Millions of years for plants to recover from global warming

ETH Zurich

In brief:

• Disruption of the functioning of vegetation due to warming can lead to the failure of climate regulating mechanisms for millions of years.
• Vegetation changes can alter the planet’s climate equilibrium.
• Geological and climatic history provide insight into the effects of global warming today.

Scientists often seek answers to humanity’s most pressing challenges in nature. When it comes to global warming, geological history offers a unique, long-term perspective. Earth’s geological history is spiked by periods of catastrophic volcanic eruptions that released vast amounts of carbon into the atmosphere and oceans. The increased carbon triggered rapid climate warming that resulted in mass extinctions on land and in marine ecosystems. These periods of volcanism may also have disrupted carbon-climate regulation systems for millions of years.

Ecological imbalance

Earth and environmental scientists at ETH Zurich led an international team of researchers from the University of Arizona, University of Leeds, CNRS Toulouse, and the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest Snow and Landscape Research (WSL) in a study on how vegetation responds and evolves in response to major climatic shifts and how such shifts affect Earth’s natural carbon-climate regulation system.

Drawing on geochemical analyses of isotopes in sediments, the research team compared the data with a specially designed model, which included a representation of vegetation and its role in regulating the geological climate system. They used the model to test how the Earth system responds to the intense release of carbon from volcanic activity in different scenarios. They studied three significant climatic shifts in geological history, including the Siberian Traps event that caused the Permian-Triassic mass extinction about 252 million years ago. ETH Zurich professor, Taras Gerya points out, “The Siberian Traps event released some 40,000 gigatons (Gt) of carbon over 200,000 years. The resulting increase in global average temperatures between 5 - 10°C caused Earth’s most severe extinction event in the geologic record”.

Move, adapt, or perish 

“The recovery of vegetation from the Siberian Traps event took several millions of years and during this time Earth’s carbon-climate regulation system would have been weak and inefficient resulting in long-term climate warming,” explains lead author, Julian Rogger, ETH Zurich.

Researchers found that the severity of such events is determined by how fast emitted carbon can be returned to Earth’s interior – sequestered through silicate mineral weathering or organic carbon production, removing carbon from Earth’s atmosphere. They also found that the time it takes for the climate to reach a new state of equilibrium depended on how fast vegetation adapted to increasing temperatures. Some species adapted by evolving and others by migrating geographically to cooler regions. However, some geological events were so catastrophic that plant species simply did not have enough time to migrate or adapt to the sustained increase in temperature. The consequences of which left its geochemical mark on climate evolution for thousands, possibly millions, of years.  

Today’s human-induced climate crisis

What does this mean for human induced climate change? The study found that a disruption of vegetation increased the duration and severity of climate warming in the geologic past. In some cases, it may have taken millions of years to reach a new stable climatic equilibrium due to a reduced capacity of vegetation to regulate Earth’s carbon cycle.

“Today, we find ourselves in a major global bioclimatic crisis,” comments Loïc Pellissier, Professor of Ecosystems and Landscape Evolution at ETH Zurich and WSL. “Our study demonstrates the role of a functioning of vegetation to recover from abrupt climatic changes. We are currently releasing greenhouse gases at a faster rate than any previous volcanic event. We are also the primary cause of global deforestation, which strongly reduces the ability of natural ecosystems to regulate the climate. This study, in my perspective, serves as ‘wake-up call’ for the global community.”

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Journal

Science

DOI

10.1126/science.adn3450 

Method of Research

Computational simulation/modeling

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Biogeographic climate sensitivity controls Earth system response to large igneous province carbon degassing

Article Publication Date

8-Aug-2024

 

The threat of mpox has returned, but public knowledge about it has declined

Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania

 

image: 

How worried U.S. adults are about contracting mpox in the next three months. From the Annenberg Public Policy Center's ASAPH survey in July 2024.

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Credit: Annenberg Public Policy Center

PHILADELPHIA – It has been two years since the World Health Organization declared a global health emergency over an outbreak of mpox, a disease endemic to Africa that had spread to scores of countries. Now, in the summer of 2024, a deadlier version of the infectious disease has spread from the Democratic Republic of Congo to other African nations, the strain that originally hit the United States has shown signs of a resurgence, and this week the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued a new alert on mpox to health care providers.

