WAIT, WHAT?!

WVU researchers team up with middle school students to study potential benefits of acid rain

Grant and Award Announcement

WEST VIRGINIA UNIVERSITY

 

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WEST VIRGINIA UNIVERSITY RESEARCHERS HAVE RECEIVED NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION FUNDING TO STUDY THE EFFECTS OF ACID RAIN, WITH THE HELP OF AREA EIGHTH GRADERS, IN THE FERNOW EXPERIMENTAL FOREST IN TUCKER COUNTY.

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CREDIT: WVU PHOTO/EDWARD BRZOSTEK

West Virginia University biologists will tap local eighth graders for help on important research studying what happens when acid rain stops falling.

Years of this environmental phenomena in the eastern U.S. have led to nitrogen pollution in streams and waterways. However, it’s also helped trees grow and microbes capture carbon from the atmosphere. Edward Brzostek, associate professor in biology at the WVU Eberly College of Arts and Sciences, has been working in the Fernow Experimental Forest in Tucker County studying the effects of acid rain on the region’s forests and watersheds.

A recent five-year award from the National Science Foundation’s Long Term Research in Environmental Biology program will support continued study on the topic by WVU, the U.S. Forest Service and local students.

“Until the Clean Air Act, we were essentially simulating a whole continental-scale nitrogen fertilization experiment,” Brzostek said. “We were dumping nitrogen on all these ecosystems, and that led to some good things and some bad things. One good thing was the trees grow faster because trees need nitrogen. The other is the soil carbon increased. This is because when the trees don't need as much nitrogen, they don't send as much carbon below ground to fuel microbial decomposition. This leads to a decline in decomposition. We get faster growing trees that store more carbon.”

Ecosystems can only hold so much nitrogen, so the excess goes into the water and leads to water quality problems downstream.

Brzostek and his team, including Ember Morrissey, associate professor of environmental microbiology, and Justin Mathias, assistant professor of biology, will involve eighth graders in Tucker County in the project. Many of those students live adjacent to the forest but have limited knowledge of the research conducted there. Additionally, 20% live below the poverty line and may lack a direct pathway to STEM.

“We’ll do field trips with them,” Brzostek said. “We’ll take them out to the Fernow. We’ll design in-class exercises, we’ll have them collect actual data and then we’re going to bring them to campus and they’ll get to meet faculty.”

Ongoing student involvement at the University level has enhanced the project’s success. Twenty-eight undergraduates, 16 graduate students and three postdoctoral associates have already been involved in the Fernow research, according to Brzostek.

“It’s been a really strong training ground for graduate students and building the next cohort of scientists,” he said.

The 4,700-acre Fernow Experimental Forest is a vital study site because, over time, the forest’s various experimental watersheds have undergone different management practices, which created a variety of different ecosystems. Five of these will be tracked as they recover. One watershed that was experimentally acidified for 30 years under the leadership of William Peterjohn, professor of biogeochemistry, global change, nutrient cycling, forest ecosystems and soil microbiology, will be of particular interest.

“Understanding the impact of chronic changes in the environment — like acid rain — requires long-term observations and experiments,” Peterjohn said. “I’m pleased that Dr. Brzostek and his colleagues have been funded to continue the legacy of long-term research at the Fernow that is focused on understanding how forests respond to a changing environment.”

In this next generation of research, the group will monitor what happens without the acid rain.

“We looked at what happens when you acidify a whole watershed,” Brzostek said. “Now, we’re looking at the recovery. We’re not dumping nitrogen anymore. Is this good? Are we going to keep these good things and lose the bad things? Or is the carbon that we’ve sequestered going to go away?”

Researchers will look at four different components of the ecosystem: stream water, soil microbes, trees and soil carbon. They hypothesize the soil microbes will respond quickest because microbes have short lifespans.

“Trees are different,” he said. “There’s some evidence the presence of nitrogen shifts which trees species will grow, so you’re setting the stage for how the ecosystem is going to respond in the future.”

Brzostek expects as nitrogen becomes more limiting, the trees will start relying on fungi and soil microbes more. They’ll also send more carbon below ground to get nitrogen, which will fuel decomposition and potentially lead to soil carbon losses over time as the greenhouse gas is released back into the atmosphere.

“In 20 years, the climate is going to be warmer and so is the forest,” Brzostek said. “There’s not going to be as much nitrogen dumped on it and what we might have is a lot of soil carbon that’s sitting around, really vulnerable to loss.”

