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)
Friday, January 17, 2025
Crew Walk to Safety After Survey Vessel Grounds on a Pebble Beach in UK
Terramare aground on Wednesday night (St Davids RNLI)
On Tuesday night, a small survey vessel ran aground off the coast of Newgale, UK while working on a telecom line project, forcing the crew to abandon ship onto the beach.
At about 1830 hours Tuesday, HM Coastguard received a distress call from the landing / survey craft MTSTerramare, which was in distress off Newgale. The vessel had lost power in one engine while operating close to the beach, and in rough surf, it could not maintain its heading. It ran aground broadside to the shore, and waves began washing over the working deck. Bright arcs from an apparent electrical short on deck were reported by bystanders.
Courtesy St Davids RNLI
The St. Davids RNLI lifeboat was dispatched to assist, and it made top speed to Newgale. The crew of the Terramare requested salvage pumps to dewater their vessel, but in the rough surf there was no way to carry out a transfer, even with smaller launches. The responders considered running a towline, but because of the relative size of the Terramare compared to the RNLI response boats and the hazards of the situation, they decided not to attempt a salvage tow.
The vessel’s crew were unharmed, and since the Terramare was nearly high and dry, they were able to step down onto the pebble beach and walk away. At this point the RNLI responders concluded their mission and returned to station, arriving at berth after 2000 hours.
"The RNLI mission is to save lives at sea, and we endeavor to save boats if possible, but it is beyond our remit to salvage," said Will Chant, coxswain for the St Davids RNLI lifeboat. "In this instance, the size of vessel and its position broadside to the beach compromised a tow, therefore once assured the crew were safe ashore, there was nothing further our lifeboats could do."
Courtesy RNLI
Good Samaritans Rescue Crew of Fishing Vessel in Gulf of Alaska
A good Samaritan vessel has rescued two fishermen from the cold waters of the Gulf of Alaska after a fishing vessel capsized off the coast of Kodiak, the U.S. Coast Guard said Thursday.
At about 0945 hours on Wednesday morning, Coast Guard 17th District received a distress alert from the fishing vessel Tanusha's EPIRB, located about 20 nautical miles southeast of Kodiak. In response, the command center dispatched a helicopter aircrew from Air Station Kodiak to the scene and made a VHF call to nearby shipping to request assistance.
The fishing vessel Victory received the call and diverted to Tanusha's last known location. The lost boat had begun taking water and had capsized, and the two crewmembers aboard had successfully abandoned ship. The crew of the Victory soon spotted the two survivors, who were drifting in a life raft near the upturned hull of their boat. One of them had a head injury and was showing signs of hypothermia.
Both fishermen were taken safely aboard the Victory, and the Coast Guard helicopter aircrew arrived to airlift them for a medevac, with assistance from a patrol boat operated by the Alaska State Troopers.
"The use of a functioning and properly registered EPIRB means quite literally the difference between life and death," said Petty Officer 3rd Class Sean Streyle of Coast Guard Sector Western Alaska. "In this case, it was our only notification that the crew of Tanusha needed assistance."
Germany Detains Tanker for Customs and Seaworthiness Inspections
Tanker is being detained for possible sanctions violations and repairs (Havariekommando)
German authorities confirmed they are continuing to detain the Panama-flagged tanker Eventin (152,000 dwt) after the vessel’s blackout and rescue from the Baltic on January 10. In addition to waiting for confirmation from the vessel’s classification society of the repairs and seaworthiness of the ship, the authorities confirmed Customs inspectors have boarded the vessel.
The General Customs Inspection Office reported that its inspectors were aboard checking the vessel’s paperwork on Tuesday and Wednesday. They also sampled the 100,000 tons of oil aboard and have submitted it for testing. They are seeking to confirm the validity of the papers and exploring if the cargo is a violation of the EU bans imposed after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. A spokesperson for Customs said the process is expected to take several more days.
The captain of the vessel has reportedly filed for permission to depart Germany after the Federal Ministry of Transport was informed the engine has been repaired. The Eventin was towed by the German rescue services on January 10 into the anchorage at Sassnitz after it blacked out during a storm in the Baltic. The original plan called for the vessel to be moved to Denmark on Monday, but the German authorities issued a detention order.
