How to use marine ecosystem models to improve climate change impact forecasts

by Lsu College Of The Coast & Environment, Louisiana State University

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

Millions of people depend on oceans for food and income. A recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change states that at least 83 percent of the ocean's surface will continue to warm this century, which will negatively affect lives and livelihoods. Additionally, a new international study that includes research from LSU found that higher resolution data are critical to predict how ocean warming will impact various marine species and ecosystems.

The study suggests that while marine ecosystem models are the key tools used to understand how climate change could impact marine food webs and fisheries in the future, how those models represent key processes that drive the marine ecosystem's response to climate change differ widely. These researchers believe this uncertainty could be causing models to underestimate future climate change impacts on the world's marine ecosystems.

LSU scientist Cheryl Harrison co-coordinated the team of 23 international researchers from the U.S., Australia, Europe and Canada, who produced this milestone paper for marine climate change impact projections. She is an assistant professor in the LSU Department of Oceanography & Coastal Sciences within the College of the Coast & Environment and in the LSU Center for Computation & Technology.

"Global ocean modeling of marine ecosystem and fisheries impacts under climate change is a relatively new field of study, and one that is very important for understanding both societal and conservation impacts of climate change. This study aims to improve understanding of major differences in various marine ecosystem models and how they work by separating out the data on how the fish respond to changes in temperature and the amount of available food," Harrison said.
The researchers explored the many mechanisms behind how marine animals respond to climate change in eight global marine ecosystem models from the Fisheries and Marine Ecosystem Model Intercomparison Project, or FishMIP. While the models in this study generally show that climate change will cause the world's marine animal populations to decline as oceans warm, the magnitude and details of temperature impacts are uncertain due to the large number of biological and ecosystem processes that temperature controls. The implication is that the models together may be underestimating the impact of ocean warming on fisheries.

"Additionally, how marine ecosystem models respond to climate change depends greatly on assumptions about the best variable from climate models to use to represent fish food," Harrison said. "Some use new growth of marine algae while others look at the total amount of biomass or more complicated formulations. However, new growth and biomass respond very differently to climate change, mostly due to the 'tropicalization of the ocean' as it warms, which is the marine equivalent to desertification. In tropical regions, there is more growth but more turnover, and less biomass to support larger organisms. These differences are amplified in the marine ecosystem responses."

This study takes the first step in reconciling those differences. According to the study's lead author, Ryan Heneghan from Queensland University of Technology's School of Mathematical Sciences, they plan to use their results as a roadmap for the global scientific community to increase its understanding of the world's marine ecosystems now and in the future.

How future fish stocks are affected by phytoplankton and iron uptake

More information: Ryan F. Heneghan et al, Disentangling diverse responses to climate change among global marine ecosystem models, Progress in Oceanography (2021). DOI: 10.1016/j.pocean.2021.102659

Provided by Louisiana State University 

Congruent trophic pathways underpin global coral reef food webs
View ORCID ProfileChloé Pozas-Schacre, View ORCID ProfileJordan M. Casey, View ORCID ProfileSimon J. Brandl, View ORCID ProfileMichel Kulbicki, View ORCID ProfileMireille Harmelin-Vivien, View ORCID ProfileGiovanni Strona, and View ORCID ProfileValeriano Parravicini

See all authors and affiliations
PNAS September 28, 2021 118 (39) e2100966118; https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2100966118

Edited by M. Aaron MacNeil, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada, and accepted by Editorial Board Member James A. Estes July 28, 2021 (received for review January 25, 2021)


Article
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Significance

Species loss can weaken the trophic interactions that underpin ecosystem functioning. Coral reefs are the world’s most diverse marine ecosystem, harboring interaction networks of extraordinary complexity. We show that, despite this complexity, global coral reef food webs are governed by a suite of highly consistent energetic pathways, regardless of regional differences in biodiversity. All networks are characterized by species with narrow dietary preferences, arranged into distinct groups of predator–prey interactions. These characteristics suggest that coral reef food webs are robust to the loss of prey resources but vulnerable to local extinctions of consumer species.

Abstract

Ecological interactions uphold ecosystem structure and functioning. However, as species richness increases, the number of possible interactions rises exponentially. More than 6,000 species of coral reef fishes exist across the world’s tropical oceans, resulting in an almost innumerable array of possible trophic interactions. Distilling general patterns in these interactions across different bioregions stands to improve our understanding of the processes that govern coral reef functioning. Here, we show that across bioregions, tropical coral reef food webs exhibit a remarkable congruence in their trophic interactions. Specifically, by compiling and investigating the structure of six coral reef food webs across distinct bioregions, we show that when accounting for consumer size and resource availability, these food webs share more trophic interactions than expected by chance. In addition, coral reef food webs are dominated by dietary specialists, which makes trophic pathways vulnerable to biodiversity loss. Prey partitioning among these specialists is geographically consistent, and this pattern intensifies when weak interactions are disregarded. Our results suggest that energy flows through coral reef communities along broadly comparable trophic pathways. Yet, these critical pathways are maintained by species with narrow, specialized diets, which threatens the existence of coral reef functioning in the face of biodiversity loss.
food web
coral reef
interaction network

Footnotes
↵1To whom correspondence may be addressed. Email: valeriano.parravicini@ephe.psl.eu or pozaschloe@gmail.com.


↵2G.S. and V.P. contributed equally to this work.


Author contributions: C.P.-S., J.M.C., G.S., and V.P. designed research; C.P.-S., J.M.C., S.J.B., G.S., and V.P. performed research; M.K. and M.H.-V. contributed new reagents/analytic tools; C.P.-S., G.S., and V.P. analyzed data; and C.P.-S., J.M.C., S.J.B., M.K., M.H.-V., G.S., and V.P. wrote the paper.


The authors declare no competing interest.


This article is a PNAS Direct Submission. M.A.M. is a guest editor invited by the Editorial Board.


This article contains supporting information online at https://www.pnas.org/lookup/suppl/doi:10.1073/pnas.2100966118/-/DCSupplemental.

