An examination of federal personnel changes in the Trump era

Many employment trends for specific agencies reflected the Trump administration’s priorities

Peer-Reviewed Publication

PLOS

 

IMAGE: THE STUDY FOUND THAT THE TOTAL NUMBER OF PEOPLE EMPLOYED FULL-TIME BY THE U.S. FEDERAL GOVERNMENT REMAINED LARGELY UNCHANGED BY THE END OF THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION, BUT WITH SIGNIFICANT VARIATION IN GROWTH, DOWNSIZING, AND TURNOVER BETWEEN AGENCIES. view more 

CREDIT: CALEB PEREZ, UNSPLASH, CC0 (HTTPS://CREATIVECOMMONS.ORG/PUBLICDOMAIN/ZERO/1.0/)

According to a new analysis, the total number of people employed full-time by the U.S. federal government remained largely unchanged by the end of the Trump administration, but with significant variation in growth, downsizing, and turnover between agencies. Brian Libgober of Northwestern University and Mark Richardson of Georgetown University present these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on January 18, 2023.

During President Trump’s term, some instances of downsizing or high turnover in the federal workforce—for instance, loss of staff at the State Department and at the Environmental Protection Agency—drew much attention. A growing body of research is deepening understanding of exactly how federal staffing changed during Trump’s time in office.

Adding to this knowledge, Libgober and Richardson analyzed rates of change in non-seasonal, full-time employment at executive branch agencies during the Trump presidency. They used a method known as Bayesian hierarchical modeling, which helped them compare employment changes between very large and very small agencies in a more statistically sound manner than if they had simply compared raw rates.

The analysis showed that aggregate federal employment remained relatively unchanged during the Trump presidency. However, some agencies grew significantly, some downsized, some remained relatively stable, and some—for instance, the National Institute of Food and Agriculture—had major turnovers in staffing without significantly changing size.

Certain agencies related to immigration and federal affairs, such as the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services and the Department of Veterans Affairs, grew significantly. Meanwhile, the Departments of the Interior, Labor, and the Treasury shrank. Certain agencies focused on civil rights had high turnover, including the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Minority Business Development Agency. Despite being subjects of major political conflict, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement remained fairly stable in terms of size and turnover.

Many of these trends were in line with the Trump administration’s priorities, the researchers note.

Hiring rates during the Trump administration did not clearly vary from hiring during the prior two (Obama and G.W. Bush) administrations, but loss of staff was higher for most agencies, especially when compared to the Bush presidency.

The authors add: “Contemporary news coverage often made it appear as though the Trump administration was doing significant damage to the federal civil service by pushing out apolitical officials who resisted their agenda, and in some cases that certainly happened. But how widespread the “damage” to the civil service was, and the exact nature of the damage, has not been too clear until now.”

#####

In your coverage please use this URL to provide access to the freely available article in PLOS ONE: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0278458

Citation: Libgober B, Richardson MD (2023) Identifying bureaus with substantial personnel change during the Trump administration: A Bayesian approach. PLoS ONE 18(1): e0278458. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0278458

Author Countries: USA

Funding: The authors received no specific funding for this work.

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JOURNAL

PLoS ONE

DOI

10.1371/journal.pone.0278458 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Identifying bureaus with substantial personnel change during the Trump administration: A Bayesian approach

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

18-Jan-2023

In the Neanderthal site of Combe-Grenal, France, hunting strategies were unaffected by changing climate

Hunted animals at Combe-Grenal consistently came from open tundra-like habitats

Peer-Reviewed Publication

PLOS

 

IMAGE: FROM DENTAL FACETS TO PALEOECOLOGICAL RECONSTRUCTIONS. view more 

CREDIT: EMILIE BERLIOZ, CC-BY 4.0 (HTTPS://CREATIVECOMMONS.ORG/LICENSES/BY/4.0/)

Neanderthals in Combe-Grenal (France) preferred to hunt in open environments, and their hunting strategies did not alter during periods of climatic change, according to a study published January 18, 2023 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Emilie Berlioz of the CNRS/Université Toulouse Jean Jaurès, France, and colleagues, as part of research carried out in the ANR DeerPal project.

