It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Saturday, March 02, 2024
Uncertainty in measuring biodiversity change could hinder progress towards global targets for nature
Researchers find it could be difficult to detect biodiversity improvements due to conservation action for nature and suggest practical solutions to guide conservation
More than ever before, there is a growing interest in dedicating resources to stop the loss of biodiversity, as recently exemplified by the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) decided at COP15 in December 2022. The GBF focuses on understanding why biodiversity is declining and what actions are needed to reverse this trend. However, according to researchers at McGill University, implementing the plan is challenging because information about biodiversity changes is not evenly available everywhere, and is uncertain in many places.
With the available data, can the scientific community and policymakers truly know if they are making progress toward international biodiversity targets, even if their efforts were effective? The research says that without a better picture of how and why biodiversity is changing in most countries, it is difficult to evaluate the effect of national plans outlined in the GBF.
“Even if policies stopped the decline of animal populations, we show mathematically that it will be hard to detect improvements with high certainty, in many places for various types of species (48 of 62 countries and species groups),” explains Prof. Brian Leung from McGill’s Department of Biology and Bieler School of Environment and lead author of the study. “This is because detecting progress is limited by the current levels of uncertainty in the data (the records are either too sparse or too variable) describing animal population trends”.
To further this point, co-author Prof. Andrew Gonzalez compares this issue with monitoring recovery in heart health after an illness. “This would not be easy to do if a doctor had not kept good historical records about a person’s heart health and without good past records, it would be difficult to know if the heart is recovering because of the treatment it is receiving. Now, imagine trying to detect if heart health was improving on average across all Canadians (perhaps by following government recommendations on diet) if data on national heart health was not collected in the past or measured into the future.”
Prof. Gonzalez continues: “instead of heart health we assessed the health of animal populations - how fast they are declining or recovering – and whether we can conclude if populations are recovering worldwide. Tracking biodiversity targets and evaluating progress cannot be done well without filling the gaps in the information at hand and reducing the uncertainty that hinders our ability to evaluate if current trends are improving.”
Measuring efforts across the board
In light of these findings, how should the scientific community and policy makers evaluate their efforts to meet such ambitious goals like preserving 30% of land and water by 2030 and slowing the rate of human-caused species extinctions? The researchers make several suggestions, including proposing a risk framework that would establish unacceptable thresholds for biodiversity decline, which are easier to detect. Also, the authors suggest investment in a national and international biodiversity monitoring systems to improve trend estimates worldwide.
As Prof. Leung concludes: “Our results highlight that care must be taken to structure how we gather knowledge about biodiversity, so that we will be able to report whether we have succeeded in meeting our global targets given international investment in nature conservation or alternatively, whether we need to re-orient our actions.”
In summary, these recommendations put forward a more rigorous approach to interpreting biodiversity trends, incorporating risk considerations, boosting investment in monitoring, explicitly deciding thresholds for success, and the use of reference benchmarks to make informed conservation decisions. If implemented, many countries potentially could benefit, given the international reach of the GBF.
Conservationists have initiated breeding programs in Vietnam to recover spotted softshell turtle populations threatened by overconsumption and habitat loss.
Based on a literature study, field surveys across Vietnam, and genetic screenings of collected samples, researchers estimated the range and conservation status of Pelodiscus variegatus, the spotted softshell turtle. The data were then used to model the species’ potential range in Vietnam.
Alarmingly, although several protected areas in Vietnam appear to harbour suitable habitats for the species, no populations were identified in any of the sites, indicating it is especially susceptible to extinction.
To recover natural populations of the species, the Institute of Ecology and Biological Resources and Cologne Zoo, Germany, initiated an in-country breeding program. In late 2023, they released 50 young and healthy turtles to a site with suitable climate and habitat in northern Vietnam.
It is hoped that additional individuals will be reintroduced to protected areas in north-central Vietnam, the sanctuary of spotted softshell turtles, to reverse its declining trend and further contribute to the global Reverse the Red movement, a target best accomplished by applying the IUCN’s One Plan Approach to Conservation.
Softshell turtles of the genus Pelodiscus are broadly distributed from southeastern Siberia through China to Vietnam. However, their range is currently extended to Indonesia, northern Australia, western Europe, North America, Hawaii, and Mauritius as a result of human transportation and breeding activities.