Data Availability

All data and scripts have been deposited in a publicly accessible GitHub repository (https://github.com/ChloePZS/foodweb) and are also available on Zenodo (https://zenodo.org/record/5341340#.YS3ikt8682w). All other study data are included in the article and/or supporting information.
Accepted July 28, 2021.


Published under the PNAS license.

REFERENCES

Congruent trophic pathways underpin global coral reef food webs | PNAS

 

Scores of internet-providing satellites will soon streak across Canada's skies, but at what cost?

by Don Campbell, University of Toronto

Researchers at U of T, UBC and the University of Regina are studying the light pollution

 that would be created by tens of thousands of new internet satellites scheduled to be 

launched in the coming years. Credit: Dave Mantel/iStockphoto

The night sky is going to get much busier thanks to thousands of new internet satellites set to launch over the next few years—and researchers say it's going to affect Canada more than most places on Earth.

Researchers from the University of Toronto, the University of Regina and the University of British Columbia found that most light pollution is expected to happen near 50 degrees latitude north and south due to the orbits of the new satellites.

This means the skies near most large Canadian cities such as Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, Regina and Winnipeg could be affected.

"As with any new technology, it's important to look at all of the possible impacts," says Hanno Rein, an associate professor at U of T Scarborough and a co-author of the new research.

"This is such a fundamental change to our view of the sky that it requires greater scrutiny."

Several internet-service companies are planning to launch tens of thousands of satellites in the near future, resulting in a 20-fold increase of these objects in the Earth's lower orbit. It's estimated the number of orbiting satellites could reach 65,000 over the next few years, compared to about 5,000 today.

This flood of satellites presents a major challenge for astronomers (and amateur stargazers) who have to contend with light pollution from the thousands of new points of light. Rein says about eight percent of all the light in the night sky might soon come from these satellites. What will be most noticeable for the average person is the hundreds of new lights slowly moving across the night sky at any given time.

The researchers say these satellites will also contribute to atmospheric pollution from rocket fuel during launch and on re-entry when they burn up in the Earth's atmosphere.

More satellites also increase the threat of low orbit collisions, contributing to what's known as the Kessler Syndrome. This is where the number of objects in low orbit is high enough that a collision becomes more likely, leading to a cascading effect where space debris increases the probability of further collisions. There is currently no method of cleaning up space debris, which means certain space activities and the use of other satellites could be prevented for long periods of time.

"If these satellites collide it gets much brighter because the surface area increases from all the small fragments of debris that get created," says Rein, whose research focuses on exoplanets and developing mathematical methods used in astrophysics.

While this technology has been touted by companies as a way to deliver high-speed internet to rural areas, Rein notes that the service is expensive and that only a relatively small group of people living in wealthy countries will enjoy the benefits.

"The light and environmental pollution impact, on the other hand, will be experienced by everyone," he says.

He says another consideration is what happens if these companies go bankrupt and can no longer manage satellites already in orbit.

The research, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, has been submitted to The Astronomical Journal. Rein also helped develop a web app that allows people to select a latitude, season and time of night to find out how many satellites will be in the night sky and how bright they will be.

"The sky plays an important cultural and scientific role in people's lives," he says. "You cannot escape this technology—you will always see these satellites flying above you, no matter where you are in the world."Russian Soyuz rocket launches 34 new UK satellites

More information: Visibility Predictions for Near-Future Satellite Megaconstellations: Latitudes near 50 Degrees will Experience the Worst Light Pollution, arXiv:2109.04328 [astro-ph.EP] arxiv.org/abs/2109.04328

Journal information: Astronomical Journal 

Provided by University of Toronto 

 

New discovery about meteorites informs atmospheric entry threat assessment

by University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Figure 1. Setup for μ-CT experiments of the Tamdakht (top) and Tenham (bottom) 

meteorite samples. Credit: DOI: 10.3847/PSJ/ac1749

Researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign watched fragments of two meteors as they ramped up the heat from room temperature to the temperature it reaches as it enters Earth's atmosphere and made a significant discovery. The vaporized iron sulfide leaves behind voids, making the material more porous. This information will help when predicting the weight of a meteor, its likelihood to break apart, and the subsequent damage assessment if it should land.

"We extracted samples from the interiors that had not already been exposed to the high heat of the entry environment," said Francesco Panerai, professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at UIUC. "We wanted to understand how the microstructure of a meteorite changes as it travels through the atmosphere."

Panerai and collaborators at NASA Ames Research Center used an X-ray microtomography technique that allowed them to observe the samples in place as they were heated up to 2,200 degrees Fahrenheit and create images in three dimensions. The experiments were performed using the synchrotron Advanced Light Source at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

"The iron sulfide inside the meteorite vaporized as it heated. Some of the grains actually disappeared leaving large voids in the material," Panerai said. "We were surprised by this observation. The ability to look at the interior of the meteorite in 3D, while being heated, led us to discover a progressive increase of material porosity with heating. After that, we took cross sections of the material and looked at the chemical composition to understand the phase that had been modified by the heating, changing its porosity.

"This discovery provides evidence that meteorite materials become porous and permeable, which we speculate will have an effect on its strength and propensity for fragmentation."

NASA selected Tamdakht as case study, a meteorite that landed in a Moroccan desert a few years ago. But the team of researchers wanted to corroborate what they'd seen so they repeated experiments on Tenham to see if a meteorite with different composition would behave in the same way. Both specimens were from a similar class of meteorite called chondrites, the most common among the meteorite finds that are made up of iron and nickel, which are high-density elements.

"Both became porous, but the porosity that develops depends upon the content of the sulfides," Panerai said. "One of the two had higher iron sulfides, which is what evaporates. We found that the vaporizing of iron sulfides happens at mild entry temperatures. This is something that would happen, not at the external fusion crust of the meteorite where the temperature is a lot higher, but just underneath the surface."