But while the American public quickly learned about the disease during the summer of 2022, as the number of cases declined and media attention waned, much of that knowledge appears to have been lost, according to new survey data from the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania.

In a nationally representative survey of about 1,500 U.S. empaneled adults conducted in July 2024, the policy center finds that knowledge about mpox – which increased from July to August 2022 – has declined, along with fear of the disease (which was previously called monkeypox). This wave of the Annenberg Science and Public Health (ASAPH) knowledge survey finds that:

• Only 1 in 20 Americans (5%) are worried about contracting mpox in the next three months, down from 21% in August 2022. In addition, fewer than 1 in 10 (9%) are worried that they or their families will contract mpox.

• Fewer than 1 in 5 people (17%) know that mpox is less contagious than Covid-19, down from 41% in August 2022. Nearly two-thirds (63%) are not sure.

• Just a third of people (34%) know that men who have sex with men are at a higher risk of infection with mpox, down from nearly two-thirds (63%) in August 2022.

• Less than half (45%) know that a vaccine for mpox exists, down from 61% in August 2022.

• Fewer people (58%) know that it’s false to say that getting a Covid-19 vaccine increases your chances of getting mpox, down from 71%.

“The speed with which the public learned needed information about mpox in the summer of 2022 was a tribute to effective communication by the public health community,” said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center (APPC) and director of the survey. “That same expertise should now be deployed to ensure that those at risk remember mpox’s symptoms, modes of transmission, and the protective power of vaccination.”

Mpox outbreaks in 2024 and 2022

Discovered in 1958, mpox is a rare disease caused by an orthopox virus, and is a less deadly member of the family of viruses that cause smallpox, according to the CDC. Mpox may cause fever, chills, headaches, muscle aches, swollen lymph nodes, and painful rashes, particularly on the hands, feet, face, chest, mouth, or near the genitals. According to the CDC, the disease can spread through contact with infected wild animals, close (including sexual) contact with an infected individual, including contact with scabs or body fluids, or contact with contaminated materials such as towels or bedding.

The current outbreak involves an mpox strain known as clade I, which is especially virulent and dangerous to infants and children under the age of 5, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), whose director general announced this week that he was convening a panel of experts to advise him whether the outbreak should be declared a global health emergency. (The WHO called an end to the 2022 mpox global health emergency in May 2023.) The WHO says there have been over 14,000 cases this year, with at least 511 deaths, according to STAT News. In the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), 62% of the deaths involved children under age 5. The current subtype appears to be spread through routine close contact between individuals, though in November 2023 the WHO confirmed that this strain was also being sexually transmitted.

This deadlier strain of monkeypox has not been reported outside central and east Africa, the CDC said.

A different strain of mpox in the 2022 outbreak, known as the clade II subtype, which spread across the United States, was less deadly and largely transmitted through sexual contact, and men who have sex with men were at higher risk of the disease. That earlier strain never disappeared entirely, though new cases are at a much lower level, according to the CDC. The majority of cases are in people who are not vaccinated against mpox or have received only one of the two recommended doses, the CDC reported.

Vaccination against mpox

While knowledge concerning mpox has declined significantly, there has been a less pronounced drop in people’s intentions to get vaccinated against the disease. The CDC has urged individuals to be vaccinated with two doses of the vaccine Jynneos four weeks apart – both for people who have been exposed to mpox virus to help prevent its spread and for people with risk factors for mpox, including men who have sex with men.

An earlier APPC survey, in October 2022, found that 76% of respondents said they were “very likely” or “somewhat likely” to get an mpox vaccine if they were exposed to mpox. The current survey, in July 2024, found a slight decline – 70% of respondents reported that they were either very/somewhat likely to get the vaccine (68%) or were already vaccinated against mpox (2%). However, 3 in 10 (30%) said they were “not too likely” or “not at all likely” to get vaccinated against mpox if exposed to the virus. In addition, 70% reported in July 2024 that they thought the benefits of vaccination against mpox outweighed the risks.

Knowledge about mpox 

Responses to knowledge questions concerning mpox, from Annenberg Public Policy Center ASAPH surveys in July and August 2022 and July 2024.

Likelihood of mpox vaccination 

The likelihood of mpox vaccination, from the Annenberg Public Policy Center's ASAPH survey in August and October 2022 and July 2024.

