Migration as morality politics

by University of Innsbruck

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

Migration often serves as an arena for conflicting values. In this context, religious groups, civil society organizations and local authorities often show a more liberal attitude than the state. The political scientist Julia Mourão Permoser applies a new analytical approach to this as yet unexplored aspect.

More than ever, social debate is focusing on refugees and migration. While policy makers respond with strict laws and regulations, members of the public protest against these or protect asylum seekers threatened with deportation. A stir was caused in Austria in recent years by three cases of asylum seekers destined for deportation who were protected by the church: in July 2018, the Archbishop of Salzburg granted church asylum to 23-year-old Ali Wajid, who was to be deported to Pakistan despite being in the middle of an apprenticeship. In November 2019, the parish priest of Unken in Pinzgau took in 26-year-old Sayed Moshtaq Sadat, who was being threatened with deportation to Afghanistan a few months before his final apprenticeship exam. A month later, the police broke a taboo by entering the cloistered area of the monastery in Langenlois to arrest Ziaulrahman Zaland, an Afghan student who had been taken in by the nuns there.

Church sanctuary has a long tradition

Protecting refugees by granting them church sanctuary is a practice known since ancient times in almost all cultures and religions. In Germany and the U.S., there is currently a large church sanctuary movement, says political scientist Julia Mourão Permoser, who conducts research and teaches at the Universities of Innsbruck and Vienna. Some church communities are very open in communicating their willingness to host asylum seekers sought by the authorities.

In the U.S., but also in Europe, there are even entire cities that consider themselves "sanctuary cities." There, administrative staff will not ask about a person's residence status or will not be allowed to pass on such data to the immigration authorities, explains Mourão Permoser. Her research project "Migration as Morality Politics" is investigating the moral conflicts surrounding migration in Europe and the U.S. using a multi-method approach: she conducts in-depth interviews with people who grant church asylum or other forms of "sanctuary," analyzing self-representations and contributions to debates by advocacy groups, and she sheds light on the attitudes of the other side.

Help as a form of protest

The researcher is also studying a third form of support for refugees with irregular status: rescue ships in the Mediterranean, such as the Sea Watch, and organizations that rescue refugees from death in the desert between Mexico and the U.S.

"With their active protests, all of these groups are taking a moral and political stance against the immigration and asylum policies of various countries," explains Mourão Permoser. In some cases they enter into direct confrontation with the state, as for example when NGOs show resistance to various coercive measures taken by the authorities against rescue ships in the Mediterranean.

Closing the research gap

Although refugee rescue organizations, asylum-granting churches and sanctuary cities pursue "grassroots" migration policy in the name of human rights and humanity, the literature on migration policy has not yet sufficiently taken this phenomenon into account, as Mourão Permoser underlines: "So far, migration research has mainly dealt with security interests or economic interests, but not with ethical values."

In the literature on value conflicts in politics, on the other hand, known as "morality politics," the role of religions is taken into account in discussions on sexuality, women's rights, abortion, same-sex marriage or stem cell research: all of these being areas where religions usually take a conservative stance. The fact that religious actors take a liberal stance in migration policy is a special phenomenon that has not so far been examined in detail. It is interesting to note that in both cases their attitude is based on the same traditional values—defending human life and human dignity. "With the new focus on the role of values, I have a contribution to make to both migration research and research on morality politics," says Mourão Permoser.

Legal indifference to refugees

More information: Itamar Mann et al, Floating sanctuaries: The ethics of search and rescue at sea, Migration Studies (2022). DOI: 10.1093/migration/mnac007

Julia Mourão Permoser, What are Morality Policies? The Politics of Values in a Post-Secular World, Political Studies Review (2019). DOI: 10.1177/1478929918816538

Provided by University of Innsbruck 

 

https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/kropotkin-peter/1897/morality.htmAnarchist Morality - Marxists Internet Archive

 Kropotkin sees the source of all so-called moral ideas in primitive superstitions. The real moral sense which guides our social behavior is instinctive, based ...