WVU graduate student Zoe Pagliaro guides Vivienne Brzostek, a K-12 student, as she samples soils for analysis in the Fernow Experimental Forest in Tucker County

WVU students Dominick Cifelli and Jessica Burke conduct tree survey research in the Fernow Experimental Forest in Tucker County.

CREDIT

WVU Photo/Hannah DeHetre

 

Adapting to climate change: Individuals take action while governments plan

Individuals are the predominant actors implementing climate change adaptations, study finds

Peer-Reviewed Publication

PENN STATE

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — While governments may take the lead in planning and financing climate change adaptation measures, such as incentivizing green infrastructure, individuals currently are most often the ones implementing actions to adapt to climate change, according to new research. The analysis, conducted by an international consortium of researchers from 20 institutions, including Penn State, in 12 countries, published in Nature Climate Change.

“The evidence suggests that individuals and households are the primary adaptation actors — the ones actually implementing ways to adapt to the changes wrought by climate change,” said study co-author Christine Kirchhoff, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering and of law, policy and engineering at Penn State. “Geographically, in higher income countries, the government may begin to take the lead in planning or financing, but individuals are the ones taking action on the ground.”

Adaptations taken by individuals include planting crops more resilient to extreme weather, moving away from areas more directly impacted by storms and flooding, and implementing behavioral changes — such as changing their outdoor working hours to cooler parts of the day, among other actions.

“Individuals are primarily focused on changing what they can control: their own behaviors,” said Elphin Tom Joe, paper co-author and doctoral student at Penn State who works with Kirchhoff. “That’s needed, but so is action from institutional actors who can coordinate more broadly impactful adaptation.”

The study, led by Jan Petzold of Ludwig-Maximillians-University of Munich, is a deeper dive into findings from the Global Adaption Mapping Initiative (GAMI), which was developed to systematically assess the peer-reviewed scientific literature as the evidence base on adaptation progress.

“From the GAMI project, we found that the larger effort global adaptation is still nascent and certainly not transformative in changing hearts and minds in broadscale adaptation initiatives,” said Kirchhoff, who is also associate director of the Law, Policy and Engineering initiative at Penn State.

The researchers examined 1,472 scientific studies on human adaption to climate change from the GAMI database and coded them by types of actors leading the adaptation measures: individuals or households; civil society, from local to international; government, from local to national; international or multinational governance institutions; and private sectors.

On average, across the globe, individuals and households were doing the most to adapt, followed by governments. The divide between adaptation actions taken by individuals versus governments is biggest in rural areas but in high-resource urban areas the situation is reversed. Importantly, the researchers said, even in areas where governments are doing more, they remained largely focused on adaptation planning and finance while individuals led implementation.

The researchers found that adaptation implementation by individuals — who were by far taking the most documented adaptation actions — was incremental, more shallow and less connected to institutional change. While government actors were generally less prominent, especially when it came to implementing adaptations.

Elphin pointed to climate resilient seeds as an example of incremental change. Such seeds come from crops naturally resistant to flooding or drought or were engineered to have such qualities. Governments or local organizations can raise awareness about the resource, but ultimately, it’s up to the individual farmer to decide on which seeds to use.

“Such incremental adaptation is important for local communities in dealing with climate risks,” Elphin said. “However, our findings suggest a lack of preconditions for more transformational adaptation, which requires systemic change and multi-actor collaboration, building on broad societal support and a shared agreement on roles and responsibilities: a social contract for climate action and sustainability transformations.”

Even in high-resource countries with governments leading planning efforts or providing financial support for adaptations, Kirchhoff said, implementation still falls primarily to individuals. In the United States, for example, the government may offer guidance on flood proofing homes, but individuals are responsible for paying for these improvements. In more resource-constrained countries, the burden is even heavier.

“We see impacts of climate change across the globe, and a lot of those impacts are disproportionately felt by communities or individuals who are already overburdened,” Kirchhoff said. “In rural areas, especially in Africa or the global south, individuals are doing what they have the agency to do — changing crops to something more resilient, maybe changing livelihoods from farming to fishing or even migrating. … And, while they will need to continue to take action, since they are the ones feeling the impacts the most, we still need all other actors to contribute to implementation.”