The archaeological site of Combe-Grenal in France was inhabited by Neanderthals for many millennia throughout the Middle Palaeolithic from around 150,000 to 45,000 years ago. These inhabitants hunted local animals whose remains are also found at the site. During the Neanderthals’ occupation, the region experienced numerous oscillations of climate and environmental conditions which are known to have impacted the habits of local fauna. In this study, Berlioz and colleagues investigated the habitat preferences of species hunted by the Neanderthals to investigate whether these environmental shifts affected Neanderthal hunting strategies.

The authors examined nearly 400 specimens of hunted animals from the site, including bison, aurochs, red deer, and reindeer, using wear on the animals’ teeth to infer their diets during the final days of their lives. The animals were found to have fed predominantly on plants growing in an open, tundra-like environment. This pattern was consistent across the many millennia recorded at Combe-Grenal, suggesting that these hunted animals continued to prefer an open-habitat feeding ecology, even during times of significant climate fluctuations. As a result, Neanderthal hunters “stayed in the open”, and were not forced to switch to hunting tactics adapted to close encounters in forested environments. In Combe-Grenal, these results put into perspective the link generally established between the evolution of the production of lithic tools and the adaptation of hunting strategies of human populations in response to environmental changes

This information is essential to understanding the influences of local environmental changes on material culture or the human history. Further examination of similar data at other sites will allow researchers to investigate whether this trend holds true at different times and in different regions.

The authors add: “Dental microwear texture analysis of ungulate preys at Combe-Grenal shows Neanderthal hunting strategies were unaffected by climatic and environmental oscillations throughout millenia.”

Dental molds for dental microwear analysis, aiming at deciphering the paleoenvironments exploited by Neanderthal populations.

CREDIT

Aurora Diaz Obregon, CC-BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

Author Interview: https://plos.io/3it9Wo1

In your coverage please use this URL to provide access to the freely available article in PLOS ONE: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0278395

Citation: Berlioz E, Capdepon E, Discamps E (2023) A long-term perspective on Neanderthal environment and subsistence: Insights from the dental microwear texture analysis of hunted ungulates at Combe-Grenal (Dordogne, France). PLoS ONE 18(1): e0278395. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0278395

Author Countries: Spain, France

Funding: ED: ANR-18-CE03-0007 (funder: Agence Nationale de la Recherche) https://anr.fr/Project-ANR-18-CE03-0007. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. EB: L'Oréal-UNESCO FWIS Award 2019 (no grant number) (funder: L'Oréal-UNESCO) https://www.forwomeninscience.com/. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

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JOURNAL

PLoS ONE

DOI

10.1371/journal.pone.0278395 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

A long-term perspective on Neanderthal environment and subsistence: Insights from the dental microwear texture analysis of hunted ungulates at Combe-Grenal (Dordogne, France)

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

18-Jan-2023

Satellites can be used to detect waste sites on Earth

New method could enable monitoring of sites likely to leak plastic waste into rivers and oceans

Peer-Reviewed Publication

PLOS

 

IMAGE: THE GLOBAL PLASTIC WATCH TOOL, ACCESSIBLE AT HTTPS://GLOBALPLASTICWATCH.ORG/. view more 

CREDIT: THE MINDEROO FOUNDATION, CC-BY 4.0 (HTTPS://CREATIVECOMMONS.ORG/LICENSES/BY/4.0/)

A new computational system uses satellite data to identify sites on land where people dispose of waste, providing a new tool to monitor waste and revealing sites that may leak plastic into waterways. Caleb Kruse of Earthrise Media in Berkeley, California, Dr. Fabien Laurier from the Minderoo Foundation in Washington DC, and colleagues present this method in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on January 18, 2022.

Every year, millions of metric tons of plastic waste end up in oceans, harming hundreds of species and their ecosystems. Most of this waste comes from land-based sources that leak into watersheds. Efforts to address this issue require better understanding of where people dispose of waste on land, but resources to detect and monitor such sites—both official sites and informal or illegal ones—are lacking.