ZOMBIE BIOLOGY

The thinking undead: How dormant bacteria calculate their return to life

by University of California - San Diego

Custom artwork illustrates an abacus made from bacterial cells known as spores used to 

count stimuli. Credit: Anne Hashimoto

Facing starvation and stress conditions, some bacteria enter a dormant state in which life processes stop. Shutting down into a deep dormancy allows these cells, called spores, to withstand punishing extremes of heat, pressure and even the harsh conditions of outer space.

Eventually, when conditions become favorable, spores that may have been dormant for years can wake up in minutes and spring back to life.

Spores wake up by re-hydrating and restarting their metabolism and physiology. But until now scientists did not know whether spores can monitor their environment "in their sleep" without waking up. In particular it was not known how spores deal with vague environmental signals that do not indicate clearly favorable conditions. Would spores just ignore such mixed conditions or take note?

University of California San Diego biologists have solved this mystery in a new study published in the journal Science. Researchers in the School of Biological Sciences discovered that spores have an extraordinary ability to evaluate their surrounding environment while remaining in a physiologically dead state. They found that spores use stored electrochemical energy, acting like a capacitor, to determine whether conditions are suitable for a return to normal functioning life.

A microscopy time-lapse movie depicts the color-coded electrochemical potential value overlaid on top of the phase image of a single spore. As revealed by the phase image, the spore remains dormant while exhibiting the ability to count stimuli, as indicated by the multicolor-coded flashes of electrochemical potential changes. Credit: Süel Lab—Kaito Kikuchi

"This work changes the way we think about spores, which were considered to be inert objects," said Gürol Süel, a professor in the Department of Molecular Biology. "We show that cells in a deeply dormant state have the ability to process information. We discovered that spores can release their stored electrochemical potential energy to perform a computation about their environment without the need for metabolic activity."

Many bacterial species form spores—partially dehydrated cells surrounded by a resilient protective coat—as a survival strategy that allows them to remain dormant for thousands of years. Such a remarkable capability makes them a threat in the form of bacterial anthrax as well as a contamination hazard in medicine and the food industry.

This microscopy time-lapse movie shows the color-coded jumps in electrochemical potential value of a single spore in response to short stimuli. With each stimulus, the spore gets closer and closer to exiting dormancy, as visualized by the color transitioning from deep purple to yellow. Credit: Süel Lab—Kaito Kikuchi

Süel and his colleagues tested whether dormant Bacillus subtilis spores could sense short-lived environmental signals that were not strong enough to trigger a return to life. They found that spores were able to count such small inputs and if the sum reached a certain threshold, they would decide to exit the dormant state and resume biological activity.

Developing a mathematical model to help explain the process, the researchers discovered that spores use a mechanism known as integrate-and-fire, based on fluxes of potassium ions for appraising the surrounding environment. They found that spores responded to even short-lived favorable signals that were not enough to trigger an exit from dormancy. Instead of waking up, spores released some of their stored potassium in response to each small input and then summed consecutive favorable signals to determine if conditions were suitable for exiting. Such a cumulative signal processing strategy can reveal whether external conditions are indeed favorable, and prevents spores from "jumping the gun" into a world of unfavorable conditions.

A composite movie showing the phase contrast of a single spore (top left) to visualize the dormant state. A movie (top right) shows the color-coded electrochemical potential of the same spore. The plot (bottom left) shows the corresponding time trace of the electrochemical potential values changing over time. Finally, a corresponding bar plot (bottom right) visualizes the jumps toward the threshold for returning to life. Credit: Süel Lab

"The way spores process information is similar to how neurons operate in our brain," said Süel. "In both bacteria and neurons, small and short inputs are added up over time to determine if a threshold is reached. Upon reaching the threshold spores initiate their return to life, while neurons fire an action potential to communicate with other neurons." Interestingly, spores can perform this signal integration without requiring any metabolic energy, while neurons are among the most energy-dependent cells in our bodies.

A microscopy image reveals several spores with their electrochemical potential color-coded

 according to the strength of the signal. 