The vessel, which was built in 2006 has been registered since 2022 in Panama. Databases list DNV as its class society. Ownership and management of the vessel have changed annually in the past few years according to the databases and it was renamed Eventin in June 2024. The ship has been listed in the EU sanctions and cited for its involvement in the Russian oil trade.
The Federal Ministry of Transport confirmed that class inspectors had been aboard. It said it was waiting for the results of its tests before determining when the tanker would be permitted to depart.
The tanker’s AIS signal shows it departed the Russian terminal at Ust-luga on January 7 bound for Port Said. Media reports indicate its destination was India.
Customs checks of the cargo aboard a vessel have become a more common cause for vessels to be detained since the institution of the sanctions against Russia. Last year, Germany held a general cargo ship transporting lumber from Russia and Finland has also been checking the cargo of the tanker Eagle S after the tanker was detained for damaging the undersea cables in the Baltic. Finnish Customs announced today it would not be pursuing charges of sanctions violations for bringing banned oil products into Finland aboard the Eagle S. The authorities determined the crew was not responsible as the Finnish authorities had ordered the vessel to Finnish territorial waters. The tanker however remains detained in Finland due to the other ongoing investigation.
NRL oceanographers receive NASA Group Achievement Award
Naval Research Laboratory
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U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), Stennis Space Center Oceanographers received NASA Letters of Achievement for their collaboration with NASA’s Sub-Mesoscale Ocean Dynamics Experiment (S-MODE). NRL and NAVO provided the NASA science team with gliders and floats and real-time ocean model forecasts for several observational campaign. From left to right- Jay Shriver, Ph.D., Joseph D’Addezio, Ph.D., and Gregg Jacobs, Ph.D. (U.S. Navy photo)
WASHINGTON - U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) oceanographers and the Naval Oceanographic Office (NAVO) received a Group Achievement Award from NASA for their collaboration with NASA’s Sub-Mesoscale Ocean Dynamics Experiment (S-MODE). NRL and NAVO provided the NASA science team with gliders and floats and real-time ocean model forecasts for several observational campaigns.
NRL’s Joseph D’Addezio, Ph.D., Gregg A. Jacobs, Ph.D., and Jay. F. Shriver, Ph.D. used Office of Naval Research’s (ONR) Physical Oceanography Program funding to provide S-MODE with daily, real-time ocean model forecasts during three S-MODE’s observational campaigns. Aided by the real-time model simulations, NRL also provided real-time glider movement guidance using NRL’s Guidance of Heterogeneous Observation Systems-GHOST technology.
“S-MODE was a scientific campaign initiated to observe, for the first time, ocean features that are too small to see from space and too large to see with isolated measurements,” said D’Addezio, “These ocean features are uniquely important because they allow the ocean and atmosphere to ‘breathe’ between one another. This makes them essential for understanding the current and future evolution of the global earth system.”
Because these features are difficult to see from space, numerical prediction models provide a way to forecast where they might occur in abundance, allowing the ship-based campaign to target certain geographic locations. The numerical model is also robust in its representation of fields in space and time, allowing scientists to study these difficult to observe features in a more complete way. NRL provided real time forecasts of the ocean off the west coast of the United States in order to aid the ship-based campaigns and the scientific evaluation of these unique ocean features. NRL deployed new prediction capabilities and demonstrated their efficacy in operational settings for the first time ever. S-MODE has proven to be a highly successful scientific endeavor for all involved.
Both the ocean model simulations and glider guidance used novel methodologies that had not yet been tested in operational environments. The ocean model was corrected every day using a new assimilation technology, whereby the horizontal scales of the model corrections were directly a function of the observation spatial density. The traditional GHOST glider guidance was augmented using the real-time ocean model fields, whereby gliders were forced to sample regions that had not been recently observed, thereby significantly reducing the redundancy of observations collected by the gliders. “Each new methodology was tested in real-time during the S-MODE campaigns and were shown to significantly increase ocean model forecast skill” said Jacobs, Ph. D., “Both technologies are now moving towards Navy transition. Overall, the NRL/NASA collaboration proved fruitful for both government agencies.”