Co-authors include researchers from Emory University, University of Michigan, University of Miami and University of California Irvine in the United States; Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, University of Hamburg and Helmholtz Zentrum Hereon in German; Energy and Resources Institute, and Indian Institute for Human Settlements in India;  University of Melbourne in Australia; University of Twente in the Netherlands; International Center for Tropical Agriculture in Senegal; University of Abomey-Calavi in the Republic of Benin;

University of the West Indies in Jamaica; University of Glasgow and University of Leeds in the United Kingdom; University of Waterloo and University of Prince Edward Island in Canada; and University of Copenhagen in Denmark. A full list of authors and their affiliations is available here.

The National Science Foundation, the German Research Foundation, the University of Hamburg, the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, the Natural Environment Research Council and the World Bank supported this research. 

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JOURNAL

Nature Climate Change

DOI

10.1038/s41558-023-01824-z 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

A global assessment of actors and their roles in climate change adaptation

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

24-Oct-2023

 

What an animated taco reveals about curiosity and patience

New research shows that curiosity can prioritize the journey over the outcome

Peer-Reviewed Publication

DUKE UNIVERSITY

 

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ILLUSTRATIONS LIKE THIS WERE USED IN A DUKE UNIVERSITY STUDY OF CURIOSITY AND PATIENCE THAT FOUND PEOPLE WHO WERE MORE MOTIVATED TO GET AN ANSWER WERE ACTUALLY MORE PATIENT TO RECEIVE IT.

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CREDIT: ABBY HSIUNG, DUKE UNIVERSITY

DURHAM, N.C. -- Curiosity paradoxically increases people’s patience for an answer, while simultaneously making them more eager to hear it, finds a new study by Duke neuroscientists.

The research might help teachers and students alike by describing a side of curiosity that encourages us to stay engaged instead of seeking immediate relief.

Die-hard fans of the Hulu show, "The Bear" are left on the edge of their seats each Sunday, wondering what's going to happen in the scrappy Chicago hotdog shop next week. But the new study from Duke helps explain why viewers may choose to avoid spoilers despite the urge for resolution.

“When we think of curiosity, we often think of this need for immediate answers,” said Abby Hsiung, Ph.D., a postdoctoral researcher at the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences and lead author of the new research paper. “But we found that when people were more curious, they were actually more willing to wait.”

The findings appeared October 16 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“When we watch TV shows or football games, we’re watching that information evolve over time, uncertain about how it’s all going to end”, said Hsiung. “I wanted to know if higher curiosity would push people to seek, or to avoid, getting an immediate ‘spoiler’.”

Hsiung drew inspiration from short cooking videos that are popular on Instagram and TikTok.

“These videos caught my attention because even though they’re so short, they manage to develop a narrative and suspense, so that you’re invested and curious about how the lasagna will all come together.”

So Hsiung got out her digital paintbrush and made a series of 30-second animated line drawing videos that, like the cooking clips, eventually ended up as something highly recognizable, like a taco or a dog.

More than 2,000 adults from across the U.S. then watched 25 of these short line-drawing videos online. Participants in Hsiung’s study were asked along the way how curious they were, how they felt, and to guess what the drawing would become. Viewers also had a ‘spoiler’ button to skip ahead to see the final drawing.

Hsiung and her team were surprised to find that when people were curious, they withheld from hitting the ‘spoiler’ button and kept watching the drawings unfold. It was when people were less curious that they tended to opt for an instant answer.

“Curiosity didn’t just motivate getting answers, it increased the value of the journey itself,” said Alison Adcock M.D., Ph.D., a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Duke and senior author of the new report.

The study also found that curiosity increased at different stages of watching these videos.

“We saw higher curiosity during moments where it seemed like the drawing could turn into anything and also when participants were starting to really home in on a single answer," said co-author Jia-Hou Poh, Ph.D., a postdoctoral researcher at the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences.

Curiosity also stirred up people's feeling of joy, explaining why people kept watching the line drawing video even when they could just hit a button to get the answer right away.

“This helps explain why people often avoid spoilers,” said Scott Huettel, Ph.D., a fellow senior author on the study and Duke professor of psychology and neuroscience. “Knowing the end of a new TV series, for example, can remove the enjoyment of watching the plot unravel.”

Hsiung and her team suggests that aside from watching TV shows, stoking curiosity might also help enhance motivation in the classroom to potentially improve learning. A recent study from Dr. Adcock and Poh found that increasing curiosity can enhance memory by ‘readying’ the brain for new information. This latest finding highlights that curiosity can also bolster persistence throughout a learning journey, which is often needed for deep understanding.