Credit: Süel Lab—Kaito Kikuchi and Leticia Galera

The researchers believe the new information about spores reframes popular ideas about cells in extremely dormant states that seem dead. Such findings hold implications for evaluating life on objects such as meteors as well as space missions seeking evidence of life.

"This work suggests alternate ways to cope with the potential threat posed by pathogenic spores and has implications for what to expect from extraterrestrial life," said Süel, who holds affiliations with the San Diego Center for Systems Biology, BioCircuits Institute and Center for Microbiome Innovation. "If scientists find life on Mars or Venus, it is likely to be in a dormant state and we now know that a life form that appears to be completely inert may still be capable of thinking about its next steps."

Authors of the Science paper include: Kaito Kikuchi, Leticia Galera-Laporta, Colleen Weatherwax, Jamie Lam, Eun Chae Moon, Emmanuel Theodorakis, Jordi Garcia-Ojalvo and Gürol M Süel.

Protein synthesis, ATP unnecessary for bacterial spore germination

More information: Kaito Kikuchi et al, Electrochemical potential enables dormant spores to integrate environmental signals, Science (2022). DOI: 10.1126/science.abl7484. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abl7484

Jonathan Lombardino et al, An electric alarm clock for spores, Science (2022). doi.org/10.1126/science.ade3921

Journal information: Science 

Provided by University of California - San Diego 

How we tracked one small seabird species' remarkable flight into a typhoon

by Emily Shepard, The Conversation

Fluttering Shearwater. Credit: Francesco Veronesi from Italy/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA

In 2018, 49,000 people in Japan were ordered to evacuate their homes as the strongest typhoon in 25 years, Typhoon Jebi, was on course to make landfall. Among those heading for shelter were my colleague Ken Yoda, professor of behavior and evolution, and his team, who were doing their annual field season studying a type of seabird called streaked shearwaters.

Typhoon Jebi broke wind records at 100 Japanese weather stations, with sustained wind speeds of 120 mp/h. These winds damaged nearly 98,000 houses, caused insurance payouts of $13 billion to £14 billion (£11.4 billion to £12.3 billion) and resulted in the deaths of seven people.

The experience of Typhoon Jebi made Ken realize he had amassed a unique tracking dataset that could be used to study how these seabirds respond to storms out on the open ocean. This information revealed the shearwaters he studied sometimes did the unthinkable: flying straight towards the eye of the storm.

So how does an animal that weighs the same as a pint of milk, weather such conditions?

Using GPS tracking data collected by tagging streaked shearwaters over 11 years on Awashima Island in the Sea of Japan, Ken Yoda teamed up with biologists Manos Lempidakis and I, and meteorologist Andrew Ross, to find out. Manos analyzed the tagging data to see which birds where flying over the Sea of Japan during the passage of a typhoon or tropical storm. Then he analyzed their GPS tracks in relation to the wind.

We never imagined the result would show that shearwaters sometimes fly directly towards the eye of a storm. The few previous studies that tracked seabirds responding to storms showed that adults flew hundreds of miles to circumnavigate them. Yet our results showed the shearwaters chased the storm eye, tracking it for up to eight hours.

How it works

Like albatrosses and other tubenose birds so-called due to the arrangement of their nostrils, shearwaters are adapted for windy conditions, using energy in the wind to fly with little flapping.

Their wing shape allows them to glide for long distances without losing much altitude. Tubenoses tend to live in windy regions, including many that are prone to cyclones.

When shearwaters fly towards the eye of the storm, they are sometimes in or near the eye wall (the region surrounding the storm eye, where the strongest typhoon winds are). But there comes a point where they cannot match the wind speed. When this happens, the birds start to drift with the wind and lose control of their direction of travel.

We used statistical modeling to delve deeper into the shearwater's movements. This work revealed shearwaters sometimes circumvented storms, but only when they were far out to sea and had a clear path around the storm system.

Most shearwaters in the study colony foraged close to the Japanese mainland. It was here, when birds were sandwiched between the storm and the land, that birds flew towards the eye of the storm.

In the northern hemisphere, cyclones move anti-clockwise. So birds foraging close to Japan could have been caught in the strong onshore winds behind the storm eye and forced to fly over land.