The turtles are considered a delicacy in China and some Southeast Asian countries. In China alone, each year hundreds of million turtles are traded, making them the most widely consumed turtles in the world.
Traditionally, this genus had been considered monotypic with only one recognised species, the Chinese softshell turtle (Pelodiscus sinensis). However, recent research has shown that the genus is much more diverse with at least seven species known to science.
Due to their morphological similarity, widespread farming activities, overharvesting, and their aquatic lifestyle, it is often difficult to study them in their natural habitat to better understand their distribution as well as their population and conservation status.
Like other congeners, the spotted softshell turtle is facing tremendous threats, from habitat loss to overharvesting for food and genetic pollution because the Chinese softshell turtle has been farmed across the country, imperilling the native genetic sources.
As the result, the Turtle Taxonomy Working Group, the global authority on taxonomic and conservation status of turtles worldwide, provisionally classifies the species as Critically Endangered, the highest ranking for taxa most vulnerable to extinction.
Release of the spotted softshell turtles
CREDIT
C. T. Pham and T. Ziegler
Original source
Le MD, Rödder D, Nguyen TT, The Pham C, Nguyen TQ, Ong AV, McCormack TEM, Nguyen TT, Le MH, Ngo HT, Ziegler T (2024) Climatic niche modelling and genetic analyses highlight conservation priorities for the Spotted Softshell Turtle (Pelodiscus variegatus). Nature Conservation 55: 67-82. https://doi.org/10.3897/natureconservation.55.114746
THE BICIKL CONSORTIUM GATHERED IN CAMBRIDGE (UNITED KINGDOM) AND ON ZOOM FOR THE FINAL GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE HORIZON 2020-FUNDED PROJECT ALMOST THREE YEARS AFTER ITS LAUNCH.
The city of Cambridge and the Wellcome Campus hosted the Final General Assembly of the EU-funded project BiCIKL (acronym for Biodiversity Community Integrated Knowledge Library): a 36-month endeavour that saw 14 member institutions and 15 research infrastructures representing diverse actors from the biodiversity data realm come together to improve bi-directional links between different platforms, standards, formats and scientific fields. Consortium members who could not attend the meeting in Cambridge joined the meeting remotely.
After a welcome cocktail reception on Monday evening at Hilton Cambridge City Centre, on Tuesday, the consortium made an early start with a recap of BiCIKL’s key milestones and outputs from the last three years. All Work Package leaders had their own timeslot to discuss the results of their collaborations.
They all agreed that the Biodiversity Knowledge Hub - the one-stop portal for understanding the complex - yet increasingly interconnected landscape of biodiversity research infrastructures - is likely the flagship outcome of BiCIKL.
In the afternoon, the participants focused on the services developed under BiCIKL. Amongst the many services resulting from the project some were not originally planned. Rather those were the ‘natural’ products of the dialogue and collaboration that flourished within the consortium throughout the project. “A symptom of passion,” said Prof. Lyubomir Penev, project coordinator of BiCIKL and founder/CEO of Pensoft Publishers.
An excellent example of one such service is what the partners call the “Biodiversity PMC”, which brings together biodiversity literature from thousands of scholarly journals and over 500,000 taxonomic treatments, in addition to the biomedical content available from NIH’s PubMed Central, into the SIB Literature Services (SIBiLS) database. What’s more, users at SIBiLS - be it human or AI - can now use advanced text- and data-mining tools, including AI-powered factoid question-answering capacities, to query all this full-text indexed content and seek out, for example, species traits and biotic interactions. Read more about the “Biodiversity PMC” in its recent official announcement.
Far from being the only one, the “Biodiversity PMC” is in good company: from the blockchain-based technology of LifeBlock to the curation of the DNA sequences by PlutoF, the BiCIKL project consortium takes pride in having developed twelve services dedicated to FAIR and linked ready-to-use biodiversity data.
On Wednesday, the consortium focused on BiCIKL's activities from the Transnational and Virtual Access Pillar, which included both presentations by each open call leader and VA leader, as well as open discussions and a recap of what the teams have learnt from these experiences.
Thursday was dedicated to an open event where BiCIKL partners and ELIXIR Biodiversity and Plant Communities came together to discuss the Future of Biodiversity and Genomics data integration at the EMBL Wellcome Genome Campus. You can find the agenda on BiCIKL's website.