“By understanding what sparks curiosity, especially how it arises from our own ideas, we can find more ways to cultivate it and benefit from the learning it promotes.” said Dr. Adcock.

Support for the research came from the Duke Institute for Brain Sciences.

CITATION: “Curiosity Evolves As Information Unfolds,” Abigail Hsiung, Jia-Hou Poh, Scott A. Huettel, R. Alison Adcock. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, October 16, 2023. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2301974120.

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JOURNAL

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

DOI

10.1073/pnas.2301974120 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Curiosity Evolves As Information Unfolds

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

24-Oct-2023

 

UC Davis, Mars researchers discover scalable production technique for low-calorie sugar substitute

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA - DAVIS

 

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PROFESSOR SHOTA ATSUMI, UC DAVIS DEPARTMENT OF CHEMISTRY, LED A TEAM THAT FOUND A NEW WAY TO COAX MICROBES INTO MAKING ALLULOSE, A POTENTIAL SUBSTITUTE FOR TABLE SUGAR. THE WORK WAS CONDUCTED IN COLLABORATION WITH THE MARS ADVANCED RESEARCH INSTITUTE.

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CREDIT: UC DAVIS

Scientists at the University of California, Davis, in partnership with the Mars Advanced Research Institute, have announced a significant breakthrough in the production of low-calorie sugar substitutes, such as allulose. This discovery could help address one of the primary obstacles to the widespread adoption of these alternatives: production costs.

Allulose, also known as D-psicose, is a naturally occurring rare sugar that provides a viable alternative to sucrose (table sugar). It has a similar taste, texture and functionality, making it an attractive option for those seeking to reduce their sugar intake. By activating a natural process in a microorganism, researchers have developed a method for high-yield and high-purity production through precise fermentation. This advance has the potential to greatly enhance the affordability and accessibility of these products.

Allulose provides nearly 70% flavor and sweet taste as sucrose, yet it is minimally metabolized as it passes through the body. By incorporating it into food products, individuals can reduce their calorie intake from sugar while still satisfying their desire for sweet flavors. Additionally, allulose has an imperceptible effect on blood glucose and insulin levels.

“Allulose is a great alternative to sugar, but we have not had a cost-effective way to manufacture it,” said Shota Atsumi, professor of chemistry at UC Davis and corresponding author on the paper published Oct. 14 in npj Science of Food. “Our new method is efficient, economically feasible and could be scaled up for commercial production.”  

The new approach has a more than 99% theoretical yield with high purity, and therefore only requires minimal processing to isolate the desired product.  Current methods of allulose production are normally limited to much lower levels of yield and purity, requiring expensive separation techniques to isolate allulose from the glucose and fructose starting material. 

Redirecting existing process

Atsumi, Ph.D. candidate Jayce Taylor, Professor Justin Siegel and a number of co-workers in the Department of Chemistry and from Mars Advanced Research Institute looked for a more efficient way to manufacture allulose. They found an industrial microorganism that has the enzymes to make allulose — it just isn’t using them in that way. They were able to edit the organism’s metabolism to get the cells to convert glucose into allulose. The cells consume all the glucose they are fed and convert it to allulose with a noteworthy concentration, a yield of over 60%, and purity of over 95%, outperforming the existing production methods. 

“Once flux was redirected, it turns out the cells have everything they need to do it; they just needed to be turned on and undesired pathways turned off,” Atsumi said. 

UC Davis has filed patent applications on the process and modified organisms. Researchers are working with a commercial partner to discuss scaling up the process. 

Additional co-authors are Dileep Sai Kumar Palur, Angela Zhang, Jake Gonzales, Augustine Arredondo, Timothy Coulther, Amiruddin Bin Johan Lechner, Elys Rodriguez and Oliver Fiehn at UC Davis; and John Didzbalis, Mars Incorporated, McLean, Virginia.  

The work and research by UC Davis were supported and funded by Mars, Incorporated.

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JOURNAL

npj Science of Food

DOI

10.1038/s41538-023-00231-0 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Awakening the natural capability of psicose production in Escherichia coli

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

24-Oct-2023

COI STATEMENT

The authors declare the following financial interests which may be considered as potential competing interests: J.E.T., D.S.K.P., A.Z., J.N.G., A.A., T.A.C., A.B.J.L., J.B.S. and S.A. are inventors on the patent application related to this study.