In recent years, the use of computational tools known as neural networks to analyze satellite data has shown great value in the field of remote sensing. Building on that work, Kruse and colleagues developed a new system of neural networks to analyze data from the European Space Agency’s Sentinel-2 satellites and demonstrated its potential for use in monitoring waste sites on land.

To evaluate the performance of the new system, the researchers first applied it to Indonesia, where it detected 374 waste sites—more than twice the number of sites reported in public records. Broadening to all countries across Southeast Asia, the system identified a total of 966 waste sites—nearly three times the number of publicly recorded sites—that were subsequently confirmed to exist via other methods.

The researchers demonstrated that their new system can be used to monitor waste sites over time. In addition, they showed that nearly 20 percent of the waste sites they detected are found within 200 meters of a waterway, with some visibly spilling into rivers that eventually reach the ocean.

These findings, as well as future findings using this system, could help inform waste-management policies and decision-making. The data are publicly available, so stakeholders can use it to advocate for action within their communities. Looking ahead, the researchers plan to refine and expand their new waste site-monitoring system globally.

The authors add: "For the first time, Global Plastic Watch arms governments and researchers around the world with data that can guide better waste management interventions, ensuring land-based waste doesn’t end up in our oceans.”

The pixel classifier inference pipeline. A temporally-paired set of Sentinel-2 data is broken apart into spectrograms to be classified by the pixel classifier neural network. This generates a heatmap of waste likelihood within the region, here visualized in red.

CREDIT

Kruse et al., 2023, PLOS ONE, CC-BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

In your coverage please use this URL to provide access to the freely available article in PLOS ONE: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0278997

Citation: Kruse C, Boyda E, Chen S, Karra K, Bou-Nahra T, Hammer D, et al. (2023) Satellite monitoring of terrestrial plastic waste. PLoS ONE 18(1): e0278997. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0278997

Author Countries: USA, Australia

Funding: Earthrise Media and JJ received funding from the Minderoo Foundation (https://minderoo.org/) for this work. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

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JOURNAL

PLoS ONE

DOI

10.1371/journal.pone.0278997 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Satellite monitoring of terrestrial plastic waste

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

18-Jan-2023

Underlying assumptions of air quality need to be redefined

Ozone levels near the surface in urban environments lower than expected

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF INNSBRUCK

 

IMAGE: THOMAS KARL AT THE INNSBRUCK ATMOSPHERIC OBSERVATORY ABOVE THE CITY OF INNSBRUCK, AUSTRIA. view more 

CREDIT: UNIVERSITY OF INNSBRUCK

The 40-meter-high monitoring tower of the Innsbruck Atmospheric Observatory near the city center of Innsbruck in Austria, Europe, continuously provides data on the composition of the atmosphere near the surface. Every hour, 36,000 data points are recorded. Using a special measuring method – the so-called eddy covariance method – the concentration of air components can be continuously monitored. An international team led by Thomas Karl from the Department of Atmospheric and Cryospheric Sciences at the University of Innsbruck has now used these data to study the chemistry of ozone, nitrogen monoxide and nitrogen dioxide in urban areas in detail. The high proportion of diesel vehicles in European cities leads to strong concentrations of nitrogen monoxide. This reacts with ozone to produce nitrogen dioxide. In the atmosphere, nitrogen dioxide decomposes again to nitrogen monoxide and atomic oxygen, which immediately combines with atmospheric oxygen to form ozone.

Common assumption needs to be refined

This chemical cycle was described mathematically over 60 years ago in the first air pollution textbook by Philip Leighton. The relationship between the two processes has since been referred to as the Leighton ratio. Computer models of atmospheric chemistry use the Leighton ratio to minimize complexity by deriving the concentration of ozone, nitric oxide, and nitrogen dioxide from the concentration of each of the other two. In practice, this has been used, for example, to derive ozone concentrations in areas polluted by nitrogen oxides. The Innsbruck atmospheric researchers' data now show that in the presence of high nitrogen monoxide emissions, computational simplifications made by Leighton lead to incorrect results. Thomas Karl points out that “in cities with high nitrogen monoxide emissions, this ratio can be overestimated by up to 50 percent, which can lead to model calculations overestimating ground-level ozone concentrations in urban areas.” The effect of chemistry – turbulence interactions plays a significant role in the lowest layer of the atmosphere, up to 200 meters above the ground.