Flying over land is dangerous for shearwaters, due to the risk of uncontrolled landings. These birds, which are so agile in the air, are clumsy on land. They struggle to take off, even in normal conditions, which makes them vulnerable to predators, including crows and birds of prey.

Flying towards the eye of the storm, away from land, is the safer option. But birds need to know where land is in order to avoid it. While adults appear to have an internal map, research suggests younger birds have not had the time to build up this knowledge. This might help explain why it is the juvenile shearwaters that sometimes wash up in their thousands in the aftermath of storms.

Stormy weather ahead

We know very little about how seabirds respond to storms, because this kind of extreme weather is, by definition, a rare event. And no two storms are the same. So we need huge amounts of tracking data (and luck) to capture the times when birds are exposed to storms and find patterns in how they behave.

One of the things that makes our study particularly valuable is the amount of data we had. We examined data from 401 shearwaters over 11 years. Within this, 75 birds flew during ten typhoons or tropical storms, making this the largest tracking dataset for animals in storms at the time of publication.

But the strategy of flying towards the eye is probably only an option for fast-flying, wind-adapted birds such as albatrosses and shearwaters. We will need more data to understand whether and how seabirds with different flight styles and energy costs respond to to typhoons that are increasing in intensity, as well as potentially in size and duration.Pelagic seabirds fly into the eye of the storm when faced with extreme weather conditions

Provided by The Conversation 

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

https://www.dictionary.com/e/typhoons-hurricanes-cyclones

Cyclone vs. Typhoon vs. Hurricane vs. Tornado: Are They All The ... 

Sep 18, 2021 ... The word cyclone is a general term for a large storm system, the most severe kind of which is called a tropical cyclone. The words hurricane and ...

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/what-is-the-difference-between-cyclone-hurricane-tornado-and-twister/articleshow/1317404.cms

What is the difference between cyclone, hurricane, tornado and ... 

Dec 3, 2005 ... In the Philipines, it is called typhoon. Hurricanes occur in the Atlantic and typhoons, in the Pacific. Basically, hurricanes and typhoons form ...

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What to Know About Tornados, Waterspouts & Hurricanes 

Feb 13, 2020 ... Luckily, a tornado never touched down. But if it did, would you have been fully prepared to weather the storm in the safest way possible? While ...

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Videos show a wild week of waterspouts from Florida to Greece 

Aug 18, 2022 ... No injuries or damage were reported from this storm. On Tuesday, what appeared to be a strong waterspout formed off Destin, Fla., ...

Study: Farming community approves of crops and sustainable management practices chosen for diversifying European fields

by University of Córdoba

Crop diversification in Italy. Credit: Diverfarming

Agricultural intensification, characterized by the high use of external inputs such as energy and agrochemical products, negatively affects the environment, leading to soil degradation, loss of biodiversity and increased greenhouse gas emissions. To revert this troubling situation and move towards sustainable agriculture that respects the environment, practices such as intercropping and reduced inputs are shown to be an effective tool backed by scientific consensus. However, such practices do not always have an easy route to their introduction.

To know the perception that the players involved in the agrifood system (farming community, agricultural technicians, public administrations, and associations) have regarding the adoption of multiple cropping systems and sustainable management practices in the specific case of cereals in Italy, a team from the Diverfarming project has carried out a consultation process on the benefits and barriers that the interested parties face when adopting this type of systems.

In the context of Italy, where the Diverfarming project trials multiple cropping options in both dryland cereal- as well as in irrigated cereal based systems, a public consultation was carried out among over 50 players (including farmers, technical advisers, technicians from the public administrations, NGOs, associations and research staff) on their practical knowledge of current diversification strategies as an alternative to agricultural intensification systems.

Thus, the team made up of research staff from the Consiglio per la ricerca in agricoltura e l'analisi dell'economia agraria (CREA), the Universidad Politécnica de Cartagena (UPCT) and the University of Tuscia gathered the opinions of the Italian agrifood sector regarding the most important agri-environmental issues, priority actions, the most appropriate farming practices and their effectiveness and the main barriers to adopting these practices and performed an analysis of these perceptions using a multicriteria analysis method (it is used to issue a comparative judgment between heterogeneous projects or measures).