 

More animal welfare or more environmental protection?

Researchers at the University of Bonn are investigating conflicting goals in animal husbandry. Human health appears to be the most important priority

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF BONN

 

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PROF. DR. MONIKA HARTMANN, JEANETTE KLINK-LEHMANN AND MILAN TATIC AT THE FRANKENFORST CAMPUS IN VINXEL IN THE SIEBENGEBIRGE REGION.

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CREDIT: PHOTO: VOLKER LANNERT/UNIVERSITY OF BONN

Which sustainability goals do people in Germany find more important: Animal welfare? Or environmental protection? Human health is another one of these competing sustainability goals. A team of researchers from the Department of Agricultural and Food Market Research at the University of Bonn have now found that consumers surveyed in their study would rather pay more for salami with an “antibiotic-free” label than for salami with an “open barn” label that indicates that the product promotes animal welfare. The results have now been published in the journal “Q Open.”

The animal husbandry sector faces a complex set of challenges as a result of various competing interests. “Sustainability goals such as animal welfare, environmental protection and human health can quickly conflict with one another,” says Jeanette Klink-Lehmann from the Department of Agricultural and Food Market Research at the Institute for Food and Resource Economics at the University of Bonn. At the same time, stricter standards in animal husbandry could have an impact on competitiveness because it is not always possible to compensate for any associated increases in costs with higher consumer prices. This can threaten the viability of family-run farms and also impact rural communities. “In order to develop appropriate policy conditions, it is vital to investigate and clarify these conflicts in the sustainability debate,” says Prof. Monika Hartmann, Head of the Department of Agricultural and Food Market Research at the University of Bonn.

A team from the Department of Agricultural and Food Market Research at the University of Bonn investigated consumer preferences for various different sustainability goals. Their study focused on three main conflicts between animal welfare and environmental protection, human health and animal health and finally human health and animal welfare. The research team analyzed the consumer preferences for these conflicting sustainability goals. They also investigated how positive information on safeguarding certain goals and information on potential conflicts can influence these preferences. Psychographic (e.g. the level of awareness for the environment, health and animal welfare) and socio-demographic factors (such as the sex and age of the participants) were taken into account in the analyses in order to explain possible differences between the preferences expressed by consumers.

In this experimental study, one group of participants were provided with information on the advantages of the pig husbandry practices associated with two fictitious labels: the “open barn” label promoting animal welfare and the “antibiotic-free” label that helps protect human health. A second group not only received this information but were also given information on potential negative effects of the production practices. A third group – which served as a control group – was only provided with information on the University of Bonn. A daily trip to the supermarket was then simulated and participants were asked to choose between two different salami products in three different scenarios, whereby the salami products each represented different sustainability goals. The willingness of consumers to pay for the chosen salami was also analyzed in each case.

The team of researchers discovered that most people chose a salami with a sustainability label and were also willing to pay more for it. However, the participants were more willing to pay for a salami with the “antibiotic-free” label than for a salami with the “open barn” label. “The results show that personal health is more important to people than animal welfare,” says Jeanette Klink-Lehmann. The study also demonstrated that animal welfare considerations were more important to people than environmental protection. Furthermore, the results demonstrate that people’s willingness to choose a more sustainable alternative is highly dependent on the price.

The researchers at the University of Bonn demonstrated that the extent to which information has an effect is dependent on which sustainability aspects are being considered and how the information is presented. “We were surprised to discover that if consumers were only provided with positive information, the willingness to pay more for ´open barn´ salami in comparison to the ‘no label’ salami increased but this was not true for ‘antibiotic-free’ salami,” says Jeanette Klink-Lehmann. The lead author has interpreted this to mean that although consumers perceive the “antibiotic-free” animal product as being beneficial for their own health, this advantage is sufficiently communicated by the label itself and additional information has no influence on consumer preferences. In contrast, the team believes that consumers might be less aware of the positive effects of “open barn” production on animal welfare. In this case, the positive information provided to consumers improved their level of knowledge and thus their willingness to pay more for salami with the “open barn” label.

To ensure full transparency, it was important to inform consumers not only about the benefits but also the potential disadvantages of a production method. “However, our results suggest that such a strategy comes at a price,” says Milan Tatic, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Agricultural and Food Market Research at the University of Bonn. The team believes that two-sided information has a neutralizing effect. “This means that we were unable to detect any positive influence on the willingness of consumers to pay more for a particular product in comparison to the control group when the positive information was paired with information on potential negative effects of the production method.”