Responsible for the effect studied in Innsbruck is the combination of strong turbulence in urban areas in the presence of  high nitrogen monoxide emissions. . The mixing of the gases combined with the relatively rapid chemical processes lead to more ozone being converted into nitrogen dioxide. The researchers' data also show that direct emissions of nitrogen dioxide from urban traffic are largely negligible in comparison to secondary formation. “It remains important to note that environmental regulations do not rely on model calculations but come into effect depending on actual measured pollutant concentrations,” Thomas Karl emphasized.

The results have now been published in Science Advances. The research was conducted jointly with the National Center for Atmospheric Research (USA), Case Western Reserve University (USA), Wageningen University (NL) and Luftblick (AT), and was financially supported by the Austrian Science Fund FWF and the European Space Agency ESA, among others.

 

Publication: High Urban NOx Triggers a Substantial Chemical Downward Flux of Ozone. Thomas Karl, Christian Lamprecht, Martin Graus, Alexander Cede, Martin Tiefengraber, Jordi Vila-Guerau de Arellano, David Gurarie, Donald Lenschow. Science Advances 2022 DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.add2365

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JOURNAL

Science Advances

DOI

10.1126/sciadv.add2365 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

High Urban NOx Triggers a Substantial Chemical Downward Flux of Ozone

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

18-Jan-2023

New research reveals shifting identities of global fishing fleet to help bolster fisheries management

Scientific study fuses multiple data sources to advance global understanding of vessel identity and behavior

Peer-Reviewed Publication

GLOBAL FISHING WATCH

 

IMAGE: DATA ANALYSIS IN THIS STUDY’S ASSESSMENT OF FISHING COMPLIANCE REVEALED HOTSPOTS OF FISHING ACTIVITY BY FOREIGN-OWNED VESSELS IN THE SOUTHWEST PACIFIC, THE WEST INDIAN OCEANS, AND CERTAIN NATIONAL WATERS. view more 

CREDIT: GLOBAL FISHING WATCH

WASHINGTON, D.C. - A new study published today in Science Advances combines a decade’s worth of satellite vessel tracking data with identification information from more than 40 public registries to determine where and when vessels responsible for most of the world’s industrial fishing change their country of registration, a practice known as “reflagging”, and identify hotspots of potential unauthorized fishing and activity of foreign-owned vessels.   

Using big data processing and a compilation of global datasets, researchers from Global Fishing Watch, the Marine Geospatial Ecology Lab from Duke University, and Stockholm Resilience Centre were able to track and analyze 35,000 commercial fishing and support vessels to reveal their changing identities and enable the reconstruction of vessel histories to demonstrate reflagging patterns. 

The study, “Tracking Elusive and Shifting Identities of the Global Fishing Fleet'' found that close to 20 percent of high seas fishing is carried out by vessels that are either internationally unregulated or not publicly authorized, with large concentrations of these ships operating in the Southwest Atlantic Ocean and the western Indian Ocean.

The data used in the study is intended to complement the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations’ Global Record of Fishing Vessels, Refrigerated Transport Vessels and Supply Vessels, a flagship transparency initiative which serves as the official database of information on vessels used for fishing and fishing-related activities. Together with the International Maritime Organization’s ship identification number scheme, these resources can provide fisheries authorities with the information needed to adequately monitor vessel activity, implement flag State responsibilities, and inform responsible fisheries management. 

“Until now, we’ve had limited information linking together the identity and activity of specific vessels,” said Jaeyoon Park, senior data scientist at Global Fishing Watch and lead author of the study. “When a vessel’s identity is changed, it makes tracking them all the more difficult, allowing bad actors the opportunity to take advantage of information gaps and avoid oversight. We need to close that loophole.” 