The study was motivated by the potential threat meteorites pose humans—the clearest example being the Chelyabinsk meteor that blasted the Earth's atmosphere over Russia in 2013 and resulted in about 1,500 people being injured from indirect effects such as broken glass from the shock wave. After that incident, NASA created the Asteroid Threat Assessment Program to provide scientific tools that can help decision makers understand potential meteorite threats to the population.

"Most of the cosmic material burns away as it enters. The atmosphere protects us," Panerai said. "But there are significant sized meteorites that can be harmful. For these larger objects that have a non-zero probability of hitting us, we need to have tools to predict what damage they would do if they would hit Earth. Based on these tools, we can predict how it enters the atmosphere, its size, how it behaves as it goes through the atmosphere, etc. so decision makers can take counter measures."

Panerai said the Asteroid Threat Assessment Program is currently developing models to show how meteorites behave and models require a lot of data. "We used machine learning for the data analysis because the amount of data to analyze is huge and we need efficient techniques.

"We are also using tools refined over the years for the design of hypersonic entry vehicle and transferring this knowledge to the study of meteoroids, the only hypersonic systems in nature, which is very exciting. This provides NASA with critical data on the microstructure and morphology of how a common meteorite behaves during heating, so that those features can be integrated in those models

Experiments may help assess risks posed by falling space rocks

More information: Francesco Panerai et al, Morphological Evolution of Ordinary Chondrite Microstructure during Heating: Implications for Atmospheric Entry, The Planetary Science Journal (2021). DOI: 10.3847/PSJ/ac1749

Journal information: The Planetary Science Journal 

Provided by University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 

Despite plan to cull dozens of coyotes, Vancouver's Stanley Park fully reopens after only 4 killed



Kendra Mangione
CTVNewsVancouver.ca Reporter and Producert
Published Sept. 21, 2021 3:08 p.m. MDT
VANCOUVER -

Officials planned to trap and kill dozens of Stanley Park coyotes during a two-week cull, but with only four of the animals euthanized, the park is still reopening on schedule.

The Vancouver Park Board said in a news release Tuesday that the popular park is once again fully accessible. All trails are open, and the overnight park closure is over.

The board said fencing set up to keep people out at night, and signs reminding them of the closures, will also be removed shortly.

Tuesday marks the end of the two weeks set aside for the province's Ministry of Forests to deal with the coyote problem in the park.

Dozens of people, including children, have been attacked since December 2019 by a population of coyotes thought to be too habituated to human activity to be relocated.

After trying other options, the ministry opted to set up traps through the area, planning to cull the population as a reset for the area.

The hope was once the problem animals had been captured and killed, any coyotes that remained or moved in would be able to co-exist with humans. At the same time, an education program would begin, with a focus on avoiding the behaviour that can lead to these situations.

Many voiced concerns about the plan, which the ministry estimated may result in the deaths of as many as 35 coyotes in the park.

But in the end, only four were killed during the cull. Combined with another seven coyotes killed by the B.C. Conservation Officer Service before the ministry-led cull began, a total of 11 have died.

In its statement Tuesday, the park board said experts think there are more coyotes living in the park, but that any immediate threat to safety has been addressed through the cull.

Visitors are still advised to be cautious, especially around dawn and dusk. Those who see a coyote should try to make themselves as large as possible, and should not run. They're advised to speak loudly and make noise, but not to scream.

Wildlife should not be fed, and any food waste should be taken home or disposed of properly. Wildlife-proof garbage bins have recently been installed in hopes this will also help reduce the number of coyote attacks.

Ministry staff will continue to monitor the situation in the park, the board said, and visitors may notice park rangers watching the behaviour of both humans and animals.

The park board said its staff is also reviewing city bylaws with an eye on enforcement, though feeding dangerous wildlife is already prohibited in B.C. under provincial regulations.

Anyone who witnesses an aggressive coyote, or who sees a person feeding coyotes, is asked to call the B.C. Conservation Officer Service to report it immediately, at 1-877-952-7277.

Mathematician Answers Chess Problem About Attacking Queens

The n-queens problem is about finding how many different ways queens can be placed on a chessboard so that none attack each other. A mathematician has now all but solved it.

Samuel Velasco/Quanta Magazine

Leila Sloman
Contributing Writer
September 21, 2021

If you have a few chess sets at home, try the following exercise: Arrange eight queens on a board so that none of them are attacking each other. If you succeed once, can you find a second arrangement? A third? How many are there?

This challenge is over 150 years old. It is the earliest version of a mathematical question called the n-queens problem whose solution Michael Simkin, a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University’s Center of Mathematical Sciences and Applications, zeroed in on in a paper posted in July. Instead of placing eight queens on a standard 8-by-8 chessboard (where there are 92 different configurations that work), the problem asks how many ways there are to place n queens on an n-by-n board. This could be 23 queens on a 23-by-23 board — or 1,000 on a 1,000-by-1,000 board, or any number of queens on a board of the corresponding size.

“It is very easy to explain to anyone,” said Érika Roldán, a Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellow at the Technical University of Munich and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne.

Simkin proved that for huge chessboards with a large number of queens, there are approximately (0.143n)n configurations. So, on a million-by-million board, the number of ways to arrange 1 million non-threatening queens is around 1 followed by about 5 million zeros.

The original problem on the 8-by-8 chessboard first appeared in a German chess magazine in 1848. By 1869, the n-queens problem had followed. Since then, mathematicians have produced a trickle of results on n-queens. Though previous researchers have used computer simulations to guess at the result Simkin found, he is the first to actually prove it.

“He basically did this much more sharply than anyone has previously done it,” said Sean Eberhard, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Cambridge.

One barrier to solving the n-queens problem is that there are no obvious ways to simplify it. Even on a relatively small board, the number of potential arrangements of queens can be huge. On a larger board, the amount of computation involved is staggering. In this situation, mathematicians often hope to find some underlying pattern, or structure, that lets them break up the calculations into smaller pieces that are easier to handle. But the n-queens problem didn’t seem to have any.

“One of the things that is notable about the problem is that, at least without thinking very hard about it, there doesn’t seem to be any structure,” said Eberhard.

This stems from the fact that not all spaces on the board are created equal.