“The results demonstrate that those participants who place importance on animal welfare and human health were willing to pay more for ‘open barn’ salami,” says Prof. Hartmann, who is a member of the transdisciplinary research area “Sustainable Futures” at the University of Bonn alongside her co-author Jeanette Klink-Lehmann. Furthermore, the study showed that health-conscious people were willing to pay more for ‘antibiotic-free’ salami in comparison to a ‘no label’ variety. “Surprisingly, the latter is also true for those people who place particular importance on animal welfare,” according to Prof. Hartmann.

Funding:

The study was funded by the Ministry for Environment, Agriculture, Conservation and Consumer Protection of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia (MULNV) within the framework of the teaching and research focus “Environmentally friendly agricultural practices suitable for local conditions” (Umweltverträgliche und Standortgerechte Landwirtschaft, USL). The publication of the study was also supported by the Open Access Publication Fund of the University of Bonn.

Publication: Jeanette Klink-Lehmann, Milan Tatic, Nina Weingarten, Monika Hartmann: Sustainability trade-offs in animal husbandry: consumers’ choice when they can't have it all, Q Open, https://doi.org/10.1093/qopen/qoad025

Web: www.mafo.uni-bonn.de

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JOURNAL

Q Open

DOI

10.1093/qopen/qoad025 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Sustainability trade-offs in animal husbandry: consumers’ choice when they can't have it all

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

24-Oct-2023

 

Biological fingerprints in soil show where diamond-containing ore is buried

DNA sequencing technique can also help source minerals that are key to the green-energy transition

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA

Researchers have identified buried kimberlite, the rocky home of diamonds, by testing the DNA of microbes in the surface soil.

These ‘biological fingerprints’ can reveal what minerals are buried tens of metres below the earth’s surface without having to drill. The researchers believe it is the first use of modern DNA sequencing of microbial communities in the search for buried minerals.

The research published this week in Nature Communications Earth and Environment represents a new tool for mineral exploration, where a full toolbox could save prospectors time and a lot of money, says co-author Bianca Iulianella Phillips, a doctoral candidate at UBC’s department of earth, ocean and atmospheric sciences (EOAS).

The technique adds to the relatively limited number of tools that help find buried ore, including initial scans of the ground and analysis of elements in the overlying rock.

“This technique was born from a necessity to see through the earth with greater sensitivity and resolution, and it has the potential to be used where other techniques aren’t working,” said Phillips.

When ore interacts with soil, it changes the communities of microbes in the soil. The researchers tested this in the lab, introducing kimberlite to soil microbes and watching how they changed in number and species.

“We took those changed communities of microbes as indicators for the presence of ore materials, or biological fingerprints in the soil of buried mineral deposits,” said Phillips.

Using these ‘indicator’ microbes and their DNA sequences, the team tested the surface soil at an exploration site in the Northwest Territories where kimberlite had previously been confirmed through drilling. They found 59 of the 65 indicators were present in the soil, with 19 present in high numbers directly above the buried ore. They also identified new indicator microbes to add to their set.

Using this set, they tested the surface soil at a second site in the Northwest Territories where they suspected kimberlite was present, and precisely located the topological outline and location of kimberlite buried tens of metres beneath the earth’s surface. This showed that indicators from one site could predict the location at another site. In future, exploration teams could build up a database of indicator species and test an unknown site to find out if kimberlite deposits are buried beneath the soil.

The researchers evaluated their technique against another technique known as geochemical analysis, which involves testing elements in the soil to identify the minerals beneath. The microbes were more precise when it came to identifying the location of buried ore.

“Microbes are better geochemists than us, and there are thousands of them,” said lead author Dr. Rachel Simister, who conducted the work as a postdoctoral researcher in the UBC department of microbiology and immunology (M&I). “You might run out of elements to sample, but you’ll never run out of microbes.”

The technique, born from work by a team including Phillips, Dr. Simister, Dr. Sean Crowe and the late professor Peter Winterburn, could catalyze the discovery of new kimberlite deposits. These rocks are known not only as potential stores of diamonds, but also for their ability to capture and store atmospheric carbon. 

The technique has potential application across other metallic deposits. The team’s ongoing research shows similar results for identifying porphyry copper deposits.