After 36 months of action, the BiCIKL project will officially end in April 2024, but does it mean that all will be done and dusted come May 2024? Certainly not, point out the partners.
To ensure that the Biodiversity Knowledge Hub will not only continue to exist but will not cease to grow in both use and participation, the one-stop portal will remain under the maintenance of LifeWatch ERIC.
In conclusion, we could say that an appropriate payoff for the project is “Stick together!” as put by BiCIKL’s Joint Research Activity Leader Dr. Quentin Groom.
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Prof. Lyubomir Penev, project coordinator of BiCIKL and founder/CEO of Pensoft Publishers at the BiCIKL's third and final General Assembly in Cambridge, United Kingdom (February 2024).
A panel discussion took place on Thursday as part of an open event, where BiCIKL partners and ELIXIR Biodiversity and Plant Communities came together to discuss the Future of Biodiversity and Genomics data integration at the EMBL Wellcome Genome Campus.
Dr. Donat Agosti, President at Plazi and a member of the BiCIKL consortium talked about conversion of biodiversity publications at the BiCIKL's third and final General Assembly of the project consortium.
CREDIT
BiCIKL
You can find highlights from the BiCIKL General Assembly meeting on X via the #BiCIKL_H2020 hashtag (in association with #Cambridge and #finalGA)
Small dietary changes can cut your carbon footprint by 25%
McGill researchers find evidence that partially replacing red and processed meat with plant protein foods can increase lifespan and mitigate climate change
The latest Canada’s Food Guide presents a paradigm shift in nutrition advice, nixing traditional food groups, including meat and dairy, and stressing the importance of plant-based proteins. Yet, the full implications of replacing animal with plant protein foods in Canadians’ diets are unknown.
New research at McGill University in collaboration with the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine provides compelling evidence that partially substituting animal with plant protein foods can increase life expectancy and decrease greenhouse gas emissions. Importantly, it also suggests that benefits depend on the type of animal protein being replaced.
The study, published in Nature Food, drew data from a national nutrition survey to analyze Canadians’ dietary records. The study modeled partial replacements (25% and 50%) of either red and processed meat or dairy with plant protein foods like nuts, seeds, legumes, tofu, and fortified soy beverages, on a combination of nutrition, health, and climate outcomes.
Small dietary changes, big impact on carbon footprint
Red and processed meat and dairy are the primary contributors to Canada's diet-related greenhouse gas emissions, as evidenced in a previous study. Remarkably, this study found a person’s diet-related carbon footprint plummets by 25% when they replace half of their intake of red and processed meats with plant protein foods. On the other hand, dairy substitutions showed smaller reductions of up to 5%.
“We show that co-benefits for human and planetary health do not necessarily require wholesale changes to diets, such as adopting restrictive dietary patterns or excluding certain food groups altogether but can be achieved by making simple partial substitutions of red and processed meat, in particular, with plant protein foods,” explains Olivia Auclair, first author and recent PhD graduate in McGill’s Department of Animal Science.
Sex gap in plant-based health benefits
Diets high in animal products are known to increase the risk of heart disease, diabetes, and certain cancers. In this study, researchers estimated that if half of the red and processed meat in a person's diet was replaced with plant protein foods, they could live on average, nearly nine months longer, stemming from a reduced risk of chronic disease.
When broken down by sex, males stand to gain more by making the switch, with the gain in life expectancy doubling that for females. In contrast, partially replacing dairy with plant protein foods led to smaller gains in life expectancy and was accompanied by a trade-off: an increased calcium inadequacy by up to 14%.
“I hope our findings will help consumers make healthier and more sustainable food choices and inform future food policy in Canada,” says senior author Sergio Burgos, Associate Professor in McGill’s Department of Animal Science and scientist at the Research Institute of McGill University Health Centre.
As more people seek sustainable and health-conscious diets, the study's findings serve as a guide, empowering individuals to make informed choices that benefit both personal well-being and the planet.
“Increasing the consumption of plant-based foods alongside reductions in red and processed meat would have considerable benefits for health and the environment and would involve relatively small changes in diets for most people in Canada,”says Patricia Eustachio Colombo, co-author and Honorary Research Fellow at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine’s Centre on Climate Change & Planetary Health.