During each S-MODE observational campaign, NAVO donated gliders and floats for S-MODE to deploy and use. During the first two experiments, NAVO donated 20 gliders. During the final experiment, NAVO donated 5 gliders and 10 floats. S-MODE successfully used these observations for their science goals and Ocean and Predictions Branch was also able to utilize the observations for Navy-oriented goals.
“Both S-MODE and NRL are extremely grateful for NAVO’s participation in the exercises.” said Shriver, Ph.D.
D’Addezio is an oceanographer in NRL’s Ocean Dynamics and Prediction Branch at Stennis Space Center, Mississippi. He received Bachelor of Science degrees in meteorology and oceanography at North Caroline State University in 2012, his Master of Science degree in physical oceanography at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington in 2014, and his Doctoral degree in physical oceanography at the University of South Carolina in 2016. His work focuses on research and development for the Navy’s ocean models, with a specific focus on data assimilation: the process by which the ocean model is updated to include information from recently taken observations. He began working with NRL in 2016.
Jacobs is head of NRL’s Ocean Dynamics and Prediction Branch. He received his Bachelor of Science degree in Aerospace Engineering at the University of Colorado in Boulder, CO in 1986, his Master of Science degree in physical oceanography from Oregon State University in 1988 and Doctoral degree in Aerospace Engineering at the University of Colorado in Boulder, CO in 1991. Jacobs has over 100 refereed journal publications, 5 book chapters and 6 patents awarded.
His recent work has focused on ocean circulation predictability into submesoscale ocean processes by exploiting new high-resolution observations such as the Surface Water and Ocean Topography mission and ocean circulation and processes controlling sound channels throughout the globe with specific focus on the North Atlantic and North Pacific oceans.
Shriver is an oceanographer also with NRL’s Ocean Dynamics and Prediction Branch. He received his Bachelor of Science degree in mathematics and meteorology from SUNY Brockport in 1987, his Master of Science degree in 1989 and Doctoral degree in 1993 in dynamic meteorology from Florida State University. Shriver has published over 55 refereed publications on a wide range of topics and has played an integral role in the transition of multiple global ocean prediction systems to the U.S. Navy for operational applications. His research interests include ocean analysis and forecasting, oceanic tides and nonlinear ocean dynamics.
Their research group has transitioned systems to operational use for real time observation processing, global and high-resolution prediction systems, and many associated applications. In recent years in collaboration with the NRL Marine Meteorology Division, the groups have transitioned global and high-resolution Earth System Prediction Capability forecasts to operations. These systems now regularly provide skillful forecasts out to 45 days.
The Ocean Dynamics and Predictions branch research focus includes basic understanding of physics of ocean circulation wave and ice processes, remote and in situ sensing systems, demonstration of predictability, and transitioning ocean forecast systems to production centers within the Navy and other national agencies. Stationed at NASA’s Stennis Space Center in southern Mississippi, it is known primarily as a test site for NASA rocket engines.
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About the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory
NRL is a scientific and engineering command dedicated to research that drives innovative advances for the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps from the seafloor to space and in the information domain. NRL is located in Washington, D.C. with major field sites in Stennis Space Center, Mississippi; Key West, Florida; Monterey, California, and employs approximately 3,000 civilian scientists, engineers and support personnel.
For more information, contact NRL Corporate Communications at (202) 480-3746 or nrlpao@us.navy.mil.
New West Health-Gallup survey finds incoming Trump administration faces high public skepticism over plans to lower healthcare costs
Nearly half of Americans (46%) think the country is headed in the wrong direction when it comes to the incoming president’s policies to lower healthcare costs, while 31% say it’s on the right track, according to the latest West Health-Gallup survey.
West Health Institute
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Weddnesday, Jan. 15, 2025— Nearly half of Americans (46%) think the country is headed in the wrong direction when it comes to the incoming president’s policies to lower healthcare costs, while 31% say it’s on the right track, according to the latest West Health-Gallup survey released today.