Credit

Annenberg Public Policy Center

APPC’s ASAPH survey

The survey data come from the 20th wave of a nationally representative panel of 1,496 U.S. adults, first empaneled in April 2021, conducted for the Annenberg Public Policy Center by SSRS, an independent market research company. This wave of the Annenberg Science and Public Health Knowledge (ASAPH) survey was fielded July 11-18, 2024, and has a margin of sampling error (MOE) of ± 3.6 percentage points at the 95% confidence level. All figures are rounded to the nearest whole number and may not add to 100%. Combined subcategories may not add to totals in the topline and text due to rounding.

Download the topline and methodology statement.

The policy center has been tracking the American public’s knowledge, beliefs, and behaviors regarding vaccination, Covid-19, mpox, flu, maternal health, climate change, and other consequential health issues through this Annenberg Science and Public Health (ASAPH) knowledge survey panel for over three years. In addition to Jamieson, the APPC team includes senior data analyst Laura Gibson; research analyst Shawn Patterson Jr.; Patrick E. Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Health and Risk Communication Institute, and Ken Winneg, managing director of survey research.

The Annenberg Public Policy Center was established in 1993 to educate the public and policy makers about communication’s role in advancing public understanding of political, science, and health issues at the local, state, and federal levels.

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Method of Research

Survey

 

Researchers find unexpectedly large methane source in overlooked landscape

University of Alaska Fairbanks

 

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The study’s research team samples soil cores at a site near Fairbanks, Alaska, in winter.

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Credit: Photo by Katey Walter Anthony

When Katey Walter Anthony heard rumors of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, ballooning under the lawns of fellow Fairbanks residents, she nearly didn’t believe it.

“I ignored it for years because I thought ‘I am a limnologist, methane is in lakes,’” she said.

But when a local reporter contacted Walter Anthony, who is a research professor at the Institute of Northern Engineering at University of Alaska Fairbanks, to inspect the waterbed-like ground at a nearby golf course, she started to pay attention. Like others in Fairbanks, they lit “turf bubbles” on fire and confirmed the presence of methane gas.

Then, when Walter Anthony looked at nearby sites,  she was shocked that methane wasn’t just coming out of a grassland. “I went through the forest, the birch trees and the spruce trees, and there was methane gas coming out of the ground in large, strong streams,” she said.

“We just had to study that more,” Walter Anthony said.

With funding from the National Science Foundation, she and her colleagues launched a comprehensive survey of dryland ecosystems in Interior and Arctic Alaska to determine whether it was a one-off oddity or unforeseen concern.

Their study, published in the journal Nature Communications this July, reported that upland landscapes were releasing some of the highest methane emissions yet documented among northern terrestrial ecosystems. Even more, the methane consisted of carbon thousands of years older than what researchers had previously seen from upland environments.

“It’s a totally different paradigm from the way anyone thinks about methane,” Walter Anthony said.

Because methane is 25 to 34 times more potent than carbon dioxide, the discovery brings new concerns to the potential for permafrost thaw to accelerate global climate change.

The findings challenge current climate models, which predict that these environments will be an insignificant source of methane or even a sink as the Arctic warms.

Typically, methane emissions are associated with wetlands, where low oxygen levels in water-saturated soils favor microbes that produce the gas. Yet methane emissions at the study’s well-drained, drier sites were in some cases higher than those measured in wetlands.

This was especially true for winter emissions, which were five times higher at some sites than emissions from northern wetlands.

Digging into the source

“I needed to prove to myself and everyone else that this is not a golf course thing,” Walter Anthony said.

She and colleagues identified 25 additional sites across Alaska’s dry upland forests, grasslands and tundra and measured methane flux at over 1,200 locations year-round across three years. The sites encompassed areas with high silt and ice content in their soils and signs of permafrost thaw known as thermokarst mounds, where thawing ground ice causes some parts of the land to sink. This leaves behind an “egg carton” like pattern of conical hills and sunken trenches.

The researchers found all but three sites were emitting methane.

The research team, which included scientists at UAF’s Institute of Arctic Biology and the Geophysical Institute, combined flux measurements with an array of research techniques, including radiocarbon dating, geophysical measurements, microbial genetics and directly drilling into soils.

They found that unique formations known as taliks, where deep, expansive pockets of buried soil remain unfrozen year-round, were likely responsible for the elevated methane releases.

