New study shows how climate change affects rain and floods

Rain and floods occur on different time scales - hours or days. Now, for the first time, it is possible to explain how climate change affects phenomena on both time scales

Vienna University of Technology

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Climate change may lead to more precipitation and more intense floods. A new study shows that to understand the details of this relationship, it is important to distinguish between different types of rainfall and flood events - namely, between short-term events that occur on a time scale of hours, and longer-term events that last several days. In each case, climate change has a different impact.

An Austrian research team has now shown for the first time that short-term precipitation and flood events on the scale of a few hours are particularly affected by the temperature increase caused by climate change. For events on a longer time scale, the relationship is more complicated. This finding was made using detailed data collected in Austria over more than a century – but it can also be applied to other regions of the world. It also allows conclusions to be drawn about which regions will experience changes in the probability of flooding, and how they will be affected. The results have now been published in the journal Nature.

Excellent data

Climate change is affecting water cycles all over the world. A look at Austria is particularly revealing: “We are in the very fortunate situation of having excellent data available,” says Prof. Günter Blöschl of TU Wien (Vienna), who led the research project. Since 1900, precipitation in Austria has been recorded by two separate institutions: by the meteorological service, now Geosphere Austria, and by the Austrian Hydrography, which is managed by the Ministry of Agriculture. The Austrian data are therefore particularly reliable and can be used to make forecasts for other countries.

These data sets have now been analysed in a cooperation of TU Wien, the Federal Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, Environment and Water Management (BML), GeoSphere Austria and the University of Graz.

Significantly more frequent precipitation events on short timescales

The analysis showed that short-term precipitation events lasting only a few hours have increased significantly in the last 30-40 years – by about 15%. “This had already been predicted by climate models, albeit with uncertainties. We have now been able to confirm it,” says Günter Blöschl.

The increase was equally strong on both sides of the Alps – this is an important result, as these are two different regions in climatological terms. “This clearly shows that large-scale weather systems are not the decisive factor for these short-term precipitation events, because they would be different near the Mediterranean than north of the main Alpine ridge,” says Blöschl. “Instead, the temperature increase caused by climate change leads to more intense precipitation locally. This is partly because warmer air can hold more moisture, but also because there is more energy in the system, and stronger warming at ground level leads to stronger upward movement of air masses. Then they also cool down faster, which leads to more rain.”

A more complicated picture on a longer time scale

This is a universal phenomenon: other regions are affected by this mechanism in much the same way as Austria. However, if longer-term rainfall events lasting several days are analyzed, a different picture emerges. In that case, global weather phenomena such as El Niño, a climate process influenced by ocean temperatures, play a much more decisive role. Rainfall events on this timescale are therefore not changing everywhere in the same way. In the Mediterranean, in some regions of Italy, Spain and Greece, long periods of precipitation may even become rarer as a result of climate change.

This difference between short and medium-term rainfall events also means that different regions are affected quite differently by floods. “Smaller rivers with smaller catchment areas are strongly influenced by short-term intense rainfall. The risk of short-term flooding is therefore much higher in areas close to such rivers,” explains Günter Blöschl. The situation is different for larger rivers like the Danube. They are less influenced by local precipitation on an hourly scale; here, weather events on a daily scale play a more important role, causing floods to increase or change little depending on the hydro-climatic situation.

The data collected in Austria thus clearly show that different types of rainfall and flood events are definitely influenced by climate change – but not always in the same way. If you want to assess the risk of flooding correctly, you have to distinguish between different time scales.

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Journal

Nature

DOI

10.1038/s41586-025-08647-2 

Method of Research

Observational study

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Increasing hourly heavy rainfall in Austria reflected in flood changes

Article Publication Date

12-Mar-2025

Want to preserve biodiversity? Keep natural areas connected, MSU, U-M researchers say

Michigan State University

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Brazilian legislation requires farmers to protect certain percentages of their land in different regions in Brazil, according to University of Michigan research scientist Thiago Gonçalves-Souza. Farms are required to protect 80% of the land if located in the Amazon, 35% in the Brazilian cerrado and 20% in other biomes, including the Atlantic forest. This sugarcane plantation is located in Alagoas, which is part of the Atlantic forest biome. While this helps, a study led by Gonçalves-Souza finds that large tracts of undisturbed forest is better for harboring biodiversity.