With this the main problem that the players identified was the fear of losing profitability and the limited training in intercropping of many farmers. For the interested parties, a very important strength is that the alternatives chosen for rotations of cereal and tomato and multiple cropping (the introduction of legumes in the rotation) are already grown as monocrops and are adapted to the local soil and climate conditions, as well as being crops that are widely known by the growers.

The people surveyed considered that the practices of minimal tillage, maintaining plant cover, rotations, the application of manure and the use of green manure to be adequate and effective. These are the strategies of sustainable management that the project proposes and are not costly, do not require major investments in machinery nor highly skilled farmers, which suggests significant potential for their introduction.

Training farmers in these techniques and in managing diversifications would be one of the solutions to the barrier of the lack of training in intercropping, whilst the integration of this knowledge in public policies to support the adoption of sustainable farming practices may be a strategy to increase their acceptance.

The research was published in Frontiers in Environmental Science.Intercropping and sustainable farming practices increase soil carbon reserves

More information: Di Bene, C et al, Barriers and Opportunities for Sustainable Farming Practices and Crop Diversification Strategies in Mediterranean Cereal-Based Systems, Frontiers in Environmental Science (2022). DOI: 10.3389/fenvs.2022.861225

Provided by University of Córdoba 

Multiple Earth simulations show ocean acidification peak in Arctic Ocean may shift from winter to summer

Future summer p′CO2 is dominated by warming, particularly in shelf seas. a–i, Arctic maps 

of the summer anomalies of total pCO2 (a–c), the thermal component (d–f) and the 

non-thermal component (g–i) are shown for the CMIP5 mean (RCP8.5) as decadal average

s for 2006–2015 (modern; a,d,g), 2091–2100 (future; b,e,h) and their difference (c,f,i). The

 summer anomaly is the average of the monthly anomalies over the three summer months 

(June, August, September). The components are from the Taylor expansion. 

The non-thermal component can be further decomposed into its various contributions, as 

discussed later, showing for instance that its reduction on the shelves is mostly from 

reduced influence of CT. Credit: Nature (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-05205-y

A trio of researchers from CEA Saclay, Sorbonne Université-CNRS-IRD-MNHN and the Alfred Wegener Institute, respectively, has found evidence that peak ocean acidification in the Arctic Ocean may shift from winter to summer by 2100. In their paper published in the journal Nature, James Orr, Lester Kwiatkowski and Hans-Otto Pörtner describe their study of acidification of the Arctic Ocean in the future. A News and Views piece in the same journal also outlines their findings.

Prior research has shown that for a host of reasons, ocean acidification in the Arctic Ocean is greatest during the later winter months. This has been attributed to multiple factors such as water temperature differences, water pH differences and the rate at which phytoplankton pull carbon dioxide from the water. But this may change, according to this new study.

Acidification of the world's oceans is happening due to the increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. As the carbon dioxide in the air meets the water, chemical reactions make the water more acidic, similar to the way soft drinks become more acidic when carbon dioxide is added to create bubbles. Prior research has also shown that acidification of the oceans is not constant—rates go up and down in any given region due to a number of factors. Researchers have also found differences based on region—some parts of some oceans are becoming more acidic faster than others. In this new effort, the researchers wondered about the acidification process in the Arctic Ocean—its cold temperature suggests things would be different than in the tropics or even in the mid-ocean.