About the study
“Partial substitutions of animal with plant protein foods in Canadian diets have synergies and trade-offs among nutrition, health and climate outcomes” by O. Auclair et al. was published in Nature Food.
Partial substitutions of animal with plant protein foods in Canadian diets have synergies and trade-offs among nutrition, health and climate outcomes
Zero emissions of carbon dioxide!
Successful production of ammonia-based clean hydrogen
The KIER has made history in Korea by successfully producing hydrogen of exceptional purity from ammonia, completely eliminating carbon dioxide emissions in the process.
NATIONAL RESEARCH COUNCIL OF SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
BASIC PRINCIPLES OF AMMONIA-BASED CARBON-FREE HYDROGEN PRODUCTION TECHNOLOGY (ABOVE) COMPARISON OF EXISTING TECHNOLOGY AND KIER TECHNOLOGY (BELOW) CREDIT: KOREA INSTITUTE OF ENERGY RESEARCH (KIER)
Dr. Jung Unho's research team at the Hydrogen Research Department of the Korea Institute of Energy Research (KIER) has developed Korea's first clean hydrogen production technology. This technology is based on ammonia decomposition and does not use fossil fuels. The team's breakthrough could pave the way for a more sustainable and eco-friendly energy source. This allows for the production of high-purity hydrogen that meets international standards for hydrogen-powered vehicles, without the carbon dioxide emissions produced by using fossil fuels.
Ammonia, a compound of hydrogen and nitrogen, has a hydrogen storage density 1.7 times higher than that of liquefied hydrogen, and it is gaining attention as the most cost-effective method for transporting hydrogen. In particular, as it has been used in various fields such as fertilizer for over 100 years, it is equipped with infrastructure, handling, and safety standards. It is considered the most practical solution to address hydrogen storage and transportation challenges.
Ammonia consists only of hydrogen and nitrogen, so no carbon is emitted when the hydrogen is separated. The decomposition process requires a supply of heat energy of over 600℃, and currently, fossil fuels are used, resulting in the emission of carbon dioxide. Therefore, to produce clean hydrogen, a carbon-free energy source must be used, even in the process of decomposing ammonia.
By utilizing the small quantities of hydrogen and ammonia left over from the decomposition reaction, the researchers were able to produce hydrogen without the use of fossil fuels.
To generate pure hydrogen from ammonia, the decomposition of ammonia is carried out at a temperature above 600℃ using a ruthenium (Ru) catalyst, followed by the purification of hydrogen through pressure swing adsorption (PSA*) technology. While carrying out this method, a residual gas mixture of nitrogen and hydrogen is formed and repurposed as a heating element for the ammonia decomposition reactor. Despite this, the residual gas alone does not offer sufficient heat of reaction, therefore extra heat must be added. *Pressure Swing Adsorption (PSA): The most widely used process for hydrogen separation. This is an adsorption-based process used to separate a specific gas from a mixed gas, utilizing the adsorption equilibrium that gas molecules have on a specific adsorbent and separate gases by adjusting process pressure.
In the case of existing technology, insufficient heat of reaction are supplemented with fossil fuels such as natural gas (LNG) or liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), so carbon dioxide is emitted during combustion. However, using the system developed this time, by supplying ammonia instead of fossil fuels, heat of reaction can be supplied and carbon dioxide emissions can be blocked at the source.
Using the developed system, high-purity hydrogen of more than 99.97%, which can be supplied to fuel cells for hydrogen electric vehicles, is produced at 5Nm3 (approximately 0.45kg) per hour. In addition, the hydrogen produced has an impurity concentration of less than 300ppm for nitrogen and less than 0.1ppm for ammonia. It met ISO 14687*, the international standard for hydrogen-fueled electric vehicles. *ISO 14687: international standard specifying minimum quality characteristics for hydrogen fuel distributed for use in vehicles and stationary applications
The research team has reached a significant milestone by demonstrating a 1kW fuel cell system for buildings that generates electricity without emitting carbon dioxide, using hydrogen extracted from ammonia. This demonstration, conducted in collaboration with Doosan Fuel Cell Power BU (Business Unit), is of great importance as it overcomes the issue of carbon dioxide emissions, which has been considered a disadvantage of natural gas (LNG) based fuel cell systems. It shows the potential to generate power using clean hydrogen fuel cells.