These warm winter havens allow soil microbes to stay active, decomposing and respiring carbon during a season that they normally wouldn’t be contributing to carbon emissions. 

Walter Anthony said that upland taliks have been an emerging concern for scientists because of their potential to increase permafrost carbon emissions. “But everyone's been thinking about the associated carbon dioxide release, not methane,” she said.

The research team emphasized that methane emissions are especially high for sites with Pleistocene-era Yedoma deposits. These soils contain large stocks of carbon that extend tens of meters below the ground surface. Walter Anthony suspects that their high silt content prevents oxygen from reaching deeply thawed soils in taliks, which in turn favors microbes that produce methane.

Walter Anthony said it’s these carbon-rich deposits that make their new discovery a global concern. Even though Yedoma soils only cover 3% of the permafrost region, they contain over 25% of the total carbon stored in northern permafrost soils. 

The study also found through remote sensing and numerical modeling that thermokarst mounds are developing across the pan-Arctic Yedoma domain. Their taliks are projected to be formed extensively by the 22nd century with continued Arctic warming.

“Everywhere you have upland Yedoma that forms a talik, we can expect a strong source of methane, especially in the winter,” Walter Anthony said.

“It means the permafrost carbon feedback is going to be a lot bigger this century than anybody thought,” she said.

 

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Journal

Nature Communications

DOI

10.1038/s41467-024-50346-5 

Article Title

Upland Yedoma taliks are an unpredicted source of atmospheric methane

Mayonnaise used in nuclear fusion research

Scientists at Lehigh University are using mayo to better understand the physics of nuclear fusion.

Peer-Reviewed Publication

Lehigh University



video:

Lehigh University researchers are digging deeper into the stability challenges of nuclear fusion—with mayonnaise! The team, led by Arindam Banerjee, the Paul B. Reinhold Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Mechanics, is examining the phases of Rayleigh-Taylor instability with an innovative approach that could inform the design of more stable fusion capsules, contributing to the global effort to harness clean fusion energy. Their most recent paper, published in Physical Review E, explores the critical transitions between elastic and plastic phases in these conditions. Read the full story. view more



Credit: Lehigh University

Department of Energy announces $4.6 million to fund public-private partnerships for fusion research

Awards will connect private sector companies working in fusion with DOE national laboratories and U.S. universities

Grant and Award Announcement

DOE/US Department of Energy

Key Takeaways

-Fusion has the potential to provide abundant clean energy
-One to two-year awards range from $100,000 to $500,000

In a continuing effort to forge and fund public-private partnerships to accelerate fusion research, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today awarded $4.6 million in 17 awards to U.S. businesses via the Innovation Network for Fusion Energy (INFUSE) program. 

The goal of INFUSE is to accelerate fusion energy development in the private sector by reducing impediments to collaboration between business and national laboratories or universities.  The overarching objective is to ensure the nation’s energy, environmental, and security needs by accelerating foundational research to advance economical, innovative fusion technologies. 

Projects for this round of funding include research in materials science, modeling and simulation, as well as enabling technologies to help move toward the ultimate goal of economical fusion energy. 

Fusion has the potential to provide abundant, reliable, and non-carbon-emitting energy by harnessing the power of the sun and the stars. The recently announced DOE Fusion Energy Strategy 2024 seeks to accelerate the viability of commercial fusion energy in partnership with the private sector.   

The U.S. has set a goal of enabling a fusion pilot plant, led by the private sector, on a decadal timescale as the country moves toward a net-zero economy by 2050. Within the Fusion Energy Sciences program, the Building Bridges vision has three major elements, one of which is “Bridging Gaps: Creating innovation engines with national laboratories, universities, and industry to support science excellence and technology readiness for fusion energy.” These INFUSE awards directly support this element through enabling the public sector to pursue questions of interest to the private sector.  

“The selections today showcase our continuing commitment to the fusion industry in the U.S. and our goal to share widely unique capabilities at national laboratories and U.S. universities,” said Jean Paul Allain, DOE Associate Director of Science for Fusion Energy Sciences. “Partnering with businesses and working together is a win-win for our fusion industry, the DOE, and the nation.”  

The 17 projects were selected via a competitive peer review process managed by the INFUSE leadership team at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory. 