Of the 116 States involved in reflagging, the study found that one-fifth of them were responsible for about 80 percent of this practice over the past decade, with most reflagging occurring in Asia, Latin America, Africa, and the Pacific Islands. The study found that reflagging takes place in just a few ports—Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Busan, Zhoushan, and Kaohsiung have the highest activity. Vessels are often reflagged to States that are unrelated to the ports in which they are changing their registrations. This means that a vessel can change its flag from one country to another without ever having to enter port in either of those countries.

While there are legitimate reasons for a vessel to change its identity, abusive reflagging, or “flag hopping,” is one way that operators avoid oversight. The study found that fleets with prevalent reflagging are over five times more likely to be composed of vessels under foreign ownership which are often registered to “flags of convenience,” defined by the International Transport Workers' Federation as countries that offer foreign shipowners the ability to register, or fly the flag, of their own State. 

While reflagging and foreign ownership are lawful, when not properly regulated and monitored, they can indicate a risk of illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing. IUU fishing accounts for as much as 20 percent of the global seafood catch with annual losses valued at up to $23.5 billion.

“Knowing the identities of vessels fishing the high seas is critical for uncovering the connection between the potential IUU fishing behavior and vessels that repeatedly change their name, flag State or registered owner,” said co-author Gabrielle Carmine, a doctoral candidate at Duke University's Nicholas School of the Environment. “This analysis could be used to help monitor fisheries more effectively and for accountability in the use and protection of marine biodiversity."

The study also identified concentrations of fishing activity by foreign-owned vessels, which are focused in parts of the high seas and certain national waters, including the southwest Pacific, the northwest Indian Ocean, Argentina and the Falkland Islands (Malvinas), and West Africa where vessels are typically owned by China, Chinese Taipei, and Spain. The hotspots in this study correspond to the areas in which multiple nongovernmental organizations have called for better governance systems. 

“By synthesizing more than 100 billion GPS positions with consolidated identity information from 200,000 vessels, we were able to reveal patterns about vessel activity from the past decade,” added Park. “This study represents a major step forward in our ability to enhance monitoring efforts and help authorities direct enforcement resources.” 

The data used in this study will be periodically updated and shared publicly to help enable better understanding of vessel behavior and bolster international fisheries management. 

###

Notes to the editor:

• Download data visualization here: Google Drive link
• Data visualization caption: Data analysis in this study’s assessment of fishing compliance revealed hotspots of fishing activity by foreign-owned vessels in the southwest Pacific, the west Indian oceans, and certain national waters.
• About vessel identity data: The data used to determine vessel identities in this study were based on public registries. A lack of vessel identity information exists at the national level, while the high seas are predominantly covered by registries published by regional fisheries management organizations. The identity data used in this study has more extensive coverage for vessels that are 24 meters and longer, as these vessels are more likely to be registered to national or international public registries than smaller ones.
• About AIS data: First developed as a collision-avoidance system, AIS is essential to vessel and crew safety. But AIS is easily manipulated, as it can simply be switched off or allow the transmission of false information, such as a vessel’s name, type or location. Currently there is no global mandate for all fishing vessels to broadcast on AIS. And due to the varying quality of satellite reception by region, there is also unequal coverage of AIS data throughout the world. Most vessels larger than 24 meters are equipped with AIS while only a small fraction of vessels smaller than 24 meters use AIS, resulting in limitations in AIS data. 
• Paper citation: J. Park, J. Van Osdel, J. Turner, C. M. Farthing, N. A. Miller, H. L. Linder, G. Ortuño Crespo, G. Carmine, D. A. Kroodsma, Tracking elusive and shifting identities of the global fishing fleet. Sci. Adv. 9, eabp8200 (2023).
• Download the data at: https://globalfishingwatch.org/data-download/datasets/public-vessel-identity:v20230118

Global Fishing Watch is an international nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing ocean governance through increased transparency of human activity at sea. By creating and publicly sharing map visualizations, data and analysis tools, we aim to enable scientific research and transform the way our ocean is managed. We believe human activity at sea should be public knowledge in order to safeguard the global ocean for the common good of all.