To see why, again imagine constructing your own eight-queens configuration. If you put your first queen near the center, it will be able to attack any space in its row, in its column, or along two of the board’s longest diagonals. That leaves 27 spaces off-limits for your next queen. But if you place your first queen along the side of the board instead, it threatens only 21 spaces, since the relevant diagonals are shorter. In other words, the center and side squares are distinct — and as a result, the board lacks a symmetric structure that might make the problem simpler.

This lack of structure is why, when Simkin visited the mathematician Zur Luria at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich to collaborate on the problem four years ago, they initially tackled the more symmetric “toroidal” n-queens problem. In this modified version, the chess board “wraps” around itself at the edges like a torus: If you fall off to the right, you reappear on the left.

The toroidal problem seems simpler because of its symmetry. Unlike on the classic board, all the diagonals are the same length, and every queen can attack the same number of spaces: 27.

Simkin and Luria attempted to build configurations on the toroidal board using a two-part recipe. At each step, they placed a queen at random, choosing any space with equal likelihood as long as it was available. They then blocked off all the spaces that it could attack. By keeping track of how many options they had at each step, they hoped to calculate a lower bound — an absolute minimum for the number of configurations. Their strategy is called a random greedy algorithm, and it’s been used to solve many other problems in the area of combinatorics.

The symmetry of the toroidal board gave Simkin and Luria a foothold on the problem. But the toroidal version trades freedom for symmetry, ultimately tripping them up. On the classic board, most queens attack fewer than 27 spaces, which leaves more flexibility for building a configuration.

“The nooks and crannies of a real chessboard turn out to really help,” said Eberhard.

Simkin and Luria’s progress on the toroidal problem eventually stalled when they couldn’t find room for the last few queens in a given configuration. Having hit a wall, they moved on to other projects. But eventually, Simkin recognized that the approach that had failed for the toroidal problem was actually well suited to the normal chessboard.

“Two, three years after we had given up on it, I realized that for the classical problem, actually this is much easier,” said Simkin.

So Simkin and Luria tried to finish up their configuration on a normal chessboard (of any dimension). They found they could usually succeed by adjusting some of the pieces they’d already placed.

“You can just move a couple of queens around, stick two new queens in and take one old queen out,” explained Nick Wormald of Monash University.

But the lack of symmetry in the classic problem did come back to bite the researchers. The random greedy algorithm treats every space on the board equally and is best suited for highly symmetric problems where every square is the same. When queens are placed at random on a standard board, the algorithm doesn’t distinguish between the center square and a side square.

Due to this limitation, Simkin and Luria only ended up improving the known lower bound for the problem. They posted their results last May.

But Simkin kept thinking about the question, even after he moved from Israel to Boston last fall after completing his doctorate at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Eventually it dawned on him that he could adapt the random greedy algorithm to the asymmetric environment of the standard n-by­-n chessboard. His key realization was that queens in an n-queens configuration were far more likely to occupy certain squares than others — so that it didn’t make sense to use the strategy he and Luria had used in which they chose every space with equal likelihood.

The nooks and crannies of a real chessboard turn out to really help.

Sean Eberhard, the University of Cambridge.

“I realized you can actually use these asymmetries to your advantage,” he said.

Because queens in the middle of the board attack the most spaces, most configurations feature more queens on the side of the board than near the center. Once a board has even 100 or so spaces along each side, Simkin found that these effects started to overwhelm other possibilities. Almost all the configurations have their queens distributed in a particular way, with fewer queens near the middle of the board and more along the sides. Simkin just needed to figure out the exact weights to assign each square when assigning queens at random.

“Let’s say you take all the queen arrays and you put them one on top of the other. Then you ask: How often is this particular position occupied?” said Nati Linial, a professor at the Hebrew University and Simkin’s doctoral adviser.

To understand roughly how the queens would be arranged, Simkin broke the n-by-n chessboard into sections, each made up of thousands of squares. Then, instead of specifying exactly which spaces on the chessboard had queens, he looked at the bigger picture: How many queens are in each section?

Once he figured out how to allocate queens by section, he returned to the techniques he and Luria had used. Only this time he could wield them more precisely: Rather than putting queens down completely randomly, he chose spaces where there were more queens more often. This allowed him to determine a formula for the minimum number of valid configurations.

Finally, Simkin proved that this formula was more than just a minimum — that it was nearly an exact description — by using a strategy known as the entropy method.

Imagine that you have a valid n-queens configuration, and you want to share it with someone. If the other person knows roughly what a configuration looks like, how much more information do you need to share before they can reconstruct it precisely?

Simkin was able to calculate a maximum number of configurations by tracking the number of spaces not under attack after the position of each additional new queen was revealed. This maximum value matched his minimum one almost perfectly, allowing Simkin to conclude that he’d just about pinpointed the actual number of n-queens configurations. His proof brought long-sought clarity to the classic problem.

Mathematicians will probably continue playing with this problem — trying to squeeze these bounds even closer together, though Simkin’s result has now taken most of the mystery out of the problem.

It’s “just about as realistic as you could hope for,” said Eberhard.

But the techniques in Simkin’s paper could prove useful for studying other questions as well. In fact, last week Candida Bowtell and Peter Keevash of the University of Oxford used similar ideas to find an analogous solution for the toroidal n-queens problem. The paper is so new it has not been fully vetted yet. And there are many other open problems in combinatorics that could benefit from the ideas Simkin used.

“The interesting things are the methods,” said Simkin. “We’re constantly looking to make our tools stronger. I hope that I’ve succeeded in doing that here.”

Dinosaurs Lived--and Made Little Dinos--in the Arctic

By Karen Hopkin on September 21, 2021
SCINTIFIC AMERICAN

Artist's interpretation of a feathered Tyrannosaurus rex. Credit: Mark Garlick Science Photo Library via Getty Images

SCARIEST T REX I HAVE SEEN WOULD LOVE TO SEE ONE IN FULL COLOUR IN THE NEXT INSTALLMENT OF JURRASIC WHATEVER


New research shows that the prehistoric giants were even cooler than we thought

Full Transcript

Karen Hopkin: This is Scientific American’s 60-Second Science. I’m Karen Hopkin.