The program solicited proposals from the fusion industry and selected projects for one- or two-year awards, all with budgets ranging between $100,000 and $500,000 each. 

The full list of planned awards can be found under “Latest Topical Funding Opportunity Awards” on the FES website. Full abstracts for each project are available on the INFUSE website. 

Selection for award negotiations is not a commitment by DOE to issue an award or provide funding. Before funding is issued, DOE and the applicants will undergo a negotiation process, and DOE may cancel negotiations and rescind the selection for any reason during that ti

 

Even indirect gun violence exposure linked to decreased quality of life

Rutgers University

Just living near gun violence – even without direct exposure or injury – significantly hurts quality of life, according to a study published in the Journal of Urban Health.

This finding from the New Jersey Gun Violence Research Center at Rutgers University reveals that shootings take a toll on millions of Americans who don’t show up in traditional victim tallies.

Survey data from 7,785 adults in nine states, including New Jersey, examined the effects of four types of gun violence exposure: being threatened with a gun, being shot, having a friend or family member get shot and witnessing or hearing about a neighborhood shooting.

"We found that witnessing or hearing about a shooting in your neighborhood was the most common type of gun violence exposure, and it was associated with a decrease in quality of life across all five domains we measured," said lead author Jennifer Paruk, a research associate at the research center.

The study revealed that 37 percent of participants reported at least one type of gun violence exposure, and the study population was representative of the overall population from those nine states, which means that more than a third of all people in those states – Colorado, Florida, Minnesota, Mississippi New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas and Washington – face exposure to gun violence.

Neighborhood exposure was most prevalent at 22 percent, followed by knowing a shooting victim (19 percent), being threatened with a gun (13 percent) and being shot (2 percent).

Indirect exposure had nearly as big an impact as direct victimization. Witnessing or hearing about neighborhood shootings predicted decreases in overall quality of life as well as physical, psychological, social and environmental well-being.

The researchers also examined cumulative exposure across all four types of gun violence experiences. They found that greater cumulative exposure predicted lower quality of life scores across all domains measured.

"Those with the most gun violence exposure, those who've been impacted in many different ways, have the lowest overall quality of life across all of these different domains," Paruk said.

Individuals who reported all four types of gun violence exposure had an adjusted average physical quality of life score that was 11.14 points lower than those with no exposure on a scale from 0 to 100. Their environmental quality of life score was 7.18 points lower on average.

The study used the World Health Organization Quality of Life - Brief Scale, which measures quality of life across physical, psychological, social and environmental domains. The researchers controlled for factors like income, education, prior abuse experiences, neighborhood safety perceptions and other demographics to isolate the relationship between gun violence exposure and quality of life outcomes.

Being threatened with a gun was associated with a 2.59-point decrease in physical quality of life, while being shot was linked to a 6.98-point decrease.

Paruk emphasized that the findings underscore the broad impact of gun violence beyond just those directly injured.

"We're really recognizing the effects that indirect gun exposure can have on many types of quality of life," she said. "For people who are getting care for gun violence, their family members in the hospital with them or who were at home taking care of them could use a lot of support."

The study suggests that reducing neighborhood gun violence could have wide-ranging benefits for community well-being.

"Reducing gun violence in particular neighborhoods would improve life for everyone in those neighborhoods,” Paruk said.

While the study didn’t test the efficacy or specific interventions, the researchers said their findings highlight the need for expanded support services for those indirectly impacted by gun violence, but such support is difficult to find.

"We might not even have support available to indirect victims," Paruk said. "And as a society, we might not recognize the harms that gun violence exposure can have indirectly. We need to make sure that the supports are available if people need them."

The researchers plan to conduct further analyses using the survey data, including examining how the frequency and recency of gun violence exposures relate to health outcomes. They said the findings reinforce the importance of considering gun violence as a broad public health issue affecting entire communities.

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Journal

Journal of Urban Health

DOI

10.1007/s11524-024-00891-7 

Method of Research

Survey

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Gun Violence Exposure and Quality of Life in Nine US States

 

A ‘thank you’ goes a long way in family relationships

University of Illinois College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences

URBANA, Ill. – You’ve probably heard that cultivating gratitude can boost your happiness. But in marriage and families, it’s not just about being more grateful for your loved ones — it’s also important to feel appreciated by them. Researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have previously explored the positive impact of perceived gratitude from romantic partners for couples’ relationship quality. In a new study, they show the benefits of perceived gratitude also apply to parent-child relationships and can promote individuals’ mental health.

