans, say UC Irvine scientists

Deep overturning circulation collapses with strong warming

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA - IRVINE

Irvine, Calif., Jan. 4, 2023 — Climate-driven heating of seawater is causing a slowdown of deep circulation patterns in the Atlantic and Southern oceans, according to University of California, Irvine Earth system scientists, and if this process continues, the ocean’s ability to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere will be severely limited, further exacerbating global warming.

In a recent study published in Nature Climate Change, these researchers analyzed projections from three dozen climate models and found that the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation and the Southern Meridional Overturning Circulation will slow by as much as 42 percent by 2100. The simulations suggest that under worst-case warming, the SMOC could cease entirely by 2300.

"Analysis of the projections from 36 Earth system models over a range of climate scenarios shows that unchecked global warming could lead to a shutdown of the ocean deep circulation,” said co-author J. Keith Moore, UCI professor of Earth system science. “This would be a climate disaster similar in magnitude to complete melting of the ice sheets on land.”

The importance of overturning circulation

In the Atlantic, as warm water flows northwards on the surface, it cools and evaporates, making it saltier and denser. This heavier water sinks into the deep ocean and proceeds to the south where it eventually rises back up, carrying from the depths the nutrients that are the food foundation of marine ecosystems.

In addition, globe-spanning ocean circulation creates a powerful factory for the processing of atmospheric carbon dioxide. The basic physical and chemical interaction of seawater and air – what Moore and his colleagues call a “solubility pump” – draws CO2 into the ocean. While the ocean circulation sends some carbon back to the sky, the net amount is sequestered in the ocean’s depths.

Additionally, a “biological pump” occurs as phytoplankton use CO2 during photosynthesis and in forming carbonate shells. When the plankton and larger animals die, they sink, slowly decomposing and releasing the carbon and nutrients at depth. Some comes back up with circulation and upwelling, but a portion remains banked beneath the waves.

“A disruption in circulation would reduce ocean uptake of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, intensifying and extending the hot climate conditions,” Moore said. “Over time the nutrients that support marine ecosystems would increasingly become trapped in the deep ocean, leading to declining global-ocean biological productivity.”

Humans depend on the solubility pump and the biological pump to help remove some of the CO2 emitting into the air through fossil fuel burning, land use practices and other activities, according to Moore.

“Our analysis also shows that reducing greenhouse gas emissions now can prevent this complete shutdown of the deep circulation in the future,” he said.

Joining Moore on this project, which was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, were lead author Yi Liu, UCI Ph.D. student in Earth system science; Francois Primeau, professor and chair of UCI’s Department of Earth System Science; and Wei-Lei Wang, professor of ocean and Earth sciences at Xiamen University in China. The study depended substantially on simulations developed by the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 6 (CMIP6) project used to inform the IPCC climate assessments.

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JOURNAL

Nature Climate Change

DOI

10.1038/s41558-022-01555-7 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Computational simulation/modeling

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Reduced CO2 uptake and growing nutrient sequestration from slowing overturning circulation