Wintering in the northernmost regions of Alaska is no walk in the park. It’s cold and dark and sometimes snowy. But that didn’t stop dinosaurs from nesting there during the Cretaceous period.

Patrick Druckenmiller: Dinosaurs were not only just living in the Arctic 70 million years ago in what’s now northern Alaska, but they were actually capable of reproducing there as well.

Hopkin: Patrick Druckenmiller of the University of Alaska Fairbanks and director of the University of Alaska Museum of the North.

Druckenmiller: In discovering that they were reproducing there, it has an important implication that strongly suggests that they were actually year-round residents in the Arctic.

Hopkin: Now the Arctic wasn’t as chilly then as it is today. But it was below freezing, with temps dipping down to around 14 degrees Fahrenheit, occasional bouts of snowfall and, of course, four months of winter darkness. If living in those conditions seems daunting, so was obtaining the study samples.

Druckenmiller: In order to get and reach our field sites, we actually have to drive from Fairbanks, about 500 miles north up to Prudhoe Bay and the oil field. From there, we board small planes and helicopters, and we fly out to our field site. And then we put together a couple of boats. And then we use the rivers up there as our highways.

Hopkin: When they spot a rock that looks particularly promising—usually in a bluff or cliff face along the river—they climb up and start collecting sediment, which then gets hauled back to the lab to be processed and examined.

Druckenmiller: We wash it, we screen it, we sieve it, and we collect and save every particle larger than half a millimeter. And what we do then is inspect every grain, grain by grain by grain, under a microscope, looking for these little remains, the bones and the teeth of what we now understand to be baby dinosaurs.

Hopkin: These itty bitty bones are way too tiny to have come from an adult dinosaur…even a wee one…and they lack the features one would expect to see in teeth and bones from an animal that’s developmentally mature.

So far, Druckenmiller and his team have dug up species from seven different dino families: from big duck-billed dinos, ceretopsians, and tyrannosaurs to smaller thescelosaurs, leptoceratops, dromaeosaurs, and troodontids. The findings are described in the journal Current Biology.

Now, why does the presence of baby bones suggest that the dinosaurs weren’t just passing through?

Druckenmiller: The reason we think they were year-round residents is because if you reproduce in the arctic, you have really a very limited time of year to do your business.

Hopkin: Egg-laying animals don’t usually engage in reproductive activities in the winter.

Druckenmiller: So if you laid an egg in the spring, and that egg took five to six months to hatch, which is what we understand the incubation period to be for some dinosaurs, such as duck-billed dinosaurs, then that means that your eggs are hatching out at the end of the summer.

Hopkin: Which doesn’t really leave enough time to head south for the winter with the family. And that raises probably the most important question.

Druckenmiller: So, if you’re overwintering there, how do you deal with the cold?

Hopkin: Some of the smaller species, like thescelosaurs and leptoceratops, could have burrowed underground and hibernated. And other researchers have unearthed evidence that some larger dino species actually sported feathers, including young T. rexes and their shaggy coated cousin, Yutyrannus huali.

Druckenmiller: We’re pretty certain that most of these meat-eating dinosaurs might have had their own down parka, as it were, to deal with the harsh winter conditions.

Hopkin: Even more intriguing, the evidence suggests that these Arctic dinos were likely warm-blooded.

Druckenmiller: We don’t actually find fossils of cold-blooded land-living animals alongside our dinosaurs. We’ve never found turtles. We’ve never found crocs or lizards. The only thing we find besides dinosaurs up there are birds and mammals, which are also warm-blooded.

Hopkin: To date, Druckenmiller and his colleagues have spent decades braving the elements to figure out what made this remote polar location an attractive place to raise a family…at least for dinos who didn’t mind the cold.

Druckenmiller: It’s definitely a labor of love.

Hopkin: And a product of stick-to-it-iveness…particularly when it comes to clinging to an arctic cliff face to collect a bunch of baby teeth.

For Scientific American’s 60-Second Science, I’m Karen Hopkin.

[The above text is a transcript of this podcast.]

TWEEDLE DEE & TWEEDLE DUM CHANGE PLACES

Shandro shuffled out as Alberta's health minister, takes on labour portfolio in swap with Copping

Former health minister faced heavy criticism throughout the pandemic

Author of the article:Ashley Joannou
Publishing date:Sep 21, 2021 • 3 hours ago • 2 minute read • 29 Comments

Tyler Shandro was shuffled off the health portfolio Tuesday afternoon. 

PHOTO BY AZIN GHAFFARI /Postmedia, file



Tyler Shandro is no longer Alberta’s health minister after more than a year of heavy criticism over his handling of the portfolio.

Shandro was shuffled out at a short ceremony Tuesday afternoon, swapping roles with former labour and immigration minister Jason Copping who now takes over the health ministry.

Media was not invited to the ceremony, which was broadcast online. Premier Jason Kenney did not give a statement explaining his decision to swap the portfolios.

Amid the turmoil of the COVID-19 pandemic, and a protracted dispute between the government and doctors, the NDP Opposition had repeatedly called for Shandro’s resignation as health minister.

In March, 2020, after Shandro took fire for confronting a Calgary doctor in his driveway, Kenney rejected calls for his removal, saying it was understandable Shandro became “passionate” in defending his spouse.

After doctors voted down a contract offer from the province in April 2021, Kenney again rejected calls to fire Shandro, saying he had his “full, 100 per cent confidence.”

In a written statement Tuesday, NDP Leader Rachel Notley called news of Shandro’s shuffle “welcome” but said it is not a solution to the crisis going on in Alberta hospitals.

“It is clear that the responsibility for Alberta’s pandemic mismanagement rests on the shoulders of every UCP member and therefore it is incumbent on them all to take responsibility and chart a more effective path on behalf of Albertans,” Notley said.