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Credit: Courtesy photo, Adriano Gambarini

Large and connected forests are better for harboring biodiversity than fragmented landscapes, according to research supported by Michigan State University. 

Ecologists agree that habitat loss reduces biodiversity. But they don't agree whether it's better to focus on preserving many smaller, fragmented tracts of land or fewer larger and more continuous landscapes.  

The study, published in Nature and conducted by researchers from Michigan State University, University of Michigan and the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research among others, examined 4,006 species of vertebrates, invertebrates and plants sampled at 37 sites around the world to provide a global synthesis comparing biodiversity differences between continuous and fragmented landscapes.  

"This paper resolves a half-century old debate about how to conserve biodiversity in natural areas, one started by scientific luminaries including E.O. Wilson and Jared Diamond," said coauthor Nick Haddad, MSU College of Natural Science professor of integrated biology in the Ecology, Evolution and Behavior Program. “Conservation of more habitat will increase biodiversity. But that is not sufficient. The land must be conserved in larger parcels that are interconnected.” 

The researchers found that on average, fragmented landscapes had 13.6% fewer species at the patch scale, and 12.1% fewer species at the landscape scale. 

Additionally, the findings suggest that primarily generalist species—species that are good at surviving in various environments—live in the fragmented areas.  

The scientists investigated what's called alpha, beta and gamma diversity at these sites. Alpha diversity refers to the number of species in a patch, while beta diversity refers to how species composition differs between two areas. Gamma diversity refers to biodiversity over a whole landscape. 

Think of driving through Ohio's farm fields and encountering patches of forests between fields, said co-author Nate Sanders, a professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Michigan. Each patch of forest might contain a handful of bird species (alpha diversity), but each patch of forest will have different species of birds compared to the previous patch (beta diversity). The biodiversity of the entire landscape containing the fragmented patches—or likewise a continuous forest—is the area’s gamma diversity. 

"The heart of the debate is that people who argue that fragmentation isn't so bad say that because you have isolated habitats, you have different species composition, which means at a large scale, it's good: if they are different, we can assume that the gamma diversity is going to be higher," said Thiago Gonçalves-Souza, a research scientist for the the U-M Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and lead author of the paper. "They say the opposite for large tracts of land: because this is a continuous and homogeneous patch, the species composition is too similar." 

But previous research didn't properly compare fragmented landscapes to large, continuous forests, Gonçalves-Souza said. For example, prior research may have looked at only one component of diversity, or may have compared a few continuous forests to dozens of fragmented patches.   

"One reason that this has been such a long-standing and unresolved debate is that we simply have not had the appropriate data and statistical tools to systematically evaluate the question at both smaller and larger scales," said coauthor Jonathan Chase, a professor with the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research. 

Haddad, Gonçalves-Souza and colleagues instead constructed an analysis that corrected for differences in sampling across different landscapes. The group discovered that fragmentation decreased the number of species across all taxonomic groups, but that the increase in beta diversity in fragmented landscapes did not compensate for species diversity loss at the landscape level. 

“These results will sharpen focus in conservation on preventing both habitat loss and habitat fragmentation,” Haddad said. 

The researchers hope the study can move the conservation community past the debate over continuous versus fragmented landscape and focus on restoration of forests. This study resulted from a global collaboration of ecologists. 

By Morgan Sherburne, University of Michigan, with contributions by Bethany Mauger, Michigan State University

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Journal

Nature

DOI

10.1038/s41586-025-08688-7 

Subject of Research

Animals

Article Title

Species turnover does not rescue biodiversity in fragmented landscapes

Article Publication Date

12-Mar-2025

Brazilian legislation requires farmers to protect certain percentages of their land in different regions in Brazil, according to University of Michigan research scientist Thiago Gonçalves-Souza. Farms are required to protect 80% of the land if located in the Amazon, 35% in the Brazilian cerrado and 20% in other biomes, including the Atlantic forest. This sugarcane plantation is located in Alagoas, which is part of the Atlantic forest biome. While this helps, a study led by Gonçalves-Souza finds that large tracts of undisturbed forest is better for harboring biodiversity.

Credit

Courtesy photo, Adriano Gambarini

Want to preserve biodiversity? Go big, U-M researchers say

University of Michigan

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ANN ARBOR—Large, undisturbed forests are better for harboring biodiversity than fragmented landscapes, according to University of Michigan research. 