“Some of my previous research has looked at gratitude in an interpersonal context, particularly between couples, and we’ve found that it’s a pretty influential factor for various aspects of the relationship. Individuals who feel more appreciated by their partners are more confident, satisfied, and committed and less concerned about instability,” said lead author Allen Barton, Illinois Extension specialist and assistant professor in the Department of Human Development and Family Studies, part of the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences at Illinois. 

“In this study we wanted to explore perceived gratitude in the broader family context, and whether it makes a difference for individual and relationship well-being, and for parenting outcomes.”

The study included data from a nationwide sample of 593 parents who were married or in a romantic relationship and had at least one child between the ages of 4 and 17. Participants answered questions about perceived gratitude from their spouse or partner and from their children, as well as items assessing psychological distress, parenting stress, and relationship satisfaction.

The researchers divided children into two age ranges — 4 to 12 and 13 to 18 — to account for developmental differences. Barton says teenagers might be expected to have more awareness of what's going on in the family and what parents are contributing to their well-being. He notes that young children can still show gratitude, although they may express it differently.

Barton and co-author Qiujie Gong, a doctoral student in HDFS when the research was conducted, found that perceived gratitude from romantic partners resulted in better couple outcomes, but did not affect levels of parenting stress. In contrast, perceived gratitude from children — both older and younger — resulted in lower parenting stress but had no impact on couple relationship satisfaction. In addition to influencing family outcomes, they found that gratitude from romantic partners and older (but not younger) children was positively associated with individuals’ psychological well-being.

Women, compared to men, reported lower levels of perceived gratitude from romantic partners and from older children. Furthermore, higher levels of perceived gratitude from children provided beneficial effects for women only. That’s consistent with prior research showing that women's contributions to the family are often less acknowledged by men than vice versa, Barton said.

“It's never 50/50 in any relationship and parents are going to be doing more than their kids, but nevertheless, our results highlight that making sure individuals’ efforts for the family are acknowledged and appreciated by other family members is important. And conversely, there is clear evidence that a lack of feeling appreciated by the family members you're trying to help leads to negative outcomes for the family,” he noted. 

Barton said parents can foster an overall climate of gratitude in the family.

“As spouses and partners, we can express and show our gratitude for the other person, and we can teach children to express appreciation in developmentally appropriate ways. If you see your partner doing something really helpful for a child, you can remind that child to say ‘thank you, mom’ or ‘thanks, dad’ for what they just did. You can develop an ongoing way of thinking and a pattern of interaction that promotes gratitude — both giving and receiving — within the home,” he said.

The researchers did not find any differences in terms of socio-demographic factors predicting perceived gratitude in various family relationships, indicating it appears at similar levels across a wide range of family types.

“As someone who studies family-based prevention programming, I am always trying to find research-based ways to build strong families, and expressing gratitude appears as one important means of doing that,” Barton stated.

“There's a lot of work that goes into making ‘family’ happen — parenting, marriage, couple relationships, and so on — for any and every family. And when those efforts go unacknowledged or underappreciated, it takes a toll on individuals and families. We know the power of thank you for couples, and this research shows it also matters for parent-child relationships.”

The paper, “A ‘Thank You’ really would be nice: Perceived gratitude in family relationships,” is published in The Journal of Positive Psychology [DOI: 10.1080/17439760.2024.2365472].

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Journal

The Journal of Positive Psychology

DOI

10.1080/17439760.2024.2365472 

Method of Research

Data/statistical analysis

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

A ‘Thank You’ really would be nice: Perceived gratitude in family relationships

 

Strike Force: Utah State leads collaborative $2.3M NSF grant to study earthquake critical zones

USU researchers Alexis Ault, Dennis Newell, Srisharan Shreedharan and Brady Cox secure five-year FRES grant

Utah State University

 

image: 

During an NSF-funded trip to the M7.6 earthquake rupture site near Içmeler, Turkey in 2023, Utah State University geoscientist Alexis Ault measures the orientation of the rupture interface and prepares to take samples. Ault is lead principal investigator on a $2.3M NSF-funded multi-institution collaborative project to study earthquake critical zones in the U.S. and abroad. 