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JOURNAL

Science Advances

DOI

10.1126/sciadv.abp8200 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Tracking elusive and shifting identities of the global fishing fleet

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

18-Jan-2023

Special drone collects environmental DNA from trees

Peer-Reviewed Publication

ETH ZURICH

 

IMAGE: DRONE FLIES THROUGH FIR FOREST view more 

CREDIT: PHOTOGRAPH: GOTTARDO PESTALOZZI / WSL

Ecologists are increasingly using traces of genetic material left behind by living organisms left behind in the environment, called environmental DNA (eDNA), to catalogue and monitor biodiversity. Based on these DNA traces, researchers can determine which species are present in a certain area.

Obtaining samples from water or soil is easy, but other habitats – such as the forest canopy – are difficult for researchers to access. As a result, many species remain untracked in poorly explored areas.

Researchers at ETH Zurich and the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research WSL, and the company SPYGEN have partnered to develop a special drone that can autonomously collect samples on tree branches.

How the drone collects material

The drone is equipped with adhesive strips. When the aircraft lands on a branch, material from the branch sticks to these strips. Researchers can then extract DNA in the lab, analyse it and assign it to genetic matches of the various organisms using database comparisons.

But not all branches are the same: they vary in terms of their thickness and elasticity. Branches also bend and rebound when a drone lands on them. Programming the aircraft in such a way that it can still approach a branch autonomously and remain stable on it long enough to take samples was a major challenge for the roboticists.

“Landing on branches requires complex control,” explains Stefano Mintchev, Professor of Environmental Robotics at ETH Zurich and WSL. Initially, the drone does not know how flexible a branch is, so the researchers fitted it with a force sensing cage. This allows the drone to measure this factor at the scene and incorporate it into its flight manoeuvre.

Preparing rainforest operations at Zoo Zurich

Researchers have tested their new device on seven tree species. In the samples, they found DNA from 21 distinct groups of organisms, or taxa, including birds, mammals and insects. “This is encouraging, because it shows that the collection technique works,” says Mintchev, who co-authored the study that has just appeared in the journal Science Robotics.

The researchers now want to improve their drone further to get it ready for a competition in which the aim is to detect as many different species as possible across 100 hectares of rainforest in Singapore in 24 hours.

To test the drone’s efficiency under conditions similar to those it will experience at the competition, Mintchev and his team are currently working at the Zoo Zurich’s Masoala Rainforest. “Here we have the advantage of knowing which species are present, which will help us to better assess how thorough we are in capturing all eDNA traces with this technique or if we’re missing something,” Mintchev says.

For this event, however, the collection device must become more efficient and mobilize faster. In tests at home in Switzerland, the drone collected material from seven trees in three days; in Singapore, it must be able to fly to and collect samples from ten times as many trees in just one day.

Collecting samples in a natural rainforest, however, presents the researchers with even tougher challenges. Frequent rain washes eDNA off surfaces, while wind and clouds impede drone operation. “We are therefore very curious to see whether our sampling method will also prove itself under extreme conditions in the tropics,” Mintchev says.

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JOURNAL

Science Robotics

DOI

10.1126/scirobotics.add5762 

ARTICLE TITLE

Drone-​assisted collection of environmental DNA from tree branches for biodiversity monitoring

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

18-Jan-2023

New tropical kelp forest discovered in the Galapagos Islands

The significance of this research, led by the Charles Darwin Foundation, lies in a new species record of this type of alga that, until now, it has been mostly found in colder waters

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF MALAGA

 

IMAGE: THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THIS RESEARCH LIES IN A NEW SPECIES RECORD OF THIS TYPE OF ALGA THAT, UNTIL NOW, IT HAS BEEN MOSTLY FOUND IN COLDER WATERS view more 

CREDIT: CHARLES DARWIN FOUNDATION/UNIVERSITY OF MALAGA

The researcher of the Department of Botany and Plant Physiology of the University of Malaga María Altamirano is a member of the scientific team that collaborates in the Seamounts Project, a project led by the Charles Darwin Foundation (CDF) that has discovered an extensive kelp forest on the summit of a seamount, at depths of ~ 50 m, in the south of the Galapagos Islands.