To learn more about acidification in Arctic Ocean, the researchers studied 27 Earth system models that have been built over many years to simulate interactions between carbon dioxide in the air and the world's oceans. They focused most specifically on changes occurring in the Arctic Ocean. The simulations showed that if carbon dioxide emission levels are not reduced, acidification will accelerate, most particularly in the summer. This, they suggest, will come about due to increases in both air and ocean temperatures, resulting in increases in sea-ice retreat. The rate of increase in the summer, they also found, will surpass the rate of increase in the winter months, leading to peak acidification switching to the summer monthStudy examines the effects of ocean acidification on phytoplankton's energy stores

More information: James C. Orr et al, Arctic Ocean annual high in PCO2 could shift from winter to summer, Nature (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-05205-y

Victoria Qutuuq Buschman et al, Seasonal peak in Arctic Ocean acidity could shift to the summer, Nature (2022). DOI: 10.1038/d41586-022-03076-x

Journal information: Nature 

© 2022 Science X Network

Egypt replants mangrove 'treasure' to fight climate change impacts

SOMETHING FLORIDA SHOULD DO

by Bahira AMIN

Workers replant mangrove trees in Egypt's Red Sea coast near Marsa Alam. 

The trees act as a natural barrier against rising seas and extreme weather.

On Egypt's Red Sea coast, fish swim among thousands of newly planted mangroves, part of a programme to boost biodiversity, protect coastlines and fight climate change and its impacts.


After decades of destruction that saw the mangroves cleared, all that remained were fragmented patches totalling some 500 hectares (1,200 acres), the size of only a few hundred football pitches.

Sayed Khalifa, the head of Egypt's agriculture syndicate who is leading mangrove replanting efforts, calls the unique plants a "treasure" because of their ability to grow in salt water where they face no problems of drought.

"It's an entire ecosystem," Khalifa said, knee-deep in the water. "When you plant mangroves, marine life, crustaceans and birds all flock in."

Between the tentacle-like roots of months-old saplings, small fish and tiny crab larvae dart through the shallows—making the trees key nurseries of marine life.

Khalifa's team are growing tens of thousands of seedlings in a nursery, which are then used to rehabilitate six key areas on the Red Sea and Sinai coast, aiming to replant some 210 hectares.

But Khalifa dreams of extending the mangroves as far "as possible," pointing past a yacht marina some six kilometres (four miles) to the south.

The about $50,000-a-year government-backed programme was launched five years ago.

Mangroves absorb five times more carbon than forests on land,

 and because they live in salt water, there is no problem of drought.

'Punch above their weight'

Mangroves also have a powerful impact in combating climate change.

The resilient trees "punch above their weight" absorbing five times more carbon than forests on land, according to the UN Environment Programme (UNEP).

The stands of trees also help filter out water pollution and act as a natural barrier against rising seas and extreme weather, shielding coastal communities from destructive storms.

UNEP calculates that protecting mangroves is a thousand times cheaper than building seawalls over the same distance.

Despite their value, mangroves have been annihilated worldwide at rapid speed.

Over a third of mangroves globally have been lost globally, researchers estimate, with losses up to 80 percent in some coastlines of the Indian Ocean.

Mangrove expert Niko Howai, from Britain's University of Reading, said in the past many governments had not appreciated "the importance of mangroves", eyeing instead lucrative "opportunities to earn revenue" including through coastal development.

Mangroves provide shelter for a host of other species, as well as acting as powerful carbon sink battling climate change.

In Egypt's case, "mass tourism activities and resorts, which cause pollution", as well as boat activity and oil drilling wreaked havoc on mangroves, said Kamal Shaltout, a botany professor at Egypt's Tanta University.

Shaltout warned that mangrove restoration efforts "will go to waste" if these threats are not addressed.

"The problem is that the mangroves we have are so limited in number that any damage causes total disruption," he said.

Impact of mass tourism

There is little reliable information to indicate how much has been lost, but Shaltout said "there are areas that have been completely destroyed", particularly around the major resort town of Hurghada.

Red Sea tourism accounts for 65 percent of Egypt's vital tourism industry.

The scale of damage, a 2018 study by Shaltout and other researchers found, "probably far exceeds what could be replaced by any replanting programme for years to come".

Mangroves are remarkable for growing in salt water, and the trees are key nurseries of marine life.

Sayed Khalifa heads the mangrove reforestation project, which aims to boost the coverage of the trees along the Red Sea coast.

As part of the mangrove reforestation project, seedlings are grown at a special nursery.

Efforts to link up replanted areas will be potentially blocked by barriers of marinas, resorts and coastal settlements.