“A cabinet shuffle will not ease the immense pressure on our hospitals from this severe fourth wave. It won’t reschedule the life-saving surgeries of thousands of Albertans. It won’t recover our economy. And it won’t help everyday families looking for leadership. Albertans deserve better.”

Tuesday’s move comes as the province is dealing with a fourth wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. Alberta currently has the highest rate of new COVID-19 cases in the country. The latest wave has put heavy pressure on the health-care system, particularly in intensive care units, leading to the cancellation of all surgeries that are considered non-essential.

Officials with Alberta Health Services announced last week that they were reaching out to other Canadian provinces asking for ICU spaces and skilled labour.

With files from Lisa Johnson

Alberta's new health minister brings questions and concerns from opponents to portfolio

Duane Bratt, a political scientist at MRU, said there are many questions around how Copping, a relatively unknown member of the legislature, ended up in the position and what he will do now that he has the role

Author of the article:Dylan Short
Publishing date:Sep 21, 2021

Minsiter of Health Jason Copping seen during his time as Minister of Labour and Immigration 

PHOTO BY LARRY WONG/POSTMEDIA


The appointment of a Calgary MLA into the role of health minister has left question marks, doubt and worry amid political commentators and opponents.

Jason Copping, MLA for Calgary Varsity and former minister of Labour and Immigration, took the reins as health minister Tuesday afternoon. Tyler Shandro has taken over Copping’s former portfolio.

Duane Bratt, a political scientist at Mount Royal University, wished Copping good luck as he steps into his new role, a position that has been under increasing scrutiny. Alberta is currently grappling with the highest COVID-19 case numbers in Canada and a health-care system that is struggling to maintain capacity.

Bratt said there are many questions around how Copping, a relatively unknown member of the legislature, ended up in the position and what he will do now that he has the role.

“How did he end up (there), was he the last guy in the room?” said Bratt. “I don’t know how he ended up in that job.”

Before entering provincial politics, Copping spent two decades working in management in the labour relations and human resources fields. His official UCP bio states he has previously worked on collective bargaining agreements and represented management in arbitration cases.

Copping was first elected into the legislature in 2019 and named to Premier Jason Kenney’s cabinet later that year. He has spent the past two years as the minister of Labour and Immigration, sponsoring five bills. Those bills mostly amended legislation around business and workplaces.

One of his recent bills, Bill 47: Ensuring Safety and Cutting Red Tape, 2020, changed a number of legal protections and compensation measures introduced by the previous NDP government. Those changes included the removal of presumptive psychological coverage for many health-care workers, including nurses and doctors.

Those workers can still receive compensation for issues such as post-traumatic stress disorder, but the Workers Compensation Board (WCB) won’t automatically assume those injuries come from the workplace.

Official Opposition Leader Rachel Notley reacted to Tuesday’s cabinet shuffle in a series of tweets, saying Copping has a legacy of revoking WCB protections and failing to protect workers at Alberta meat plants during COVID-19 outbreaks in the workplace.

The Alberta Union of Provincial Employees (AUPE) issued a similar statement, saying Copping has “blemishes” on his record, pointing to changes in workers legislation.

Bratt said the new role would be difficult for anyone to take on as relations have been frayed through past and present labour negotiations with health-care workers.

The province is currently negotiating a new bargaining agreement with the United Nurses of Alberta.

“What is his standing? What are the policy changes? Those are all very good questions and there is, I mean, there is no trust that the health-care workers have with the government over labour negotiations,” said Bratt.

Copping said Tuesday afternoon that he is honoured to be asked to serve as health minister. He said he has three pillars he plans to work on: increasing health-care capacity permanently, getting vaccine-hesitant Albertans to receive their shots and prepping the health-care system to adequately respond to potential future waves of COVID-19.

“We obviously have immediate and significant pressures on our health-care system right now and I step into this role resolutely committed to building immediate capacity,” said Copping.

Conservatives largest decline occurred in Calgary, political scientist attributes drop to Kenney's pandemic response

02:32
Liberal candidate elected in Calgary

Stephanie Thomas
CTV News Calgary Video Journalist
Updated Sept. 21, 2021 8:13 a.m. MDT
CALGARY -

A Calgary political science professor says Conservatives are losing their grip on Alberta and Premier Jason Kenney's scant leadership amid the pandemic was reflected in the federal election results.

Although Alberta voted largely to maintain the status quo, two or possibly three seats will have flipped by the time mail-in ballots are counted on Tuesday, in addition to the one previous NDP holdout in Edmonton.

The Liberals were victorious in Calgary Skyview as former Ward 5 city councillor George Chahal was elected to represent the riding.

Lori Williams, a political science professor at Mount Royal University, believes Chahal is in line for another promotion with "almost a guaranteed cabinet post."

"(He) has political experience, he's well respected in Calgary," said Williams in an interview with CTV Morning Live, before mentioning Chahal's campaign focused on challenges Calgary and Alberta currently face that the federal government has promised to assist with funding, including transit.

She says the Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) is facing a reckoning in Alberta, losing the most votes across the country compared to the other parties and the biggest decline was in Calgary.

"I don't think there's any question that Jason Kenney's management of the pandemic played into this election," said Williams.

Kenney has kept a low profile during the federal election campaign and Alberta's mounting fourth wave, only to emerge last week to announce more restrictions and what would eventually come to be called a vaccine passport system. The move was regarded by many as too little, too late.

There are calls for his resignation, and speculation that the inner circles of the United Conservative Party are strategizing Kenney's departure.

Williams says the election night results also puts Erin O'Toole's leadership of the CPC into question.

She adds that minority governments typically force collaboration, and expects that we will see the federal, provincial and municipal governments working together going forward, and expects Chahal to be a part of that.

Alberta Premier Jason Kenney battles COVID-19 hospital crisis, internal party revolt

Alberta Premier Jason Kenney answers questions at a news conference where the provincial government announced new restrictions because of the surging COVID cases in the province, in Calgary, Alta., Friday, Sept. 3, 2021.THE CANADIAN PRESS/Todd Korol

Dean Bennett, The Canadian Press
Published Tuesday, September 21, 2021 5:40PM EDT

EDMONTON - Alberta Premier Jason Kenney fought Tuesday to contain a rapidly expanding COVID-19 crisis that has overrun hospitals and ignited a party revolt against his leadership.