Ammonia-based hydrogen production system with 1 kW class PEMFC
1st Carbon-free Ammonia Decomposition Reactor
According to lead researcher Dr. Jung Unho, the newly developed technology holds great significance as it allows for carbon-free hydrogen production using ammonia, filling a previous gap in this area. There is an expectation that it will find practicality in diverse areas that use clean hydrogen. In his remarks, he went on to say, “The combining of ammonia and fuel cells presents a viable option for powering eco-ships. And as we scale up, we can also make a significant impact in the clean hydrogen power sector.“
Meanwhile, this research was conducted with the support of Korea Southern Power Co., Ltd. (KOSPO).
Evolution-capable AI promotes green hydrogen production using more abundant chemical elements
Searching for electrode materials free of platinum-group elements
THIS RESEARCH TEAM DEVELOPED AN AI TECHNIQUE CAPABLE OF ACCURATELY PREDICTING THE COMPOSITIONS OF MATERIALS WITH DESIRABLE CHARACTERISTICS BY SWITCHING PREDICTION MODELS DEPENDING ON THE SIZES OF THE DATASETS AVAILABLE FOR ANALYSIS.
CREDIT: KEN SAKAUSHI NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR MATERIALS SCIENCE
1. A NIMS research team has developed an AI technique capable of expediting the identification of materials with desirable characteristics. Using this technique, the team was able to discover high-performance water electrolyzer electrode materials free of platinum-group elements—substances previously thought to be indispensable in water electrolysis. These materials may be used to reduce the cost of large-scale production of green hydrogen—a next-generation energy source.
2. Large-scale production of green hydrogen using water electrolyzers is a viable means of achieving carbon neutrality. Currently available water electrolyzers rely on expensive, scarce platinum-group elements as their main electrocatalyst components to accelerate the slow oxygen evolution reaction (OER)—an electrolytic water reaction that can produce hydrogen. To address this issue, research is underway to develop platinum-group-free, cheaper OER electrocatalysts composed of relatively abundant chemical elements compatible with large-scale green hydrogen production. However, identifying the optimum chemical compositions of such electrocatalysts from an infinitely large number of possible combinations had been found to be enormously costly, time-consuming and labor-intensive.
3. This NIMS research team recently developed an AI technique capable of accurately predicting the compositions of materials with desirable characteristics by switching prediction models depending on the sizes of the datasets available for analysis. Using this AI, the team was able to identify new, effective OER electrocatalytic materials from about 3,000 candidate materials in just a single month. For reference, manual, comprehensive evaluation of these 3,000 materials was estimated to take almost six years. These newly discovered electrocatalytic materials can be synthesized using only relatively cheap and abundant metallic elements: manganese (Mn), iron (Fe), nickel (Ni), zinc (Zn) and silver (Ag). Experiments found that under certain conditions, these electrocatalytic materials exhibit superior electrochemical properties to ruthenium (Ru) oxides—the existing electrocatalytic materials with the highest OER activity known. In Earth’s crust, Ag is the least abundant element among those constituting the newly discovered electrocatalytic materials. However, its crustal abundance is nearly 100 times that of Ru, indicating that these new electrocatalytic materials can be synthesized in sufficiently large amounts to enable hydrogen mass-production using water electrolyzers.
4. These results demonstrated that this AI technique could be used to expand the limits of human intelligence and dramatically accelerate the search for higher-performance materials. Using the technique, the team plans to expedite its efforts to develop new materials—mainly water electrolyzer electrode materials—in order to improve the efficiency of various electrochemical devices contributing to carbon neutrality.
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5. This project was carried out by a NIMS research team led by Ken Sakaushi (Principal Researcher) and Ryo Tamura (Team Leader). This work was conducted in conjunction with another project entitled, “High throughput search for seawater electrolysis catalysts by combining automated experiments with data science” (grant number: JPMJMI21EA) under the JST-Mirai Program mission area, “low carbon society.”
6. This research was published in ACS Central Science, an open access journal of the American Chemical Society, as an “ASAP (as soon as publishable) article” at 8:00 am on November 30, 2023, EST (https://doi.org/10.1021/acscentsci.3c01009).