"Mangroves are hardy, but they are also sensitive, especially as saplings," Howai said.

"Intermingling mangrove reforestation with existing development projects is not impossible, but it is going to be more challenging."

To be successful, Shaltout said that tourist operators must be involved, including by tasking resorts with replanting areas themselves.

"It could even come with certain tax benefits, to tell them that just like they have turned a profit, they should also play a role in protecting nature," the botanist said.


Explore further  Tracking the journey of mangroves in southern Japan

© 2022 AFP

Onshore algae farms could become 'breadbasket for Global South'

by Krishna Ramanujan, Cornell University

Microalgae cultivation facility along the Kona Coast of Hawaii's Big Island. Credit: Cyanotech Corporation/Provided

How do we increase food production by more than 50%, on a limited amount of arable land, to feed a projected 10 billion people by 2050?

The solution could come in the form of nutritious and protein-dense microalgae (single-celled), grown in onshore, seawater-fed aquaculture systems.

A paper, "Transforming the Future of Marine Aquaculture: A Circular Economy Approach," published in the September issue of Oceanography, describes how growing algae onshore could close a projected gap in society's future nutritional demands while also improving environmental sustainability.

"We have an opportunity to grow food that is highly nutritious, fast-growing, and we can do it in environments where we're not competing for other uses," said Charles Greene, professor emeritus of Earth and atmospheric sciences and the paper's senior author. "And because we're growing it in relatively enclosed and controlled facilities, we don't have the same kind of environmental impacts."

Even as the Earth's population grows in the coming decades, climate change, limited arable land, lack of freshwater and environmental degradation will all constrain the amount of food that can be grown, according to the paper.

"We just can't meet our goals with the way we currently produce food and our dependence on terrestrial agriculture," Greene said.

With wild fish stocks already heavily exploited, and with constraints on marine finfish, shellfish, and seaweed aquaculture in the coastal ocean, Greene and colleagues argue for growing algae in onshore aquaculture facilities. GIS-based models, developed by former Cornell graduate student, Celina Scott-Buechler '18, M.S. '21, predict yields based on annual sunlight, topography, and other environmental and logistical factors. The model results reveal that the best locations for onshore algae farming facilities lie along the coasts of the Global South, including desert environments.

"Algae can actually become the breadbasket for the Global South," Greene said. "In that narrow strip of land, we can produce more than all the protein that the world will need."

Along with high protein content, the researchers noted that algae provide nutrients lacking in vegetarian diets, such as essential amino acids and minerals found in meat and omega-3 fatty acids often sourced in fish and seafood.

Algae, which grow 10 times faster than traditional crops, can be produced in a manner that is more efficient than agriculture in its use of nutrients. For example, when farmers add nitrogen and phosphorus fertilizers to grow terrestrial crops, about half runs off fields and pollutes waterways. With algae grown in enclosed facilities, excess nutrients can be captured and reused.

Similarly, carbon dioxide must be added to aquaculture ponds to grow algae. Researchers and companies have been experimenting with adding algae to construction materials and cement, where the carbon gets sequestered and removed from the atmosphere. "If we use algae in these long-lived structural materials, then we have the potential to be carbon negative, and part of the solution to climate change," Greene said.

One challenge is that sourcing CO2 is currently expensive and energy inefficient, but engineers are experimenting with concentrated solar technologies that use mirrors to focus and concentrate sunlight to heat a working fluid, which in turn can be used in direct air capture technologies that capture carbon dioxide from the air.

Also, while algae farming solves many food-related and environmental problems on paper, it can only be successful if people adopt it in diets and for other uses. Adding nutritious algae as a major ingredient or supplement in plant-based meats, which currently rely on less nutritious pea and soy, is one possibility.Algae-forestry, bioenergy mix could help make CO2 vanish from thin air

More information: Charles Greene et al, Transforming the Future of Marine Aquaculture: A Circular Economy Approach, Oceanography (2022). DOI: 10.5670/oceanog.2022.213

Journal information: Oceanography 

Provided by Cornell University