Kenney was expected to replace Health Minister Tyler Shandro with Labour Minister Jason Copping in a cabinet shuffle mid-afternoon.

Kenney's government also reached out to the federal government for emergency help with COVID-19 hospitalizations that may soon force doctors to ration life-saving resources

Municipal Affairs Minister Ric McIver asked the government for air transportation to move patients to care facilities outside Alberta and for more intensive care nurses and respiratory therapists.

“Federal assistance in these two areas has the potential to create significant relief to the health-care system,” McIver wrote in a letter to Bill Blair, federal minister of public safety and emergency preparedness.

Blair responded on social media: “Federal officials have been engaging their counterparts in Alberta for the past week to offer help. I have made it clear that when a request is received, it will be approved. We will work together to provide for the people across Alberta.”

Last week, Alberta asked other provinces for help when it declared a state of public health emergency. At that time, Kenney reintroduced gathering restrictions and announced a form of vaccine passport.

Alberta has more than 20,000 active cases. On Monday, there were 954 COVID-19 patients in hospital and 216 of them were in intensive care, well over normal ICU capacity.

Many surgeries have been cancelled and Kenney estimated last week that hospitals could be overwhelmed by the end of the month without direct action.

The premier is facing not only public but internal backlash from the United Conservative rank and file as well as from caucus members over his handling of the pandemic.

Joel Mullan, the party's vice president of policy, said Kenney needs to step down or face a fast-tracked review of his leadership.

“(A resignation) is necessary because both party members and the public have lost faith in Jason Kenney's leadership,” said Mullan.

He said Kenney has failed by constantly making extreme, inflexible policy decisions on COVID-19, only to retreat when the shifting, mutable crisis has forced his hand.

In the latest retreat, Kenney introduced proof of vaccination requirements after proclaiming for weeks he would never do so.

“We paint ourselves into a corner where there's no other option but to turn yourself into a liar to get out of it,” said Mullan. “This is a highly fluid situation with a virus we don't have a firm understanding of yet.

“There's no management of public expectations. Instead it's just telling people, `Nope, this is how it's going to be' until it isn't. It's no wonder that people don't trust him anymore.”

Kenney is not facing a party leadership review until late next year, unless at least 22 United Conservative constituencies vote to hold one earlier.

Mullan said more than 30 constituency associations have said they intend to call for a review but most have yet to formally ratify their decisions.

“I don't know exactly when it will be done, but it seems to be moving quite quickly.”

Mullan said if a leadership review were to be called, it would take place within two to three months. Kenny would need a simple majority of votes by the membership to keep his job.

“If he gets less than 50 (per cent), he's fired.”

Last week, Dr. Deena Hinshaw, Alberta's chief medical officer of health, admitted the fuse on the explosive fourth wave was lit on July 1, when Kenney lifted almost all health restrictions, faster than any other province. He said it was safe to do so, because 70 per cent of eligible Albertans had received at least one dose of vaccine.

Kenney declared COVID-19 was effectively defeated and that a future rise in cases could be accommodated in the health system. He said he didn't envision needing a fallback.

After that, vaccination numbers effectively stalled and fell behind other provinces. That prompted Kenney to recently offer $100 to anyone getting a first or second shot.

His government failed to act during July and August as case numbers spiralled and Kenney went on vacation.

Last week, he said he didn't act earlier because he didn't believe Albertans would have followed renewed health restrictions.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 21, 2021.

'Kenney effect' hurt federal Conservatives on Alberta election night, experts say

Conservative support fell by nearly 14 per cent in province

CBC News · Posted: Sep 21, 2021

Alberta Premier Jason Kenney announced new public health measures last week — political scientists say that may have played a part in Monday's election results.

 (The Canadian Press)

Political scientists say the Tories' commanding grip on Alberta was weakened on election night by Premier Jason Kenney's controversial response to the devastating fourth wave of COVID-19.

The "Kenney effect" was in full force at the polls, said Lisa Young, a political scientist with the University of Calgary.

Conservative support in Alberta fell by nearly 14 per cent in Monday's federal election, allowing the NDP and the Liberals to gain a foothold in some ridings.

Many Albertans voted in protest against COVID-19 restrictions or a lack thereof, Young said Tuesday.

"I think we saw a few things that sort of speak to the Kenney effect," she said.

"The fact that the Conservatives didn't do as well in terms of the popular vote as they have in the last couple of elections is probably a case of the traditional Conservative supporters not going up to vote, or voting for another party as a protest."

As Canadians elected a Liberal minority government for the second time since 2019, Alberta remained a largely uninterrupted sea of blue.

The Conservative Party of Canada dominated in Alberta, especially in rural ridings, but there were notable exceptions in ridings that instead went orange or red.

The NDP held on to Edmonton Strathcona, and by early Tuesday, NDP candidate Blake Desjarlais was declared the winner over Conservative incumbent Kerry Diotte in Edmonton Griesbach.

George Chahal won for the Liberals in Calgary Skyview. In Edmonton Centre as of Tuesday afternoon, Conservative incumbent James Cumming remained locked in a see-saw battle against Liberal Randy Boissonnault in a still undeclared race.

The Tories were left with 55.4 per cent of the vote in Alberta. In 2019, the party garnered 69 per cent.

Public health divide

Young said Kenney's divisive approach to the pandemic has Tory voters breaking off on both of the left and right side of the conservative camp.

Increasing support for the People's Party, particularly in Alberta's rural ridings, points to a splinter on the far right, one borne out of frustration and distrust over a recent COVID clampdown in Alberta.

"That speaks to a different kind of Kenney effect from people who object to what the provincial government is doing in terms of COVID," she said, adding it is a reminder that there are people disaffeced with the Alberta political system.

Calgary pollster Janet Brown said Albertan unhappiness with Kenney's handling of the pandemic surged in the final weeks of the campaign.