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Credit: Sinan Akçiz, CSU, Fullerton

LOGAN, UTAH, USA -- Utah State University geoscientist Alexis Ault recalls the devastating aftermath of back-to-back 7.8 and 7.6-magnitude earthquakes on Feb. 6, 2023, near the Turkey-Syria border that killed more than 50,000 people and displaced millions.

“We witnessed the destruction firsthand, as well as the resilience of the country and population trying to get their footing and rebuild,” says Ault, associate professor in USU’s Department of Geosciences, who traveled to the disaster site about six months after the catastrophic quakes. “It was heartbreaking, but also inspiring.”

Unfortunately, she says, Turkey is among many countries that repeatedly experience large and damaging earthquakes on an unpredictable basis. Her colleague Brady Cox, founding director of USU’s Earthquake Engineering Research Center, has also observed calamitous human suffering and infrastructure damage during the past 25 years following earthquakes in the United States and abroad. Citizens of Utah, says Cox, professor in USU’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, are also at risk from a significant — and potentially overdue — earthquake along the Wasatch Fault.

Understanding the earthquake cycle processes that portend such powerful forces and how to mitigate their risk is at the core of a research project Ault is undertaking with Cox and USU Geosciences colleagues Dennis Newell and Srisharan Shreedharn, along with Brown University geophysicist Greg Hirth and California State University, Fullerton geologist Sinan Akçiz. The team was awarded a $2.3 million Frontier Research in Earth Sciences (FRES) grant from the U.S. National Science Foundation to pursue the five-year project.

Ault, Newell and Akçiz’s trip to the 2023 7.6-magnitude quake site, funded by an NSF Rapid Response Research grant, enabled them to collect fragile samples from the earthquake’s rupture interface along the Çardak-Yesilyurt Fault system, along with measuring gas flux along the rupture.

“Those delicate samples, which are no longer possible to acquire because the rupture interface erodes with time, provide critical materials for the current study,” says Newell, professor and interim head of USU’s Department of Geosciences.

The Çardak-Yesilyurt rupture samples, along with samples and shallow geophysical data the researchers have collected from California’s southern San Andreas fault, will help the team investigate how the earthquake critical zone — the near-surface layer of the Earth’s restless crust — accumulates and releases earthquake energy on major strike-slip faults. Ault notes acquisition of geophysical data across the San Andreas fault, led by Cox, was made possible by USU faculty Seed Grants awarded to Ault and Cox.

Ault says, unlike the fault in Turkey, the San Andreas fault is overdue for an earthquake.

“This NSF-funded project will help us overcome limitations of previous, generalized characterizations of earthquake critical zones with more in-depth geologic data, seismic imaging studies, deformation experiments and modeling,” she says. “Combining expertise from varied engineering and geoscience disciplines, we aim to emerge with a more complete and accurate picture of earthquake critical zones in these settings.”

The team plans to leverage NSF-supported, shared-use equipment and data archiving resources from the Natural Hazards Engineering Research Infrastructure (NHERI) program and USU’s new Rock Deformation and Earthquake Mechanics Lab, the latter of which is led by co-PI Shreedharan.

“By deforming these one-of-a-kind samples in the Rock Deformation and Earthquake Mechanics Lab under the same pressures that they experienced in the near-surface crust, we can begin to understand how, where and over what timescales strike-slip fault zones like the San Andreas and Çardak-Yesilyurt accumulate strain energy,” he says.

Centered on concepts of intellectual, educational and cultural reciprocity, the project involves international collaboration with researchers in Turkey. It also affords substantial learning and training opportunities for mentees. These include positions for three doctoral students and two postdoctoral fellows at Utah State, a doctoral student and postdoctoral fellow at Brown, and a master’s student position at CSUF, as well as multiple research opportunities for undergraduate researchers at each of the participating institutions.

In addition, the grant bolsters the USU team’s ongoing efforts with the university’s Native American Summer Mentorship Program, which encourages Aggie undergrads at the USU Blanding campus to pursue research and four-year degree programs.

“This project has the potential to benefit communities from multiple angles, including improving earthquake hazard models and seismic site response analyses to better protect human life, to providing meaningful educational opportunities in Earth sciences and engineering, as well as strengthening international partnerships,” Ault says.