When viewed through a political lens, only Republicans are more positive than negative about the future of healthcare costs under the Trump administration; nearly three-quarters (73%) think the incoming administration’s healthcare policies are headed in the right direction. In contrast, 24% of independents and 3% of Democrats say the same. Democrats overwhelmingly think the yet-to-be-detailed policies are going in the wrong direction (84%), and nearly half of political independents (48%) agree.
Findings on prescription drug prices fall along similar party lines, but Americans are generally more negative than positive on Trump's policies to bring prices down (41% vs. 34%).
“The survey reflects a deep divide across party affiliation about the future of healthcare policy,” said Timothy Lash, president, West Health Policy Center — a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization focused on healthcare and aging. “Political independents, however, remain highly pessimistic, which may better reflect the realities and consequences of a high-priced healthcare system more than the politics or personalities behind it.”
Political independents comprise approximately four in 10 U.S. adults, ahead of Republicans (30%) and Democrats (26%).
Low Confidence in Policy Action
Only one-third of Americans are optimistic that the incoming Trump administration’s policies will bring down the cost of healthcare (32%) or prescription drugs (34%). When asked about specific healthcare priorities — including lowering drug costs, protecting Medicare and Social Security, capping insulin prices, and addressing mental health within the U.S. healthcare system — overall, majorities of Americans express doubt that these issues would be prioritized in Trump’s second term.
57% do not believe the administration will prioritize lowering prescription drug costs.
58% do not think capping insulin for everyone at $35 will be a priority.
56% do not think protecting Medicare and Social Security will be a priority.
60% say they do not think the new administration will expand Medicare negotiation.
63% say expanding access to mental healthcare is unlikely to be prioritized.
Americans United in Concern Over Healthcare Costs
Americans across the political spectrum share concerns about healthcare affordability. Prior West Health-Gallup polling shows that a third or more of Republicans, Democrats and independents are concerned they will be unable to pay for needed healthcare. Other recent West Health-Gallup research also found that only about half or less of Democrats and Republicans rate U.S. healthcare quality as excellent or good, an all-time low.
“As Americans navigate an evolving political landscape, the data continue to show a clear and unified desire for meaningful policies that address the rising cost of care and the difficulty many have obtaining access,” said Gallup senior researcher Sarah Fioroni.
Methodology
The West Health-Gallup Survey was conducted via web Nov. 11-18, 2024, with a nationally representative sample of 3,583 U.S. adults aged 18 and older. The margin of sampling error is ±2.1 percentage points at the 95% confidence level.
About Gallup Gallup delivers analytics and advice to help leaders and organizations solve their most pressing problems. Combining more than 80 years of experience with its global reach, Gallup knows more about the attitudes and behaviors of employees, customers, students and citizens than any other organization in the world.
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NATIONALIZE LONG TERM CARE HOMES
UC Irvine-led study shows crucial role of staffing instability in nursing home ratings
Researchers recommend adding metric to CMS quality-of-care evaluation measures
University of California - Irvine
Irvine, Calif., Jan. 14, 2025 — A study led by the University of California, Irvine has revealed the significant impact of staffing instability on nursing home quality across the country, as reflected in the Five-Star Quality Rating System published by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Families and prospective residents often rely on these care assessments when choosing a nursing home.
Research findings, recently published online in the journal Health Affairs Scholar, showed that nursing homes either gained or lost a quality star when the staffing instability measure was included in the Five-Star metric.
“The choice of a nursing home is one of the most emotional and profound decisions a family makes. Adding staffing instability to the Five-Star ratings would empower consumers to make more informed decisions, while encouraging facilities to prioritize consistent staffing,” said corresponding author Dana Mukamel, UC Irvine Distinguished Professor of medicine. “After all, consistent, adequate staffing is vital to ensuring the health and well-being of residents.”
Currently, the CMS evaluates staffing using two key metrics: the average number of hours per resident per day and turnover rates. Staffing instability refers to daily fluctuations – from fully staffed to struggling to cover shifts – capturing the inconsistency that might not be obvious when only looking at averages. Day-to-day variations can directly impact residents, affecting everything from timely meals to essential care.