“You could use this technique to find minerals to fuel a green economy,” said senior author Dr. Crowe, EOAS and M&I professor and Canada Research Chair in Geomicrobiology. “Copper is the most important critical element that we’ll need more of going forward.”

Dr. Crowe, along with Dr. Simister and co-author Dr. Craig Hart, co-owns spin-off company Discovery Genomics which provides these sequencing services to the mineral resource sector.

“This is exciting because it's part of a growing recognition of the potential for using microbes at every stage of mining, from finding the minerals, to processing them, to returning sites to their natural states.” said Dr. Crowe. “Currently, microbial DNA sequencing requires specific expertise and is comparable in cost to other mineral exploration techniques, but this could change with industry adoption.”

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DOI

10.1038/s43247-023-01020-z 

Adding crushed rock to farmland pulls carbon out of the air

Field test finds carbon stored in soils even in dry climates

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA - DAVIS

 

IMAGE: 

UC DAVIS RESEARCHERS FIND ADDING CRUSHED VOLCANIC ROCK TO FARMLANDS CAN REMOVE CARBON DIOXIDE FROM THE AIR. THIS 'ENHANCED' ROCK WEATHERING WORKS EVEN IN DRY CLIMATES.

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CREDIT: AMY QUINTON/UC DAVIS

Adding crushed volcanic rock to cropland could play a key role in removing carbon from the air. In a field study, scientists at the University of California, Davis, and Cornell University found the technology stored carbon in the soil even during an extreme drought in California. The study was published in the journal Environmental Research Communications.

Rain captures carbon dioxide from the air as it falls and reacts with volcanic rock to lock up carbon. The process, called rock weathering, can take millions of years — too slow to offset global warming. But by crushing the rock into a fine dust, rock weathering speeds up. Previous studies have estimated this “enhanced” rock weathering could store 215 billion tons of carbon dioxide over the next 75 years if spread across croplands globally.

But until now the technology hasn’t been field-tested in dry climates.

“These reactions require water,” said lead author Iris Holzer, a doctoral candidate in soils and biogeochemistry in the Department of Land, Air and Water Resources at UC Davis. “Since we’re interested in the global carbon storage potential of enhanced weathering, we need to understand if it can work in these drier climates and if different measurement approaches are effective. We were excited to observe carbon removal in this environment.”

California as a test case for storing carbon

Researchers applied crushed rock, both metabasalt and olivine, on 5 acres of a fallowed cornfield in the Sacramento Valley. They collected measurements during the winter months of 2020-2021. California was experiencing extreme drought at the time, with rainfall at 41% of its historical average.

The study found the plots with crushed rock stored 0.15 tons of carbon dioxide per hectare (2.47 acres) during the study compared to plots without crushed rock. Though researchers expect different weathering rates in different environments, if this amount of carbon was removed across all California cropland, it would be equivalent to taking 350,000 cars off the road every year.

“We’re definitely seeing evidence of weathering processes taking place on short time scales,” said Holzer. “Even the infrequent heavy rains we get in the West might be enough to drive enhanced rock weathering and remove carbon dioxide.”

Holzer said measuring and verifying that carbon storage at larger scales and following it over time is the next challenge.

Forty-one percent of Earth’s land surface is covered by drylands that are expanding due to climate change. Researchers said this makes investigating enhanced rock weathering in drylands increasingly important.

“When it comes to bending the global carbon curve, we are in a race against time,” said senior author Benjamin Z. Houlton, Ronald P. Lynch Dean of the Cornell University College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. “Our study demonstrates a new way to verify carbon dioxide removal via enhanced weathering, which is a critical leap forward for scaling this technology in croplands worldwide.”

Other authors include Mallika Nocco, in the Department of Land, Air and Water Resources at UC Davis.

The research, part of the Working Lands Innovation Center, was funded by the California Strategic Growth Council and the Grantham Foundation, Roger Sant and Doris Matsui. Aggregates and mining company, SGI, a Standard Industries company, donated the crushed metabasalt rock from its site in Ione, California.

A spreader unloads crushed metabasalt rock on a fallowed corn field in the Central Valley.

CREDIT   Amy Quinton/ UC Davis

JOURNAL

Environmental Research Communications

DOI

10.1088/2515-7620/acfd89 

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Direct evidence for atmospheric carbon dioxide removal via enhanced weathering in cropland soil

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

18-Oct-2023