Erin O’Toole's federal Conservative party lost support in Alberta in comparison to previous elections. (Evan Mitsui/CBC)

Many Tories will now blame the premier for Conservative Leader Erin O'Toole's losses on the Alberta campaign trail, she said.

"When you look at the overall national popular support for the Conservatives, it's not far off the last election, but there's been this big drop in Alberta," Brown said.

"O'Toole was able to make some good progress outside of Alberta but troubles in Alberta sort of undermined him.

"There's going to be a lot of conservatives who are angry about how the last week of the campaign played out. And we'll be looking for Jason Kenney's role in that."

Brown said Alberta remains a conservative heartland but the Kenney government's handling of the pandemic influenced perceptions of the federal Conservative party.

O'Toole had previously praised the Alberta government's pandemic response. But as election day approached, the province was in the grips of a surging fourth wave that threatened to push the health-care system to its breaking point.

"The Conservatives got 14 per cent lower in this election than they did just two years ago ... That's a huge shift," Brown said.

"There's no key beneficiary of that drop, which again, makes you wonder what was going on in the minds of voters."

The biggest loser in Monday's federal election might just be Jason Kenney

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The election is bad news for the federal Conservatives but it is a disaster for Kenney, writes Graham Thomson

Graham Thomson · For CBC Opinion · Posted: Sep 21, 2021 6:00 AM MT 

Conservative leader Erin O'Toole really had only himself to blame for praising Premier Jason Kenney while COVID-19 began battering Alberta's health care system, writes Graham Thomson. (Todd Korol/The Canadian Press)

This column is an opinion from Graham Thomson, an award-winning journalist who has covered Alberta politics for more than 30 years. For more information about CBC's Opinion section, please see the FAQ.

---

As federal Conservatives cut through the clutter of the election to figure out why they lost, they'll be pointing their knives in the direction of embattled Alberta Premier Jason Kenney.

They are upset, to say the least, with Kenney for so mishandling the fourth wave of the pandemic that he became an issue in the final week of the election campaign as he chaotically tried to prevent Alberta's health care system from collapsing under the weight of COVID-19 cases.

By declaring yet another province-wide public health emergency and by finally being forced to introduce a vaccine passport (that he disguised as a "restrictions exemption program"), Kenney allowed Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau to attack him and by extension Conservative Leader Erin O'Toole, who had applauded the Alberta premier's pandemic response just days prior.

Of course, O'Toole really had only himself to blame for praising Kenney while COVID-19 began battering Alberta's health care system. In the end, O'Toole clumsily did his best to avoid journalists' questions on the issue, going so far as not even mentioning Kenney by name.

• Alberta Premier Jason Kenney's wounds may be self-inflicted but are they politically fatal?

• 'I wish we didn't have to do this': Alberta to offer $100 incentive to get vaccinated against COVID-19

The campaign might have had a litany of issues, including Afghanistan, gun control and daycare, but the pandemic trumped them all, and Kenney became the poster boy of how to let COVID-19 overwhelm your health care system.

It's not fair to blame Kenney for O'Toole's loss, but federal Conservatives who are eager to save O'Toole's hide post-election aren't going to go easy on the Alberta premier.

Even though the national seat results for the Liberals and Conservatives pretty much echo those of the 2019 election, the Alberta results are an ominous sign for the provincial Conservatives.

The NDP held on to Edmonton Strathcona and, in one of the upsets of the night, NDP candidate Blake Desjarlais defeated Conservative incumbent Kerry Diotte in Edmonton Griesbach.

Diotte may have been the victim of a perfect storm where, compared to 2019, the progressive vote surged while thousands of Conservative voters stayed home or switched to the People's Party of Canada that saw its share of the vote double in the riding.

George Chahal won for the Liberals in Calgary Skyview, while in Edmonton Centre, Conservative incumbent James Cumming was in a see-saw battle against Liberal Randy Boissonnault.

This is bad news for the federal Conservatives but it is a disaster for Kenney. It would seem the public's anger at the Alberta premier has bled into the federal arena.

Normally, federal Liberal candidates in Alberta only have a chance to win a seat when their party is clearly headed toward a majority government — as it was in 2015 when Liberals won four seats.

• Alberta's proof-of-vaccination program begins today. Here's what you need to know

• Alberta Premier Jason Kenney condemns hospital protests

When their party is headed to defeat or a minority status, they lose those seats, as they did in 2019.

Now, here they are on the cusp of winning two Alberta seats while their party only managed to eke out another minority government.

And the NDP, always ecstatic to win even one seat in Alberta, now has two.

You could call that the Rachel Notley effect, where the public's approval of the provincial NDP leader's behaviour during the pandemic has spilled over into the federal scene.

If Kenney was treading water yesterday, he is a drowning man today.

Not only is he the least popular premier in the country, with a fractious caucus on the edge of revolt and a party that is falling behind the NDP in fundraising, he will be the target of federal Conservatives looking for somewhere to point fingers.

This has happened before in Alberta politics.

During the federal election in June 2004, Premier Ralph Klein's very vocal plans to shake up Alberta's health care system created a massive headache for Stephen Harper's Conservatives.

Klein had boasted of "bold and courageous" reforms that would challenge – if not outright break – the Canada Health Act.

Liberal leader Paul Martin seized on Klein's rhetoric to attack Harper and it worked. Conservatives blamed Klein for allowing the Liberals to hang on to power with a minority government.

Klein's popularity, already beginning to weaken, began a free fall. He managed to win the Alberta election in November 2004 but lost 11 seats and 200,000 votes compared to the 2001 election.

Klein's days were numbered and, after receiving a humiliating 55 per cent support in a leadership review in March of 2006, he had no choice but to retire earlier than planned.

Kenney, on the other hand, is not supposed to face a leadership review until late next year.

However, there is now a move afoot by some UCP constituency associations to force a review early next year to give the party time to choose a new leader before the next election scheduled for the spring of 2023.

The knives are out for Kenney and they're coming from all directions.