Using data from more than 13,600 nursing homes during the third quarter of 2023, researchers tested several scenarios of staffing instability relative to other measures in the ratings. They applied CMS methodologies and discovered that on a conservative 5-to-50-point basis, 21 percent of nursing homes experienced a change in their quality star rating. Under a less conservative 10-to-100-point basis, the number jumped to 40 percent.
“The Five-Star rating system serves as a vital tool for families and caregivers making critical decisions about long-term care options, and adding this measure will ensure that ratings more accurately reflect the quality they can expect,” Mukamel said. “This information would also encourage nursing home operators to focus on staffing consistency, leading to better resident outcomes.”
The CMS has been updating its nursing home quality measures over the past 20 years to adapt to changing standards and as new data becomes available. The study’s authors strongly recommend that staffing instability be incorporated into the Five-Star ratings.
“This change would not upend the entire rating system. Our findings offer the CMS a clear pathway to push the needle on quality care forward, making a real difference in the lives of nursing home residents and their families,” Mukamel said.
The team included Heather Ladd, a research associate in UC Irvine’s Department of Medicine; Dr. Debra Saliba, UCLA professor of medicine; and R. Tamara Konetzka, Louis Block Professor of Public Health Sciences and professor of medicine at the University of Chicago.
This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute on Aging under award number R01AG066742.
About the University of California, Irvine: Founded in 1965, UC Irvine is a member of the prestigious Association of American Universities and is ranked among the nation’s top 10 public universities by U.S. News & World Report. The campus has produced five Nobel laureates and is known for its academic achievement, premier research, innovation and anteater mascot. Led by Chancellor Howard Gillman, UC Irvine has more than 36,000 students and offers 224 degree programs. It’s located in one of the world’s safest and most economically vibrant communities and is Orange County’s second-largest employer, contributing $7 billion annually to the local economy and $8 billion statewide. For more on UC Irvine, visit www.uci.edu.
Media access: Radio programs/stations may, for a fee, use an on-campus studio with a Comrex IP audio codec to interview UC Irvine faculty and experts, subject to availability and university approval. For more UC Irvine news, visit news.uci.edu. Additional resources for journalists may be found at https://news.uci.edu/media-resources.
Journal
Health Affairs Scholar
Article Title
Incorporating staffing instability in the nursing home Five-Star Staffing Composite
Tree crops crucial for sustainable development
Research team emphasize global importance for biodiversity, economy and climate
University of Göttingen
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Cacao plantation in the project: ‘Ecological intensification and multifunctionality of genetically diverse cocoa agroforestry systems in Peruvian landscapes (Eco-Cacao)’. Tree crops such as these offer important sources of income for local people and can - with sustainable strategies - protect biodiversity.
Tree crops – for example, apple, cherry, olives, nuts, coffee, and cacao – cover more than 183 million hectares worldwide, yet remain largely overlooked in agricultural policies, despite their critical role in achieving the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). An international research team, with the participation of Göttingen University, highlight how these crops are not only essential to feed the world and for global economies, but also hold immense potential for protecting biodiversity and the climate, as well as improving livelihoods for millions of people worldwide. The findings were published in a Perspectives article in Nature Sustainability.
The study’s findings urge policymakers to develop specific agendas to promote sustainable practices in tree crop agriculture. Agricultural policies typically focus on annual crops – such as wheat, sunflowers or rice – which have much shorter life cycles, from germination to harvest in just one year. While fostering sustainable practices in crops like wheat is also important, the ecological benefits of these systems are often limited due to their simpler vegetation and shorter harvest cycle. Tree crops, by contrast, are more complex, including several layers of vegetation – herbaceous, shrubs, trees – and provide stable habitats that can support biodiversity when managed sustainably.
With their permanent root systems and extensive leaf litter, tree crops also prevent soil erosion, enhance its fertility, and provide habitats for many species year-round. They contribute to greenhouse gas reduction through carbon sequestration, improve habitat connectivity for fragmented ecosystems, and buffer protected areas from the impacts of intensive agriculture. Tree crops tend to be less mechanized and require more manual labour, offering vital employment opportunities, particularly in low- and middle-income countries where these crops are widespread.