Ecologists agree that habitat loss and the fragmentation of forests reduces biodiversity in the remaining fragments. But ecologists don't agree whether it's better to focus on preserving many smaller, fragmented tracts of land or larger, continuous landscapes. The study, published in Nature and led by U-M ecologist Thiago Gonçalves-Souza, comes to a conclusion on the decades-long debate.

"Fragmentation is bad," said study author Nate Sanders, U-M professor of ecology and evolutionary biology. "This paper clearly shows that fragmentation has negative effects on biodiversity across scales. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try to conserve small fragments when we can with our limited conservation dollars, but we need to be wise about conservation decisions."

The study, conducted by researchers from U-M, Michigan State University and the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research among others, examined 4,006 species of vertebrates, invertebrates and plants sampled at 37 sites around the world to provide a global synthesis comparing biodiversity differences between continuous and fragmented landscapes. They found that, on average, fragmented landscapes had 13.6% fewer species at the patch scale, and 12.1% fewer species at the landscape scale. 

Additionally, the findings suggest that generalist species—species that are good at surviving in various environments—primarily live in the fragmented areas. 

The scientists investigated what's called alpha, beta and gamma diversity at these sites. Alpha diversity refers to the number of species in a patch, while beta diversity refers to how species composition differs between two areas. Gamma diversity refers to biodiversity over a whole landscape.

Think of driving through Ohio's farm fields and encountering patches of forests between fields, Sanders says. Each patch of forest might contain a handful of bird species (alpha diversity), but each patch of forest will have different species of birds compared to the previous patch (beta diversity). The biodiversity of the entire landscape containing the fragmented patches—or likewise a continuous forest—is the area's gamma diversity.

"The heart of the debate is that people who argue that fragmentation isn't so bad say that because you have isolated habitats, you have different species composition, which means at a large scale, it's good. If they are different, we can assume that the gamma diversity is going to be higher," said Gonçalves-Souza, a postdoctoral fellow at U-M's Institute for Global Change Biology. "They say the opposite for large tracts of land: because this is a continuous and homogeneous patch, the species composition is too similar."

But previous research didn't properly compare fragmented landscapes to large, continuous forests, Gonçalves-Souza said. For example, prior research may have looked at only one component of diversity, or may have compared a few continuous forests to dozens of fragmented patches.

"One reason that this has been such a long-standing and unresolved debate is that we simply have not had the appropriate data and statistical tools to systematically evaluate the question at both smaller and larger scales," said co-author Jonathan Chase, a professor at the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research.

Gonçalves-Souza and colleagues instead constructed an analysis that corrected for differences in sampling across different landscapes. The group discovered that fragmentation decreased the number of species across all taxonomic groups, but that the increase in beta diversity in fragmented landscapes did not compensate for species diversity loss at the landscape level.

"This paper resolves a half-century old debate about how to conserve biodiversity in natural areas, one started by scientific luminaries including E.O. Wilson and Jared Diamond," said co-author Nick Haddad, a researcher at Michigan State University.

Gonçalves-Souza says that biodiversity isn't the only thing lost when landscapes become fragmented: The ability of the landscape to store carbon is compromised as well.

"People are also comparing these two situations and finding that we are losing the ability for landscapes to store more carbon in fragmented landscapes," Gonçalves-Souza said. "Fragmented landscapes are not only going to affect biodiversity by decreasing alpha and gamma diversity, but it also has implications for carbon stock as well."

Gonçalves-Souza hopes the study can move the conservation community past the debate over continuous vs. fragmented landscape, and focus on restoration of forests.

"I don't know if it's useful to think about continuous vs. fragmented landscapes. We need to protect biodiversity and I think this debate is not helping to actually support conservation," he said. "In many, many countries there aren't many large, intact forests remaining. Therefore, our focus should be on planting new forests and restoring increasingly degraded habitats. Restoration is crucial for the future, more so than debating whether it's better to have one large forest or many smaller fragments."

This study resulted from a global collaboration of ecologists, supported by the University of Michigan, says Sanders, who is also chair of the U-M Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. 