The significance of this research, published in the scientific journal Marine Biology, lies in a new kelp species record for the region and, probably, for science. Thus, this research, conducted in collaboration with the Galapagos National Park Directorate and National Geographic, has discovered and characterized the ecology of this new ecosystem.

Refuges for diversity

Kelps are brown algal seaweeds, famous for reaching very large sizes, which form marine forests in high densities. Similar to coral reefs and mangroves, these forests are very important for the maintenance of marine biodiversity, as they provide protection and food for many species.

As kelps are cold-water species, most of these forests are found exclusively in warm-cold or polar regions and shallow coastal areas because they need constant light. However, this kelp forest of the Galapagos Marine Reserve is located in a tropical region away from coastal areas.

"This is the first time that such an extensive and dense kelp forest has been registered in this part of the Galapagos and at such depths, since what we found looks very different from the Eisenia galapagensis kelp species, discovered in this area in 1934”, explains Salomé Buglass, CDF scientist and lead researcher, who adds that it is almost twice the normal size.

Remotely operated vehicles

As standard scuba diving is restricted to depths of 40 meters, CDF’s research teams relied on new technologies, such as remotely operated vehicles (ROVs), to explore, document and characterize these deep-sea ecosystems.

In fact, thanks to the installation of a mechanical claw to the ROV, in 2018 Professor María Altamirano, who was in the archipelago as coordinator of a collaboration project of the University of Malaga, together with the researcher at the University of Granada Julio de la Rosa, were able to analyze specimens of this newly registered alga, “which is essential to determine its taxonomy and is still under study”.

Explore and protect

“Despite their enormous importance as ecosystem engineers and as support for the fascinating marine life of the Galapagos Islands, the macroalgae of this area have been widely ignored among the marine ecosystems of the archipelago”, says Altamirano. “This discovery offers the opportunity to highlight its significance as habitat for other species and their role in carbon sequestration within deep-sea areas”.

The scientists conclude that knowing that there are entire marine forests teeming with life that we were unaware of at only 50 m depth, serves as a reminder of how much remains to be explored, discovered, learned and protected.

International scientific team

Led by the researcher at the FCD Salomé Buglass, the Seamounts Project was conducted by an international scientific team formed by: María Altamirano at the University of Malaga, Hiroshi Kawaii at the Kobe University, Takeaki Hanyuda at Kitasato University, Julio de la Rosa at the University of Granada, Jorge Rafael Bermúdez at the Higher Polytechnic School of the Littoral, Euan Harvey at Curtin University, Inti Keith at the CDF, and Simon Donner at the University of British Columbia.

Bibliography:

Buglass, S., Kawai, H., Hanyuda, T., Harvey, E., Donner, S., De la Rosa, J., Keith, I., Bermúdez, J.R., Altamirano, M. 2022. Novel mesophotic kelp forest in the Galápagos archipelago. Marine Biology (2022) 169:156. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00227-022-04142-8

New tropical kelp forest disco [VIDEO] | EurekAlert! Science News Releases

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JOURNAL

Marine Biology

DOI

10.1007/s00227-022-04142-8 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Novel mesophotic kelp forests in the Galápagos archipelago

The researcher of the Department of Botany and Plant Physiology of the University of Malaga María Altamirano is a member of the scientific team that collaborates in the Seamounts Project, a project led by the Charles Darwin Foundation (CDF) that has discovered an extensive kelp forest on the summit of a seamount, at depths of ~ 50 m, in the south of the Galapagos Islands. (IMAGE)

As standard scuba diving is restricted to depths of 40 meters, CDF’s research teams relied on new technologies, such as remotely operated vehicles (ROVs), to explore, document and characterize these deep-sea ecosystems.

CREDIT

Charles Darwin Foundation/University of Malaga