The researchers call for the implementation of regulations, financial incentives, and supportive policies aimed at improving agricultural practices for tree crops to maximize their contribution to global sustainability. “Tree cropping areas overlap with most of the world’s biodiversity rich areas, making them key to conservation. However, local practices and landscape-scale measures adapted to different contexts are needed. We call for tailored policies and further research to ensure sustainable management of tree crops,” explains co-author Dr Elena Velado-Alonso, at Göttingen University’s Functional Agrobiodiversity and Agroecology Group.
“We’re missing an opportunity to leverage tree crops to address some of the biggest environmental and social challenges of our time,” says Dr Carlos MartÃnez-Núñez, researcher at the Doñana Biological Station and coordinator of the study. “When managed properly, these agricultural systems can be a powerful tool for biodiversity conservation, climate change mitigation, and rural poverty alleviation, in addition to producing around 1,000 million metric tons of food annually.”
“This call to action represents a crucial step in rethinking agriculture’s role in building a fairer, more sustainable future,” adds Velado-Alonso.
Original publication: Carlos Martinez-Nuñez et al, “Tailored policies for perennial woody crops are crucial to advance Sustainable Development." Nature Sustainability 2024.Doi: 10.1038/s41893-024-01483-8
Orchard meadow in Germany. Such tree crops often have a high level of biodiversity, which can be promoted through sustainable management.
Red admiral butterfly in a meadow orchard in Germany
Credit: Redish Lab, University of Minnesota (CC-BY 4.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
Researchers find that rats create neurological maps of places to avoid after experiencing a threat and think about these locations when exhibiting worry-related behaviors. These findings—which A. David Redish of the University of Minnesota, US, and colleagues presented in the open-access journal PLOS Biology on January 14th—may provide insight into the neuroscience of common psychological conditions like anxiety.
There are many theories as to why people experience anxiety. One is that anxiety is associated with a psychological phenomenon called “approach-avoidance conflict,” where an individual desires something but is weighing that against an associated negative outcome.
To examine the neurological underpinnings of this phenomenon, researchers studied rats navigating an L-shape track. The rats would enter at one end, with food available at the opposite end of the track, but partially hidden around the corner would be a robot with claws on the front and a stinger-like tail, somewhat resembling a cross between a pincer beetle and a scorpion.
As the rats approached the food, the robot would sometimes charge forward and gnash its claws and wriggle its tail to simulate an attack. After these attacks, the rats began performing avoidant behaviors, like hesitating or fleeing back to safety, which the researchers propose are associated with worry about the robot.
Some of the rats in the experiment were implanted with probes to monitor the hippocampus, part of the brain thought to be involved in learning and memory. The researchers specifically focused on the activity of neurons called “place cells,” which activate when an animal visits a specific location. By scrutinizing their activity, the researchers could map which place cells were associated with the location of the food or of the robot.
When the rats hesitated while approaching the food, the researchers found increased activity in the place cells associated with the location of the robot and of the food. This may represent the approach-avoidance conflict between wanting the food and worry about the robot. However, when the rats turned around part-way down the track, the active place cells were mainly associated with the location of the robot.
Usually, place cells are only active when the cells’ associated location is the animal’s location or just ahead of the animal. However, as the rats turned around and fled back to the safe end of the track, their place cells associated with the distant robot remained active.
Anxiety is related to the ability to imagine situations, something the hippocampus and place cells are known to be involved in. The activity of place cells associated with negative events—especially when at a distance from their associated locations—may help scientists better understand the neuroscience of anxiety.
Underlining this association, the researchers observed far fewer worry-related behaviors among the rats when given the anti-anxiety drug diazepam, commonly known as Valium. This medication also altered the activity of the hippocampus, reducing the neural patterns associated with these anxiety-like behaviors.