Images of forests 

Study: Species turnover does not rescue biodiversity in fragmented landscapes (DOI: doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-08688-7)

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Journal

Nature

DOI

10.1038/s41586-025-08688-7 

Method of Research

Observational study

Article Title

Species turnover does not rescue biodiversity in fragmented landscapes

Article Publication Date

12-Mar-2025

 

UMass Amherst nurse-engineer team honored for inventing IV pole designed to improve patient safety

Elaine Marieb Center for Nursing and Engineering Innovation’s robust research is helping to improve the usability of intravenous smart pumps

University of Massachusetts Amherst

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Karen Giuliano, nursing co-director of the Elaine Marieb Center for Nursing and Engineering Innovation, does research in the center's IV lab.

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Credit: Lauren LeCours/UMass Amherst

A nurse-engineer team at the University of Massachusetts Amherst has been honored with an ANA Innovation Award for inventing a new intravenous (IV) pole designed to improve the safety and ease of administering IV medications at the hospital bedside.  

The American Nurses Association Foundation and the American Nurses Enterprise  announced the 2025 award winners on Tuesday, March. 11. The team – Karen Giuliano, nursing co-director of the Elaine Marieb Center for Nursing and Engineering Innovation; Jeannine Blake, assistant professor of nursing; and Juan Jiménez, associate professor of mechanical and industrial engineering and a Manning/IALS Innovation Fellow – won honorable mention in the 2025 Team Innovation Award category.  

Preventable medication errors harm approximately 500,000 hospitalized patients in the U.S. each year. Many of these errors occur with the use of IV smart pumps, which require a very specific system setup to ensure the right amount of medication is delivered as ordered.  When the setup is not followed, the IV smart pump can deliver too much or too little of the medication prescribed, even as the pump signals it is delivering the correct amount.    

By combining the engineering and fluid dynamics expertise of Jiménez with the clinical knowledge of critical-care nurses Giuliano and Blake, this interdisciplinary team set out to develop an IV pole that simplifies and accelerates the setup and delivery of IV medications in hospitals when using an IV pump, ultimately reducing the occurrence of dangerous yet largely preventable medication errors. The idea stemmed from real-world clinical observations, which revealed that standard IV poles often made it more challenging and time-consuming for frontline nurses to achieve optimal IV infusion setups. 

A patent is under review for this novel IV pole, which features an adjustable crossbar for hanging infusions. This innovative crossbar automatically maintains the required height differential between the IV pump and the medication container. Established by IV smart pump manufacturers, this differential helps ensure optimal fluid flow accuracy. The pole improves IV medication delivery efficiency while minimizing the need for manual adjustments. 

“The work of Drs. Giuliano, Blake and Jiménez, along with the Elaine Marieb Center, represents the future of healthcare innovation,” said Frank Sup, engineering co-director of the Elaine Marieb Center.  

Giuliano, Jiménez and Blake received a 2022 Manning/IALS Innovation Award to support work on their new IV pole project. “By bringing together expertise from both nursing and engineering, we are breaking barriers and reimagining how technology can support nurses and improve patient care,” Giuliano said.  

According to Jiménez, “This project is a perfect example of why engineering and nursing must work together to solve real-world healthcare challenges. Nurses bring firsthand clinical experience and deep knowledge of patient care, while engineers contribute technical expertise to design practical, effective solutions.”  

The ANA Foundation’s Team Innovation Award celebrates interdisciplinary collaboration and ingenuity in addressing critical healthcare challenges. The winning teams exemplify these values by integrating engineering principles into nursing practice to develop cutting-edge healthcare solutions that enhance clinical outcomes and streamline nursing workflows. Their efforts have contributed to novel medical devices and improved patient safety protocols, according to the ANA Foundation. 

The invention of the new IV pole is part of the Elaine Marieb Center for Nursing and Engineering Innovation’s active program of research on the safety and usability of IV smart pumps. Their research has focused on reducing infusion errors, optimizing alarm management and enhancing usability to better support clinicians in high-pressure environments, such as the intensive care unit (ICU), where patients are typically receiving multiple IV drips at the same time. 

About the University of Massachusetts Amherst  

The flagship of the commonwealth, the University of Massachusetts Amherst is a nationally ranked public land-grant research university that seeks to expand educational access, fuel innovation and creativity, and share and use its knowledge for the common good. Founded in 1863, UMass Amherst sits on nearly 1,450-acres in scenic Western Massachusetts and boasts state-of-the-art facilities for teaching, research, scholarship, and creative activity. The institution advances a diverse, equitable, and inclusive community where everyone feels connected and valued—and thrives, and offers a full range of undergraduate, graduate and professional degrees across 10 schools and colleges, and 100 undergraduate majors.