The authors add, “Worrying about the future requires mental representations of imagined negative future outcomes. Rats facing a predator-like robot guarding a food source developed new mental representations of the robot’s location, resulting in rats transiently thinking about where the robot is prior to foraging for food.”
Citation: Calvin OL, Erickson MT, Walters CJ, Redish AD (2025) Dorsal hippocampus represents locations to avoid as well as locations to approach during approach-avoidance conflict. PLoS Biol 23(1): e3002954. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3002954
Author Countries: United States
Funding: This work was funded by grants from the US National Institute of Health: R01-MH080318 (ADR), R01-MH112688 (ADR), a T32 fellowship to OLC (T32-DA037183), a T32 fellowship to CJW (T32-DA007234), summer project funding from St. Olaf College to MTE, and funding from the University of Minnesota Medical School. The funders had no role in study design, data collection, and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
Beach guardians: How hidden microbes protect coastal waters in a changing climate
Stanford University
A hidden world teeming with life lies below beach sands. New Stanford-led research sheds light on how microbial communities in coastal groundwater respond to infiltrating seawater. The study, published Dec. 22 in Environmental Microbiology, reveals the diversity of microbial life inhabiting these critical ecosystems and what might happen if they are inundated by rising seas.
“Beaches can act as a filter between land and sea, processing groundwater and associated chemicals before they reach the ocean,” said study co-first author Jessica Bullington, a Ph.D. student in Earth system science in the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability. “Understanding how these ecosystems function is key to safeguarding their services in the face of sea level rise.”
The research team conducted the intensive study at Stinson Beach, north of San Francisco. Stinson Beach is representative of a “high-energy” beach, which has only a handful of previous papers on the microbiome worldwide.
Microbial guardians
Microbial communities living in groundwater within beach sand play a crucial role in maintaining coastal water quality. These microbes help break down chemicals, including excess nutrients like nitrogen, which can come from natural sources, such as decomposing plant matter, or human sources, like agricultural runoff and wastewater.
To better understand the dynamics of this microbial filtering system, the research team headed to Stinson Beach. Over two weeks, during both a wet and dry season, they collected samples from the beach’s subterranean estuary around the clock to capture changing tides. Then, the researchers analyzed the microbial DNA using advanced gene sequencing techniques. This approach – the first of its kind at such a fine time scale – provided unprecedented insight into the microbial community’s composition and stability.
The researchers found that the microbial communities remained relatively stable over changing tidal conditions and seasons. However, a wave overtopping event – when seawater surged into the aquifer due to high-energy waves – caused significant changes in the microbial makeup. Such disturbances are expected to become more frequent with rising sea levels and storm surges, making it harder for the microbes to do their water purification work.
“These microbes live in complex communities, many with specialized roles that include processing nutrients and even producing or consuming greenhouse gases,” said co-senior author Christopher Francis, a professor of Earth system science and of oceans in the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability. “The microbial community’s resilience under typical conditions is encouraging, but disturbances like wave overtopping highlight their vulnerability to climate change,” said co-first author Katie Langenfeld, a postdoctoral scholar in civil and environmental engineering at Stanford at the time of the research and current postdoctoral fellow at the University of Michigan.
Implications for coastal resilience
The study’s findings establish a critical baseline for understanding how subterranean estuaries function and respond to environmental changes. As sea levels rise, beach sands will be forced inland or erode, altering groundwater hydrology, chemistry, and microbial composition.
The research adds a crucial piece to the puzzle of coastal resilience. By highlighting the interplay between microbial dynamics and physical processes like wave action, the study brings into question impending changes to coastal groundwater. Policymakers and coastal planners should consider the role of these hidden ecosystems when designing strategies to manage sea level rise, according to the researchers.
“We rely on these microbial communities for essential biogeochemical cycling at the land-sea interface,” said co-senior author Alexandria Boehm, the Richard and Rhoda Goldman Professor of Environmental Studies in the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability and the Stanford School of Engineering. “If their capacity diminishes due to climate impacts, we could see cascading effects on coastal water quality and marine life.”
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the National Science Foundation, the Stanford University McGee and Levorsen Research Grant, and ARCO Stanford University Graduate Fellowship.
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